The New York Times has announced that the entire world is outraged at Israel’s behavior in bombing Qana.  So it must be true. Or is it?

Nothing is more heartrending than the suffering of children. Emotionally we all want to put the blame on the bombs, the bombers, and those who ordered the bombing. And yet that is obviously a twisted perversion of reality. Because it is the explicit policy of Islamist terror groups to hide behind children, shooting missiles at Israeli civilians all the time. The gains to the terrorists are enormous. Israelis inevitably feel guilty about the unwanted casualties, but they don’t know what else to do in the face of constant attacks on their own children at home. The Muslim masses are predictably outraged because they only hear one side of the story. And the Leftist media continue to lie—- there is no other word for it—- about who is choosing to expose children to danger.

So the seeds are planted from the beginning. The BBC and the New York Times have labeled the black hats and the white hats for years and years. We are seeing just another replay of Leftist propaganda since Stalin—- who was the innocent victim of Western aggression until decades after his death, when a few old Lefties sheepishly admitted his crimes. Communism killed some 100 million innocents in the 20th century, according to the authoritative Black Book of Communism  (Livre Noire du Communism in the original French).

And yet, the most famous intellectuals of the 20th century served this murderous ideology. We are simply seeing a repeat today, with the usual suspects on the Left siding with Islamic fascism just as they took sides with the Leftist fascism of Stalin and Mao.

The Qana story is just a replay of Abu Ghraib, the myth that Saddam had no WMDs, the Wilson-Plame bedroom farce, and on and on. It has just become a kind of reflex of the Left: Israel and the United States are always wrong. Everything is set up for the same mendacious narrative.

Hezbollah killed the children of Qana, just as it killed the children of Haifa. Hezbollah is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow criminals of the mullahcracy in Tehran, who created the Hezbo monster with malice aforethought to “wipe Israel off the map.” There’s no mystery here. They are dead serious about a second genocide against the Jews of Israel. There has never been any effort to lie about it on the part of the Khomeini cult in Tehran. So we know who is responsible.

And yet, the “liberal” media always blame the good guys. There is something twisted and perverse about the media narrative, some sense of delight in enabling the overt malice of the Islamofascists. Because the media know. They know what’s going on. They are just playing dumb, trying to turn their easily-led audiences against those they hate the most. The media take an almost sexual delight in facilitating the murderous malice of Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad. In the calculus of moral responsibility, the New York Times and its ilk must therefore be held to blame in equal measure with the aggressor. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is their working slogan, and it is hard to evade the thought that the biggest “journalists” and editors have learned to enjoy that game, that sense of importance, that arrogation of power. They are co-conspirators in the slaughter of innocents.

The Leftist media will now tell us who won in Lebanon. They know, because they make the rules. When they announce that Israel lost, a frisson of delight will shiver the Left around the world. Muslims will hand out candy in the streets. And the world will become much more dangerous.

Read the rest.

The American Thinker

The deployment of the Basiji in the mine fields shows what one can expect from the Mullah-Regime · By Matthias Küntzel

In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise.

“In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”[1]

The children who thus rolled to their deaths formed part of the mass “Basij” movement that was called into being by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The Basij Mostazafan – the “mobilization of the oppressed” – consisted of short-term volunteer militias. Most of the Basij members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically and by the thousands to their own destruction. “The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies,” a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War has recalled, “It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander’s orders, everyone wanted to be first.”[2]

The western media showed little interest for the Basiji – perhaps because journalists could not be present during the hostilities or perhaps because they did not believe the reports. Such disinterest has persisted to this day. The 5000 dead of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on the Kurds of Halabja have remained in our memory. History has forgotten the children of the minefields.

Today, however, Ahmadinejad appears in public in his Basiji uniform. During the war, he served as one of the Basiji instructors who turned children into martyrs. The generation that fought in the Iran-Iraq War has come to power along with Ahmadinejad. He owed his election in Summer 2005 to the contemporary Basiji movement. In Fall, he announced a “Basiji Week.” According to a report in the newspaper Kayan, some 9 million Basiji heeded the call, “forming a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long…. In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people turned out.”[3] In his speeches, Ahmadinejad praises the “Basiji culture” and the “Basiji power” with which “Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage.” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Chair of the Guardian Council, goes so far as to describe the very existence of Iran’s nuclear program as a triumph of those Iranians who “serve the Basiji movement and possess the Basiji-psyche and Basiji-culture.”[4]

Far from being the subject of criticism, the sacrifice made of the Basiji in the war against Iraq is celebrated nowadays more than ever before. Already in one of his first television interviews, the new President enthused: “Is there an art that is more beautiful, more divine, more eternal than the art of the martyr’s death?”[5] The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, held up the war against Iraq, on account of the fearlessness of the Basiji, as a model for future conflicts.

...

The human wave tactic was implemented as follows: the barely armed children and teenagers had to move continuously forward in perfectly straight rows. It did not matter whether they fell as canon fodder to enemy fire or detonated the mines with their bodies: the important thing was that the Basiji continued to move forward over the torn and mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, going to their deaths in wave after wave.[8] The tactic produced some undeniable initial successes for the Iranian side. “They come toward our positions in huge hordes with their fists swinging,” an Iraqi officer complained in Summer 1982, “You can shoot down the first wave, and then the second. But at some point the corpses are piling up in front of you, and all you want to do is scream and throw away your weapon. Those are human beings, after all!”[9] By Spring 1983, the Pasdaran had sent some 450,000 Basiji in shifts to the front. After three months, whoever survived his deployment was sent back to his school or workplace.[10]

How were the Basiji recruited? Principally, in the schools: the Pasdaran sent “special” educators who hand-picked their martyrs from the obligatory paramilitary exercises. Propaganda films – like the 1986 television film “A Contribution to the War” – praised this alliance between students and the regime against those parents who tried to save their children’s lives.[11]

Secondly, the regime employed incentives. Thus, in a campaign called “Sacrifice a Child for the Imam”, every family that lost a child on the battle field was offered interest-free credit and other generous benefits. Moreover, enrollment in the Basij gave the poorest of the poor a chance for social advancement. Basiji reservists are still today treated as protégés of the Mullah-regime.[12]

Thirdly, the regime employed coercive measures. The following story of young Hossein, which was documented by the German weekly der Spiegel in 1982, is merely one among thousands:

“Why did you enlist?” The youngster in the camouflage fatigues, with both sleeves and pants legs rolled up, doesn’t answer. “His name is Hossein. He doesn’t know his family name,” the translator says. The boy is twelve at most. His face is gaunt, his body is bent forward, he breathes in spurts. One can see that he has trouble staying on his feet. “Polio,” the translator says. …Hossein comes from Mostalbar, a tiny spot somewhere between Shiraz and Bandar Abbas. …One day some unknown Imams turned up in the village. They called the whole population to the plaza in front of the police station and they announced that they came with good news from Imam Khomeini: the Islamic Army of Iran had been chosen to liberate the holy city Al-Quds – Jerusalem – from the infidels. …Hossein had no choice. The local Mullah had decided that every family with children would have to furnish one soldier of God. Because Hossein was the most easily expendable for his family and because, in light of his illness, he could in any case not expect much happiness in this life, he was chosen by his father to represent the family in the struggle against the infidel devils.[13]

Of the twenty children that went into battle with Hossein, only he and two others survived.

In 1982, during the retaking of the city of Khorramshahr, 10,000 Iranians died. Following “Operation Kheiber”, in February 1984, the corpses of some 20,000 fallen Iranians were left on the battle field. The “Karbala Four” Offensive in 1986 cost the lives of more than 10,000 Iranians. All told, some 100,000 men and boys are said to have been killed during the Basiji operations.[14] Why did the Basiji rush with such fervor to their own destruction?

 Quite enlightening.  Go read the rest.

Matthias Küntzel's Blog

By Michael Holden

LONDON, July 26

(Reuters) - Sacdiya Hussein Ali was 7 years old when she was taken to a stranger's house in her native Kenya and held down on a mat by 10 women who pulled her legs apart while a woman cut her with a razor blade.

"The lady who was doing the circumcision came between my legs and she started cutting my private parts," Ali, now 34 and living in London, told Reuters. "After the cutting I was screaming. They had put some clothes in my mouth so I couldn't shout, but they could still hear me screaming."

Ali is one of an estimated 3 million women and girls who suffer female genital mutilation (FGM) each year. The practice, also known as female circumcision, involves removing part or all of a girl's clitoris or labia. It is often carried out by an older woman with no medical training, using anything from scissors to tin can lids and pieces of glass. The victims have no idea what is going to happen to them and anaesthetic or antiseptic treatment is often not used.

"When they cut me, they mixed some herbs and eggs ... and poured it where they had cut and stitched me with thorns," Ali recounted.

The centuries-old practice, prevalent mostly in Africa, is now also being brought by immigrants to Western countries, like Britain. "FGM is a huge problem in the UK," said Ensharah Ahmed, community development officer at the UK-based Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development (Forward). Forward estimates there are around 279,500 women living in Britain who have undergone FGM, with another 22,000 girls under 16 in danger of joining them.

Just horrific.

Al-Reuters 

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?

What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.

...Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.

...Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?

Thank you, Charles.

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.

President Bush’s embryonic stem cell policy began with lies and has now ended with one.

Bush reserved his first veto as president for one of the only valuable things this do-almost-nothing Congress has managed to actually get done.

With a flourish of a veto pen that has remained dormant no matter how dopey Congress has been, the Senate bill allowing public funding of embryonic stem cell research has been consigned to the legislative trash can. [What a load of crap -ed.]

An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, [Yeah, DemocRATS... -ed.] having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.

When Bush uttered his first confused words on the subject of embryonic stem cell research five years ago in August 2001, he said that he was opposed to embryonic stem cell research since it involved the destruction of human life.

He noted that there were embryos, and many of them, already in existence in infertility clinics and left unwanted by those who created them. But he held it was wrong to use those in research. Instead, he told us, he had found a way out of the dilemma of how to do embryonic stem cell research without destroying any embryos.

What had Bush figured out that no one in the scientific community could see then and remains unable to see now?

There were, he said, 60 stem cell lines that had been made from embryos which held “great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures.” If he gave federal money to support research on those lines and funded research on adult stem cells, such as bone marrow, fetal blood cells taken from umbilical cords and other adult stem cells found in skin, muscle and the intestine, then all would be well.

Wrong science, flawed ethics
The president’s supporters, a much larger set then than now, blessed his insight and his wisdom in producing a marvelous "compromise" and pronounced the quandary over stem cell research resolved.

Except, as even the president must have known and some of his most vocal supporters knew, the president was talking through his hat.

PMSNBC

System Administrator Appreciation Day

If you can read this, thank your sysadmin

A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.

Fig. 1 Ted.

A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.

A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.

When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.

A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work -- to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin -- and know she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this webpage.

Show your appreciation

Friday, July 28th, 2006, is the 7th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your System Administrator something that shows that you truly appreciate their hard work and dedication.

Let's face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It's the least you could do.

Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let's be honest, sometimes we don't know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.

'nuff said.

Neither the mainstream media nor Kofi Annan have mentioned it, but Hizballah has attacked UNIFIL observers twice this week. (Hat tip: Larry.)

From the UN’s own press releases:

24 July 2006:

One unarmed UN military observer, a member of the Observer Group Lebanon (OGL), was seriously wounded by small arms fire in the patrol base in the Marun Al Ras area yesterday afternoon. According to preliminary reports, the fire originated from the Hezbollah side during an exchange with the IDF. He was evacuated by the UN to the Israeli side, from where he was taken by an IDF ambulance helicopter to a hospital in Haifa. He was operated on, and his condition is now reported as stable.

Notice: in this instance, the UN observer was injured badly enough to be evacuated to an Israeli hospital. Where they saved his life.

Not a word of condemnation from Kofi Annan for Hizballah. And not a word of gratitude for Israel, for saving a UN peacekeeper’s life.

25 July 2006:

This morning, Hezbollah opened small arms fire at a UNIFIL convoy consisting of two armored personnel carriers (APC) on the road between Kunin and Bint Jubayl. There was some damage to the APCs, but no casualties, and the convoy was obliged to return to Kunin.

Via:  Little Green Footballs

...When Israeli forces completed their pullout from Lebanon in early 2000, Foreign Minister David Levy reminded Annan that it was now up to Lebanon, in collaboration with UNIFIL, to live up to their obligations to deploy the Lebanese army in the south and to secure its border. That the present conflict is occurring is proof positive of the failure of the Lebanese government and of UNIFIL to even attempt to fulfill these obligations. The arsenal and forces that Hezbollah has amassed on Israel’s northern frontier were assembled under the eyes of UNIFIL. In fact, accusing the U.N. troops of “failure” would be inaccurate; “enabler” might be a more apt description.

One incident we encountered during our visit to Israel last year illustrates this sad fact. In January 2005, Hezbollah planted five camouflaged “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs), inches on the Israeli side of the border near Zarit, 15 mountainous miles inland from the Mediterranean coast.  The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) detected these IEDs and, following procedure, notified UNIFIL. A French UNIFIL engineer duly certified that the devices were indeed IEDs, then “requested” that Hezbollah remove them. Hezbollah, not denying it had planted them, flatly refused, stating that since the mines were (just barely) inside the “Zionist” border, it was up to the “Zionists” to remove them. So the IDF sent in a large armored bulldozer to carry the mines off for disposal. This task required making a sharp 90-degree right turn from an Israeli road onto the narrow border trail where the IEDs were located. Making this sharp right turn, the left front corner of the bulldozer inevitably occupied, for a couple of seconds, about a meter of land on the Lebanese side. During those seconds a Hezbollah fighter directed an anti-tank missile at the narrow, unguarded windshield of the bulldozer. The pinpoint strike, which our Israeli sources have admitted required extraordinary training and skill, killed the bulldozer’s driver, Sgt. Maj. Jan Rotzanski, a 21-year-old Russian immigrant from Herzliya. The cynical cruelty of this murder, which Hezbollah proceeded to widely celebrate across Lebanon, speaks volumes not only about Hezbollah, but also about UNIFIL.

Nor has the situation changed much now that the conflict is “hot.” UNIFIL’s only apparent action this past week has been to voice concerns that its troops might get hit in the crossfire. This is indeed a risk — because UNIFIL has long permitted Hezbollah to locate its forces, including its missile batteries, in the very shadow of installations belonging to the “peacekeepers.” UNIFIL has thus turned into a very convenient and high-profile human shield for terrorists.

Interesting observation.  Read the rest.

National Review Online

July 25, 2006: The mainstream media has, under the cover of the Israeli incursions into Lebanon, managed to expose another intelligence effort. This time it is a total of eight data-mining programs used to assist analysts in locating terrorists and stopping them before they carry out their plans. Five of these were developed under the efforts of the Total Information Awareness program run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and cancelled by Congress.

Tracking terrorists has become a high priority since the September 11 attacks. These efforts have included listening to their communications, tracking finances, and also trying to locate patterns indicating terrorist activity. These programs have helped break up several attacks, usually through arresting cells of terrorists (like the group in Florida). These efforts actually represent two different lines of research. One area is software that filters data to give analysts a much smaller haystack to search though. The other area is a group of programs that allow analysts from various agencies to collaborate via computer networks.

This is not the first time that intelligence efforts have been compromised by the mainstream media. The New York Times has twice blown major intelligence efforts by the National Security Agency involving effort to intercept terrorists' communications and in tracking finances. Other media outlets have blown open programs that involved keeping terrorists under wraps – and have even revealed interrogation techniques by publishing the logs for one of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, Mohammed al-Khatani, who was believed to be slated as the 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks.

In a very real sense, what has happened is that the mainstream media has decided to leak as many programs as they can. These days, to find out what the United States is doing, all an al-Qaeda operative has to do is to subscribe to the New York Times and USA Today – a grand total of $1.75 per weekday. Logging onto the websites is free. – Harold C. Hutchison

Strategy Page

A militant Islamic group has filed a police report against Indonesia's Miss Universe candidate accusing her of indecency, a lawyer for the organization said Tuesday.

Nadine Chandrawinata's participation in the contest and display of her body in a swimsuit there "is actually insulting for Indonesian dignity and women," Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) attorney Sugito told Reuters.

Chandrawinata did not make it to the finals of the Sunday competition in Los Angeles, which was won by Miss Puerto Rico, but she had drawn heavy media coverage in Indonesia, partly because of her mixed Indonesian-German parentage and Eurasian looks.

Sugito said FPI had also filed complaints against four people involved in sponsoring and organizing Chandrawinata's participation.

"I am worried that Nadine is only victim of their ambition," he said.

Under Indonesian law, police would have to investigate whether there was sufficient evidence for a case under the complaint, and if so, turn their findings over to prosecutors for a decision on whether it merited going to court.

The offences involved carry potential sentences ranging from two to six years in jail, Sugito said, adding that the posing requirements of the competition offended the standards not just of Islam but other religions.

A government decree against participation in beauty contests issued when strongman Suharto was president is still technically in effect in Indonesia, although in practice it has been disregarded since he lost power in 1998.

Some 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam, making it the world's most populous Muslim country.

Although most Indonesian Muslims are considered relatively moderate and the government is officially secular, hard-line groups are becoming increasingly vocal and visible.

The result has been a tug-of-war in Indonesian politics over how much religious values should be reflected in law.

FPI has filed complaints with the police on other issues previously, while critics say it encourages such vigilante tactics as attacking bars selling alcohol during the Muslim fasting period.

An April protest organized by FPI against the Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine was marked by rock throwing and vandalism.

Nice.... 

Yahoo! 

CNN's Robertson Now Admits: Hezbollah 'Had Control' of His Anti-Israel Piece

Better late than never? On CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, CNN’s senior international correspondent Nic Robertson added all of the caveats and disclaimers that he should have included in his story last week that amounted to his giving an uncritical forum for the terrorist group Hezbollah to spout unverifiable anti-Israeli propaganda.

Back on July 18, Hezbollah took Robertson and his crew on a tour of a heavily damaged south Beirut neighborhood. The Hezbollah “press officer” even instructed the CNN camera: “Just look. Shoot. Look at this building. Is it a military base? Is it a military base, or just civilians living in this building?”

In his original story, Robertson had no complaints about the journalistic limitations of a story put together under such tight controls, and Robertson himself at one point seemed to agree with the Hezbollah propaganda claim that Israeli jets had targeted a civilian area: “As we run past the rubble, we see much that points to civilian life, no evidence apparent of military equipment.”

Challenged by Reliable Sources host (and Washington Post media writer) Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Robertson suggested Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There's no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”

But the closest Robertson came to making any of these points in the taped package that aired last week was admitting that “we [he and his CNN crew] didn’t go burrowing into all the houses,” after pointing out (for the second time) that “we didn’t see any military type of equipment” in the area Hezbollah chose to let them tour.

Five days later, Robertson argued that “journalistic integrity” required skepticism: “When you hear their [Hezbollah’s] claims, they have to come with more than a grain of salt, that you have to put in some journalistic integrity. That you have to point out to the audience and let them know that this was a guided tour by Hezbollah press officials along with their security, that it was a very rushed affair.”

While some viewers undoubtedly deduced out that it was “a guided tour” from the numerous sound bites from the Hezbollah press officer, it’s not as if Robertson ever complained about his limitations or explicitly warned viewers that there was no way he could confirm any of the claims.

Nic Robertson, of course, isn’t the only correspondent going on these Hezbollah-arranged tours, as CNN’s Reliable Sources noted yesterday. In a set-up to his interview with Robertson, Kurtz played clips of NBC’s Richard Engel and CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer relating their trips into the damaged areas, with Palmer providing the sort of disclaimer that Robertson failed to include last week: “This morning, Hezbollah showed journalists around the ruins of its former stronghold, but Hezbollah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see.”

I'm shocked!  Shocked, I tell you!

NewsBusters 

What if the people, institutions, and attitudes of today were somehow taken back in time to World War II? What would have been the result? Would we have ended up winning or losing that war?

 Those of us old enough to remember World War II face many painful reminders of how things have changed in Americans' behavior during a war. Back then, the president's defeated opponent in the 1940 election — Wendell Wilkie — not only supported the war, he became a personal envoy from President Roosevelt to Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

We were all in it together — and we knew it. People who had been highly critical of American foreign policy before we were attacked at Pearl Harbor now fell silent and devoted themselves to winning the war.

What if the people, institutions, and attitudes of today were somehow taken back in time to World War II? What would have been the result? Would we have ended up winning or losing that war?

What about the great cry of the hour, a cease fire?

It so happens that World War II had the biggest cease fire in history. It was called "the phony war" because, although France was officially at war with Germany, the French did very little fighting for months, while the bulk of the German army was in Poland and France had overwhelming military superiority on the western front.

Famed correspondent William L. Shirer reported on the "unreal" western front, with soldiers "on both sides looking but not shooting." German soldiers bathed in the Rhine and waved to French soldiers on the other side, who waved back.

During this period Hitler offered to negotiate peace with France and England.

Kofi Anan would have loved it.

Read the rest.

Jewish World Review

There are now 2500 Australian soldiers and police in East Timor, mostly in the capital, Dili.

While thousands of Australian soldiers and police have served in East Timor since 1999, none have been accused of sexual misconduct. The behaviour of some peacekeepers has outraged many UN staff, several of whom have resigned in disgust.

In one of the worst instances detailed in Ms Ospina's report, a peacekeeper from an unnamed country is alleged to have abused two boys and two girls in the enclave of Oecussi.

In early 2001, two soldiers were sent home with injured penises after allegedly attempting sexual intercourse with goats.

Ms Ospina says that, as in other UN operations, the arrival of peacekeepers has attracted prostitution. She refers to a study showing that in 2004 there were 250 female and 110 male sex workers in Dili. Of the males, 75 per cent were younger than 18.

The report says the fear and reluctance to report sexual misconduct by UN personnel may be justified. Both the perpetrators and, usually, the person to whom such cases would be reported are men in positions of relative power, the report says.

Nice one, Kofi. What's one more UN scandal?

The Age

Israel is being set-up in the world’s media to meet an impossible standard. To its critics, if Israel does not instantly destroy all of Hizbullah and its fixed installations (and that “instant” has now already passed) and do it without taking any casualties itself or inflicting any collateral damage on the other side, then it has failed. 

By this peculiar standard, any country that has ever fought a war has “lost” it after the first week.  But it should surprise no one that this standard is only applied to Israel and the United States. It is an absurd standard, and a defeatist one.

Having set the rules of the game so as to ensure failure, critics then commence laying blame on the country which is presumed guilty merely by being who and what it is. The victim of unprovoked attacks is thus guilty of “disproportionate&r dquo; response. Eliminating military installations hidden among civilians (such hiding being a war crime itself) becomes an attack on civilians.

Such guilt-mongering is not simply wrong, it is also camouflage, designed to divert attention away from the party which bears far greater responsibility.

There is a person responsible for the devastation both in Israel and in Lebanon.  And that person is the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. 

This is “Kofi’s War.”  Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 under the guarantee of a UN resolution that the border area would not be remilitarized.  The responsible agent of that guarantee was Kofi Annan.

Defenders might say that the UN did not have the military power to enforce that policy. So why did it not say so? Kofi still had the bully pulpit of the Secretary Generalship. He could have called for a larger force and the will to use it.

Do you remember the conferences called to examine the building of what we are now told are impenetrable underground bunkers?  Neither do I. 

Do you remember the speeches calling attention to the stockpiling of offensive missiles?  Neither do I. 

Do you remember the investigation of the use of civilian domiciles to house weapons launchers and thus endanger the local citizenry?  Neither do I.

Excellent.  Read the rest.

The American Thinker 

Screaming at the can of food will not make it open by itself.

I should not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves.

If I put a live mouse in my food bowl, I should not expect it to stay there until I get hungry.

The guinea pig likes to sleep once in a while. I will not watch him constantly.

If I bite the cactus, it will bite back.

I will not stand on the bathroom counter, stare down the hall, and growl at nothing (especially right after my human has finished watching "The X-Files").

Television and computer screens do not exist to backlight my lovely tail.

No matter how dangly and attractive they are, my human's earrings are not cat toys.

If I play 'dead cat on the stairs' while people are trying to bring in groceries or laundry, one of these days it will really come true.

My human is capable of cooking bacon and eggs without my help.

The cat food is already dead. I do not need to kill it by swatting bits of it all over the floor.

I am a carnivore. Potted plants are not meat.

I will never be able to walk on the ceiling, and staring up the wall and screaming at it will not bring it any closer.

It is not a good idea to try to lap up the powdered creamer before it all dissolves in the boiling coffee.

The goldfish likes living in water and should be allowed to remain in its bowl.

If my human wants to share her sandwich with me, she will give me a piece. She will notice if I start eating it from the other end.

I cannot leap through closed windows to catch birds outside.

The large dog in the back yard has lived there for six years. I will not freak out every time I see it.

If I must give a present to my human's overnight guests, my toy mouse is much more socially acceptable than a live cockroach, even if it isn't as tasty.

Even though I hear voices in my head, I do not have to answer them.

And now, my additions:

Just because I can squeeze myself under the dresser doesn't mean I can get back out again on my own; and furthermore, Mom doesn't appreciate having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to pull out the drawers in order to rescue me.

Scratching the lip of the litter box covers nothing. Same thing with the wall next to the box.

The scenery in the pantry/closet/laundry room doesn't change much, and I don't need to explore these "new rooms" everytime the door to one of them is opened.

Batting toys (or food) under the refrigerator, stove, or similar is not an effective way to get humans to join in playing with you.

Hat tip:  My sweet baby... 

In the experiment the research team headed by Dr. Arno Rauschenbeutel and Professor Dieter Meschede decelerated several caesium atoms for a period of several seconds so that they were hardly moving, then loaded them onto a 'conveyor belt' consisting of lasers. This conveyor belt is made up of a standing light wave composed of many peaks and troughs – possibly comparable to a piece of corrugated iron. 'Unfortunately it cannot be predicted which trough precisely the atoms will land in,' Arno Rauschenbeutel explains. 'It's rather like pouring several eggs from a big dish into an egg carton – which section each egg rolls into is a matter of chance.'

However, anyone wishing to calculate with atoms must be able to place them exactly. 'All the atoms on the conveyor belt have to have the same distance from each other,' is how Arno Rauschenbeutel sketches the challenge. 'Only then can we get them to interact in a controlled way in what is called a quantum gate.' By lining up gate operations like these it would already be possible to carry out simple quantum calculations.

The Bonn physicists therefore subsequently 'sorted' the atoms in their experiment on the conveyor belt. They did this by first taking a photo to record their positions. They next set the conveyor belt moving – and with it the caesium atoms 'trapped' in the troughs. In this way they transported the wrongly placed atoms to their 'laser tweezers' – this is basically nothing more than another conveyor belt consisting of laser beams which is oriented orthogonally to the first conveyor belt. 'When we set the tweezers' light wave in motion, we can lift the wrongly placed atoms off the conveyor belt,' Arno Rauschenbeutel explains. 'Then we move the conveyor belt to the desired position and simply pop the atom back in.'

The film shows how well this works: the tweezers select two atoms consecutively from the belt and put them back on again in such a way that they are exactly the same distance from each other and from a third atom. 'Sorting seven atoms in this way takes us about two seconds,' Dr. Rauschenbeutel says.

Pretty darn cool. Maybe this will lead to a cure for liberalism...

Physorg.com

f ever there was an example of what’s wrong with the intersection of government and science, the Environmental Protection Agency’s 20-year campaign to scare the public about dioxin is certainly a leading candidate.

The EPA slammed into a bureaucratic wall this week when a National Academy of Sciences panel told the agency to take its dioxin report back to the drawing board. But the NAS’ rejection of the EPA report was handled with kid gloves -- permitting the agency to save face by allowing the dioxin scare to continue indefinitely.

“EPA assessment of dioxin understates uncertainty about health risks and may overstate human cancer risk,” was the headline of the NAS’ media release announcing (and summarizing) its review of the EPA’s latest dioxin scaremongering.

The NAS said the evidence that dioxin caused cancer in humans was “not strong” and that risk estimates had to be imagined through use of mathematical models. Despite the acknowledged absence of evidence linking dioxin with cancer in humans, the NAS panel bizarrely agreed that dioxin was “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

It’s the sort of 2-plus-2-equals-five conclusion that only connoisseurs of regulatory bureaucracy can fully appreciate.

The EPA issued in 2003 a draft report on dioxin alleging that the substance was 10 times more carcinogenic than the agency previously claimed -- and some dioxin hysterics had already been calling it the “most toxic manmade chemical” for which there was “no safe exposure.”

Read the rest at Fox News. 

The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'

Greenhouse, global warming - and some facts

JunkScience.com
April 21, 2006

Given the number of JunkScience.com readers expressing some confusion over the "greenhouse effect," carbon dioxide, global warming and climate change, we thought it might be a good idea to pull together a page of questions-and-answers, complete with a few nice little graphics explaining the facts.

We thought that since there is long-standing, intense public interest in these topics and that vast sums of public and private monies are being thrown at the much-dreaded "problem" of "global warming," there should be a wealth of quality explanations and graphics to which we can point readers to alleviate their confusion.

That was about the time that our quick project and quiet weekend went awry very quickly.

Who would have thought so many "issue" sites, environment sites and, yes, government sites, could be hosting so much utter garbage on a topic subject to such intense scrutiny? Who could have imagined having to spend several hours wading through searches to find a few simple graphics correctly expressing the greenhouse effect? Who knew that so many blowhards are out there pontificating from complete ignorance?

Some of the bad descriptions appear to be poor efforts at simplifying the material to suit grade school course work and the like, but that does not make them any more acceptable. Obviously a slight rethink of this project was necessary. We will now try to deliver an extremely simplified version of how this greenhouse thing actually works and some indication of what might be expected from what is known about the Earth and what has been measured, rather than simply guessed about.

Basic misconceptions that must be addressed include:

Does the Earth's atmosphere primarily behave like an actual greenhouse?

No. The term "greenhouse effect" is unfortunate since it often results in a totally false impression of the activity of so-called "greenhouse gases." An actual greenhouse works as a physical barrier to convection (the transfer of heat by currents in a fluid) while the atmosphere facilitates convection. So-called "greenhouse gases" in the Earth's atmosphere do not act as a barrier to convection so the impression of actual greenhouse-like activity in the Earth's atmosphere is wrong.

For an expanded description of physical greenhouses see Sue Ann Bowling's ASF piece here.

Supplemental, April 25: A couple of people have written challenging whether physical greenhouses function as convection barriers since they do radiate and so does the atmosphere - apparently we need to expand on this point. To begin with, a physical greenhouse is simply a contained subset of the atmosphere - it is not bounded by the near-vacuum of space as is the planet's atmosphere and so has rather different properties. The proof that convection containment is critical to the function of physical greenhouses is that it is possible to create structures with similar radiative properties, one which allows convective activity between the structure and unconstrained atmosphere and one which does not. Only the structure constraining internal-external convection will function as an effective greenhouse. Greenhouse gases categorically do not inhibit convective activity and so are not like a physical greenhouse.

Forgetting about the unfortunate-but-commonly- used terminology for a moment, is the so-called 'greenhouse effect' bad?

Only if you think undesirable a habitable planet with relatively stable temperature. Our moon, lacking greenhouse effect, makes a kind of comparison even though lack of atmosphere makes it uninhabitable regardless of temperature. The moon's mean surface temperature by day is 107 °C (225 °F) and by night drops to -153 °C (-243 °F). The Lunar temperature increases about 260 °C from just before dawn to Lunar noon. So, if you fancy such a temperature range then a greenhouse effect-free world is for you, otherwise you might want to be pleased we have it here on Earth.

How much does the so-called 'greenhouse effect' warm the Earth?

It's estimated that the Earth's surface would be about -18 °C (0 °F, 255 K) with atmosphere and clouds but without the greenhouse effect and that the (we'll call it "natural") greenhouse effect raises the Earth's temperature by ~33 °C (59 °F). Devoid of atmosphere it would actually be a less cold -1 °C (272 K) because the first calculation strangely includes 31% reflection of solar radiation by clouds (which could obviously not occur without an atmosphere) while clouds actually add significantly to the greenhouse effect - for simplicity, just stick with ~33 °C.

[Edited for clarity, April 24] Theoretically, if the planet's surface cooled by radiation alone, then the greenhouse-induced surface temperature would be much warmer, about 350 K (77 °C), but atmospheric motion (convective towers carrying latent and sensible heat upwards and large scale circulation carrying it both upwards and polewards) significantly increase the "escape" of energy to space, leaving Earth's surface more than 60 °C cooler than a static atmosphere would do.

So, despite there being far more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than required to achieve the current greenhouse effect, and that has been so since before humans discovered fire, evapo-transpiration and thermals transport heat higher in the atmosphere where radiation to space is increased. This is why Earth remains about 15 °C rather than about 77 °C.

Wait a minute! Those aren't the numbers I learned!

Ah! Someone who remembers their science classes eh? Well, you got us. Reference works frequently list the planet's mean surface temperature as 16 °C (61 °F); sometimes 15 °C (59 °F) is mentioned and yes, these are about the expected temperatures by calculation -- in the 1960s and 1970s numbers as high as 65 °F (18 °C) were popular but we haven't seen those for some time. Here we run into a little bit of a problem, however -- taking the Earth's temperature is no trivial task. In fact, even defining precisely what we mean by the absolute surface air temperature is challenging. Current global temperature anomalies (the amount of warming or cooling reported) are estimated against an expected average of 14 °C (57 °F) -- the guess-timated mean temperature over the period 1961-1990.

Are greenhouse gases like a blanket around the Earth?

No, for the same reason that they don't behave like an actual greenhouse, they simply do not behave as a barrier to convective activity and so aren't "like a blanket."

Do greenhouse gases trap the sun's radiation/'heat'?

Not to any great extent. The Sun, being much hotter than Earth, emits high energy, shortwave radiation while Earth, in response, emits longwave radiation. The cooler the portion of the Earth or atmosphere, the lower energy intensity, longer wave radiation is emitted -- that old white hot, yellow hot, red hot thing. Greenhouse gases are generally transparent to incoming solar radiation -- they let most solar radiation through -- and opaque to Earth's radiation -- they absorb and transfer the Earth's infrared radiation by a variety of means. That said, oxygen and ozone do absorb incoming Ultraviolet (UV) radiation (<0.3µm) and water, ozone, oxygen and, to a tiny extent, carbon dioxide also absorb a small amount of incoming shortwave below the 3 micron (µm) wavelength range (>see graphic) and it is mostly the UV absorption by ozone that causes warming in the stratosphere above the tropopause. The tropopause is the boundary between the troposphere (which is based at the earth's surface and has temperature that decreases with height, extending about 10-50Km or 6-30 miles above the surface) and the stratosphere (which is a stable region of very low levels of vertical mixing above the troposphere).

A representation of relative emission wavelengths can be seen on the following graphic.

Greenhouse gases, therefore, do not "trap heat," but could be fairly described as delaying the energy transfer from Earth to space. "Trapping heat" implies that the energy is stuck in the system forever -- this is a false notion. Greenhouse gases do not emit energy in the same bandwidth that they absorb energy, and thus emissions from carbon dioxide are not absorbed by carbon dioxide. While energy may be delayed on its inevitable journey back to space, it will eventually be emitted regardless of the number of intervening stages.

Do greenhouse gases 'reradiate' the infrared radiation they absorb?

This is an unfortunate expression that is all too common. Absorbed radiation is transformed to either kinetic or potential energy and, as such, no longer exists in its original form -- hence, it cannot be "reradiated." When molecules absorb infrared radiation they are said to become excited ("hot"). Such molecules can release energy usually in one of three ways: by chemical reaction (uncommon, since greenhouse gases are pretty stable and non-reactive); quenching (transferring energy to cooler molecules, increasing their temperature) and; emission (usually at lower energy [longer wavelength] radiation than the energy previously absorbed). Once more, since the absorbed energy has been transformed it cannot be said to be "reradiated".

Is 'greenhouse' the same as 'global warming'?

Absolutely not. We'll look at both terms below.

What about 'climate change' then?

That's a different thing altogether. Change is what the climate is always doing and is the result of our planet's orbital eccentricities, axial wobble, solar brightness variation, cosmic ray flux, etc.. There are also plausible terrestrial drivers of climate change too, including super volcanic events and tectonic movement, but these are not in the realm of anthropogenic (manmade) effects and so we won't looking at them here.

The global mean temperature over which there has been so much obsession is only one part of climate -- for example, how wet or dry the climate happens to be is probably of far greater significance than a simple mean temperature -- in fact, it's not even clear that a global mean temperature is a particularly useful metric. However, it is the cause of great angst at present so it will remain the focus of this document for that reason alone.

Graphics for a simple understanding of the greenhouse effect

This first graphic meets the criteria of being simple, doesn't say things like "reradiated" (as so many do), specifically includes water vapor and clouds as both absorbers and emitters (remarkably few greenhouse graphics do so) and is reasonably proportionate.

Big note here -- we were unable to find useful graphics adequately expressing convection, which, as we highlighted above, keeps the planet more than 60 °C cooler than would otherwise be the case.

The next graphic provides an indication of the infrared component of the planetary radiation budget. Note that these are expressed as percentages and that the 100% incoming and outgoing solar energy balance is not the whole story -- there is additional energy transfer in progress between the atmosphere and surface, and surface and atmosphere. This is the natural greenhouse effect that makes life as we know it possible on Earth. (Don't worry if you don't quite follow the numbers, we'll provide a "map" view below.)

The preceding view is very pretty and contains lots of numbers but we can perhaps get a better look at what is going on from a different representation. The following is from Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997). This is expressed in Watts per square meter (Wm^-2) and tells the same story of the incoming 342 Wm^-2 = outgoing (235 + 107 Wm^-2). Note that there is relatively little direct reflection and radiation from surface to space but significant exchange via the atmosphere. Note further that the surface receives almost twice the energy from the atmosphere as it does directly from the sun. The exchange between surface, atmosphere and surface is what is meant by greenhouse effect. (Those not enjoying lots of numbers or missing primary colors might prefer viewing this simplified Earth energy budget)

It might also help novices to conceive of the atmosphere and the natural greenhouse effect as a kind of a metaphorical energy flow control valve. There's a lot of energy bouncing around, but the amount of energy entering the system and the amount leaving is fairly tightly constrained. The atmosphere is acting as a kind of check valve, slowing the loss of energy to space but the net incoming (324 + 168 Wm^-2) = net outgoing (390 + 78 + 24 Wm^-2).

Okay, if that's greenhouse, what is 'global warming'?

While greenhouse is the "what," "global warming" really refers to the "how much." Populist overuse and abuse has largely rendered "global warming" meaningless -- what is really meant is "enhanced greenhouse" -- yes, another term but don't worry, we'll explain this one easily and quickly. Since Arrhenius began speculating a century ago about low CO₂ levels and ice ages the hypothesis of temperature relation to atmospheric carbon dioxide has drifted in and out of scientific focus. At present it is the focus of a great deal of attention. "Enhanced greenhouse" means the additional delay in energy loss to space induced by the fraction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by humans before those gases are removed from the atmosphere by breakdown and/or biological activity.

So, greenhouse is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere. In simple terms, however, the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total greenhouse effect. The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other "minor greenhouse gases." As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO₂.

The adjacent radiation absorption window graphic gives an idea of which molecules absorb various wavelengths. Where the shaded portions completely span between 2 lines it indicates that particular wavelength is fully absorbed and the "window" is saturated (or said to be "closed"). Rather obviously, once a window is saturated adding more gases with the same properties will do nothing. This point seems to cause confusion for some people so perhaps consider multiple shades on a window with each shade blocking half the light coming through - pull one shade and you reduce the light source by half, pull another so you block half the light coming through the first shade, etc.. The effect of each shade diminishes as you keep adding more and eventually you get no additional effect - you have saturated or blocked the radiation window and it makes no difference if you double or quadruple the number of shades again.

Well, I heard that carbon dioxide is bad -- it's pollution, isn't it?

There seem to be a few things that your informant forgot to tell you -- like carbon dioxide being an essential trace gas that underpins the bulk of the global food web. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 15% seems to be the common number cited for the increase in global food crop yields due to aerial fertilization with increased carbon dioxide since 1950. This increase has both helped avoid a Malthusian disaster and preserved or returned enormous tracts of marginal land as wildlife habitat that would otherwise have had to be put under the plow in an attempt to feed the growing global population. Commercial growers deliberately generate CO₂ and increase its levels in agricultural greenhouses to between 700ppmv and 1,000ppmv to increase productivity and improve the water efficiency of food crops far beyond those in the somewhat carbon-starved open atmosphere. CO₂ feeds the forests, grows more usable lumber in timber lots meaning there is less pressure to cut old growth or push into "natural" wildlife habitat, makes plants more water efficient helping to beat back the encroaching deserts in Africa and Asia and generally increases bio-productivity. If it's "pollution," then it's pollution the natural world exploits extremely well and to great profit. Doesn't sound too bad to us.

But we're responsible for all the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect?

Gracious no! Humans can only claim responsibility, if that's the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here). Half our estimated emissions fail to accumulate in the atmosphere," "disappearing" into sinks as yet undetermined. Humans' total accumulated carbon contribution could account for perhaps 25% of the total non-water greenhouse gases (that is, accounting for all the increase since the Industrial Revolution regardless of source and irrespective of whether warming from any cause might result in an increase in natural emission to atmosphere -- we're simply claiming the lot as anthropogenic or human-caused here).

Clarification June 4: the mention of 25% of total non-water greenhouse effect above and the following mention of 2.5% of total greenhouse effect has confused a few readers, leading to some e-mails suspecting one or the other to be a typographical error. The figures are correct. Recall that water vapor accounts for about 70% and clouds (mostly water droplets) accounts for another 20%, thus water in it's various forms is 90% of the greenhouse effect, leaving 10% for non-water greenhouse effect. Of this remaining 10%, mainly atmospheric carbon, humans might be responsible for 25% of the total accumulated atmospheric carbon, thus 0.25 x 0.1 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5% of the total greenhouse effect.

Ah, we've added 2.5% to the total greenhouse effect then?

Not exactly, if it were such a simple accumulation, we could easily determine exactly how much Earth would warm from a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ (not much) and certainly that would be an improvement on the silly figures bandied about. Theoretically, in a dry atmosphere, carbon dioxide could absorb about three times more energy than it actually does, as could clouds in the absence of all other greenhouse gases -- look at it as there already being "competition" for available suitable longwave radiation (energy these gases can absorb), if you like. Readers should be aware that the temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic (that means there is a diminishing response as you keep adding more, like the additional window shade example, above). If we consider the warming effect of the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide (about 280 parts per million by volume or ppmv) as 1, then the first half of that heating was delivered by about 20ppmv (0.002% of atmosphere) while the second half required an additional 260ppmv (0.026%). To double the pre-Industrial Revolution warming from CO₂ alone would require about 90,000ppmv (9%) but we'd never see it - CO₂ becomes toxic at around 6,000ppmv (0.6%, although humans have absolutely no prospect of achieving such concentrations).

Well, how much does carbon dioxide heat the Earth?

Oh my, we were afraid you were going to ask that. Because so many of the atmospheric processes are still being sorted out and quantified this is a non-trivial task. But alright, here goes.

What we can do is plot some of the more common estimates -- note that these are something of a curve-fitting exercise on our part because we don't have the full papers and workings at hand. Stay with us while we run through a couple of rough sketch graphs, following which we'll try a different approach to see if we can't narrow the possibilities.

We'll offer three of the more commonly used and/or discussed estimates for the amount of cooling Earth would experience for a hypothetical zero-CO₂, cloud-free atmosphere; Lindzen (5.3 °C clear sky, 3.53 °C with 40% cloud), along with Charnock & Shine (12 °C clear sky), C&S are the big number guys in the estimation game (both from Physics Today, 1995) and Kondratjew & Moskalenko (7.2 °C, commonly cited but we are not sure why, perhaps because Houghton used their estimate in his book, 'The Global Climate', 1984) - here these estimates are simply scripted up to produce the following graphs and the numbers are imprecise, merely adequate to give everyone a reasonable look at how carbon dioxide fits into the picture. Note also that there is still dispute over whether water would (does) act as a positive or negative "feedback" (multiplier effect) since water vapor and droplets (clouds) affect both incoming Solar radiation and outgoing Earth radiation.

Our simple script is logarithmic (remember our example of adding more shades over a window) but does not allow for complete saturation of radiative wavelengths, likely increases in evapo-transpirative cooling, increases in albedo (bright clouds reflecting more incoming solar radiation) nor any variation by latitude and so will progressively overestimate potential warming from CO₂ alone. No matter, it does quite well enough to demonstrate the principle.

You can see how much this little script has overshot the mark since Lindzen states explicitly that a doubling from 300ppmv to 600ppmv of atmospheric carbon dioxide would result in only 0.5 °C warming. Rather obviously, Lindzen's calculations do not suggest a particularly large greenhouse influence on post-Industrial Revolution temperatures and, significantly, this does not include clouds, so CO₂ would really only be a fraction of the total effect shown (Lindzen states 0.22 °C if calculated with 40% cloud cover). Despite our over-estimation of the numbers on the graph it should be apparent there is only moderate warming potential from carbon dioxide emissions. These have all been plotted simultaneously so you can see the range of estimates for incremental change in temperature driven by greenhouse gases and below we show for a quadrupling of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gas relative to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

Update May 14: we've had a few people wonder why we "allow" claims of 40% cloud cover as though such was an outrageous claim -- what can we say? These thumbnails link to NASA's famous Blue Marble composites (low resolution versions) and you can find plenty more Earth images on their Visible Earth site. end update.

Since some people are not familiar with logarithmic effect, we'll just point out a few features from the above graphs. Note the diminishing effect in all cases -- the first half of pre-IR greenhouse-driven temperature increment in each estimate is achieved by less than 20 parts per million carbon dioxide (20ppmv CO₂), it then took adding thirteen times as much again to repeat the performance (to 280ppmv). The estimated temperature increment range for a doubling of pre-IR CO₂ (graphed as 300ppmv to 600ppmv) is just +0.6 °C to +1.5 °C and for a quadrupling (to 1200ppmv) +1.3 °C to +2.9 °C.

Lots of numbers, which ones fit what we think we know of the Earth's greenhouse effect?

Let's try working backwards for a moment. The Earth's greenhouse effect is commonly estimated at 33 °C and these calculations simply assume that to be true. If water vapor accounts for 70% and clouds another 20% then we have 10% left for carbon dioxide and the ubiquitous "other" GHGs. Lindzen's 3.53 °C cooling potential for complete removal of CO₂ would then seem to fit the bill fairly adequately at around 10.7% of the total effect, while there's really not room for the larger estimates. Note, however, that carbon dioxide is generally reckoned to account for between 4.2% and 8.4% of Earth's greenhouse effect because water vapor and clouds also behave differently at different concentrations and temperatures (we warned you this wasn't linear).

If, on the other hand, we assume Charnock and Shine are closer to the mark then ~36% of Earth's greenhouse effect would be driven by CO₂. This is intuitively unreasonable since water is both prolific and has absorption windows overlapping those of carbon dioxide to a large extent. Given that water covers more than 70% of the globe and that the lower atmosphere over water tends to be relatively well supplied with water both as vapor and clouds and further given that water is the dominant absorber in wavelengths expected in the warmer regions, such as in the tropics where water is hugely prolific and where significant greenhouse warming occurs, it simply does not seem reasonable to expect CO₂ to preferentially absorb more than one-third of the available energy. This suggests (but does not prove) that Lindzen is likely to be the nearest estimate from those we've plotted above.

Note that if you discount all other possible drivers of global temperature change -- meaning that humanity has completely taken over from all natural effects that were operating until that time (highly unlikely) -- then the estimate of Charnock & Shine neatly fits observed warming over the period. If their massive estimate of greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide is true then a worst case doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will still only produce a total warming under 1.5 °C (and we're thought to be almost half-way there already). This still does not suggest a major enhanced greenhouse catastrophe.

If that's all the anticipated greenhouse effect, where do the big warming estimates come from?

Ah, this is where it gets rather contentious because the big warming numbers come not from measurements but from computer models. These computer models and their output are passionately defended by the modeling clique and frequently derided by empiricists -- but the bottom line is that models make an enormous range of assumptions. Whether all the assumptions, tweaks and parameter adjustments really collectively add up to a realistic representation of the atmosphere is open to some conjecture (current climate models do not model "natural" climatic variation very well), but there is no evidence yet that they can predict the future with any greater certainty than a pack of Tarot cards. Moreover, humans do a lot besides emitting greenhouse gases, changing vegetation and transpiration rates through agriculture, for example, and many effects expected to both increase and decrease regional temperatures are not included in these models.

Regardless, climate models are made interesting by the inclusion of "positive feedbacks" (multiplier effects) so that a small temperature increment expected from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide invokes large increases in water vapor, which seem to produce exponential rather than logarithmic temperature response in the models. It appears to have become something of a game to see who can add in the most creative feedback mechanisms to produce the scariest warming scenarios from their models but there remains no evidence the planet includes any such effects or behaves in a similar manner.

Update May 14: There has been some claim we are ignoring "self-evident" positive feedbacks, which we'd be delighted to highlight if only someone could point to any such empirical measure. The bottom line, however, is that the IPCC estimates a trivial 0.6 °C ± 0.2 °C warming during the Twentieth Century and both the GHCN-ERSST Data Set and the HadCRUT2v Data Set record the period of the 19-teens through mid-1940s as having a global trend of +0.13 °C/decade for a net warming of 0.45 °C -- leaving a mere 0.15 °C ± 0.2 °C net warming potential for the post-WWII period of significant carbon emission from fossil fuel use. It is evident, to us at least, that if positive feedback mechanisms exist (entirely plausible) then their effect is negligible or mitigated by negative feedback mechanisms (equally plausible). Unlike modelers, who alter their virtual worlds at whim, we can only measure what the world actually does, and there simply isn't room in the measured change for the existence of significant unmitigated positive feedbacks. -- end update.

As an example of how mileage may vary, as they say, we've reproduced here a table of comparisons between 108 model guess-timations for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide compiled by Kacholia and Reck, published in 1997. Note that the range spans from 0.2 °C to 6.3 °C and that the same modelers get large variations as they play with their model parameters, e.g. Washington and Meehl show listings of 1.3 °C; 1.4 °C–3.5 °C; 1.6 °C; 4.0 °C and back to 1.6 °C over the course of a decade (not highlighted as being egregious or any such thing, just frequent in this list). Charnock and Shine appear in this list (1993) with estimations of 1.5 °C–2.4 °C and we derive their 1995 discussion in Physics Today as 1.46 °C so we're in the ballpark and they may have reduced their estimate as Lindzen seems to have done, listed here from 1982 as 1.46 °C–1.93 °C and stating explicitly in the same Physics Today discussion that he estimated 0.5 °C for clear sky conditions and just 0.22 °C when including 40% cloud cover.

Unfortunately there has been no narrowing of the estimated range of "expected" warming from a doubling of CO₂ -- in fact the range has widened even further as ever more players attempt to stand out in a crowded publication field. It isn't that the physics of carbon dioxide's radiative properties keep changing, rather that ever more imaginative "feedbacks" are shunted into the positive column to make model output more interesting. The bottom line is that you need to stuff a huge amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere to get much response as more of the absorptive bands near saturation.

Why do we suspect the big warming numbers are likely wrong?

Actually, you can play with some parameters and work it out for yourselves. Since the really big guesses made by the IPCC and some truly bizarre output by climateprediction.net (CPN) are at least linear, if not exponential in their response to changes in minor trace gases we can work backwards and below you will find a pair of calculators so you can have a go.

Update: we didn't even manage to post this yet and poor old CPN has suffered a major embarrassment: Error discovered in the BBC Climate Change Experiment. So now even they know they're wildly over-guess-timating. The BBC is advising those they dragooned into the project that their model runs will be restarting here. Meanwhile, Red Tops like The Inquirer are mischievously postulating "With around 200,000 PCs running the experiment non-stop for two months, it looks very much as if the BBC experiment is making more of a contribution to global warming than scientific knowledge." Fortunately, the real world is not so easily perturbed. End update.

At left we have a linear calculator. To know how it works you just have to remember that the Earth is about 15 °C, so that's the output target you are aiming at producing at the bottom of the calculator. You know that carbon dioxide accounts for something less than 10% of the Earth's greenhouse effect so your first input is going to be a number less than or equal to that (in fact, we've limited the calculator so any greater input will be calculated as 10% and it will ignore any attempted input that is not greater than zero). The second parameter is the guess-timated warming. The output produced will be what the current global mean temperature must be for the linear increase to be as input.

At right we have a logarithmic calculator so you can play with the atmosphere to your heart's content. The calculator will always assume a base of 33 °C for the starting net greenhouse effect - it's limited to a max of 10% greenhouse effect from CO₂ and a minimum of 2ppmv CO₂ so you can really have a play with the atmosphere and logarithmic effect. Notice how doubling small concentrations of carbon dioxide gives large responses while the reverse also applies - enjoy! When you are finished we have some more information below the calculators.

How did you go? No? Oh well, try 4.2% of greenhouse effect for a net warming of 1.4 °C for the linear calculator.

Well, why is the planet warming so catastrophically if it's not CO₂ then?

Who says it is warming catastrophically? Humans have only been trying to measure the temperature fairly consistently since about 1880, during which time we think the world may have warmed by about +0.6 °C ± 0.2 °C. As we've already pointed out, the estimate of warming is less than the error margin on our ability to take the Earth's temperature, generally given as 14 °C ± 0.7 °C for the average 1961-1990 while the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) suggest 13.9 °C for their average 1880-2004. We are pretty sure it was cold before the 1880 commencement of record and we would probably not handle the situation too well if such conditions returned but there has been no demonstrable catastrophic warming while people have been trying to measure the planet's temperature. If we have really been measuring a warming episode as we think we have, then setting new records for "hottest ever in recorded history" should happen just about every year -- although half a degree over a century is hardly something to write home about -- so there's really nothing exciting about scoring the highest number when looking at such a short history.

At risk of belaboring the point, the following data is from the merged land air and sea surface temperature data set (based on data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) of land temperatures and the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) of SST data). This is the Time series: Temperature January-December, 1880 - 2005: Global Trend: 0.04 °C/decade (for the arithmetically-challenged that's 12.5 decades for a total of +0.5 °C since 1880). The land temperature-only data (less than 30% of the planet and usually measured around cities) yields a trend of 0.07 °C/decade over the same period for a total increment of 0.875 °C.

A lot of people seem to like an idea of a specific temperature number so here's the National Climatic Data Center's monthly mean temperature record. Rather obviously seasonal change throughout the year dwarfs net increment over one and one-quarter centuries.

While we are talking about thermometry and measured near-surface temperatures we must underline that these accumulate to mere estimates and are fraught with difficulties. Seven-tenths of the globe's surface is water and historical temperature series from these regions are largely based on sailors tossing a bucket on a rope over the side and then dangling a thermometer in the water hauled aboard, so coverage is basically from sea lanes and measurement somewhat, shall we say, agricultural. Then there's the problems introduced by discontinuity in local records as observation points move over time or small towns cease to exist altogether, even gardens or the growth of adjacent trees might influence how air flows around a specific recording point and then there's changes in equipment to take into account. Calculating what the temperature is, let alone what it has been, is no trivial task and then accumulating myriad changing locales to a global amalgam leaves much room for error.

We briefly mentioned above that much of the temperature record is derived from measurement taken where people happen to be and thus there is an increasingly urban nature to the temperature record as rural recording sites have ceased to operate, especially over the last three decades or so. To some extent this is due to meteorological satellites as there is no longer a need to maintain remote observation outposts for the purpose of deriving surface-based weather forecasts, hence the urbanization of the near-surface temperature record. The significance of this is that there is an increasing difference between the temperatures found in the built environment and surrounding land surface - it's called the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE). Berkeley Lab have a good example here.

To what extent UHIE is influencing the global temperature trends we think we are measuring remains uncertain. Although curators of global temperature datasets tend to claim the effect has been eliminated through adjustments to the record, or that it is irrelevant, such claims are not entirely convincing.

There are regions where temperature records have been maintained for much longer than the 1880 commencement usually seen and these make interesting comparators. Additionally, we have some available rural and urban records from similar regions that can be viewed in parallel where we might expect similar trends if urban influence has genuinely been removed from the record. Alongside we have an example of the Armagh Observatory and Central England Temperature trends compared. Since there is no obvious reason carbon dioxide would behave differently in Northern Ireland than it does in Central England we must at least entertain the suspicion other factors are in play.

In addition to relatively subtle disparity in trends between locations we have measurements which are likely less influenced by UHIE, those taken actually in the atmosphere by instrument packs carried aloft by meteorological balloons. At left is the radiosonde record from 1958-2004 (latest we have available).

At right we have the Alaskan surface record classically highlighting the effect of the PDO phase shift. There is no plausible means by which accumulating greenhouse gas could effectively act as a major warming agent in one year but not in the preceding or subsequent years. There are many other datasets and attempts at measuring the temperature of the Earth ranging from satellite-mounted Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) to meteorological station near-surface thermometer records and a comprehensive collection of these can be found here on JunkScience.com.

We would be remiss if we did not at least mention the infamous "hockey stick" representation of global temperature as estimated for Earth's recent history. The graphic linked at left comes from the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR). The red "blade" section of the graphic is the same data as depicted in red on the graphic linked below, right and serves as an object lesson - always check the scale of depiction.

Notice that the graphic does not show absolute Central England Temperature as does the Armagh comparison above. Of particular significance is that the CET contains abrupt warming episodes of similar or greater magnitude early in each of the previous centuries. While it appears that the CET makes a fair proxy for Northern Hemisphere temperatures as derived by Jones and Mann this is merely speculative and constitutes no proof. It does, however, suggest great caution is warranted before attempting to extrapolate trends from a mere century or so of temperature data.

What caused the apparently massive temperature leap at the beginning of the 18^th Century? It certainly wasn't industrialization, that hadn't happened yet. If such changes appear in the record during recent periods when people can not have caused them then they are by definition "natural" and, if such natural changes are evident in recent history, why are we so fixated on carbon dioxide as a "culprit" driving lesser warming now?

Finally, it is worth wondering why, with some three and one-half centuries of population growth, development and urbanization depicted in the Central England Temperature series, recent "chart-toppers" have managed to elevate top temperatures by a paltry 0.16 °C over those of the early 1730s. The vast majority of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has taken place over the seventy years since the Second World War and if CO₂ were a significant driver of temperature change we would expect those years to be almost exclusively represented in the highest temperatures and yet fewer than half manage to make the warmest one-hundred list. The post hoc ergo propter hoc association of carbon dioxide is observed to increase, warmer temperatures are measured, therefore carbon dioxide warms the planet is a very poor basis for the current fixation.

So, humans aren't affecting the planet or its temperature.

Whoa! We didn't say that at all. This discussion is on greenhouse effect and possible enhanced greenhouse, but that's a long way from anthropogenic effect in total. Whether or not they really affect global mean temperature, human endeavors have significant local effects. The heat island effect mentioned above or the local effect of increased water vapor from large scale irrigation schemes would be good examples. Then there's land use change which can be variable depending on latitude -- replacing dark forest with wheat fields might significantly affect local albedo and cooling one region while denying shade in a more heavily irradiated region might cause ground heating through increased absorption. There are many effects in a hugely complex system, some will be negative, some positive and all represent change, although that is neither good nor bad in and of itself. That humans affect the region of their activities is true -- that enhanced greenhouse from human activity is known to be a current or imminent catastrophe is not. And this document is only dealing with greenhouse effect and "global warming."

What are the take-home messages:

• The temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic, not exponential.
• The potential planetary warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~280ppmv to 560ppmv (possible some time later this century - perhaps) is generally estimated at less than 1 °C.
• The guesses of significantly larger warming are dependent on "feedback" (supplementary) mechanisms programmed into climate models. The existence of these "feedback" mechanisms is uncertain and the cumulative sign of which is unknown (they may add to warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or, equally likely, might suppress it).
• The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Assuming the unlikely case that all the natural drivers of planetary temperature change ceased to operate at the time of measured atmospheric change then a 30% increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused about one-third of one degree temperature increment since and thus provides empirical support for less than one degree increment due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
• There is no linear relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide change and global mean temperature or global mean temperature trend -- global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during the period atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising.
• The natural world has tolerated greater than one-degree fluctuations in mean temperature during the relatively recent past and thus current changes are within the range of natural variation. (See, for example, ice core and sea surface temperature reconstructions.)
• Other anthropogenic effects are vastly more important, at least on local and regional scales.
• Fixation on atmospheric carbon dioxide is a distraction from these more important anthropogenic effects.
• Despite attempts to label atmospheric carbon dioxide a "pollutant" it is, in fact, an essential trace gas, the increasing abundance of which is a bonus for the bulk of the biosphere.
• There is no reason to believe that slightly lower temperatures are somehow preferable to slightly higher temperatures - there is no known "optimal" nor any known means of knowingly and predictably adjusting some sort of planetary thermostat.
• Fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide are of little relevance in the short to medium term (although should levels fall too low it could prove problematic in the longer-term).
• Activists and zealots constantly shrilling over atmospheric carbon dioxide are misdirecting attention and effort from real and potentially addressable local, regional and planetary problems.

Remember: Water vapor and carbon dioxide are major greenhouse gases. Water vapor accounts for about 70% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide somewhere between 4.2% and 8.4%. Much of the wavelength bands where carbon dioxide is active are either at or near saturation. Water vapor absorbs infrared over much the same range as carbon dioxide and more besides. Clouds are not composed of greenhouse gas -- they are mostly water droplets -- but absorb about one-fifth of the longwave radiation emitted by Earth. Clouds can briefly saturate the atmospheric radiation window (8-13µm) through which some Earth radiation passes directly to space (those hot and sticky overcast nights produce this effect - that is greenhouse but has nothing to do with carbon dioxide). Greenhouse gases can not obstruct this window although ozone absorbs in a narrow slice at 9.6µm. Adding more greenhouse gases which absorb in already saturated bandwidths has no net effect. Adding them in near-saturated bands has little additional effect.

Here's a very simplified graphic on atmospheric absorption. And, at right, there's a somewhat more detailed graphic.

Right: (a) Normalized blackbody curves for 5780 K and 220 K, plotted so that irradiance is proportional to the areas under the curves. (c) Atmospheric absorption in clear air for solar radiation with a zenith angle of 50 degrees and for diffuse terrestrial radiation. (b) Same as (c) but for the portion of the atmosphere lying above the 11-km level, near the middle latitude tropopause. [From Wallace and Hobbs, p. 332]

Finally, here's a palm-size reference version for those pub trivia nights.

So, now you know. You can see how much warming you

1. The garbage collector is not stealing our stuff.

2. I should not suddenly stand straight up when I'm lying under the coffee table.

3. I will not roll my toys behind the fridge, behind the sofa, or under the bed.

4. I must shake the rainwater out of my fur before entering the house.

5. I will not eat the cats' food, either before they eat it or after they throw it up.

6. I will stop trying to find the few remaining pieces of clean carpet in the house when I am about to be sick.

7. I will not throw up in the car.

8. When at the beach, I will not roll on dead seagulls, fish, crabs, etc. no matter how good they smell.

9. Kitty box crunches, although tasty, are not food.

10. I will not eat any more Kleenex or napkins and then re-deposit them after processing, in the back yard.

11. The diaper bin is not a cookie jar.

12. My humans' toothbrushes are for the exclusive use of my humans. If they want me to have one, they'll get me one.

13. I will not chew crayons or pens, especially not the red ones, so that when I throw up, my people will not assume I am hemorrhaging.

14. When in the car, I will not insist on having the window rolled down on rainy days.

15. We do not have a doorbell. I will not bark each time I hear one on TV.

16. I will not steal Mom's underwear and dance all over the backyard with it.

17. The sofa is not a face towel, neither are Mom & Dad's laps.

18. My head does not belong in the refrigerator.

19. I will not bite the officer's hand when he reaches in for Mom's driver's license and car registration.

20. I will not play tug-of-war with Dad's underwear when he's on the toilet.

21. To avoid having a string hang out of my butt, I will not eat mint-flavored dental floss out of the bathroom garbage.

22. I will not consider rolling around in the dirt a necessity first thing after getting a bath.

23. I will remember that sticking my nose into someone's crotch is an unacceptable way to greet visitors.

24. I will not fart in my owner's face while I am sleeping on the pillow next to their heads.

25. I will not come in from outside and immediately drag my butt across the carpet.

26. The toilet bowl is not a magical, never-ending water supply, and just because the water is blue doesn't mean it is cleaner.

27. I will not sit in the middle of the living room and lick my crotch when company is here.

28. I will remember that suddenly turning around and smelling my butt can quickly clear a room, and is thus to be avoided.  Except when in-laws are here.

29. The cat is not a squeaky toy, so when I play with him and when he makes that noise, it's usually not a good thing.

30. Even though he's too chicken to come on Sundays, the mailman WILL be back!

Via:  Tony's Funnies 

'God hates fags' creator preaches 'hate because the Bible preaches hate'

By Jon E. Dougherty
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

A Kansas-based Baptist church led by a vehemently anti-homosexual pastor was once sought out by then-Sen. Al Gore, Jr. in his Democratic bid for the presidency in 1988, according to group leaders who at one time even worked for the Gore effort in Kansas.

Fred Phelps, Sr., pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., and creator of the notorious "God Hates Fags" website, said that when Gore was running for president 12 years ago, he enlisted "members of the Westboro Baptist Church to help run his 1988 campaign in Kansas."

Al Gore and wife Tipper with Fred Phelps, Jr. and his wife Betty in 1988.

"In fact, Fred Phelps, Jr. [son of Westboro pastor Fred Phelps, Sr.] was one of his delegates," he said.

Also, in 1989 Phelps claims to have held a fundraiser at his home for Gore, attended by an estimated 500 people and "considered a success by any political standards."

So grateful for that support was Gore, said Phelps, that four years later, in 1992, Phelps was provided tickets to the inauguration of President Clinton. He was also sent tickets to the 1996 inauguration, he said.

Since those days, however, Gore has begun to court support from openly homosexual and lesbian activist groups, which has caused friction with his one-time anti-homosexual supporters.

Fred Phelps, Al Gore, and former Kansas Gov. Joan Finney.

Gore's reported change of heart -- along with his support for new federal hate crimes legislation that would provide enhanced penalties for crimes against homosexuals -- has soured him in the eyes of Phelps and his congregation.

Phelps, whose website is anti-homosexual in the extreme, said his church is an "old school" Baptist church that "adheres to the teachings of the Bible, preaches against all form of sin (e.g., fornication, adultery, sodomy), and insists that the doctrines of grace be taught publicly to all men."

He also says he preaches "hate because the Bible preaches hate."

"For every one verse about God's mercy, love, compassion, etc., there are two verses about His vengeance, hatred, wrath, and so on," says the group's website.

"The maudlin, kissy-pooh, feel-good, touchy-feely preachers of today's society are damning this nation and this world to hell. They are telling you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear, just like what happened in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah," said Phelps.

Dag Vega, a spokesman for the Gore campaign, responded to Phelps' claims by saying, "We are not dignifying those stories with a response." But he did not deny any past association between Gore, Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

Gore with Fred and Timothy Phelps.

Vega also said he would supply documentation proving that Gore backed homosexual and lesbian rights in 1988, but that documentation was not forthcoming by press time. [Big suprise... -ed.]

Meanwhile, Phelps' appearance and protests at events around the country continue to spark controversy and, in more than a few cases, outrage.

On Oct. 8, he appeared in Seattle, Wash., for the second time in a month to protest GayBC, an Internet-based radio station. Phelps led about a dozen supporters who used a megaphone to shout denouncements of the station and its homosexual audience.

As it did in September, Phelps' demonstration provoked hundreds of local homosexual activists to take to the streets. At that time, Phelps and a small group of supporters traveled to Roanoke, Va., to protest during the funeral of a man shot to death in a homosexual bar by another man who told witnesses he was looking to "kill some faggots."

Local Baptist ministers said they agreed that the homosexual lifestyle was destructive, but that protesting it at a funeral was inappropriate.

World Net Daily 

Well, well, well...

For those of you who aren't familiar with Fred Phelps, a few of his recent expliots:

Man to protest at soldier's funeral

Dodge City showdown at funeral

Phelps plans to protest soldier's funeral

Great choice of friends there, Al...

For the man who invented the Internet, you remain woefully ignorant of it's power to prove that you are

a hypocritical, lying, cockbite... 

Why are people still listening to this popinjay??

UPDATE:

Hmmm...

Seems like Freddie was once honored by the NAACP...

Unapologetic supporters of terrorism turned out in London today, and Moonbat Media has photos of the disgusting display: Anti-Israel Protest in London, 22 July 2006.

Read Me has photos from the Hizballah supporters’ demonstration in Chicago.

LGF reader WrathofG-d emailed these pictures from the pro-Hizballah demonstration in Los Angeles last week:

ands of Terror Supporters in Sydney

The spiritual leader of Australia’s Muslim community, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali , in brown cape, joins members of Sydney’s Lebanese community in a march through Sydney’s central business district Saturday, July 22, 2006. More than 10,000 people, carrying coffins and chanting ‘No war,’ rallied to protest against Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

From Little Green Footballs 

IDF Dave has pictures from the Hizballah supporters’ march in Montreal: Hezbollah Supporters in Montreal 07/22/06.

The front line of the march. As is usual at these things, the strategy seems to be to put children at the front and have them holding signs with gory images.

A man with a Hezbollah cap and and scarf. I took a picture of him so that when he gets arrested next year for trying to blow up some of our skyscrapers I can pull this photo out of my archives while his neighbors and family claim they never knew he supported terrorism.

From Little Green Footballs 

Palestinian students hold a Hezbollah flag and anti-war posters, and shout anti-Israel slogans as they picket the Israeli Embassy in Moscow Thursday, July 20, 2006. Posters read : Israel = Nazism = Fascism. Arab world, we have common enemy. If you want peace, stop occupation of Palestine. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

From Little Green Footballs 

A Reuters photographer was at the pro-Hizballah demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in New York City on July 18. We know this because Reuters published one photo of the posters and signs at the event—this one:

And their ridiculously bland caption completely ignored all the hate symbols and Islamic supremacism in their own photo:

Supporters of Lebanon protest outside the Israeli consulate in New York, July 18, 2006. REUTERS/Chip East (UNITED STATES)

And I just noticed that in the above photo, someone is taking a picture of the Reuters photographer.

But those signs weren’t the worst ones. Reuters apparently decided that the United States didn’t need to see the other posters carried by Muslim demonstrators, even though in any sane universe these pictures would be considered extremely newsworthy: Socialists and Moslems Rally Against Israel.

Stumbled onto this little gem while sewer slogging over at HuffPo:

Latest good news
FOUR DEAD IDF stormtroopers. Hurrah


GO HAMAS
GO SYRIA
GO HEZBOLLAH
GO IRAN

Destroy the Zionazi entity and kill all the IDF stormtroopers.
Wipe that shitty little country of the face of the map.

The world will celebrate the end of the Israeli fascist state.

Death to the Zionazi pigs like jkingoff, SenorPeerPressure

And a special FUCK YOU to RSU
Typical NEOCON moron


Latest good news
FOUR DEAD IDF stormtroopers. Hurrah


GO HAMAS
GO SYRIA
GO HEZBOLLAH
GO IRAN

Destroy the Zionazi entity and kill all the IDF stormtroopers.
Wipe that shitty little country of the face of the map.

The world will celebrate the end of the Israeli fascist state.

Death to the Zionazi pigs like jkingoff, SenorPeerPressure

And a special FUCK YOU to RSU
Typical NEOCON moron




Latest good news
FOUR DEAD IDF stormtroopers. Hurrah


GO HAMAS
GO SYRIA
GO HEZBOLLAH
GO IRAN

Destroy the Zionazi entity and kill all the IDF stormtroopers.
Wipe that shitty little country of the face of the map.

The world will celebrate the end of the Israeli fascist state.

Death to the Zionazi pigs like jkingoff, SenorPeerPressure

And a special FUCK YOU to RSU
Typical NEOCON moron


Latest good news
FOUR DEAD IDF stormtroopers. Hurrah


GO HAMAS
GO SYRIA
GO HEZBOLLAH
GO IRAN

Destroy the Zionazi entity and kill all the IDF stormtroopers.
Wipe that shitty little country of the face of the map.

The world will celebrate the end of the Israeli fascist state.

Death to the Zionazi pigs like jkingoff, SenorPeerPressure

And a special FUCK YOU to RSU
Typical NEOCON moron

By: bm8675309 on July 22, 2006 at 08:39am

Lovely folks, these liberals...

A screen capture can be seen here, as I'm sure it will quickly disappear.

Posted on 07/22/2006 6:20:05 AM CDT by Valin

When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship.

All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine... figuring him for a safe target. When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood instantly started to pour from this poor man's mutilated ear.

Everyone present was horrified and was prepared to absolutely murder this Marine, but my shipmate quickly turned on him and began to single-handedly back him towards a corner with a series of stinging jabs and upper cuts that gave more than a hint to a youth spent boxing in a small gym in the Bronx.

Each punch opened a cut on the Marine's startled face and by the time he had been backed completely into the corner he was blubbering for someone to stop the fight. He invoked his split lips and chipped teeth as reasons to stop the fight. He begged us to stop the fight because he could barely see through the river of blood that was pouring out of his split and swollen brows.

Nobody moved. Not one person.

The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor's lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine's head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker.

Finally the Marine's pleading turned to screams.... a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly.

Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I'm not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back.

You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: "Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]... say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]".

He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage.

This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters... right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up... or that he was wrong.

Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I'm sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully.

Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked "I give up", and we gently backed the sailor away from him.

I'm sure you can guess why I have shared this story today.

I'm not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine's woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors:

This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage... but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat.

Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.

President Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire.

Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of 'Military Success for Dummies Arab Despots' by the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in '56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success:

Instigate a war. Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you... get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire. Whatever you do, don't surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population... and will force a truce. Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle. This tactic has never failed. Not once.

In fact it worked so will for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War - a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel - as a military victory! No kidding... it's a national holiday over there!

President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to "Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we'll be ready to discuss all matters."

Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer. He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country.

And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw.

As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat.

Link 

Ahmadinejad-Palestine-OIC
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a phone talk with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked for the convening of an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to seek a way to end Israeli attacks against Lebanon.

According to the Press Affairs Bureau of the President's Office, President Ahmadinejad considered urgent consultations among OIC member states, particularly the regional countries, a bare necessity under the current conditions.

He added, "The Islamic governments, including the regional countries, must heed their responsibilities by acting more dynamically, since if they would fail to do so the dimensions of aggressions would not be limited to Lebanon."
Referring to the silence observed by the concerned international organizations, as well as the support of some Western countries for Israeli crimes, including the massacring of civilians, Ahmadinejad asked for much greater dynamism of the Islamic countries aimed at putting an end to Israeli attacks.

The Iranian president stressed that Israel's pretext of the detainment of two Zionist soldiers for staging such broad-scale attacks was merely a cover up plot aimed at implementing a pre-planned operation aimed at destroying most of Lebanon's infrastructure facilities and massacring hundreds of civilians.

He added, "The Zionist regime is a serious threat against global peace and security, and if it would succeed in achieving its objectives in this phase, it would definitely expand the dimensions of its aggressive moves."
Ahmadinejad said, "The wrath of regional nations against the indifference of world powers keeps increasing and if it would reach a critical point, the old ties of the Middle East nations with them, particularly with the Europeans, would be seriously deteriorated." The Turkish Premier, too, during the phone talks, referring to the Islamic Republic of Iran's traditional role in preserving peace and stability in the region, asked for the establishment of a shared Islamic path aimed at offering humanitarian assistance to the oppressed Lebanese nation. [Preserving peace and stablity? THAT'S funny... -ed]

Erdogan added, "Keeping in mind that the OIC has become more active in this regard, and that there are tense diplomatic negotiations going on aimed at halting the Israeli attacks, the best thing to do currently is to rush humanitarian aide to the Lebanese people, and to fortify efforts aimed at implementing a cease fire to secure regional peace and stability."

That whole "12th Imam" thing not workin' out for ya, is it goatfluxer? Getting a tad nervous about a 5 kiloton "Hello" heading your way?

What happened to the idea that Muslims would soon be "rejoicing," I wonder?

IRNA

Maybe he signed up for the wrong profession because who in their right mind would want to be a army man? He should have studied harder in school and found a real job instead of joining the army. Lmao , be all u can be? Don't patronize me ! People who join the army either have no education or come from small towns.. He should blame himself for his family dying due to his lack of education.

Too bad the paid assasin wasn't home also... Got what he deserved for serving an illegal government in an illegal war.

ANOTHER BUSH TRADJEDY [sic]... YIP FOLKS HERE ARE 5 [sic -- 4] MORE NOTCHES, BUSH CAN ADD TO HIS BELT.

The p***k bush has cut funds to lock away the lunatics, just to pay for his illegal war. May the same fate await the evil bushites.......they are evil and will be treated as such. They, the pig bushites, are truly the enemies of America!

Bush and republicans put them both in harms way..........If he had been home this would have never happened....instead he is risking his life for another republican lost cause....

MOre Deaths indirectly caused by Geroge W. BUSH!!!! If he didnt lie to start a war.....and the husband was at home, the people would all be alive. The was is for Halleburton, Exxon MObile, and all the other members of the Industrial military complex, who ar to benefit by this war. THANKS BUSH, hope you can sleep nights... But people without a conscious dont have trouble sleeping...I guess.

For more on the vitriolic hate that comes from the Left, check out Michelle Malkin's Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild

Wow.  Just wow.

Human Events Online 

India has banned a number of websites by domain, but has only singled out 17 websites by name, including this one. Among the American websites all are connected in some way to The Jawa Report.

Why did India ban this website? And what is the larger meaning of this action?

The short answer to the first question is that we offended Islamists and India is afraid of its own Muslim citizens. The short answer to the second question is that, sadly, it is increasingly becoming evident that liberty may not be able to exist wherever there is a large population of Muslims.

What, specifically, did we do to offend Islamists and their supporters in the Muslim world?

Some time ago a story began to be circulated in the mainstream press that a detainee's Koran had been put in a toilet at Guantanamo Bay. It later turned out that the story was false.

Nevertheless, the reaction from many in the Muslim world was quite revealing about an alleged 'tiny minority of extremists'. Riots erupted all over the world by people who were offended. Thousands marched, caused property damage, and some were even killed.

Over what? A story about a book being put in a toilet.

We can understand why someone might get offended over their holy book being mistreated. We might get offended if someone did the same to a Bible. But anyone who would engage in violence over such an action has a values system that is not only foreign to us, but also one which is not compatible with liberty.

This reaction, along with the later reaction of many Muslims over cartoons depicting Mohammed, was a clarifying moment for us.

Islam, as understood by many Muslims, is not a tolerant religion.

The very definition of tolerance is to allow that which we do not agree with. The moment Muslims demand that their governments punish those who say, write, or depict things that they find offensive, they reveal their intolerance.

Many people in my experience are intolerant. Intolerance is not a very unique attribute. It is intolerance coupled with threats of violence that makes many Muslims unique in the world. It is also what makes Islam uniquely dangerous among the major religions of the world.

Not only do these intolerant Muslims wish for offensive speech to stop, but they threaten violence upon any government unwilling to censor.

So, our reaction to the overreaction in the Muslim world was to make fun of them by making fun of the Koran flushing story. Oddly, making fun of intolerant people is now considered a form of intolerance by many in the world.

We admit that the humor involved was tasteless. We also admit that we knew that it would offend some. But if you can't legitimately offend people engaging in riots, who advocate criminal penalties for blasphemy, and who wish your destruction, who can you offend?

While the specific reason for India's attempt to ban us was that we were blasphemous, the more general reason was because it feared its own citizens.

India has been taken hostage by its sizeable Muslim population. It is afraid of its own citizens. It fears that if they are exposed to that which is religiously offensive, that violence might erupt. That if the government doesn't do something, then they might just have to do something about the government.

India's banning of this and other websites, then, is completely rational. It is based on the real fear of real people who do real violence. Thus, it is completely understandable.

While we might understand India's reason for banning our website, we certainly don't condone it.

Giving in to violent threats is not, in my book, a winning strategy for defeating the very people who are threatening you. Appeasement only works if your goal is appeasement. If your goal is to drag Muslims who have a 7th century mentality about how the world ought to be ordered into the 21st century, then this is no way to do it.

This is not to say that we don't agree that there might be limits to free speech. Such limits seem legitimate in the context of war, for instance.

However, when one bans speech because it is religiously offensive, then two freedoms are killed at the same time. A nation cannot truly have freedom of religion if that religion is immune from public criticism. A nation cannot truly have freedom of speech if blasphemy becomes a criminal act.

Sadly, there is not a single country in the world where Muslims are a majority that criticisms of Islam are legally tolerated. While Muslims proudly proclaim that they 'tolerate' Chrisianity, they do not mean tolerance in the Western sense. They may 'tolerate' Chrisitians worshipping in their own churches, but the minute that a Christian steps out in public he is unable to accomplish the 'Great Commission' of trying to convert the non-believer into a believer.

Some 'moderate' Muslim countries allow Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians to be converted to whichever religion that they may choose. But once a Muslim, always a Muslim. It is forbidden for any missionary of any faith to try to convert a Muslim.

Islam is a one-way street.

India's actions lead us to suspect that it will not just be Islamic states where religious oppression is the norm, but that any country with a sizeable Muslim minority might also be forced, for the sake of domestic tranquility, to ban blasphemy. And we believe that our fears are founded on more than this one case.

A simple statistical analysis shows that there is a strong inverse correlation between Muslim populations and freedom. What this means is that the more Muslims there are in your country, the more likely it is that your country is repressive. India's actions give us a definite candidate for the causal mechanism underlying the correlation.

There is some good news, though, in those same statistics. Since Geoge W. Bush has been in office, declaring liberty and democracy the common birthright of humanity, Muslim countries are becoming more free. None has fully reached that goal in our understanding of the term and there are some exceptions to the rule, but as a whole they are moving in the right direction.

We hope that the movement to liberalize will continue in the Muslim world.

If Muslim countries are moving in the right direction, liberalizing in ways unimaginable before the Bush administration turned up the heat, it is odd that some non-Muslim countries seem to be moving in the opposite direction while responding to the same pressures.

If India and other countries hope that by banning a handful of websites, or by condemning speech critical of Islam, that it will appease their Muslim populations, they have greatly miscalculated.

What offends Islamists and many Muslims is not what we or others say, it is that they are not in power to stop us from saying it.

The ultimate goal of these people is the creation of a state based on sharia (or Islamic) law. One in which Muslims rule and Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists take a back seat. It is only then, when it is Muslims who do the deciding on what needs to be banned, that they will be happy.

The real gripe Muslims have in non-Muslim countries is about power. They want it, but don't yet have the numbers to exercise it.

India, of all countries, should understand this. Both Pakistan and Bangledesh were states founded because Muslims on the Indian subcontinent refused to be ruled by any other than a Muslim master. Several wars have been fought between India and her Muslim neighbors because of this. Today, a low-level war continues in Indian Kashmir because Muslims refuse to be governed by any country in which they are not a majority. Even when that country is headed by a Muslim, which is the case in India right now, sizeable numbers of Muslims demand more.

India is said to be a secular state with aspirations of greatness. Its actions today show that it is neither completely secular nor ready for its proper place on the world stage.

This is all doubly sad because India is also a natural ally against the cancer of Islamic fundamentalism. It is on the frontline in the war against the global jihadis.

It is India, not the U.S., which shares its bloody borders with the world of Islam. Mumbai should be a reminder to India who its real friends are, and who are its enemies.

The move towards religious censorship by India is a mistake. A nation does not cement its alliances by adopting the values of its enemies and rejecting those of nations willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with it against forces which plan its destruction.

Although we, who have always supported India in the past, feel that this action was a slap in the face, we continue to wish her continued progress and prosperity. A wealthy India is an India better able to stay off the attacks of the barbarians at her gates. Those barbarians are our common enemies.

India may have turned its back on us, but we will not be so petty as to completely turn our backs on her.

UPDATE: Apparently, the ban is still in effect.
------------------------- ------------------------

*Exposing the Leftz (aka, OpiniPundit)
*The Pirate's Cove
*Merri Musings (Indian government banned her old website, now abandond--also, the lovely bride of The Jawa Report's Editor-in-Chief, Vinnie)
*Macker
*Princess Kimberly (now defunct)
*Editors in Pajamas
*Commonfolk Using Commonsense (their old website banned)
*My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Via Macker, this is alleged to be a scanned copy the order by the Indian government to censor our websites. Notice there are 17, rather than the 11 as reported in the media. Also, notice that the urls are correct in the document, it appears that the MSM got the urls wrong.

Show your solidarity, visit The Jawa Report and spread the word. 

A security start-up on Thursday unveiled a free tool that scans Web sites for malicious code and other exploits, giving users a chance to steer clear of dangerous URLs before they click on links.

The tool, dubbed "LinkScanner" by Exploit Prevention Labs, is the fruit of an earlier effort -- the Atlanta-based company's SocketShield -- and in later versions, will compete with better-known site raters such as McAfee's SiteAdvisor, Exploit's chief operating officer said Thursday.

"At some point, you'll be able to enter a search here and point it to a specific [search] engine, and we'll return pages with scan results," said Chris Weltzien.

SiteAdvisor, technology that security giant McAfee acquired in April, rates sites in search results posted by Google, Yahoo, and MSN, but uses a completely different methodology.

"SiteAdvisor is not immediate and not empirical," said Joe Chiarella, Exploit Prevention's product manager. "Its information is not necessarily very fresh; we're instantaneous."

When a user enters a URL in LinkScanner, the tool scans the requested page for threats and exploits, then reports back on what it found. "I think it's most useful for checking out links people send you in e-mail, Weltzien said. "Even though you've told them not to, they still do."

However, the tool doesn't warn users of all potentially risky sites. Several sites tested by TechWeb that were identified by Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 as likely spoofed phishing URLs, were passed by LinkScanner.

"We're not going terribly deep into the site," admitted Chiarella. "There are number of ways you can crawl a site, and we're doing it relatively superficially." LinkScanner scans only the page entered, not any secondary pages or sites linked to from the URL. "We could go to the entire depth of the site, but that would take some time," said Chiarella. "People have about a 30 second wait tolerance."

In TechWeb's tests, LinkScanner took about 10 seconds to return its findings.

LinkScanner is based on an SDK for SocketShield, a stand-alone exploit interceptor that the company released in final form last month. It's also tied to the same intelligence network Exploit Prevention uses to feed data to SocketShield.

The company wants to license the SDK to Web portals and sites so that others can add a LinkScanner-style tool to their domains, said Weltzien. "It would provide a real stickiness factor for portals," he said, if other sites gave users the option of pre-scanning a link to a third-party page.

LinkScanner is free to use, and will remain so, said Weltzien, since he hopes to convince users of the tool to upgrade to the $19.95-per-year SocketShield.

"There's a real need for users to look at emerging threats to unpatched machines," Weltzien said. "They need real-time protection against real-time threats."

LinkScanner can be accessed from here.

Via:  Information Week 

Sum up the declarations of Hezbollah’s leaders, Syrian diplomats, Iranian nuts, West Bank terrorists, and Arab commentators — and this latest Middle East war seems one of the strangest in a long history of strange conflicts. For example, have we ever witnessed a conflict in which one of the belligerents — Iran — that shipped thousands of rockets into Lebanon, and promises that it will soon destroy Israel, vehemently denies that its own missile technicians are on the ground in the Bekka Valley. Wouldn’t it wish to brag of such solidarity?

Or why, after boasting of the new targets that his lethal missiles will hit in Israel, does Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (“We are ready for it — war, war on every level”) now harp that Israel is hitting too deep into Lebanon? Don’t enemies expect one another to hit deep? Isn’t that what “war on every level” is all about?

Meanwhile, why do the G-8 or the United Nations even talk of putting more peacekeeping troops into southern Lebanon, when in the past such rent-a-cops and uniformed bystanders have never stopped hostilities? Does anyone remember that it was Hezbollah who blew up French and American troops who last tried to provide “stability” between the warring parties?

Why do not Iran and Syria — or for that matter other Arab states — now attack Israel to join the terrorists that they have armed? Surely the two-front attack by Hamas and Hezbollah could be helped by at least one conventional Islamic military. After promising us all year that he was going to “wipe out” Israel, is not this the moment for Mr. Ahmadinejad to strike?

And why — when Hezbollah rockets are hidden in apartment basements, then brought out of private homes to target civilians in Israel — would terrorists who exist to murder noncombatants complain that some “civilians” have been hit? Would not they prefer to lionize “martyrs” who helped to store their arms?

...In this regard, it is time to stop the silly slurs that American policy in the Middle East is either in shambles or culpable for the present war. In fact, if we keep our cool, the Bush doctrine is working. Both Afghans and Iraqis each day fight and kill Islamist terrorists; neither was doing so before 9/11. Syria and Iran have never been more isolated; neither was isolated when Bill Clinton praised the “democracy” in Tehran or when an American secretary of State sat on the tarmac in Damascus for hours to pay homage to Syria’s gangsters. Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists; that was impossible during the Arafat fraud that grew out of the Oslo debacle. Europe is waking up to the dangers of radical Islamism; in the past, it bragged of its aid and arms sales to terrorist governments from the West Bank to Baghdad.

Some final observations on Hezbollah and Hamas. There is no longer a Soviet deterrent to bail out a failed Arab offensive. There is no longer empathy for poor Islamist “freedom fighters.” The truth is that it is an open question as to which regime — Iran or Syria — is the greater international pariah. After a recent trip to the Middle East, I noticed that the unfortunate prejudicial stares given to a passenger with an Iranian passport were surpassed only by those accorded another on his way to Damascus.

So after 9/11, the London bombings, the Madrid murders, the French riots, the Beslan atrocities, the killings in India, the Danish cartoon debacle, Theo Van Gogh, and the daily arrests of Islamic terrorists trying to blow up, behead, or shoot innocent people around the globe, the world is sick of the jihadist ilk. And for all the efforts of the BBC, Reuters, Western academics, and the horde of appeasers and apologists that usually bail these terrorist killers out when their rhetoric finally outruns their muscle, this time they can’t.

Instead, a disgusted world secretly wants these terrorists to get what they deserve. And who knows: This time they just might.

I wish this guy would run for President.  I command you to go read the rest...  :)
 

 National Review Online

When President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty five years ago, Democrats howled. Pulling out of the treaty to roll out missile defense would, they predicted, lead to a new arms race, undermine American security and in any case was unnecessary. "This premise, that one day Kim Jong Il or someone will wake up one morning and say 'Aha, San Francisco!' is specious," Senator Joe Biden told AP in May 2001.

Apparently no one bothered to translate "specious" into Korean. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has now defied world opinion by test-firing a Taepodong-2 missile capable of hitting San Francisco. The fact that the missile failed is small consolation, since we are also now seeing in Lebanon a further proliferation of missiles from Syria and Iran that can reach deep into Israel. Does anyone doubt that Iran, or some other adversary, will build an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. as soon as it is able?

...

When Mr. Bush informed Vladimir Putin that the U.S. intended to exercise its legal right to withdraw from the ABM pact, the world didn't end. The Russians moved on to bigger issues, and much of the rest of the world decided that they'd like to join the missile-defense club. Six nations now participate with the United States in developing new missile-defense technology and nearly a dozen others use some of what's already been developed.

The Pentagon now spends nearly $10 billion a year on missile defense and is developing several promising new technologies. These include sea-based defenses and low-orbit satellites that help track incoming missiles, as well as the Thaad program designed to knock out long-range missiles as they are heading to Earth. Thaad had a successful test over New Mexico last week. By investing in this capability, the U.S. may even deter the world's rogues from investing heavily in missile technology. Defense dollars are limited, even in terror regimes, and they won't invest their money in weapons that won't work. With the expanding North Korean and Iran missile threats, it'd be nice to think Democrats would acknowledge their mistakes. But we'd gladly forgo any apologies if liberal Democrats would finally admit that missile defenses are a necessary part of America's antiterror state arsenal.

Cheers.  Go read the rest.

Wall Street Journal 

The Lebanese Minister of Defense warned Israel Thursday that if IDF ground forces are sent into southern Lebanon, Lebanese troops will fight along with the Hizbullah against Israel.

Unconfirmed at this time, but I'll update if more becomes available...

Jerusalem Post 

The Mosaic Religious Community has advised its Jewish members against speaking Hebrew loudly on the streets of Oslo or wearing Jewish emblems. The suggestion has infuriated some in the membership.

It comes after a Jewish man wearing a kippah, or yarmulke, was assaulted on an Oslo street Saturday. The Mosaic Religious Community wants its members to be careful.

"We have encouraged our members to avoid speaking Hebrew loudly on the street," Anne Sender of the Jewish organization told newspaper Vårt Land. She also told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that men may want to reconsider wearing the yarmulke.

That's provoked journalist Mona Levin, daughter of the late pianist Robert Levin. "We can't conceal that we're Jews," Levin said, adding that she intended to start wearing her Star of David. "That's letting ourselves down."

Sender said she wanted to stress that "the situation for Jews in Norway is better than it has been for a long time," despite current tensions caused by the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel that broke out last week.

Norway's government has supported Israel for years and actively worked to bring peace to the Middle East. At the same, there's also strong sympathy and support for the Palestinians.

The Mosaic Religious Community, which represents Jewish interests in Norway, has around 850 members in Oslo alone. The community reports "a steady flow" of new people joining from other countries or through conversion to Judaism.

The community also has actively sought to include the Israeli citizens living in Norway.

Community leaders claim on their web site that the Jewish community in Oslo is "very much a part of the Norwegian society at large, while, at the same time, maintaining its uniqueness."

Hmmm....  Is this calandar right?  Is it really 1934? 

Link 

The conventional wisdom is that the United States is so tied down that it can't do much about the rocket attacks on Israel, the blatant sponsorship of terrorists by Iran and Syria, or the Iranian nuclear program.

Oil prices are already sky-high. Any unilateral American action might disrupt tight global supplies. That would derail the economies of our Western allies and only further enrich enemies with windfall profits.

Trying to win hearts and minds for the fragile democracy in Iraq also means we can't afford to offend Arab sensitivities elsewhere. And a lame-duck George Bush, low in the polls and facing uncertain congressional elections this fall, certainly doesn't want to involve the American taxpayer with more costly commitments abroad.

But despite that sound conventional wisdom, an exasperated West is running out of choices in the Middle East.

For years, the Arab world clamored for the Israel "problem" to be solved. Then peace and security would at last supposedly reshape the Middle East. The Western nations understood the "problem" as being Israeli retention of lands it had captured in Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon after defeating a series of Arab forces bent on destroying the Jewish state.

But after the Israeli departure from Sinai, Gaza and Lebanon, and billions of dollars in American aid to Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, there is still not much progress toward peace. Past Israeli magnanimity was seen as weakness. Now Israel's reasoned diplomacy has earned it another round of kidnapping, ransom and rocket attacks.

Finally, the world is accepting that the Middle East problem was never about so-called occupied land -- but only about the existence of Israel itself. Hezbollah and Hamas, and those in their midst who tolerate them (or vote for them), didn't so much want Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza as pushed into the Mediterranean altogether. And since there will be no second Holocaust, the Israelis may well soon transform a perennial terrorist war that they can't easily win into a conventional aerial one against a terrorist-sponsoring Syria that they can.

For its part, the United States has spent thousands of lives and billions in treasure trying to birth democracy in Iraq. We wished to end our old cynical support for Middle East dictators that earned us such scorn and instead give liberated Iraqis a choice other than either theocracy or autocracy.

In multilateral fashion, America has also welcomed the help of the European Union, the United Nations, China and Russia in convincing the Iranians of the folly of producing nuclear weapons. But like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran does not wish to parley -- just as the beheaders and kidnappers in Iraq don't, either.

The two most liberal societies in Europe -- Denmark and the Netherlands -- welcomed almost anyone to their shores from the Middle East. Their multicultural hospitality was supposed to have led to a utopian "diverse" nation of various races, nationalities and religions.

Instead, such liberality has earned both small nations pariah status in the Muslim world for the supposed indiscretions of a few freewheeling filmmakers and cartoonists.

Yet for all their threats, what the Islamists -- from Hezbollah in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to the Iranian government in Tehran to the jihadists in Iraq's Sunni Triangle -- don't understand is that they are slowly pushing tired Westerners into a corner. If diplomacy, or aid, or support for democracy, or multiculturalism, or withdrawal from contested lands, does not satisfy radical Islamists, what would?

Perhaps nothing.

What then would be the new Western approach to terrorism? Hard and quick retaliation -- but without our past concern for nation-building, or offering a democratic alternative to theocracy and autocracy, or even worrying about whether other Muslims are unfairly lumped in with Islamists who operate freely in their midst.

Any new policy of retaliation -- in light both of Sept. 11 and the messy efforts to birth democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the West Bank -- would be something of an exasperated return to the old cruise-missile payback. Yet in the new world of Iranian nukes and Hezbollah missiles, the West would hit back with something far greater than a cruise missile.

If they are not careful, a Syria or Iran really will earn a conventional war -- not more futile diplomacy or limited responses to terrorism. And history shows that massive attacks from the air are something that the West does well.

So in the meantime, let us hope that democracy prevails in Iraq, that our massive aid is actually appreciated by the Middle East, that diplomacy ultimately works with Iran, that Syria quits supporting terrorists, and that Hamas and Hezbollah cease their rocket attacks against Israel -- more for all their sakes than ours.

By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, July 19 (Reuters)

  Syria barred a U.N. mission to the Middle East unless it excluded one of its members, Norwegian Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. adviser on Syria-Lebanon issues, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.

Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary-general, told reporters the mission decided not to go to Damascus because it urgently needed to return to New York to brief the U.N. Security Council on a flurry of diplomatic initiatives. "The mission did plan to go to Syria and one of the issues we would have had to grapple with is what to do with Roed-Larsen," Malloch Brown said. "What would have been a tough choice is one we did not have to make."

Damascus, diplomats said, had barred Roed-Larsen because of his previous reports on Security Council resolutions demanding Syrian forces withdraw from Lebanon and militia disarm. His reports have also cited weapons flowing to Lebanon's Hizbollah militia across the Syrian border.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent the team to the Middle East to search for ways to end the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. He will report to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

"Obviously the secretary-general considers it his business to choose who to send on good offices mission," Malloch Brown said. "It is clearly the case that the Syrians didn't want him," he said of Roed-Larsen.

But Malloch Brown said that if the U.N. initiative continues, Annan would want a team to visit Damascus "and this will be an issue he will have to face down the road."

Annan, he said, would be reporting on the diplomatic overtures and his demands for a cease-fire at a dinner on Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and possibly Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief. The team was led by political adviser Vijay Nambiar of India and included Middle East envoy Alvaro de Soto of Peru as well as Roed-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat.

Nope.  Syria is squeeky clean in all this.

These aren't the 'droids your looking for...

(Move along...)

Al-Reuters 

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy explains himself—or doesn’t—at a press conference shortly after the accident.

Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a car went off a bridge on Martha’s Vineyard. With a young senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, at the wheel, the Oldsmobile sank into the water beneath the Dike Bridge.

In a sequence of events that instantly became famous, Senator Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and swam to shore. By 2:30 a.m. he had made his way back to his hotel in Edgartown, where he was sighted in the lobby. He made 17 phone calls to family members and associates. But not until 10 hours after the accident did he call the police to tell them about the car crash—and the other person in the car, who had died.

Senator Kennedy had not been alone. Riding alongside him had been a young woman, not his wife, named Mary Jo Kopechne. She had been sitting next to him as they drove away from a party, and as they crossed Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island the accident ended her life. It would haunt the rest of Kennedy’s career.

After President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and then the killing of Robert F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy was regarded as the next standard-bearer of America’s foremost political family. With the 1972 presidential election approaching, many, including some of President Richard M. Nixon’s advisers, expected the youngest Kennedy brother to make a bid for the White House. As the details of the events at Chappaquiddick slowly emerged, however, they significantly weakened his prospects.

The public learned that the senator had miraculously escaped from his sinking vehicle, failed in his efforts to rescue Kopechne, and neglected to call for emergency assistance until long after the young woman could have been saved. People read reports that there might have been enough air left in the car to keep Kopechne alive until a search and rescue team arrived—but Kennedy waited hours to notify the authorities of her plight. Though many of his constituents wrote letters urging him not to resign from the Senate, many more Americans were deeply unsettled by his conduct.

Looking back on the 1972 election cycle, George McGovern, the eventual Democratic nominee, explained: “Teddy had run into the Chappaquiddick thing and more or less disqualified himself. . . . I decided a week after Chappaquiddick that I had a . . . clear shot at the nomination.”

In this regard, the events of that summer night marked not only a personal tragedy but a turning point in American politics. For years the Kennedys had dominated the national stage. Even after Chappaquiddick, observers as prominent as President Nixon expected Ted Kennedy to attain the Presidency. But the senator could never escape the shadow of his questionable deeds. Though he decried his own actions, describing them as “irrational and indefensible and inexcusable and inexplicable,” this reaction hardly satisfied most Americans.

As years passed, more information about Chappaquiddick came to light, with suggestions emerging that Kennedy had drunk far more that night than he had admitted. Even more disturbingly, one reporter alleged that the senator had considered trying to hide his involvement in the accident by having a relative claim responsibility for the crash. When Kennedy eventually did seek the Presidency, in 1980, challenging Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries, he could not reassure the American people that his previous errors were mere aberrations. With Chappaquiddick always in the air, many Americans concluded that he was not the kind of person that should be President.

In the following decades, people have offered a variety of explanations for the events of July 18, 1969. Some have suggested that Kennedy is simply a man without a moral compass, preoccupied, above all, with self-preservation. Others have offered other, more complex reasons for his poor behavior and apparent inability to come to terms with his actions. The late journalist Michael Kelly, among others, found fault in his upbringing, arguing that he was “born and bred to act like the last of the Regency rakes”—to live like an aristocrat to whom the usual rules governing behavior did not apply. Ted Kennedy, the argument goes, didn’t leave behind this devil-may-care attitude when he reached the Senate.

Indeed the culture of the Senate itself may have influenced his behavior. When he first joined that body, in 1962, when he was 30, reporters still protected the private lives of politicians. In the words of the journalist Lou Cannon, it was still “an era when White House photographers by common consent took no waist-down pictures of a crippled president and personal things were written about politicians only if they were in the penitentiary.” A politician like Strom Thurmond could conceal a child born out of wedlock; President Kennedy could cover up extensive marital indiscretions.

Entering the Senate so young, Edward Kennedy learned the trade of politics from an older generation of men accustomed to this earlier brand of politics. He is one of only five members of the 87th Senate still alive, and he’s 12 years younger than his next-youngest former colleague, James B. Pearson. But he reached his political prime amid new, stricter standards for behavior and decreasing tolerance for misconduct. By 1969 it was impossible for someone in his position to conceal events like those at Chappaquiddick, and by the time he ran for President, such a scandal was utterly crippling—and he was still unable to fully explain his actions. As the National Journal’s Michael Barone said: “Maybe Ted Kennedy didn’t realize times have changed.”

In spite of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy has gone on to an extremely successful career as a legislator. According to former Senator Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, he ultimately achieved his own kind of greatness when he “lifted the curse from himself that Kennedys had to be President.”

Richard Nixon, in the wake of Chappaquiddick, wrote a note to himself saying, “A man is not finished when he’s defeated, he’s finished when he quits.” Thirty-seven years after Chappaquiddick, Kennedy is still not finished. Neither, however, is the specter of his disastrous accident.

—Alexander Burns, an undergraduate at Harvard College, is a frequent contributor to AmericanHeritage.com.

Mary Jo was unavailable for comment... 

The elite liberal media, being yapping lap dogs for the American political left, have been screaming about the evil Jews using disproportionate force as Israel finally responds to the carnage Muslim terrorists have been heaping upon it of late. The proverbial last straw was the Iranian- and Syrian-controlled terrorist group Hezbollah kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. Hezbollah, in case you have forgotten, carried out the 1983 attacks on the United States Embassy and Marine compound in Beirut, the 1984 attack on the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, and the 1996 destruction of the Khobar Towers U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia (total Americans dead in these attacks: 325).

The usual sniveling lackeys of the anti-Israel Democratic Party and their liberal media henchmen can’t seem to grasp the entry-level tactical maxim of disproportionate response, which throughout recorded history has demonstrated innumerable times how disproportionate response can oftentimes end a war. It is the same principle used in barroom brawling: If someone punches you in the nose, you must assume he has no intention of stopping with that one punch, which means your response should be to repeatedly and viciously hit him over the head with the barkeep’s Louisville Slugger until sufficient evidence is presented that causes you to believe the fellow is no longer a threat. It all has to do with the concepts of survival and victory. And, as an added attraction, word will get around town that you are not to be trifled with.

Funny, but we haven’t really been inundated with liberal newspaper editorials lamenting Hamas and Hezbollah’s unending attacks on Israel with Qassam and Katyusha missiles and demanding the terrorists cease and desist, now have we? Why do you suppose that is? And why, as soon as Israel decides enough is enough, do you suppose liberal newspaper editorials from coast to coast attack the Jews for having the temerity to vigorously defend themselves?

Naturally, many liberals are screaming that a "disproportionate response" to an attack is illegal. This is an asinine claim with no basis in fact. And any professional military man will tell you that the military commander who orders only proportionate responses to attacks will soon be dead or relieved of command. If a commander comes up against a platoon in the defense dug into a fortified position on a hill, he doesn’t send one of his platoons against the enemy platoon. He sends a reinforced company with armor, artillery and close-air support. And he employs every weapon he can get his hands on short of a tactical nuke. That’s how you win, people.

No part of the Laws and Customs of War on Land requires warring parties to use proportional force in response to an attack. Are we pretty clear on that?

The leader of the liberals is Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. Edvard Munch must have somehow looked into the future to find and use Dean as his paradigm for "The Scream."

There is no more delusional an extremist liberal in American politics than Howard Dean and, yes, that’s saying something because he has a slew of competition. However, to give you his most recent example of just how unhinged a weirdo he is, while addressing an audience of braying liberals in San Diego this past Sunday at a lemmingesque gathering called DemocracyFest at San Diego State University, Dean claimed that, if Democrats were in charge, Israel would not have needed to invade Lebanon because this diuturnal conundrum would have been handily deciphered years ago by the sagacious liberals.

Said Doctor Demento: "If you think what's going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn't, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn't get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians."

Yes, Howard, you Democrats sure did a dandy job on not only the Middle East, but North Korea, China, Congo, Somalia, the Pakistan-India fracas, the Philippines, the birth and global rise of al Qaeda, the intercontinental expansion of Hezbollah, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. I can’t determine what he is babbling about when he says Clinton brought the "Northern Irish and the IRA" together, given that the Irish Republican Army is from Northern Ireland. And on the same day Dean made his bizarre claim that Clinton had brought Israel and the Palestinians together, Israel again walloped the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry compound. The man lives on Planet Preposterous in the Screw-Loose Galaxy.

In the end, liberals are a spineless lot who have once again shown their true colors, every one of which is a sickly and sickening shade of yellow.

Urah, Gunny...

850 KOA 

July 17, 2006 -- Hans Peter Niesward, from the Department of Gravitationsphysik at the ISA in Munich, says we can stop global warming in one fell swoop — or, more accurately, in one big jump.

The slightly disheveled professor states his case on WorldJumpDay.org, an Internet site created to recruit 600,000,000 people to jump simultaneously on July 20 at 11:39:13 GMT in an effort to shift Earth's position.

Niesward claims that on this day "Earth occupies one of the most fragile positions in its orbits for the last 100 years." According to the site, the shift in orbit will "stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogeneous climate."

The Man Who Wasn't There

Niesward's theory has at least one major flaw: Niesward doesn't really exist. He is a character created by Torsten Lauschmann, a German-born artist living in Scotland. Lauschmann — a live performer, filmmaker, DJ and photographer — may be best known for his work "Misshapen Pearl," described as a "phenomenological investigation of the streetlamp's function in our consumer society."

Lauschmann's multimedia approach has allowed him to explore a wide variety of subjects, including butterflies, paparazzi photos and, now, a flash-mob experiment.

In 2005, Lauschmann encouraged scientists and bloggers from around the world to discuss World Jump Day.

"He thought it would just circulate among friends, but it quickly seemed to morph. Within weeks it was global — people in Australia were talking about it on the radio," said Neil Mulholland, a reader in contemporary art theory at Edinburgh College of Art. "The more it was discussed, the more people joined the site, and it crashed several times."

The site now claims to have just under 600 million jumpers registered for the cause. But will people jump out of environmental activism or a commitment to the bizarre? Is the jump as important as the buzz it's created?

The Anti-Jumpers

Members of the online environmental site treehugger.com have been debating not only the physical possibility of the jump's promise but the morality of its outcome.

Just amazing...

Link 

When an IDF soldier was killed by a terrorists’ bomb in Nablus today, dozens of residents—including children—swarmed around the body, cheering and carrying away body parts: IDF soldier killed in Nablus.

Immediately after the explosion, dozens of residents gathered around the soldier’s body and burst into shouts of happiness in front of the Arab media’s television cameras.
 
After the incident, a senior member of the Brigades told Ynet that his people hold part of the killed soldier’s body, but another activist made it clear that there was no plan to negotiate on the body parts, which were later transferred to the Palestinian Authority and then to IDF representatives. 

Here’s another picture at Getty Images, showing Palestinian children taking photos of the carnage with digital cameras.

UPDATE at 7/17/06 9:54:20 am:

Notice how carefully the Associated Press cropped the photo above, to avoid showing the face of the terrorist holding the soldier’s boot.

Via:  LGF 

New York Times photographer Joao Silva was right there in the room as a member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” tried to kill American troops: The New York Times - New York Region - Slide Show - Slide Show: Memorable Photographs.

Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally comments on this one:

A sniper loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr fires towards U.S. positions in the cemetery in Najaf, Iraq.

Michele McNally: “Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage.”

UPDATE at 7/15/06 8:11:33 pm:

Here’s a site where New York Times photographer Joao Silva is hawking a book about his uncomfortably close friendships with people who want to kill your neighbors, your sons, and your daughters: In the Company of God by award-winning New York Times photographer, Joao Silva. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.)

In the Company of God is a photographic compilation that portrays Iraqi Shi’a Muslims in a period of occupation and transition. This photographic body of work, recorded over twelve months, richly captures the Shi’as’ intense commitment to their faith and their indomitable spirit of sacrifice.

About the pictures

The pictures in this book are not displayed in a chronological order but rather in a manner that best illustrates a narrative about faith, sacrifice, war and martyrdom. They were taken while on assignment for The New York Times, from July 30 to November 3, 2003, from January 16 till April 1, 2004, from June16 until August 30, 2004, and again from January 18, 2005 until March 31, 2005.

UPDATE at 7/15/06 9:02:08 pm:

Jeff Goldstein comments: Sleeping with the Enemy.

Incredible courage?  Well, far be it for me to question such self-congratulatory enthusiasm, but it seems to me that actual “incredible courage” would have entailed, say, Joao Silva getting word to US troops, or his bumrushing the sniper and beating him unconscious with a heavy telephoto lens.

Whereas what we’ve witnessed here is the product of dangerous opportunism in the service of plaudits and cocktail party invites.

Via:  LGF 

Hizbullah terrorists fired a long-range missile at the major Israeli port city of Haifa Thursday evening. Tzfat and Nahariya were struck again as well, causing scores of injuries.

A simultaneous wave of missiles struck Tzfat and Nahariya at around 7:30. Twenty people were injured in Tzfat - one seriously and three moderately. As the 8 PM news programs began and Israelis prepared to break the Fast of the 17th of Tamuz, two long-range missiles struck Haifa - though no injuries resulted.

Throughout Thursday, nearly 100 Katyusha missiles were fired at various towns and cities in northern Israel, injuring 90 people and killing two.

Eleven people were wounded lightly by shrapnel in the latest attack on Nahariya. One rocket hit a multi-level apartment house and a second destroyed a house. Residents have been ordered to remain in shelters and a small fire is raging in one of the town's parks.

In the eastern Galilee, rockets hit Rosh Pina and Hatzor, as well as Tzfat – which was struck earlier in the day as well.

In Judea and Samaria, Arabs threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli targets Thursday afternoon and also fired at Israeli soldiers. No one was injured.

Rocks were thrown at Israeli vehicles in Samaria, and a firebomb was thrown at a bus near Bethlehem.

IDF soldiers found ammunition and weapons in an Arab car at a checkpoint west of Hevron. The driver was arrested and is being interrogated.

Link

Get 'em, IDF! 

No one should have any lingering doubts about what’s going on in the Middle East. It’s war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are different instruments, ranging from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted “insurgency” in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable.

It is very good news that the White House immediately denounced Iran and Syria, just as Ambassador Khalilzad had yesterday tagged the terrorist Siamese twins as sponsors of terrorism in Iraq. For those who doubt the Iranian hand, remind yourself that Hezbollah is a wholly owned subsidiary of the mullahcracy (with Syria providing some supplies, and free run of the territory), and then read what Iraq the Model had to say yesterday, Wednesday: Hizbollah is Iran's and Syria's partner in feeding instability in Iraq as there were evidence that this terror group has a role in equipping and training insurgents in Iraq and Hizbollah had more than once openly showed support for the “resistance” in Iraq and sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants who are responsible for most of the violence in Iraq. Notice, please, that he says Iran “sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants...” He is talking Sunnis here, the same Sunnis who, according to CIA deep thinkers and scads of academic experts, cannot possibly work closely with Shiites like, ahem, the mullahs of Tehran. Iraq the Model isn’t burdened by this wisdom, and so he just reports what he sees on the ground in his own country.

Notice also that over the weekend there was a “security summit” in Tehran, involving all of Iraq’s neighbors, at which Iran’s moonbat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made one of his trademark understatements about Israel. “The existence of this regime will bring nothing but suffering and misery for people in the region,” he mildly commented, and then said that the anger of the people might soon “lead to a vast explosion that will know no boundaries.”

Sounds to me like he knew something before the rest of us. As well he should, because Iran has been quite busy in Lebanon of late. The Lebanese Tourism Ministry’s Research Center announced an amazing statistic in early July: in the first six months of the year, 60,888 Iranian tourists visited Lebanon. No other Asian country came close (the Philippines ranked second, with a bit over 12,000). I don’t think that there’s enough disposable income in mullahland to cover the expenses of more than ten thousand people a month headed for the Beirut beaches. Do you think, as I do, that a goodly number of those “tourists” were up to no good? Maybe some of them were working for the Revolutionary Guards Corps? Or were Hezbollah operations people? I’ll bet you your favorite farm that one of them was the world’s most wanted man, Imad Mughniyah, the operations chieftain of Hizbollah, the world’s most lethal terrorist organization.

Actually I won’t bet; it would be unethical. We know that Mughniyah flew to Damascus a while back with Ahmadinejad, and went to Lebanon to work with his buddies.

In this war, there is no meaningful distinction between Iran and Syria, they work in tandem. It’s just that Iran gives the orders and Syria obeys.

There’s a lot of fanciful analysis of the recent expansion of the war, revolving around a general “why?” and a more specific “why now?” Someone said that Iran was trying to distract world attention from the upcoming U.N. showdown over the mullahs’ atomic program, which seems silly to me. A U.N. debate serves Iran’s interest. It deflects attention from our growing awareness of Iran’s centrality in Iraq, and the urgency of going after the regimes in Tehran and Damascus. That is where Iran’s doom lies, not in the endless charade about the nukes.

I don’t think it is worth our time and energy to try to answer the “why now?” except to agree with Allahpundit who remarked that there does seem to be something special about dates numbered “11.” The important thing to keep in mind is that both the Gaza and northern Israel attacks were planned for quite a while, which means that Iran wanted this war, this way. It isn’t just a target of opportunity or a sudden impulse; it’s part of a strategic decision to expand the war.

Iran has been at war with us all along, because that’s what the world’s leading terror state does. The scariest thing about this moment is that the Iranians have convinced themselves that they are winning, and we are powerless to reverse the tide. As I reported here several months ago, Khamenei told his top people late last year that the Americans and Israelis are both politically paralyzed. Neither can take decisive action against Iran, neither can sustain prolonged conflict and significant casualties. Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader said, the terrorists are all working for Iran, and we will expand the terror war.

Don’t think for a moment that they worry about victims in Gaza or Lebanon. They are delighted to see Israel fighting on two fronts, because they will use the pictures from the battlefield to consolidate their hold over the fascist forces in the region. After a few days of fighting, I would not be surprised to see some new kind of terrorist attack against Israel, or against an American facility in the region. An escalation to chemical weapons, for example, or even the fulfillment of the longstanding Iranian promise to launch something nuclear at Israel. They meant it when they said it, don’t you know?

Read the rest.

National Review Online 

By Joseph Farah
© 2006 Wor ldNetDaily.com

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas

WASHINGTON – Sen. , R-Texas, has quietly introduced a bill to create a "North American Investment Fund" that would tap U.S. and Canadian taxpayers for the development of public works projects in Mexico.

Despite assurances this week from White House press secretary Tony Snow that President Bush opposes the idea of a European Union superstate for North America, the effort, by one of the president's loyal supporters in the Senate, is sure to spark new questions about negotiations between the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico on issues ranging from security to the economy.

"Currently, a significant development gap exists between Mexico and the United States and Canada," Cornyn said. "I believe it is in our best interests to find creative ways to bridge this development gap."

Cornyn introduced the bill just before the July 4 holiday – admitting in his introductory comments that Congress is not likely to adopt his plan quickly. In fact, Cornyn previously attempted to create the new international fund in legislation he introduced in 1994. It soon thereafter died in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where the latest version is headed.

Senate Bill 3622, co-sponsored by Sen. , R-Minn., specifically authorizes the president to "negotiate the creation of a North American Investment Fund between the governments of Canada, of Mexico, and of the U.S. to increase the economic competitiveness of North America in a global economy."

The fund, if it is ever created, won't just cost U.S. and Candian taxpayers more, it will also cost Mexican taxpayers a lot more.

Cornyn's bill requires the government of Mexico to raise tax revenue to 18 percent of the gross national product. The current tax rate is approximately 9 percent.

"The purpose of this fund is to reinforce efforts already underway in Mexico to ensure their (sic) own economic development," Cornyn said. "The funding would make grants available for projects to construct roads in Mexico, to facilitate trade, to develop and expand their education programs, to build infrastructure for the deployment of communications services and to improve job training and workforce development for high-growth industries."

As WND reported recently, opposition is mounting to similar programs, including President Bush's North American Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Plans by government agencies and private foundations alike promoting deeper cooperation between the three countries – including even a plan for a common currency called the "amero" – are getting more scrutiny in the media, by activists and by public officials.

Lou Dobbs of CNN – a frequent critic of Bush's immigration policies – has been most outspoken.

CNN's Lou Dobbs

"A regional prosperity and security program?" he asked rhetorically in a recent cablecast. "This is absolute ignorance. And the fact that we are – we reported this, we should point out, when it was signed. But, as we watch this thing progress, these working groups are continuing. They're intensifying. What in the world are these people thinking about? You know, I was asked the other day about whether or not I really thought the American people had the stomach to stand up and stop this nonsense, this direction from a group of elites, an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value. And I hope, I pray that I'm right when I said yes. But this is – I mean, this is beyond belief."

World Net Daily 

When I told a New York Observer reporter that my only regret was that Timothy McVeigh didn't hit The New York Times building, I knew many would agree with me — but I didn't expect that to include The New York Times. And yet, the Times is doing everything in its power to help the terrorists launch another attack on New York City.

As with forced school busing, liberals seem to believe that the consequences of their insane ideas can be confined to the outer boroughs.

Last year, the Times revealed a top secret program tracking phone calls connected to numbers found in Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's cell phone. How much more probable cause do you need, folks? Shall we do this as a diagram? How about in the form of an SAT question — or is that a touchy subject for the publisher of the Times? "9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is to terrorist attacks as ..."?

Their reaction to al-Zarqawi's death was to lower the U.S. flag at the Times building to half-staff. (Ha ha — just kidding! Everybody knows there aren't any American flags at The New York Times.)

And most recently, ignoring the pleas of the administration, 9/11 commissioners and even certifiable liberal Rep. Jack Murtha, the Times revealed another top secret program that had allowed the Treasury Department to track terrorists' financial transactions.

We're in a battle for our survival and we don't even know who the enemy is. As liberals are constantly reminding us, Islam is a "Religion of Peace." One very promising method of distinguishing the "Religion of Peace" Muslims from the "Slit Their Throats" Muslims is by following the al-Qaida money trail.

But now we've lost that ability — thanks to The New York Times.

People have gotten so inured to ridiculous behavior on the left that they are no longer capable of appropriate outrage when something truly treasonous happens. It is rather like the rape accusation against Bill Clinton losing its impact because of the steady stream of perjury, obstruction of justice, treason, adultery and general sociopathic behavior coming from that administration.

This is a phenomenon known in the self-help community as "Clinton fatigue" (not to be confused with the lower back pain associated with excessive sexual activity known as "Clinton back").

In December 1972, Ronald Reagan called President Richard Nixon after watching Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Vietnam War on "CBS News," telling Nixon that "under World War II circumstances, the network would have been charged with treason."

No treason charges were brought, but we still have to hear liberals carrying on about Nixon's monstrous persecution of the press — which was so ungrateful of him, considering how nicely the press treated him.

Today, Times editors and columnists are doing what liberals always do when they're caught red-handed committing treason: They scream that they're being "intimidated" before hurling more invective. This is getting to be like listening to the Soviet Union complaining about the intimidation coming from Finland.

Liberals are always play-acting that they are under some monstrous attack from the right wing as they insouciantly place all Americans in danger. Their default position is umbrage, bordering on high dudgeon.

We've had to listen to them whine for 50 years about the brute Joe McCarthy, whose name liberals blackened while sheltering Soviet spies.

In 1985, Times columnist Anthony Lewis accused the Reagan administration of trying to "intimidate the press." Channeling Anthony Lewis this week, Frank Rich claims the Bush administration has "manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year."

Rich's evidence of the brutal crackdown on the press was the statement of San Francisco radio host Melanie Morgan — who, by the way, is part of the press — proposing the gas chamber for the editor of the Times if he were found guilty of treason, which happens to be the punishment prescribed by law. (Once again Frank Rich finds himself in over his head when not writing about gay cowboy movies.)

I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution. A conviction for treason would be assured under any sensible legal system.

But however many Americans agree with Reagan on prosecuting treason, we can't even get President Bush to stop building up the liberal media by appearing on their low-rated TV shows — in the process, dissing TV hosts who support him and command much larger TV audiences. American consumers keep driving CNN's ratings down, and then Bush drives them back up again. So I wouldn't count on any treason charges emanating from this administration.

This is how Bush "intimidates" the press? The level of intimidation I had in mind is more along the lines of how President Dwight D. Eisenhower "intimidated" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg at 8 in the morning, June 19, 1953.

COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER

AnnCoulter.com

His dragon-slaying heroics have kept his legend alive through the centuries.

But the Church of England is considering rejecting England's patron saint St George on the grounds that his image is too warlike and may offend Muslims.

Clergy have started a campaign to replace George with St Alban, a Christian martyr in Roman Britain.

The scheme, to be considered by the Church's parliament, the General Synod, has met a cautious but sympathetic response from senior bishops.

But it clashes with the increasing popularity of the saint and his flag in England. The World Cup brought out millions of St George crosses as the symbol became increasingly mainstream and less frequently dismissed as a badge favoured only by far-Right political activists.

If St Alban replaced St George, the red cross on a white background would have to be replaced as England's flag by Alban's symbol, a diagonal yellow cross on a blue background that bears a strong similarity to St Andrew's cross, the flag of Scotland.

The proposal has been put forward by the Rev Philip Chester, vicar of St Matthew's, Westminster, who has called the use of St George as patron saint 'dotty'.

His call for a change is based on the lack of firm historical evidence that George - said to be a Roman general from the 4th century AD who was put to death by Emperor Diocletian for professing Christianity - ever existed.

He said: 'We are sure St Alban is a real figure. What's more, he lived in this country.'

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams indicated support for an upgrade for Alban, although he is said to be cautious about relegation for George.

He told the Sunday Times: 'I think St Alban is irreplaceable in the history of English Christianity. Perhaps we ought to raise his profile because it's the beginning of the church in this country with martyrdom, wisdom and courage.'

The image of St George was used to foster patriotism in 1940, when King George VI inaugurated the George Cross for civilian acts of the greatest bravery. The medal bears a depiction of the saint slaying the dragon.

However, George has become unfashionable among politicians and bureaucrats. His saint's day, April 23, has no official celebration in England, and councils have banned the St George flag from their buildings and vehicles during the World Cup.

The saint became an English hero during the crusades against the Muslim armies that captured Jerusalem in the 11th century.

An apparition of George is said to have appeared to the crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098.

His dragon-slaying legend is thought to have begun as an allegory of Diocletian's persecution of Christians.

Alban was martyred in 304 AD on the site of St Albans abbey in the Hertfordshire city that now bears his name.

A Roman army officer, he was said to have converted after sheltering a Christian.

Link

Sunday Times reporter Ali Hussain spent six weeks in Beeston, where three of the 7/7 bombers came from, and filed a highly disturbing report on the community’s hatred for Britain: Undercover on planet Beeston.

Jabbar, clean shaven and in his thirties, ran a DIY shop on the Dewsbury Road. On the face of it Jabbar, who lived nearby with his young family, was one of those responsible, hard-working people who weave communities together. He insisted I stay for tea, and then rice and curry.

As I brought up 9/11, I was taken aback when he began to talk about a “western conspiracy against Muslims”. I had been in London on the day of the 2001 attacks and like everyone else had watched in amazement and horror as the twin towers fell. I had never doubted that Osama Bin Laden had inspired the atrocity and that Islamic terrorists had perpetrated it.

Jabbar doubted it. He told me the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy and that he had a DVD which proved it. So were the London bombings, he said.

I found myself in a ferment of mixed emotions. Here was a man who had shown great courtesy and kindness, yet believed the West was so corrupt it had staged terrorist attacks against itself. How could he be so deluded? Jabbar, however, was far from alone. One of the sternest advocates of conspiracy theory was Imran Bham, a shopkeeper running Idoo PC, a computer equipment shop.

“You don’t get anywhere with the dirty kuffar (infidels),” he told me, claiming there was a widespread conspiracy against Muslims and that the 7/7 bombings were part of it. “These brothers never did it,” he said. “And understand this. In order for America and Britain to go to Iraq they have to have reasons and sometimes, I’m afraid, if you haven’t got a reason, you make up that reason.”

He showed me pictures of the bomb blasts from the BBC on his computer, claiming ID documents must have been placed at the scene by officials because the blasts would have destroyed them.

He offered me £5 to go and buy a piece of beef, telling me to place the meat in the oven alongside my credit card, passport and other ID and then turn the temperature up. After half an hour at medium temperature, he said, the documents would melt but the beef would only be sweating. I could then draw my own conclusions.

Once again, I felt as if I had entered a strange bubble, a world where the reality I had known before had been suspended. Bham then asked me if I would ever blow myself up for Islam. I replied that the Koran says you should not harm innocent people.

“What Koran was that?” he countered. “Don’t fool yourself by saying jihad is a struggle within, to get on with life, to motivate myself to get up for prayers and that sort of thing,” he said. “That’s not jihad. Who told you that?”

Very telling.

Via:  LGF 

Since most of my readers are seeking pistols lately, rather than revolvers, I am providing a pistol recommendation in every caliber I deem worthy of ownership. I am also including some comments about the appropriate use for each weapon. I hope these opinions are helpful to my readers – especially those considering that all-important first handgun purchase. Of course, each gun purchase is an important decision, not to be taken lightly.

Ruger 10/22 Mark III Hunter. This is by far the toughest category from which to choose a single recommendation. Some new offerings by Walther and Sig Sauer were hard to resist. But the accuracy and reliability of the 10/22 have made it a favorite among target shooters and small-game hunters for years. With adjustable sights and a barrel well over six-inches long, even the novice target shooter will be thrilled with the accuracy of this fine weapon. The fiber optic front sight will also come in handy in the woods. This is really an ideal squirrel gun but the long barrel also produces enough energy to take out foxes, raccoons, and armadillos. This is all the more possible with some of the hotter ammunition now available at most sporting goods stores. 

 Sig Sauer P232 Stainless .380. Career women – those with jobs keeping them busy during the day- must often do their shopping late at night. I encourage women to be very careful when carrying a purse at night – and during the day for that matter. A woman should always keep her purse close by her side. She should also keep one hand inside the purse clutching this beautiful stainless gem by Sig Sauer. It isn’t just an excellent deterrent for robbers. A potential rapist will also be repentant after seven stinging shots from this accurate little weapon. Men with larger hands should note that the molded plastic grip also makes the Sig P232 more comfortable than the average .380.

 Browning Hi-Power 9mm. A few years ago, my friend Jon Deputy introduced me to this wonderful firearm. The 4 and 5/8-inch barrel makes it extremely accurate. This is the perfect target gun for those who have mastered the 22 long rifle. It can also be a good sidearm in the woods, particularly when one is carrying a big bore rifle (note: I always carry a small sidearm with a big rifle and vice versa). A light weight 9mm bullet is actually a good round for the rabid raccoon or fox one might encounter in woods. Some might say this is overkill but, of course, with rabid animals around overkill is more desirable than underkill.

H&K USP .40. The people at Heckler and Koch make some very fine weapons. Reliability and accuracy are guaranteed regardless of the model or caliber. I like this particular model because the 4.25-inch barrel and USP recoil reduction system make it such a smooth shooter. The .40 caliber does have some kick that can wear down shooters, especially when they get into barrels under four inches. But, sometimes a gun-owner needs a little more energy than a 9mm can deliver. Just ask one of my students – also a sworn police officer – who was mistaken for a burglar while stalking a drug dealer in someone’s back yard. After the home owner unleashed his pit bull, the officer was barely able to save himself with the third shot from his 9mm. The .40 caliber will usually do the trick with the first shot.

Springfield XD .357 Sig. Let me state upfront that I have no need for this gun and no real justification for buying it. But I’m enjoying my Springfield .45 XD so much I’ve decided to buy another XD in a caliber I do not yet own. (I’m just learning to celebrate diversity, I suppose). The .357 Sig is one hot little round but, of course, the ported barrel will help to tame it. It will be interesting to see what this does to the next coyote I encounter in the woods. Of course, that’s not a realistic scenario but, remember, I’m just trying to justify the purchase.

Glock 10mm Model 20C. This is as powerful a pistol as you will ever want to fire. Clearly, it would be entirely too much recoil without the compensated barrel. But it will come in handy when I go hog hunting later this summer. I plan to use a 45-70 rifle to take a trophy hog. Then, the real fun will begin when I go after a smaller (and, no doubt, tastier) hog with the 10mm. The 4.6-inch barrel will give me all the accuracy I need to take a smaller hog with one clean shot.

 Kimber .45 Tactical Custom II. This full-size .45 ACP weighs only 31 ounces. It has a 5-inch barrel that is fitted to a stainless steel match grade bushing for incredible accuracy. This is a good weapon to take out of the safe and slide under your bed at night. When loaded with 230-grain hollow points, it will take down any intruder while minimizing the threat of over-penetration. Kimber offers a lot of choices.

Of course, all of these handguns will be helpful if we ever have to expel the U.N. from Manhattan. In case they don’t, let the great American tradition of gun collecting continue. And let the Utopian Marxists beware.

Fuck off, UN.

Link 

I kid you not. Mathias Mossberg says we can artfully superimpose the genocidal goals of Hamas on top of the Israeli desire to build a thriving nation, and end up with utopia: Instead of two states side by side, why not one superimposed on the other? (Hat tip: Cato.)

There’s one good point in this piece, which apparently got the nod from the editors at Foreign Policy:

...present realities are far from sane and sound...

Via:  LGF