Another Log on the Unearned Self-Esteem Bonfire

Winners are losers -- Orwell must be spinning:

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default.

The Gloucester Dragons Recreational Soccer league’s newly implemented edict is intended to dissuade a runaway game in favour of sportsmanship. The rule replaces its five-point mercy regulation, whereby any points scored beyond a five-point differential would not be registered.

Kevin Cappon said he first heard about the rule on May 20 — right after he had scored his team’s last allowable goal. His team then tossed the ball around for fear of losing the game.

He said if anything, the league’s new rule will coddle sore losers.

The rewards of a weak, supine and anti American President

Mexico opens California office to provide ID for illegals

It's the Communist way...consolidate control, curtail free speech

How not to save news

By JEFF JARVIS

The Federal Trade Commis sion says it wants to save journalism. I'm not sure who asked it to.

In a just-released "staff discussion draft" of "potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism," the agency only circles its wagons around old newspapers and their fading business models.

If the FTC wants to reinvent journalism, perhaps it should align with news' disruptors. But there's none of that in this report. The word blog is used but once in 35 pages of text--and then only in a parenthetical mention of soccer blogs. Discussion of investing in technology comes on the last page in a suggestion about tools for "improved electronic note-taking."

I testified before these untechnocrats and told them about my research at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism into the emerging ecosystem of news. We found profitable hyperlocal bloggers selling $200,000 in ads per year. And we built new, less expensive business models for news (at newsinnovation.com). But that's not mentioned, either.

Instead, the FTC staff declares defeat in the search for business models so it may explore many government interventions, including:

* Expanding copyright law and restricting the doctrine of fair comment to benefit legacy publishers.

* Granting antitrust exemptions to allow publishers to collude on pricing to consumers and to business partners.

* Giving news organizations tax exemptions.

* Subsidizing news organizations by increasing government funding to public broadcasting; establishing an AmeriCorps to pay reporters; giving news companies tax credits for employing journalists; creating a national fund for local news, and giving the press an increased postal subsidy.

To its credit, the FTC does ask how to pay for all this. So the staffers speculated about what I'll dub the iPad tax -- a 5 percent surcharge on consumer electronics to raise $4 billion for news. They also consider a tax on broadcast spectrum and even on advertising.

Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?

The FTC's one suggestion I can salute is more government transparency -- making agencies release information in standard formats, enabling us all to become watchdogs. But that's about responsible government, not saving journalism.

The good news in all this is that the FTC's bureaucrats try hard to recommend little. They just discuss. And much of what the agency staff ponders are political impossibilities. If there was grumbling about bailing out General Motors, imagine the hailstorm about raising taxes to save newspapers.

The report quotes my testimony to the FTC, where I said I'm "optimistic to a fault about the future of news and journalism." That's because the barrier to entry into the media business has never been lower -- and that means news can grow.

The government should favor neither incumbents nor newcomers, but rather create a level playing field by helping every American get open, high-speed access to the Internet. That is the gateway to the real future of news and media.

I believe that future is entrepreneurial, not institutional. The industry's institutions have had 15 years since the start of the commercial Web and we've seen how far they can come. What we need now are innovators -- like my entrepreneurial journalism students -- to invent new forms, structures, efficiencies and business models for news.

But those entrepreneurs don't need government help. They need to be left alone with the assurance they won't be interfered with by the FTC -- or the FCC, which has its own hearings and reports on the future of journalism.

"Get off our lawn," I testified to both agencies in Washington. That didn't make it into the report.

Jeff Jarvis, author of "What Would Google Do?", teaches at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Where's the special prosecutor?

AP Sources: Admin talked jobs with Romanoff

Succinctly said

More on the corruption and Progressive Tyranny front: Obama's absurd commission to look into the BP oil rig explosion includes at least two anti-oil, global warming activists.

What a friggin' surprise. Almost as brilliant as putting a pedophile in charge of school safety.

Or an enemy of Free Speech in charge of the FCC...

Or an enemy of Equality Before the Law in charge of the Justice Department...

Or an enemy of the Free Market in charge of Green Jobs...

Or an enemy of Freedom in charge of Regulation...

...et cetera ad nauseum

It's pretty hard to be surprised. But it's still easy to be disgusted.

(hat tip:Gunslinger's Journal)

We're being boiled, slowly

The 'peaceful' Jihad in America

By ANDREW C. McCARTHY

Last Updated: 12:43 AM, June 1, 2010

Posted: 12:19 AM, June 1, 2010

Most Americans don't realize that jihad is about much more than terrorism.

Even the terrorists don't blow up buildings for the sake of blowing up buildings. There is method in their madness.

Jihad is not mindless mass-murder, nor is it a syrupy "internal struggle to become a better person." No, jihad is the mission to establish and spread sharia.

The installation of Allah's law, believed by Muslims to be a divine injunction, is the necessary precondition to the creation of Islamic societies. While it can, and often is, waged forcibly, Islamists don't resort to violence (or, at least, to more violence) where surrenders, appeasements and capitulations are available.

And al Qaeda is merely an offshoot of the central Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Founded in 1928, the Ikhwan's motto to this day remains, "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

In 1991, Mohamed Akram, a US-based chieftain of the Brotherhood, penned a memo for the eyes of the central leadership in Egypt. Later seized by the FBI, this self-described "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America" outlined the game-plan for what the organization regards as its "civilizational" war against the West:

"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Nor was there anything new about this "grand jihad." During a post-9/11 raid, Swiss authorities found a similar smoking gun -- a methodical plan for the long-term "cultural invasion" of the West -- written by Brotherhood theorists in 1982.

As a matter of fact, this sabotage strategy has been in place for nearly half a century. Its bottom-up elements stress Islamist domination of Muslim education, mosques and community centers. From these bases of operation in every city, the Brotherhood's method is not terrorize but to slipstream behind Islamist terrorists, assuming the posture of "moderates."

The goal is to seep sharia -- Islam's totalitarian legal code that governs not just the spiritual realm but all aspects of life -- into our politics, law, financial system, educational institutions, labor negotiations, familial relations, and all facets of our domestic and foreign policy, from health care to engagement with Iran.

Yes, 31 years after the Iranian revolution, 17 years after Islamists declared war on the United States by bombing the World Trade Center and nine years after the 9/11 atrocities, the American people are still in the dark about the daunting challenge we face. Under jihadist siege for decades, we still don't even get what jihad is and why it isn't just about "violent extremists" -- the politically correct term now used by government officials in their desperation to bleach the Islam out of Islamist terror.

Two years ago, I wrote about this ethos of conscious avoidance in "Willful Blindness." But that was a memoir about trying to confront international terrorism as a federal prosecutor in the 1990s. The forces arrayed against us are much more extensive and insidious than al Qaeda, and they are not just pressing the limitations of our criminal-justice system.

The game-plan being executed against us targets American constitutional democracy itself, taking aim at its core principles of individual liberty.

Lavishly backed by Saudi billions thanks to a decades-old partnership with the kingdom, the Brotherhood is now raising, in our midst, its third generation of operatives and sympathizers. Its tentacles include such high-profile organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society (the Brotherhood's semi-official American branch).

Our opinion elites are only too happy to take at face value the claims of these groups to be "moderate." Indeed, our government, media and academies are reluctant to discuss Islam honestly, let alone Islamist ideology.

And effectively allied with the jihadists is the hard left across the West. For all their differences (e.g., on abortion and the rights of women and homosexuals) Islam and the Left are in essential harmony when it comes to their vision of authoritarian government and their perception of the immediate obstacle to their designs: American constitutional democracy.

What the global Islamist project is doing, and how, are the subjects of my new book, "The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America," published last week. It is the story of the ideology that not only fuels anti-American terror but stokes a sedulous jihadist campaign to Islamicize our society -- not without firing a shot, but by capitalizing on the shots that have already been fired.

A grand jihad is hell-bent on sabotaging America. We ignore it at our peril.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

The fascists are coming now

Groups want FCC to police hate speech on talk radio, cable news networks

Knowing your enemies

Immigration laws only apply to a leftist agenda

The Turks should be the last people to speak up

The Turkish Government as Global Arbiter of Ethnic Violence [Victor Davis Hanson]

The virulent worldwide reaction to Israeli’s handling of the Gaza flotilla has been quite instructive. The bankrupt Greeks, for example, are taking a holiday from railing at the Germans to demonstrate in solidarity with the Turkish-organized Gaza effort, which puts them on the same side as those whose government supports the occupation of much of Greek-speaking Cyprus and its divided capital.

No one in Europe worried much about the constant shower of missiles from Gaza in the past. No one in Europe said a word when North Korea torpedoed and slaughtered South Koreans on the high seas. No one objected when the Iranians hijacked a British ship and humiliated the hostages.

We ourselves seem to be getting a sort of novel pass for executing scores of suspected terrorists — and anyone in their vicinity — in our new, stepped-up Predator drone assassinations.

But the Western and Islamic worlds have a preexisting furor at the Jewish state that can be tapped at will by almost any pro-radical-Palestinian group clever enough to do proper P.R. after a desired asymmetrical confrontation. The fallout from Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, the distortions around the 2002 terrorist storming of the Church of Nativity, the 2006 Lebanon war — over time, these incidents do their part, in weird fashion, to incur hatred for a liberal democracy while creating sympathy for a theocratic thugocracy like Hamas.

What explains this preexisting hatred, which ensures denunciation of Israel in the most rabid — or, to use the politically correct parlance, “disproportionate” — terms? It is not about “occupied land,” given the millions of square miles worldwide that are presently occupied, from Georgia to Cyprus to Tibet. It is not a divided capital — Nicosia is walled off. It is not an overreaction in the use of force per se — the Russians flattened Grozny and killed tens of thousands while the world snoozed. And it cannot be the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo. And, given the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish histories (and reactions to them), the currently outraged Turkish government is surely not a credible referent on the topic of disproportionate violence.

Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik — 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis. Perhaps it is oil: half the world’s reserves versus Israel’s nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.

Perhaps there is also a new sense that the United States at last has fallen into line with the Western consensus, and so is hardly likely to play the old lone-wolf supporter of Israel in the press or at the U.N.

At this point, it doesn’t much matter — as this latest hysterical reaction reminds us, much of the world not only sides with Israel’s enemies but sides with them to such a degree as to suggest that, in any existential moment to come, the world either will be indifferent or will be on the side of Israeli’s enemies.

Quite frightening, when you think of it.

Democrats tend toward despotism and fleecing the public

D.C. mayor cites 'emergency' to raise fees, fines

By Deborah Simmons

The cost of living, working and doing business in the District rose a little more Tuesday, after Mayor Adrian M. Fenty again reneged on his no-tax-increase pledge and implemented "emergency" executive orders that increase scores of fees for business permits and traffic fines to pay for his 2010 and 2011 spending plans.

The increases, which the mayor blames on the D.C. Council, are detailed in Volume 57, No. 22, of the D.C. Register and dated May 25 — one week after the council rejected the mayor's initial proposal to raise taxes.

The plan, which Mr. Fenty characterized as an "emergency" maneuver to balance the budget, would generate an estimated $7 million this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, and about $21 million in fiscal 2011.

Fiscal conservative Jack Evans, Ward 2 Democrat and the only lawmaker to vote against the mayor's 2011 spending plan, said Tuesday that he does not support raising taxes, fees or fines by executive fiat or in legislation.

The city needs to curb spending, he said.

Robert V. Brannum, president of the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, a citywide coalition of dozens of citizens groups, questioned whether the situation is indeed an "emergency."

Under the mayor's executive order, some traffic fines are doubled, while others increase four or five times as high. At least one infraction, passing a stopped school bus with flashing lights, increases tenfold from $50 to $500.

The Department of Motor Vehicles also increased fines for failing to yield to parades, funeral processions and pedestrians, and for passing fire apparatus or driving over a fire hose. Motorists also can get a $10 ticket for "failure to back into [a parking] space."

The mayor, who is a cyclist, did not include bicycle infractions in his executive order; only motorists are listed in the traffic infractions sections. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association, which continues to push city officials for bike lanes and safety programs, supports increased traffic fines for motorists.

Small and large businesses also began paying higher fees for licenses and permits.

The mayor ordered the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to begin levying a 10 percent fee on "each basic business license to cover the costs of enhanced technological capabilities" of the licensing system, according to the new regulations.

Businesses need basic licenses to operate a broad base of activities, including those that are service-oriented, such as beauty and barber shops, and massage parlors. A barber or beauty shop pays $78 for a license, while a massage parlor owner pays $789.

The increases are necessary because the council "created the potential of an unbalanced budget," the new regulations said. "This emergency rulemaking will contribute the revenue necessary to maintain the District's balanced budget. The revenue obtained will be used to maintain critical services to the District's citizens and thereby preserve their health, safety, and welfare."

But Mr. Brannum of the civic federation said D.C. municipal regulations on emergency fees do not justify Mr. Fenty's actions.

The D.C. Administrative Procedure Act says any emergency must be for the immediate preservation of public peace, health, safety, welfare or morals — and none of those is at stake, Mr. Brannum said.

"I do not see the imposition of these fees [taxes] as an emergency," he said in an e-mail.

Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said Tuesday that the administration moved as quickly as possible in an effort to minimize unintended consequences of an unbalanced budget.

The mayor is "committed to ensuring the city's budget remains balanced," she said.

Throughout recent budget deliberations, Mr. Evans warned that overspending is threatening the city's fiscal standing. He argued against raising taxes and fees, and spending down the city's savings. But neither the mayor nor the council made substantial cuts.

In fact, some liberal lawmakers — among them Michael A. Brown, at-large independent; Mary M. Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat; Jim Graham, Ward 1 Democrat; and Tommy Wells, Ward 6 Democrat — pushed tax increases to pay for increased spending on the poor this election year.

Mrs. Cheh, for example, was the chief lawmaker behind the new 6 percent sales tax on soda, while Mr. Graham proposed raising income taxes.

All 13 lawmakers said the recession has hit the poor the hardest, and they bolstered social services such as housing and health care subsidies, free schooling and job training programs. Even Mrs. Cheh's beverage tax sends money to programs in schools and day care centers.

Mr. Fenty campaigned for mayor in 2006 by pledging not to raise taxes, but this is the second year in a row that he and lawmakers have raised taxes and fees that affect the poor and wealthy alike.

Last year, the mayor and the council raised gas, sales and tobacco taxes. Earlier this year, they imposed a 5-cent fee on plastic and paper carryout bags.

Economists agree that consumption taxes on basic goods and general government-use fees are regressive and hurt the poor the most.

Pollsters and strategists have yet to gauge what impact the new fees and taxes will have on the races for mayor and council. One effect is certain, however: The new sugary-beverage tax will hit the wallet of the athletic Mr. Fenty, who favors vitamin water.

Leftist liar and ignorant as well.

Bozell Column: Tavis Smiley's Outrage

By Brent Bozell

PBS station managers made a big push last year to drive any trace “sectarian” Christianity out of the taxpayer-funded broadcasting system, banning any church services or religious lectures that appeared on a handful of stations. They ultimately compromised and banned any new church programming [1]. But on at least one program, PBS sounds like it’s declaring war on Christianity, including smears on Christianity that are not based on reality.

If that sounds shocking, imagine what the average Christian PBS viewer might have thought as he watched Tavis Smiley’s weeknight talk show on May 25. The guest was ex-Muslim and atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, there to promote her latest book, “Nomad.” Smiley claims to be a Christian, but he attacked Ms. Ali for “idealizing Christianity” and recklessly turning people away from Islam.

Right out of the box, Smiley was out to make a point. “You say unapologetically and rather frankly that your mission here is to inform the West about the danger of Islam,” he began. “What danger do we need to be made aware of?”

What? Did Tavis Smiley somehow sleep through 9/11? Is PBS keeping him locked in a closet where he remains unaware of the ongoing terrorist attacks on Americans – successful and unsuccessful – made by Islamic radicals? When Ali brought up the deaths of 13 at Fort Hood and the failed Times Square bomber, Smiley unloaded a literally unbelievable statement: “But Christians do that every single day in this country.” [Audio available here [2].]

Ali replied: “Do they blow people up?” Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is -- I could do this all day long.”

Tavis Smiley is not only wrong, he’s perversely wrong. The boys who shot up Columbine High School were not Christians, they were just violent psychopaths who, among other evils, mocked students who cried out for God to save them. There aren’t Christians walking into post offices or schools every single day in America and blowing people up. Anyone in charge of journalistic integrity at PBS should see this as a blazing inaccuracy, in addition to a religious smear. Men this dishonest should be kept from microphones, not hired to speak into them.

But Smiley kept going, insisting Christians were far worse than Muslim terrorists: “There are so many more examples of Christians -- and I happen to be a Christian. That's back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.”

Who would have thought that anyone would outdo Rosie O’Donnell, who insisted radical Christianity was “just as threatening” as radical Islam?

Ali calmly explained that Christians are far more tolerant. They take abuse on television programs without threatening to blow up Comedy Central offices or promise Daniel Pearl-style decapitations for executives. She acknowledged “not all Muslims are terrorists, we must emphasize that, but almost all terrorist activities that take place today in our time are done and justified in the name of Islam.”

This caused another burst of illogic from Smiley, who compared the Fort Hood attack to the Tea Party activists protesting ObamaCare on Capitol Hill. “There are folk in the Tea Party, for example, every day who are being recently arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people ‘nigger’ as they walk into Capitol Hill, for spitting on people.”

Put aside the thoroughly unproven accusations, now that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver has backed off the story of conservative spitters, and there is no audio, or corroboration of the accusation of N-words being thrown. Had those events actually happened, would they in any way have been comparable to murder?

PBS has an ombudsman now to receive public complaints. Michael Getler should hear from across the country, from Christians and non-Christians alike, that Tavis Smiley must provide a retraction and an apology for his scurrilous and bigoted remarks against Christians and the billions that practice that faith. PBS stations across the country accept millions in funding from good-hearted Christian taxpayers who don’t deserve to see allegedly “public” broadcasting attacking their integrity.

Seventy-seven percent of Americans call themselves Christian.

People in public broadcasting boast in their pledge drives and their direct-mail fundraising letters and in their congressional testimony that they are an oasis of civility and intelligent discourse. But they host, and help fund, the unintelligent, inaccurate garbage coming out of the mouth of Tavis Smiley. This trash belongs in the dumpster.

A media left wing alliance

Colombia Election Skunks The Media

Democrat fiscal insanity

Democrats’ Tax Extender Bill to Add $115 Billion to Deficit in Only Two Years

Any doubt he's got his fingers in the US?

Venezuela's Chavez backing leftist guerrillas in Mexico

Knowing who they are...

FNC Notes Gaza-Bound Flotilla’s Links to Terrorists, Mob Chanted ‘Death to Jews’

Who knew they had political prisoners

Cuba 'moves political prisoners closer to their homes'

If ever there was a "play station" mentality it's in the UN

U.N. investigator calls for halt to CIA drone killings

Democrats New Ideas

I came across this short quote in a book I'm reading:

Suppose that the government decided that jalopies were a menace to public safety and a blight on the beauty of our highways, and therefore took them away from their drivers. Suppose, then, that to replenish the supply of automobiles, it gave these drivers a hundred dollars each to buy a good used car and also made special grants to General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to lower the cost--although not necessarily the price of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Imperials by a few hundred dollars. Absurd as this may sound, change the jalopies to slum housing, and I have described with only slight poetic license, the fifteen years of a federal program called urban renewal.
-Herbert J. Gans, "The Failure of Urban Renewal," Commentary (April 1965)

What was considered absurd enough to use as a derogatory comparison, becomes, under the current administration public policy.

Israeli/Palestinian negotiations

Mike at Cold Fury points out this gem left by a commenter over at Volokh:

And now for a preview of the Israeli/Palestinian negotiations ...

UN: To understand things, let us have both of you say what you want.

Israel: We want to live in peace. Watch our children grow up. Watch them enjoy their lives and be happy.

Palestinians: We want to kill all the Jews.

UN: Well, I think we can find a compromise. What if we just kill half the Jews?

Israel: What ?!? You can’t be serious?

Palestinians: We want to kill the left half of every Jew!

UN: That seems reasonable.

Israel: Are you mad you can’t kill 1/2 of a person? This is insane and totally unacceptable. We thought this would be an honest negotiation.

UN: Now we see what the real problem is. We see the unreasonableness of the Jews.

EU: Psst, Palestinians. If you kill off the Jews the Holocaust won’t be our fault. If you can’t live with them either it must be their fault.

UN: Look, you hook-noses, how you thwart every attempt at peace, and lie and complain about the Holocaust. And, I feel the Palestinians were honest in their desires. You seem not to have been honest in wanting a compromise.

And the EU, the Democrats and Academia nod their heads in agreement.

Hmmm...

Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model

Well isn't that comforting?

Nuclear equipment missing from Iranian lab, IAEA report says

An apparatus that could be used to extract plutonium for an atomic bomb is gone, the United Nations watchdog agency says.

The growing threat to Israel's existence

No Israeli good deed goes unpunished
By Spengler

Israel mishandled the Gaza "humanitarian aid" flotilla through extreme forbearance, and will suffer a marathon of tongue-clicking and hand-wringing by diplomatic hypocrites who know better. The Jewish state lost the propaganda battle the moment the floating time bomb disguised as a humanitarian mission sailed from Turkey. If Israel had denounced the matter as a provocation and withdrawn its ambassador from Turkey, warning that the object of the exercise was to provoke violence and open the way for weapons deliveries to Hamas, the outcome might have been quite different.

The facts in the case are straightforward.

Although it is true, as the New York Times misleadingly noted, that the Turkish sponsor of the flotilla - Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH - The Foundation of Humanitarian Relief) - does not appear on the

United States State Department's list of terrorist organizations, IHH belongs to an umbrella organization that US authorities have identified as a terrorist financier, namely Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir). [1]

Jonathan Schanzer, a former US government official specializing in terrorist financing, provides the details and links to the relevant US government documents in a post at the Weekly Standard blog [2]. Schanzer quotes US Treasury documents that report that the Union of Good "compensated Hamas terrorists by providing payments to the families of suicide bombers. One of [the charities], the al-Salah Society, previously identified as a key support node for Hamas, was designated in August 2007 ... The Society employed a number of members of the Hamas military wing and supported Hamas-affiliated combatants during the first Intifada."

Turkey's secular government of a decade ago banned the IHH from contributing to earthquake relief because of its terrorist ties, as Caroline Glick observes in the Jerusalem Post [3]. The fact that the present Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embraced IHH is consistent with Erdogan's public support for Iran.

Israel maintains a naval blockade of Gaza because Iran among others attempts to ship missiles and other weapons employed to attack Israeli civilians from launching pads in Gaza. In February 2009, the Monchegorsk, shipping weapons from Iran to Hamas in Gaza, was seized by authorities in Cyprus, the most recent of several high-profile interceptions.

Israeli authorities offered to allow the flotilla to land at the Israeli port of Ashdod and ship its cargo of humanitarian aid to Gaza overland after appropriate security inspection; the flotilla refused.

There is in any case "no humanitarian problem in Gaza", according to the United Nations Middle East envy Robert Perry [4], despite occasional shortages of construction materials and other goods.

In short, the Gaza flotilla caper was the invention of an organization with deep ties to terrorist financing of Hamas to ameliorate a humanitarian problem that doesn't exist while refusing an Israeli offer to deliver its aid to Gaza. We know the outcome: Israeli naval commandos carrying paintball guns encountered armed resistance and suffered injuries, and ultimately used their weapons to defend themselves. Israeli authorities say nine were killed, while activist groups said 19 were unaccounted for.

All these facts are on the public record. Nonetheless, the international press persist in describing the flotilla as a humanitarian aid convey rather than as a transparent provocation by terrorist organizations, and the governments of the world will click their tongues hypocritically over the Israeli action.

There is a curious symmetry between Israel's reluctance to call out the Turks for their sponsorship of the provocation, and the seemingly explicable reluctance of the Israeli military to treat the threat with the seriousness it clearly deserved. The Israeli navy commandos walked into a trap for which they clearly were unprepared.

After the fact, Defense Minister Ehud Barak denounced the IHH as "a violent, extremist organization that supports terrorism". But if that is the case, David Horovitz asked in the Jerusalem Post, "In such circumstances, facing such hostility, it is hard to fathom why the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] so underestimated the challenge its soldiers would face, and thus erred so strikingly over both its choice of how to thwart the flotilla, and over the number of soldiers, and the equipment, it sent into the battle at sea."

Evidently, Israel has trouble accepting the reality on the ground, just as other governments do. There is not going to be a peace negotiation, but rather a war, and that the war will be terrible and bloody. Israel has lost Turkey as an ally; the United States, for that matter, has lost Turkey as an ally, as the leaders of Ankaracompete with the mullahs of Tehran for the leadership of Islamism. A stronger American hand might have made war unnecessary. But the Barack Obama administration has withdrawn from strategic leadership, and when the cat's away, as I wrote last October, the mice kill each other [5].

Israel has been hoping against hope that the old alliance with Turkey can be salvaged, and that the American national security establishment somehow will overrule the president, whose aversion to the use of American power is now a matter of doctrine. During a recent visit to Jerusalem, well-informed Israelis emphasized that Israel was trying to show the United States that it is a reliable ally. But it is hard to be a reliable ally of a superpower that no longer wishes to be one.

Whether Israel has the wherewithal to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions for a number of years is a matter of debate; it almost certain could do so with tactical nuclear weapons launched from its submarines now in the Persian Gulf. It would have to combine an air attack on Iran with a ground assault on Hezbollah's forces in southern Lebanon. In the best of cases a decisive victory against Hezbollah might cost the lives of perhaps 3,000 infantrymen, not to mention the lives of civilians caught in a rocket bombardment. It would have to have sufficient resources to frighten Syria away from intervening, or, if necessary, to reduce Syria's armed forces. If the war plan went awry, casualties might be far greater.

The actual parameters of a pre-emptive war are far more complex, and I have neither the information nor the expertise to offer further conjectures on how matters might play out. There are many possible variants; if I knew enough to analyze them competently, I would not write about them in any event.

The price under the best of outcomes would be traumatic for a state in which the death of a single serviceman is a national tragedy. The country's leaders still hope against hope that they might find some alternative to war. The Gaza flotilla affair should teach Jerusalem that no matter how gingerly it approaches the threats on its borders, and how gently it responds, it ends up holding the bag for the region's problems. It might as well get down to the business of war.

By coincidence, observant Jews around the world this week read Numbers 13:1 to 15:41 in synagogues, including the Biblical story of the 12 spies whom Moses sent to scout the promised land. Joshua and Caleb argued that an invasion would succeed, but were outvoted by the representatives of 10 of the 12 tribes. For that display of cowardice, the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the desert until the entire generation that had left Egypt had died out and was succeeded by men born into freedom. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not a religious man, but no doubt this week's Torah portion will command his undivided attention.

Notes
1. Editor's note: According to the Free Gaza website, "The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is comprised of: Free Gaza Movement (FG), European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), Ship to Gaza Greece, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and the International Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza, with hundreds of groups and organizations around the world supporting the effort." The Free Gaza Movement includes on its board of advisors Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jeff Halper, John Pilger and Jenny Tonge.
2. The Terror Finance Flotilla
3. Ending Israel's losing streak
4. UN Envoy to Peres: No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
5. When the cat's away the mice kill each other Asia Times Online, October 20, 2010.

Megan McArdle Isn't Thinking Things Through

I usually try to avoid any criticisms of a blogger who is generally on the right side of things but after reading Megan McArdle's criticism of the Israeli raid today, I really couldn't resist. She just doesn't think things through and seems to accept the misinformation of the event at face value:

I realized that the ships were in international waters, and had every right to attack armed men attempting to board their ship. It was not precisely bright, mind you--unless you're looking to die for a cause. But Israel had no right to be there. I think their establishment has gotten a little too caught up in the romance of illicit raids tacitly greenlighted by the US. Suddenly every operation is Entebbe.

Oh those horrible Israelis, violating international law just for the sake of bravado. Actually there were some very good reasons for the Israelis to board the ships where and, more importantly, when they did. This from the geo-political & tactical military experts at Stratfor:

The Israelis engaged the flotilla some 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) from the Israeli coast, and the fast attack craft of the Israeli navy would have had the benefit of maneuverability, so there may have been other options. But the night of May 30 was also the last night before the flotilla would have reached Gaza, so if boarding was going to be done, this night was the last chance for it under the cover of darkness. The Israelis may also have hoped to seize wanted individuals or prevent evidence of weapons or other contraband from being destroyed or dumped overboard.

Another issue is, if your neighbor keeps shouting over your fence that he is going to come over to your house and break into your car or hurt your family, are the police not allowed to stop him until he crosses over onto your property? Not that I am aware of. Also, if there were a boat full of drug smugglers that was coming towards the coast of the US, what do you think the US Coast Guard would do, especially when it was obvious those drugs are headed this way and they would get some sort of tactical advantage by not waiting? Anyway, Megan continues:

I mean, in the case of the Black September folks, my basic sympathies are with the Israelis. And I'm fairly ok with bombing the incipient nuclear capacity of a near neighbor with a death with for your country. But there is just no way to argue that this rises to the level of tracking down the folks who senselessly slaughtered your athletes, or preventing a scary neighbor from getting a nuclear bomb. It's stopping a ship carrying food and supplies to the hungry.

Okay, and you know that there are only humanitarian supplies on board how? As Mona Charen mentioned in her piece:

Fact: Upon learning of the intentions of the Gaza flotilla, the Israeli government asked the organizers to deliver their humanitarian aid first to an Israeli port where it would be inspected (for weapons) before being forwarded to Gaza. The organizers refused. “There are two possible happy endings,” a Muslim activist on board explained, “either we will reach Gaza or we will achieve martyrdom.”

So if this was a purely humanitarian mission, why not just go into an Israeli port and have the supplies then go to Gaza? The only reason not to is if you have something to hide or if the whole point of this entire exercise was something other than a humanitarian mission. As the "activist" said, they prefer either to get into Gaza directly, which would mean the blockade is broken, or they want to be killed by the Israelis, causing a major international reaction. They really couldn't care less about "hungry" people in Gaza. And it's not like there is no aid coming in from Israel to Gaza. Mona Charen mentions that "During the first three months of this year, 94,500 tons of supplies were transferred to Gaza from Israel, including 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food for the strip’s 1.5 million inhabitants. Representatives of international aid groups and the United Nations move freely to and from the Gaza Strip."

Here is more from Megan:

The best case was that Israel royally pissed off their one ally in the region by illegally boarding Turkish-flagged ship, forcing Turkey to abandon its basically friendly stance. Of course, at the same time, they would have stopped the alarming flow of bandages and metal pipes into Gaza. Yet it's hard to see how this was ever going to be a win.

She really seems to have no grasp of the reality of the region. Ever since Obama took office, Turkey has been moving closer and closer to Iran, at the expense of Israel. And Turkey's leadership regularly spews anti-Israel bile. Without Turkey, this whole flotilla thing would never have even happened. Heck of a friend. And tell me again how you know that bandages and metal pipes were all that were aboard? And if they let this flotilla through without inspection, how can you say the next ship wouldn't be full of weapons? Gaza is run by a genocidal organization that has 1 main purpose, the extermination of the Jews in Israel. As Mona Charen stated in her piece on board one of the ships, according to al-Jazeera, the “humanitarian” Palestinians sang “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” — a reference to the 628 massacre of Jews in Arabia at the hands of Muhammad.

Meg concludes:

But I'm afraid Israel brought this one on themselves. The stupidity of it is simply staggering.

So Meg, what should they have done? Let the flotilla run the blockade? Open another channel for arms smuggling into Gaza? Create some giant net wall to keep the ships from getting close to Gaza? Or how about a force field? I'd say the only thing that the Israelis did that was stupid was worrying so much about public opinion that the first wave of commandos was armed with only paint guns. That is why so many Israeli troops were injured in the melee. Their #1 goal should be to preserve the lives of their citizens. World public opinion should always be second. The world hated and murdered Jews before 1967 and before 1948. Acting all nice nice with people who are frothing at the mouth with their hatred for you will get you nowhere.

The media lies and here's another example...

ABC Bashes Bush on Memorial Day

Rick Richman

The ABC News report on the rainout of President Obama's planned Memorial Day speech in Illinois noted that Obama had been criticized for not staying in Washington to go to Arlington National Cemetery. But ABC provided a ready excuse, subtitling its report "Obama Not First to Skip Arlington on Memorial Day" and asserting that George W. Bush "did not attend in 2001 or 2002."

ABC was flat-out wrong about 2001, and highly misleading about 2002.

Memorial Day 2001. On May 28, 2001, George W. Bush not only went to Arlington National Cemetery and gave a remarkably eloquent speech after laying a wreath there; he had multiple Memorial Day events before and after.

He began the day at a White House Memorial Day Breakfast, where he spoke in the East Room to a group that included Senators, Members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and a group of veterans and ex-pows.

Then he went to the Oval Office for a bill-signing ceremony on a bill to expedite construction of the World War II memorial, remarking that it was "indeed fitting that this measure becomes law on Memorial Day."

Then he signed an Executive Order to establish a presidential "Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation's Veterans."

After that, he went to Arlington.

After his speech and wreath-laying at Arlington, Bush flew across the country and spoke at a Memorial Day Commemoration at the Champlin Fighter Aircraft Museum in Mesa Arizona, where he offered these words:

The heroes we remember never really set out to be heroes. Each loved his life as much as we love ours. Each had a place in the world, a family waiting and friends to see again. They thought of the future just as we do, with plans and hopes for a long life. But they left it all behind when they went to war, and parted with it forever when they died. Every Memorial Day we gather at places like this to grasp the extent of their loss and the meaning of the sacrifice. It always seems more than words can cover. In the end, all we can do is be thankful; all we can do is remember, and always appreciate the price that was paid for our own lives and our own freedom.

. . . And we can never measure the value of what was gained in their sacrifice. We live it every day in the comforts of peace and the gifts of freedom. These have all been purchased for us, and we're grateful for the sacrifice.

Memorial Day 2002. On May 27, 2002, Bush did not go to Arlington National Cemetery because he was in Europe, attending week-long meetings with foreign leaders.

On that Memorial Day, he attended a Memorial Day Service at a church in Sainte Mere-Eglise, France, where he offered some remarks. Then he commemorated Memorial Day at the Normandy American Cemetery, where 9,000 Americans are buried, and spoke eloquently again:

We have gathered on this quiet corner of France as the sun rises on Memorial Day in the United States of America. This is a day our country has set apart to remember what was gained in our wars, and all that was lost.

Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom. Our wars have taken from us the men and women we honor today, and every hour of the lifetimes they had hoped to live.

This day of remembrance was first observed to recall the terrible casualties of the war Americans fought against each other. In the nearly 14 decades since, our nation's battles have all been far from home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of those battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories.

And in all those victories American soldiers came to liberate, not to conquer. The only land we claim as our own are the resting places of our men and women. . . .

The grave markers here all face west, across an ageless and indifferent ocean to the country these men and women served and loved. The thoughts of America on this Memorial Day turn to them and to all their fallen comrades in arms. We think of them with lasting gratitude; we miss them with lasting love; and we pray for them. And we trust in the words of the Almighty God, which are inscribed in the chapel nearby: "I give unto them eternal life, that they shall never perish."

In neither year was Bush on vacation for Memorial Day. And it is nice that we are able to recall Bush's eloquence, given the unfortunate circumstances that prevented us from hearing from President Obama this year.



Cartoon by Erin Bonsteel

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