THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS

Statesmen all over the world have paid homage to it. It's leadership has been praised and defended by Jimmy Carter. Charities have been established to support it. Fund raising in its name takes place every day. It has been provided with security training and weaponry by the International Community. If any country deserves to be called the proud creation of enlightened diplomacy and peacemaking, this is is it.

No peace agreement ever will emerge between Israel and the Palestinians, I believe, because economics should have dispersed the Palestinian population more than half a century ago. Mechanization of agriculture, rather than Zionist political aims, began displacing the rural Arab population in the 1930s, I observed in another location. The Zionist agency bought farms from absentee landlords, displaced the fellaheen engaged in near-subsistence agriculture, and made the land profitable and productive. From an economic standpoint, that is, the Palestinians were Okies, but with no California to go to. This led to the 1936-39 Arab uprising against the British Mandate and Jewish settlement.

Rather than disperse gradually like other agrarian populations, the Palestinian Arabs became wards of the United Nations after the 1947-48 War of Independence. Their numbers surged because of better medical care and nutrition than they previously enjoyed as well as child subsidies. That is why the 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel grew into the 4 million "refugees" registered with the UN in 2002. I place the term "refugees" in quotation marks because in no other case has the third generation following a population transfer retained official refugee status.

Despite the best intentions of Shimon Peres and the Israeli socialists, it seems delusional to imagine that any combination of light industry and tourism will provide a livelihood for a Palestine with 5 million inhabitants (including the non-refugee West Bank population). The Palestinian entity cannot exist without subsidies, and it cannot extract subsidies from the West or from the Muslim world without constituting a military threat. The existential choices for Palestinians come down to dispersal or perpetual war.

Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent.

Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there. He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man. Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

This January is on course to be the second warmest in the UK since records began and the fifth warmest in central England for 350 years. The average UK-wide temperature so far for the month - which experts say is unlikely to change - is 5.9C (43F).

The average Central England Temperature (CET), which has been measured since 1658, is 7.1C (45F).

The Met Office began recording UK-wide weather in 1914, with the warmest January since that time coming in 1916. During that record month, the average temperature was 6.3C (43F).

The Met Office said temperatures had been pushed up by winds blowing warm air in from the west.

Adam Gadahn, the first American to be charged with treason in more than fifty years, was born in Oregon, grew up in rural California, and converted to Islam at the age of seventeen. He is now twenty-eight. No one who knew him before his religious awakening ever thought that he would join Al Qaeda, and many people who knew him after he did are still perplexed.

And yet, in a short time, Gadahn has become one of Osama bin Laden’s senior operatives. (He is believed to be hiding in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.) He is a member of Al Qaeda’s “media committee,” and his responsibilities are thought to include those of translator, video producer, and cultural interpreter. Primarily, though, Gadahn is a spokesperson, a role he performs with tremendous conviction. He has addressed the United States in five videos, most of which reach a wide audience on the Internet and, in some form or another, have been discussed on the evening news. Last year, shortly before the fifth anniversary of September 11th, Al Qaeda’s leadership featured Gadahn in a video titled “An Invitation to Islam.”

The video began with an introduction from Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s main theoretician, who referred to Gadahn tenderly as a brother and as “a perceptive person who wants to lead his people out of darkness into the light.” Zawahiri implored his Western audience to listen to Gadahn, even to follow his example. Al Qaeda had never before given one of its members, let alone an American, an endorsement so intimate and direct.

Saudi Arabia's willingness to work with Iran likely indicates the growing alarm in the kingdom's leadership over the two simultaneous crises, which have inflamed Sunni-Shiite tensions throughout the Middle East.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has given tepid support to a new American strategy in Iraq but has expressed skepticism over whether it will succeed. Besides sending 21,000 additional American troops to Iraq, the new strategy takes a tougher stance on Iran.

A censored version of the film The Queen in which all references to God were taken out has been removed from Qantas flights. The Oscar-nominated film starring Helen Mirren, which had the word "God" removed, was being screened on Qantas long-haul flights until the mistake was picked up. "God" was bleeped out seven times during the film, which centres on the Queen's relationship with Tony Blair in the weeks after the death of Princess Diana.... The company said an overzealous young employee removed "God" after being asked to delete all swear words. Management claimed he failed to distinguish between the religious significance of the term and its use as a profanity.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said that U.S. combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 ...

Leading Sydney broadcaster 2GB was guilty of vilifying Lebanese people when presenter Brian Wilshire said they were inbred and had very low IQs, according to an investigation by the media watchdog.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found yesterday that a 2005 broadcast on the top talk station was a breach of the Commercial Radio Code of Practice. Wilshire made his remarks in a talkback segment late at night just days after the Cronulla riots.

"We will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced"

When most of us think about Ice Ages, we imagine a slow transition into a colder climate on long time scales. Indeed, studies of the past million years indicate a repeatable cycle of Earth’s climate going from warm periods (“interglacial”, as we are experiencing now) to glacial conditions.

The period of these shifts are related to changes in the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis (41,000 years), changes in the orientation of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun, called the “precession of the equinoxes” (23,000 years), and to changes in the shape (more round or less round) of the elliptical orbit (100,000 years). The theory that orbital shifts caused the waxing and waning of ice ages was first pointed out by James Croll in the 19th Century and developed more fully by Milutin Milankovitch in 1938.

... Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily apparent in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One sees clear indications of long-term changes discussed above, with CO² and proxy temperature changes associated with the last ice age and its transition into our present interglacial period of warmth. But, in addition, there is a strong chaotic variation of properties with a quasi-period of around 1500 years. We say chaotic because these millennial shifts look like anything but regular oscillations. Rather, they look like rapid, decade-long transitions between cold and warm climates followed by long interludes in one of the two states.

The best known example of these events is the Younger Dryas cooling of about 12,000 years ago, named for arctic wildflower remains identified in northern European sediments. This event began and ended within a decade and for its 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder.

... Whether the pathway for propagation of climate change is atmospheric or oceanic, or whether changes in oceanic and terrestrial sequestration of carbon may globalize effects of climate change, as suspected for glacial/inter-glacial climate changes, are open questions. Yet we begin to approach how the paradox mentioned above can happen: Global warming can induce a colder climate for many of us.

... Our main message is not just that, however. It is that global climate is moving in a direction that makes abrupt climate change more probable, that these dynamics lie beyond the capability of many of the models used in IPCC reports, and the consequences of ignoring this may be large. For those of us living around the edge of the N. Atlantic Ocean, we may be planning for climate scenarios of global warming that are opposite to what might actually occur.

Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday.

The Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe," Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent's Jews, he responded, "The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim."

Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe's future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?" The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements, said Lewis.

Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.

"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism," said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.

The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.

1-No Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Several hundred chemical weapons were found, and Saddam had all his WMD scientists and technicians ready. Just end the sanctions and add money, and the weapons would be back in production within a year. At the time of the invasion, all intelligence agencies, world-wide, believed Saddam still had a functioning WMD program.

3-Sanctions were working.

The sanctions worked for Saddam, not for Iraq. Saddam used the sanctions as an excuse to punish the Shia majority for their 1991 uprising, and help prevent a new one. The "Oil For Food" program was corrupted with the help of bribed UN officials, and mass media outlets that believed Iraqi propaganda. Saddam was waiting out the sanctions, and bribing France, Russia and China, with promises of oil contracts and debt repayments, to convince the UN to lift the sanctions.

7-Iraq Is In A State of Civil War.

Then so was Britain when the IRA was active, and so is Spain today because ETA is still active. Both IRA and ETA are terrorist organizations based on ethnic identity. India also has tribal separatist rebels who are quite active. That's not considered a civil war. This is all about partisans playing with labels for political ends, not accurately describing a terror campaign.

10- The War in Iraq is Lost.

By what measure? Saddam and his Baath party are out of power. There is a democratically elected government. Part of the Sunni Arab minority continues to support terror attacks, in an attempt to restore the Sunni Arab dictatorship. In response, extremist Shia Arabs formed vigilante death squads to expel all Sunni Arabs. Given the history of democracy in the Middle East, Iraq is working through its problems. Otherwise, one is to believe that the Arabs are incapable of democracy and only a tyrant like Saddam can make Iraqi "work." If democracy were easy, the Arab states would all have it. There are problems, and solutions have to be found and implemented. That takes time, but Americans have, since the 18th century, grown weary of wars after three years. If the war goes on longer, the politicians have to scramble to survive the bad press and opinion polls. Opposition politicians take advantage of the situation, but this has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with local politics in the United States.

ISRAEL’S outgoing chief of staff is expected to give evidence to a commission of inquiry into the conduct of last summer’s Lebanese war that could seal the fate of Ehud Olmert, the embattled prime minister.

General Dan Halutz, 58, who resigned earlier this month, will spell out Olmert’s failure to outline the objectives of the war. Political analysts believe his testimony before the Winograd Commission may lead to Olmert’s resignation.

Protesters in the Gaza Strip Gunmen from rival Palestinian factions are continuing to trade fire in the Gaza Strip as their deadly power struggle shows no sign of abating. Gunfire and exploding grenades could be heard in Gaza City early on Sunday. Fighting between the governing Hamas faction and its political rival, Fatah, has left at least 22 dead since Thursday, the worst violence in months. The clashes have halted attempts to hold talks on forming a Palestinian national unity government.

The Republican senators urging " a deal" to allow the Democrats to get a vote on Biden without getting the 60 votes for cloture clearly do not believe General Petraeus or Secretary Gates or don't care about stopping an "encouragement to the enemy." Instead of demanding that republican senators not vote for cloture, John McCain is joining John Warner in seeking a "compromise" on this issue, Gang of 14 style, that will end up handing the Democrats what they want --a victory on the Biden resolution. If Mitch McConnell agrees to this deal, he will be signaling the GOP base that nothing --nothing-- has changed in D.C. when it comes to the Senate Republicans.

What part of "encouragement to the enemy" don't the Republican senators understand? [Umph added.] They can stop the Biden resolution, or at least do the public the service of illuminating which republicans are willing to join Democrats in providing that encouragement. There is no valid reason --none-- to agree to cloture.

Americans who are serious about the war cannot tolerate the Biden/Warner resolutions, and sense in John McCain's attempt to produce another "Gang of 14" deal not seriousness but opportunism. If Senator McConnell steps forward and simply declares these are not maneuvers worthy of a great country in a time of war, he will have the esteem and gratitude of those who are serious about the war. He and the other serious senators might lose --there might be 11 Republicans willing to expose themselves as defeatists who would join Democrats in voting for cloture on the Biden resolution.

But the Republican senators might actually wake up to the reality that the Republican Party supports victory in the war, and act accordingly. The GOP senators ought to fight their political battles with at least one-tenth the effort for victory as the hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought real battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BRITISH doctors [said] he was too old to be treated on the National Health Service. But, at 72, he flew to Asia for a double-lung transplant and now claims to be the oldest man in Britain to have survived the operation. Joseph — not his real name — is one of a growing number of Britons who, frustrated with NHS waiting lists, are venturing into the murky world of organ brokers offering kidneys and livers harvested from the poorest quarters of the world, sometimes illicitly. ... He remains unsure where his new lungs came from. The Singapore surgeons told him only that they had been donated by the family of a much younger man who died from an unspecified head trauma.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton opened her quest for the White House Saturday stressing her potentially historic role as a woman - a tough woman at that, who will "deck" opponents, win the presidency and enact universal health care that eluded her as First Lady.

Obama is a smoker. Who knew? I like the way this story raises the issue – they’re concerned about the effect on his voice if he stops smoking, don’t you see. Hah! I’m waiting for the candid shot of Obama having a smoke – if he’s in a good suit, giving off that Rat Pack vibe, it’ll set the anti-smoking cause back ten years. It's he's wearing a fedora, which would add a jazzman / forties twist, I see a fifty-state sweep. Or maybe not. Given how cigarette smoking has become a moral issue, it’ll be interesting to see how this gets played. A humanizing frailty? A surprising character flaw? DID HE SMOKE AROUND CHILDREN? Doesn't matter; the more I look at this fellow, the more I see a fifty state sweep.

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Gunmen armed with mortars and grenades fought in several areas of Gaza City on Saturday, killing two men on the third straight day of factional clashes linked to the power struggle over the Palestinian government. The deaths brought to 20 the number of Palestinians killed since late Thursday, and at least 66 people were wounded, medical officials said. The rival Hamas and Fatah movements traded angry accusations, and each held several supporters of the other side hostage.

The violence froze talks about bringing Fatah into the Hamas-led government, negotiators said. Fatah's leader, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said he would go ahead with his plan to call early elections if the coalition negotiations fail to produce results within two to three weeks. The Gaza fighting, which started late Thursday, was among the deadliest in nearly two months.

"As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be-President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. 'When comes the end?' ... And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end."

This was part of freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's much ballyhooed stentorian Democratic response to President Bush's State of the Union address.







One wonders if the untold millions of North Koreans who've starved, bled, and died since then would similarly applaud Eisenhower's courage and wisdom. For more than half a century, North Korea has been a prison-camp society beyond the imagining of George Orwell, where public executions for stealing food are familiar events. The man-made famine of the 1990s alone claimed the lives of up to 1 million people (hard data from Stalinist regimes are difficult to come by).

One also wonders: When are our troops going to come home? Technically, the Korean War isn't really over. We're merely enjoying a ceasefire — much like the one we had with Iraq in the 1990s.

While Webb favors a "formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq," our forces in South Korea have been there for nearly six decades. Something tells me the antiwar base of the Democratic party doesn't have that sort of timetable in mind for Iraq.

So, except for the fact that the Korean War didn't end, our troops are still there, and the outcome has been the source of humanitarian and national-security nightmares, Webb's salute to Eisenhower's statesmanship really strikes home. [Umph added.]

In fairness, Webb is a thoughtful man who takes foreign affairs more seriously than most politicians. But his closest-weapon-to-hand style of attack against Bush does not reflect well on him or the Democratic party that chose him to be its representative.

But it is revealing. Indeed, the Democratic party's most honest moment Tuesday night came not in Webb's brusque words but in the Democrats' brusquer body language.

The president asserted that no one wants failure in Iraq. Understandably, the commander in chief wanted to avoid conceding how very real a possibility failure is, so he chose his rhetoric carefully. He spoke in the abstract about the bipartisan desire for victory and success.


And yet the Democrats for the most part sat on their hands, refusing to applaud, never mind rise in favor of such statements from a wartime president. Then, when the president mentioned ending genocide in Darfur, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her party leaped to their feet.

... None of this explains why Democrats are so eager to support continued U.S. fighting against the Taliban as part of NATO forces in Afghanistan, even though that puts us between two sides in what amounts to an Afghan civil war. But maybe Afghanistan is a humanitarian crisis too. Or maybe it's an excuse for Democrats to prove they are still tough as far as foreign policy.

Or maybe Democrats simply think the war in Iraq is lost, while there's still hope in Afghanistan ... assuming there's a principle in there somewhere.

... The 11th Commandment for liberals seems to be, "Thou shalt not intervene out of self-interest." Intervening in civil wars for humanitarian reasons is O.K., but meddling for national-security reasons is not.

This would explain why liberals supported interventions in civil wars in Yugoslavia and Somalia but think being in one in Iraq is the height of folly. If only Truman had called the Korean civil war a humanitarian crisis, Ike might not have called the whole thing off. ...

There seems to be only one hope for persuading the Democrats to support staying in Iraq. Let's just beat the rush and call Iraq a humanitarian crisis now. It surely is already. And if we leave prematurely, Iraq will undoubtedly give Darfur and Yugoslavia a run for their money as a humanitarian horror show. Why wait for calls to return to stop the bloodshed?

I'm actually quite sincere when I ask the following question: Does anybody — anybody — seriously think the effort in Afghanistan has more at stake for the war on terror than than the effort in Iraq?

I am in no way saying that Afghanistan isn't important. It's very important. But it seems so transparently obvious to me that Iraq is more important, that the downsides of failure are more grave, that the upside of success more rewarding, that I simply have a hard time believing anyone sincerely feels otherwise after seriously engaging the facts.

Moreover the moral concerns are so much greater, in terms of the humanitarian consequences of departure and America's obligation in Iraq.


The case could easily be made that we owe the Afghans nothing. We attacked their government after we were attacked by people given safe harbor and support on their soil. We did what we needed to do, and now we can leave. I don't agree with that argument, but it seems so much more compelling for Afghanistan than it does for Iraq, where we did launch a war of choice and therefore have a greater obligation to do right by the Iraqi people and to stay true to our democratic ideals.




This Democratic talking point about Afghanistan being the central front of the war on terror seems like such convenient b.s. I'm shocked they say it so glibly.

But maybe I'm wrong and there's a great argument I haven't heard.

Senate Democrats quashed a proposal yesterday that would have dramatically increased civil fines on employers who hire illegal aliens. [...] Mr. Sessions' proposal came directly out of the employer-sanctions section of the immigration-reform bill approved with overwhelming Democratic support last year. It would raise the minimum fine on employers from $250 per hired alien to $5,000 per alien. And it would raise the maximum fine from $10,000 per alien to $40,000 per alien.

Though Democrats turned back Mr. Sessions' employer-sanctions amendment, they allowed through a second Sessions amendment aimed at federal government contractors who are caught hiring illegal aliens....

After accusing Republicans of stalling, Mr. Kennedy then proceeded to read aloud for five minutes a story in the New York Times about soldiers fighting in Iraq.

Companies looking to reach China's consumer market with pig images during Year of the Pig celebrations next month will have to adjust after a national television network adopted a policy to be sensitive to the country's small Muslim population, according to published reports. China Central Television said it would ban all verbal and visual pork references from advertisements during Lunar New Year celebrations next month.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."

The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying "perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense."

[MOORE:] You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, not thousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq with millions of us! I know that you’re out of combat-ready soldiers — so you have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million — Iraq — is to send in at least 28 million! Here’s how it would work:

The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. That will quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of us will stay and rebuild the country. Simple.

[CRITTENDEN:] Or, here's another idea. How about if Michael Moore rounds up the 25 million people who saw Farenheit 9/11 and takes them over to Iraq to serve as human shields? Michael Moore's girth ought to cover at least four Iraqis all by its immense self.

GLASOV: Qutb was an Islamic fanatic who was full of hatred. He was intoxicated by a death cult based on martyrdom through jihad.

Yes, Qutb obviously believed that we were “immoral” -- in the sense that any Muslim radical believes that anything non-Muslim is immoral. In his view, immorality was anything connected to humans pursuing earthly happiness and joy -- and anything that didn’t involve giving one’s life through jihad.

In terms of the U.S., Qutb was enraged when he saw people dancing at a church social in Colorado in the 1940s. And let’s just get a glimpse of the mindset here: the dancing there was nothing compared to the dancing of today. And whatever it is that one might think of the dancing today, one thing is for sure: no one of sound mind would have called the dancing at the church social in Colorado in 1940 as being “immoral” by any rational standard.

The bottom line is that Qutb was enraged that people were enjoying music and life, because the purpose of life was death through jihad. And this disposition was akin to the Leninist hatred of cheer on earth.

Global warming could exacerbate the world's rich-poor divide and help to radicalize populations and fan terrorism in the countries worst affected, security and climate experts said on Wednesday.

"We have to reckon with the human propensity for violence," Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain's former ambassador to the United Nations, told a London conference on "Climate Change: the Global Security Impact."

"Violence within and between communities and between nation states, we must accept, could possibly increase, because the precedents are all around." He cited Rwanda and Sudan's Darfur region as two examples where drought and overpopulation, relative to scarce resources, had helped to fuel deadly conflicts.

Experts at the conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute said it was likely that global warming would create huge flows of refugees as people tried to escape areas swamped by rising sea levels or rendered uninhabitable by desertification.

Tickell said terrorists were likely to seek to exploit the tensions created.

"Those who are short of food, those who are short of water, those who can't move to countries where it looks as if everything is marvelous are going to be people who are going to adopt desperate measures to try and make their point."

BIN LADEN ON CLIMATE CHANGE

John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain's Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.

"You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries," al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 "letter to the American people."

The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire. Apart from causing that terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be harmless — a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.

"It's one of the most reviled words in the English language, but if one Texas mayor gets his way, getting caught uttering the "N-word" will hit offenders where it hurts. Mayor Ken Corley of Brazoria, Texas, has proposed a city ordinance that would make using the word in an offensive fashion a crime equal to disturbing the peace and punishable by a fine of up to $500. But legal experts said it's unlikely the law will stand up to the First Amendment....

Under the proposed Brazoria ordinance, users of the N-word would be fined only if a complaint were filed against them, thus protecting those who think they are using the word as a term of endearment.

Source

Thousands of diabetic children could risk losing limbs because the NHS cash crisis is hitting services, said a report out on Wednesday.

Four out of five diabetic children have poor glucose control, putting them at risk of developing complications, it said.

In the UK, there are 20,000 children under the age of 15 with type 1 diabetes, which means sufferers are dependent on insulin. Another 1,000 children have type 2, which is associated with obesity, but many more youngsters are undiagnosed. ...

The cash crisis means Pediatric Diabetes Specialist Nurses (PDSNs) are overstretched, it said. According to the Royal College of Nursing, there should be no more than 70 children to each nurse but some NHS trusts have caseloads of up to 300 children, meaning PDSNs take on more. Almost every region in England has seen an increase in the number of children each PDSN manages, the reports said.

Over a third (40%) of trusts have no protocols for transferring children into adult diabetic care while nearly a third of youngsters who want psychological support do not receive it, it added. Douglas Smallwood, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: 'No wonder 80% of children have poor blood glucose control.

An opposition protest turned violent today as thousands of Hezbollah supporters blocked roads leading into Beirut, burning tires and cars and clashing with government loyalists. The escalation brought the Lebanese capital to a virtual standstill and heightened fears that the nearly two-month long political crisis could burst into sectarian conflict.

Along one major thoroughfare, government loyalists faced off with Hezbollah demonstrators with a brawl and sporadic gunfire. One side raised photos of the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and burned photographs of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination in 2005 originally set off Lebanon’s political turmoil. The other side, lined up across the street, raised photographs of Mr. Hariri and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, and even of Saddam Hussein, while shouting epithets back.

Until now, the opposition protest has largely been noisy but peaceful, as both sides dug in for a long fight. Hezbollah, together with the Christian Free Patriotic Movement and several smaller groups, descended on Beirut last month, calling for Mr. Siniora’s resignation and for early parliamentary elections in order to form a so-called national unity government in which Hezbollah and its allies would have veto power.

JERUSALEM – Many of Yemen's Jews this weekend fled their homes for a hotel after receiving death threats from Islamic militants accusing the country's tiny Jewish community of serving as agents for "global Zionism."

The Jews said they feared for their lives. It was disclosed they had been forced to pay special taxes that Islam imposes on Jews and Christians in return for protection and security. About 45 Jews left their village in Sa'ada county in Yemen after Dawoud Yousuf Mousa, one of the heads of the local Jewish community, was warned Jan. 10 if the Jews don't leave within 10 days they would be exposed to killings, abductions and looting.

Four masked militants approached Mousa and delivered a letter to him warning the Jewish community had been under Islamic surveillance. "After accurate surveillance over the Jews residing in Al Haid, it has become clear to us that they were doing things which serve mainly global Zionism, which seeks to corrupt the people and distance them from their principles, their values, their morals, and their religion," the letter stated. "Islam calls upon us to fight against the disseminators of decay," the letter said. The threats have been attributed to disciples of Shiite religious leader Hossein Bader a-Din al-Khouty. [...]

Most of Yemen's Jews were evacuated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet, a series of semi-secret airlifts between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 45,000 to the Jewish state with the assistance of Britain and the U.S. A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue until 1962, when a civil war in Yemen put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus. Several thousand Jews remained.

Interviewer: "How can the Iraqi public, which is anti-American, and which believes the U.S. is the Great Satan, support people who talk the way you do?"

Iyad Jamal Al-Din: "Whoever believes America is the Great Satan should not shake its hand. I do not consider the U.S. to be the Great Satan. I view it as the sponsor and founder of the project of democracy, and the defender of democracy in Iraq.

You can be sure that if America were to withdraw today, there would be Shiite massacres of Shiites, Sunni massacres of Sunnis, and Kurdish massacres of Kurds. The strong would again devour the weak, until somebody would be back the next day - there's no doubt about it. We are still far from democracy."

BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 — The United States military said that two marines died Sunday in western Iraq and that an additional seven service members died Saturday. The deaths brought the weekend toll to 27 and made Saturday the third-deadliest day for United States forces since the war here began.

"The Australian flag has been banned from this year's Big Day Out in Sydney after organisers branded it a "gang colour" and symbol of hate.

The Daily Telegraph has learned organisers of the Aussie rock festival at Homebush will confiscate any flag or bandana bearing the national symbol at the gate.

Source

The mystery deepens. Turning the newspaper page, we find that, under demented Kyoto arrangements, Germany’s Dresdner Bank is now brokering an arrangement by which European companies will pay 15 billion euros to the corrupt and autocratic Russian state monopoly, Gazprom, in return for “carbon credits” to continue selling oil and gas to European customers on the open market.

This money in turn will help Russia’s dark, authoritarian regime to invest further in its ability to hold Europeans who depend on Russian heating oil through the winter to ransom when it has political demands.

They start by opposing capital punishment. They end by insisting on hanging themselves. [UMPH ADDED.]

Outside JI schemes, which allow investors to book foreign emission savings as their own, experts say Russia may have as many as 3 billion tonnes of spare quotas to sell under Kyoto's terms if it passes the required laws.

Question: "You were formerly Hizbullah secretary-general. Is the [situation in Lebanon] within the strategic framework of Hizbullah? Does Hizbullah have an outlined and prepared plan that is being implemented today? Why do you think Hizbullah has become a source of anxiety for the Lebanese? "

Al-Tufeili: "It wasn't like this in the beginning. Hizbullah's activity was limited to resistance [operations]... But, unfortunately, the problem has developed today to the point where they have succeeded in changing Hizbullah from a resistance force into a tool to be used in [whatever] direction they want."

Question: "Does this mean that Hizbullah does not make its own decisions, and that its orders come from outside [Lebanon]?"

Al-Tufeili: "Yes, Hizbullah is a tool, and it is an integral part of the Iranian intelligence apparatus. Unfortunately, all the elements in the [Lebanese] arena have become tools, and take orders from outside [Lebanon]..."

This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima (2,500 in one day) of World War II and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the 243 killed on 31st January 1968 — the first day of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam war. The attack remains the deadliest post-World War II attack on Americans overseas.

In May 2003, in a case brought by the families of the 241 servicemen who were killed, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth declared that the Islamic Republic of Iran was responsible for the 1983 attack. Lamberth concluded that Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government, was completely reliant on Iran in 1983, and assisted Iranian Ministry of Information and Security agents in carrying out the operation.^[7] Among the intelligence information initially uncovered by Thomas Fortune Fay, an attorney for the families of the victims, was a National Security Agency (NSA) intercept of a message sent from Iranian intelligence headquarters in Tehran to Hojjat ol-eslam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus. As it was paraphrased by presiding U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, "The message directed the Iranian ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct him ... 'to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines.'"[3]

Dr. Weiss believes that man-made greenhouse gases have recently had a role in warming the earth, although the extent of that role, he says, cannot yet be known. What is known, however, is that throughout earth's history climate change has been driven by factors other than man: "Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation," says Dr. Weiss, "and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solar magnetic activity."

The sun's most obvious magnetic features are sunspots, formed as magnetic fields rip through the sun's surface. A magnetically active sun boosts the number of sunspots, indicating that vast amounts of energy are being released from deep within.

Typically, sunspots flare up and settle down in cycles of about 11 years. In the last 50 years, we haven't been living in typical times: "If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity," Dr. Weiss states.

These hyperactive periods do not last long, "perhaps 50 to 100 years, then you get a crash," says Dr. Weiss. 'It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon."

In addition to the 11-year cycle, sunspots almost entirely "crash," or die out, every 200 years or so as solar activity diminishes. When the crash occurs, the Earth can cool dramatically. Dr. Weiss knows because these phenomenon, known as "Grand minima," have recurred over the past 10,000 years, if not longer.

"The deeper the crash, the longer it will last," Dr. Weiss explains. In the 17th century, sunspots almost completely disappeared for 70 years. That was the coldest interval of the Little Ice Age, when New York Harbour froze, allowing walkers to journey from Manhattan to Staten Island, and when Viking colonies abandoned Greenland, a once verdant land that became tundra. Also in the Little Ice Age, Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half.

"Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity," Abdusamatov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

"It is no secret that when they go up, temperatures in the world's oceans trigger the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Abdusamatov claimed that the upper layers of the world's oceans are - much to climatologists' surprise - becoming cooler, which is a clear indication that the Earth has hit its temperature ceiling already, and that solar radiation levels are falling and will eventually lead to a worldwide cold spell.

"Instead of professed global warming, the Earth will be facing a slow decrease in temperatures in 2012-2015. The gradually falling amounts of solar energy, expected to reach their bottom level by 2040, will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-2060," he said, adding that this period of global freeze will last some 50 years, after which the temperatures will go up again.

"There is no need for the Kyoto Protocol now, and it does not have to come into force until at least a hundred years from now - a global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions," Abdusamatov said.

But the Fairness Doctrine isn't going to kill Rush or Hannity. With tens of millions of listeners and a dozen years head start, are they really in jeopardy? This is about something much bigger. The Fairness Doctrine would bring new competition to the radio airwaves at all levels all across this country. It wouldn't keep a show on that wasn't any good either. But even wingnuts like Rush and Sean would actually have to offer facts amidst their snide, condescending decent into propaganda, while having guests on to offer the opposite side. That's just too much work, especially for Rush, who hasn't broken a sweat, except when he was in trouble for allegedly doctor shopping pills, or when he got caught with somebody else's penis pills after his single man's holiday to an underage capital of the world.

Extreme sentimentality, on behalf of infamous monsters, is what we have come to expect from the post-rational species of liberal, whom I term a “gliberal” to distinguish him from the real thing. For them, only the side of justice can err. They are indifferent to the victims of injustice. By subtle degrees, they even come to identify with the perpetrators of horrible crimes, though they wouldn’t dare commit such crimes themselves. One cannot understand them without meditating deeply on the nature of the demonic.

The mystery deepens. Turning the newspaper page, we find that, under demented Kyoto arrangements, Germany’s Dresdner Bank is now brokering an arrangement by which European companies will pay 15 billion euros to the corrupt and autocratic Russian state monopoly, Gazprom, in return for “carbon credits” to continue selling oil and gas to European customers on the open market. This money in turn will help Russia’s dark, authoritarian regime to invest further in its ability to hold Europeans who depend on Russian heating oil through the winter to ransom when it has political demands.

They start by opposing capital punishment. They end by insisting on hanging themselves.

Police on Saturday detained a teenager suspected of slaying an ethnic Armenian journalist, acting on a tip from the boy’s father after his picture was broadcast on Turkish television, senior officials said. Ogun Samast, who is either 16 or 17, was caught on a bus in the Black Sea city of Samsun, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He was traveling, apparently from Istanbul back to his hometown of Trabzon, said Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler.

Samast was wanted in connection with the killing of Hrant Dink, a 52-year-old editor of the Turkish Armenian newspaper Agos. Dink was gunned down Friday outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul.

Most Turks assume Dink was targeted for his columns saying the killing of ethnic Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century was genocide. Nationalists consider such statements an insult to Turkey’s honor and a threat to its unity, and Dink had been showered with insults and threats.

The teenage boy suspected of fatally shooting an ethnic Armenian journalist confessed during initial questioning that he killed the man, a local prosecutor told a state-run news agency on Sunday. Ahmet Cokcinar - a prosecutor in the city of Samsun, where the boy was caught - told the Anatolia news agency that the teenager confessed to killing Hrant Dink.

Ogun Samast, who is either 16 or 17 years old, was caught Saturday after police acted on a tip from the boy's father after his picture was broadcast on Turkish television, senior officials said. Samast was caught on a bus as he was apparently traveling from Istanbul, where the shooting took place, back to his hometown of Trabzon, Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler said. [...]

Turkey's relationship with its Armenian minority has long been haunted by a bloody past. Much of its once-influential Armenian population was killed or driven out beginning around 1915 in what an increasing number of nations are calling the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died but vehemently denies it was genocide, saying the overall figure is inflated and the deaths occurred in the civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Maybe the Assassination in Turkey Was Done for Religious Motives? [Michael Ledeen] -- From Little Green Footballs:

The assassination of Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink is being universally portrayed as ethnic strife, a political act by Turkish nationalists against an Armenian critic. Call me Mr. Suspicious, but when I see the entire media monolith pushing an idea like that with so much enthusiasm, I start looking for the real explanation. And the real explanation, as with so many of these media smokescreens, is jihad. Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul. (Hat tip: Paul.)

NTV television said Dink had been shot three times in the head and neck.

Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner near the newspaper, said the assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted “I shot the non-Muslim” as he left the scene.

This little piece of essential information is now being excised from all wire service and media reports.

The war in Iraq brings to Joe Lieberman's mind an old Mark Twain story.

"When a cat jumps on a hot stove, the cat never jumps on the stove again because the cat always assumes the stove is hot," says the senator from Connecticut.

"But we are smarter than that. OK, so Vietnam didn't work out. But there are times when you've got to use force, to protect your security and to protect your principles."

Try telling that to the nuisance of congressional felines now prowling around the Iraq debate, eyeing it like a cooker on high boil.

Next week will witness a Senate vote on a resolution condemning President Bush's new plan to quell growing sectarian violence and terrorism in Iraq by increasing the number of troops. While that vote may be largely symbolic, it comes amid far more ominous congressional calls to cut off war funding, to leave the Iraqis to settle their differences, to bring the troops home. If ever the Iraq political debate was at a crossroads, it's now.

At the center of this fray is Sen. Lieberman, a sort of Horatio at the congressional bridge--spiritedly trying to hold back a bipartisan stampede out of Iraq that he believes will result in devastating consequences for that country, the region and, most importantly, U.S. national security.

• FACT: the last US combat troop left Vietnam on March 31, 1973.
• FACT: South Vietnam didn't fall until TWO YEARS LATER.
• FACT: the North Vietnamese didn't violate the terms of the Paris Peace treaty and invade the South, and South Vietnam didn't fall until the Democrat inn Congress pulled the plug on financing them and abandoned them to the socialists of North Vietnam.
• FACT: millions fled Vietnam AFTER the socialist takeover; millions did not get in boat to enter Vietnam.
• FACT: socialist Pol Pot promptly took over Cambodia and murdered MILLIONS, and Laos promptly fell too - THE DOMINO THEORY WAS CORRECT. 100 million people in the region suffered under socialism for decades ever since - 65 million in Vietnam alone!
• A similar regional bloodbath and descent into jihadist tyranny in the Middle East would follow the collapse of the nascent democracy in Iraq. That's why we mustn't act like pussies and abandon the Iraqis or the region.

Mexico has extradited a purported drug cartel boss and three other alleged major traffickers to the United States, a move that Washington on Saturday called "unprecedented" in the cross-border fight against organized crime.

Osiel Cardenas, the alleged Gulf cartel leader who was believed to still be running his gang from jail in Mexico, was sent north Friday along with 13 others wanted by U.S. authorities after their appeals against extradition ran out, the office of Mexico's attorney general said.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales praised Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Saturday for the extradition, saying the U.S. had never before received from Mexico such a large number of drug suspects and others wanted for prosecution in the United States.

"The actions overnight by the Mexican government are unprecedented in their scope and importance," Gonzales said in a statement released Saturday.

... they continue to intellectually approach the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the leftist base they pander to, [so] we will have the continuing pleasure of watching these moral pygmies, currently even more intoxicated with power because they have a majority in Congress, as they actively undermine (all with the help of their media propaganda wing) any and all American interests around the world; impede and vilify US military actions (while saying they "support" the troops), and generally behave as prototypical leftists are wont to do--all, of course, in the name of "peace".

Hezbollah head Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has welcomed the resignation of Israeli army chief Lt-Gen Dan Halutz in the wake of the two sides' summer conflict. Sheikh Nasrallah told his movement's al-Manar TV in Lebanon: "Any of them that don't resign will be forced out."

Gen Halutz said he was taking responsibility for the failures of the Israeli military campaign. Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in July, and killing of eight others, sparked 34 days of fighting. A UN-brokered truce ended the conflict, in which more than 1,200 people died. ...n a three-hour interview broadcast live, Sheikh Nasrallah told al-Manar he had been "happy" when he heard of Gen Halutz' resignation.

In a separate development, Nasrallah promised Friday evening that his opposition alliance would intensify its campaign to bring down the government, pledging to mount an "effective" action in the coming days. Nasrallah told al-Manar that Hizbullah's consultations with its allies were drawing to a close and they would release a statement shortly that spelled out the steps to be taken. "I believe this action will be effective, very important and very big," he said. He would not divulge the plan but urged all Lebanese to support it.

NEW YORK — A New Jersey-born Muslim cleric with links to a suspected Al Qaeda operative who surfaced at a college not far from the cleric's Peoria, Ill., mosque the day before the Sept. 11 attacks has found a new home.

The imam now is spewing his message of hate to a growing group of followers at a mosque in Birmingham, England. His target: the United States, the United Kingdom, Christians and Jews.

Abu Usamah at-Thahabi, who preached at the Islamic Center of Peoria in 2001, is the subject of a British news documentary that revealed Monday how he regularly exhorts worshippers at the Green Lane Masjid, or mosque, in Birmingham to hate Westerners...

Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting President Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months. Mr Chavez said he wants to approve "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Pakistani security forces on Wednesday hunted for 10 injured militants including a senior Al-Qaeda member after an army air strike destroyed a training camp near the Afghan border.