Not To Subjugate

clipped from www.frontpagemagazine.com Despite the changing imagery, however, one thing remained constant. From his earliest days, Arafat was clear that the PLO’s aim was “not to impose our will on [Israel], but to destroy it in order to take its place . . . not to subjugate the enemy but to destroy him.” The Palestinian nationalism that he and his Communist advisers created would be the only national movement for political self-determination in the entire world, and across all of world history, to have the destruction of a sovereign state and the genocide of a people as its only raison d’etre.

This one is a must read. Antonio Gramsci is beaming in his grave...

Bigoted Misogynistic Ignoramuses -- An Update From Pat

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Clinton Light

clipped from freemanhunt.blogspot.com A very nice man, yes. A very fiscally conservative man, no. This is a must read story and pretty much sums up my feelings about Huckabee. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once "his No. 1 fan." She was bitterly disappointed with his record. "He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal," she says. "Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don't be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office." ... "He has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement," says Blant Hurt, a former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine. "He's hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate." You'll have to scroll to the bottom of the table to find Huckabee as he was one of only nine governors to receive an F.

The Primitive Sacrifice

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com To put it another way, if you toss aside our Judeo-Christian "wisdom tradition," as secular scholars have done, then you also throw out our traditional way of discussing the reality of man's role as cosmic metaxy. You end up with mere de-mythologized horizontal history, and ultimately with a "particularization" of historical events, divorced from the cosmic Universal. This is a kind of intellectual Fall that ends in the tin growl of deconstruction, multiculturalism, "diversity," moral relativism, and leftist totolerantarianism. In turn, this is why secularism is not just anti-religion, but a substitute "religion of darkness" for unfertile eggheads in their ovary tower. When you worship at the altar of political correctness, you are engaging in a kind of primitive sacrifice of the One. It is a violent dismembering and therefore disremembering of Unity, and as as result, anti-human in the extreme.

The Sahwa Wild Card

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com But Ali Hatem - and other sheikhs with whom I spoke - are looking at an awakening that goes beyond groups of fighters. They talk of forming a new political party - nonsectarian - built on a tribal base that includes Sunnis, Shiites and others. "The political people in authority in Iraq have failed," he says. "We cannot wait." Such a development may have to wait until Iraq holds provincial elections. But the ferment aroused by the sahwa movement is already shaking up Iraq's political scene. No one knows whether the movement will morph into one or several parties, or into job banks and army units or new militias. It has become the new military and political wild card in Iraq.

Henry Points Out The Obvious

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com The NIE holds that Iran may be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 and, with increasing confidence, more warheads by the period 2010 to 2015. That is virtually the same timeline as was suggested in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate. The new estimate does not assess how long it would take to build a warhead, though it treats the availability of fissile material as the principal limiting factor. If there is a significant gap between these two processes, it would be important to be told what it is. Nor are we told how close to developing a warhead Tehran was when it suspended its program or how confident the intelligence community is in its ability to learn when work on warheads has resumed. On the latter point, the new estimate expresses only "moderate" confidence that the suspension has not been lifted already. Intelligence personnel need to return to their traditional anonymity.

Failing (Into) "Intelligence"

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The new stereotype is that of a generation of history, and English BAs—who failing to get their law or advanced academic degrees—went into intelligence. Once there they got angry that their genius was not appreciated and their liberal worldviews were not heard, and then began leaking and molding intelligence to fit preconceived notions—even as they claim they were squeezed by right-wingers wanting to bomb someone. A thorough mess we have at present. Partisanship shapes intelligence analyses, and dissidents leak and spin to the media to undermine views they do not embrace.

And One Would Be Wrong

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com One would think that countries that signed the Kyoto treaty are doing a better job of curtailing carbon emissions. One would also think that the United States, the only country that does not even intend to sign, keeps on emitting carbon dioxide at growth levels much higher than those who signed. And one would be wrong. The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998. A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government. If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following. * Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%. * Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%. * Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%. * Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

The Proper Priorities Pope

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement. His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks. The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.

Not Anyone With Common Sense

clipped from attackmachine.com Astute readers remember (better than the AP) that in 1997, the US Senate voted 95-0 to oppose any climate treaty that excluded China, India and other developing nations. John Kerry was one of the 95. Now he’s in Bali: Kerry gravely told the group that he was delighted to be in Bali at this “transformational moment.” He thanked the nations that persevered to push the Kyoto Protocol without the participation and leadership of the United States. Let’s give Kerry the benefit of the doubt and interpret the Byrd-Hagel resolution, not as a rejection of Kyoto, but as an attempt to steer the negotiations. Does anyone believe that China, which is due to bring some 400 new coal-fired generating plants online, would agree to Kyoto? A liberal might believe that, but not anyone with common sense.

Tails We Die

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “Tehran’s expectations of reciprocal good will have been dashed by American condemnation of perceived provocations in other arenas, as when Iranian support for objectives in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was rewarded by President Bush’s inclusion of Iran in the “axis of evil.” Do they not know that the mullahs were playing both sides of the table? At the very moment Tehran was sitting at the negotiating table with us to discuss the future of Afghanistan, Iranian-guided terrorists were trying to kill Americans on the ground. Just as they are today, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s kind of a template for the nuclear program: on the one hand they make a friendly gesture, on the other hand they continue to produce the ingredients of their atomic bomb. Heads they fool us, tails we die.

Consequences

clipped from www.estatevaults.com “Now,” the old Japanese said, “I will tell you why I invited you here. It is because I have something to say to you, and to all Americans.” He was out of breath and his face was full of color from the whiskey he had drunk, and I thought, “Well, here it comes.” Yamagishi said, “Thank you. Thank you for defeating Japan. If you Americans had not done so, this village would be as it always was. The militarists would never have let us have democracy. But the Americans built the road; my nephews and nieces have cars and television sets, and they see their children every day. In one of my novels a political idealist asks Paul Christopher what he believes in. Christopher replies, “I believe in consequences.” In the novel, as in politics and in life itself, you can’t know what the consequences of any act will be until you come to the end.

The Decline Of The West

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Clouseau Again

clipped from www.slate.com At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason. Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Serenade For A Madman

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Soon thereafter signs began to appear that the Bush administration was dedicating diplomatic efforts to send the New York Philharmonic to North Korea. Reading the tea leaves, Terry Teachout wondered: What would you have thought if Franklin Roosevelt had encouraged the Philharmonic to accept an official invitation to play in Berlin in the spring of 1939? Do you think such a concert would have softened the hearts of the Nazis, any more than Jesse Owens's victories in the 1936 Olympics changed their minds about racial equality? Having failed to rein in North Korea's nuclear program, Bush administration diplomats now work to serenade a madman. Reflecting the deep thought underlying American diplomacy, Donald Kirk pronounces it a triumph. Perhaps the Philharmonic string section can take a shot at getting us word on the North Korean contribution to the Syrian installation that the Israelis destroyed in September.