Last message from Corregidor

Via Perfunction, here is a link to the last American message from the Philippine island of Corregidor before it fell to the Japanese on May 6, 1942. It was sent in Morse code by Cpl. Erving Strobing, and the file at the link includes a voice-over translation. It's stunning to hear even today (near the end, "get this message to my mother").



This is a photo of the Corregidor surrender, and is one of the few photographs of American forces surrenduring to anyone. Defeat is not a national habit.

The Big Mo' has turned

It is hard to tell at this moment exactly where the momentum turned but turned it has. In a series of counter strikes worthy of a kung fu movie, Barak has pulled when the Barbarian hordes at the Gate thought he would push. As Debka.com reports this morning,

In response to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice”s demand for “meaningful” Israeli steps to ease Palestinians’ lives, defense minister Ehud Barak presented a package of concessions. The checkpoint will be removed outside Jericho. He also brought to the trilateral meeting with Rice and Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad Sunday, March 30, permission to post 600 Palestinian security officers trained in Jordan in the terrorist stronghold of Jenin. The ultimate security responsibility for counter-terrorism, Barak stressed, would remain in Israeli hands.

Barak’s willingness to make concessions caught Rice by surprise. As ArutzSheva reports,

(IsraelNN.com) Israeli diplomatic sources said Sunday that the American delegation was very surprised at the extent of Israeli concessions to the Fatah-controlled "Palestinian Authority" (PA) announced by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. However, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quick to say that they were not enough, and vowed to monitor Israel's execution of its promises.

The latest Israeli concessions to the PA in Judea and Samaria include permission for construction of two new Arab neighborhoods in the Ramallah area, with a total of 5,000 to 8,000 housing units. In addition, about 50 dirt roadblocks in Samaria will be removed, thus enabling vehicular traffic between Jenin, Tulkarm, Kalkilya and Ramallah, and the permanent checkpoint in the Rimonim area will be removed.

However, Stonewall Barak stopped here, having the impudence to tell the School Marm no to linking Jenin with Hebron. Rice thought she could sneak in the PA’s goal of linking the West Bank and Gaza by way of an end run around Jerusalem via Hebron.

Our exclusive sources report that US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice put this stipulation to prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, Sunday, March 30. It was one of three she wanted implemented in the five weeks before President George W. Bush’s attendance of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

Rice explained she was not asking for free Palestinian passage on all the West Bank’s roads - only one or two, where they could travel without running into Israeli checkpoints.

Israel’s top military commanders warned government leaders in the strongest possible terms that the US secretary’s demands if met would spell the end of their war on terror and expose Jerusalem and other Israeli cities to the waves of suicide killers their systematic efforts had been holding back. The checkpoints were a vital element of their operations to keep Israel’s heartland safe from terrorists.

The Jenin-Tarkumiyeh route, they said, was already targeted by terrorists led by Hamas for two-way smuggling between Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Removing all existing controls would present the Gaza and Jenin terror networks with the gift of a direct, unmonitored link.

Rice lost no time announcing that she would be closely watching to make sure that Israel follows through on its promises.

"We will monitor exactly what the Israelis do and the purpose is to improve the Palestinians' freedom of movement," Rice said. "We want to be much more systematic about what is promised and what is actually carried out," she added.

Oooh is she tough or what. Not only is she sounding like a broken record, but she is clearly not listening to what Israelis are telling her. Israel, with or without Olmert, has drawn the line. This is more that you asked and more, Israel is telling Ms. Rice. You deliver a peaceful partner who will not kill our children in their school houses. If Condi remembers the bombings in Birmingham and how it changed her life; but, does she, like Israelis, remember the eight boys killed in a parochial school last month.

This morning as Israelis return to work, search the net, and wade through the even greater fog from the Israeli MSM. I am in Jerusalem, sitting with the faculty in the library preparing for classes. We all read collectively with glee that Barak’s personal assessment of these events. His own recitation of Ms. Rice's lessons are very clear.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicated Sunday night that despite revious statements to the contrary, he may decide to pull Labor out of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government due to Olmert's "accountability" for Israel's failure to attain its objectives during the Second Lebanon War.

"The prime minister has not been cleared of all accountability," Barak
said during a meeting with bereaved parents of soldiers who fell during the war. The parents met Barak in his office and discussed with him the results of the war and its implications on the remainder of Olmert's term.

Barak also indicated that the possibility of his party quitting the government was still on the agenda, claiming that the government would not live out its term. "Elections in two or three years are not a possibility," he assured the parents.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632371915&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Bayla the Librarian claps with joy, “Oh good. Elections. We all deserve a day off.”

Netanyahu is still the strongest actor on the stage, with Barak in second place. It would appear that Rice’s puppet, McOlmert is in his last act, and her peace pastiche is about to go “snap, crackle, pop”

Passover is less than four weeks away. On the night of the Passover dinner, all Jews recall the days of terror and bondage living in the land of bondage, under the heel of Pharoah. At the conclusion of the ritual meal, every stands and shouts--Next Year in Jerusalem.

Barak is preaching to the choir.

You better not shout, you better not pout,

Insanity Clause is coming to town.

Last week at this time, the first string Americans were here for Easter and Purim. Cheney and McCain made clear that they, at least, support Israelis in their fight against terror. This week, the second string shows up to tell Israelis they are bad boys and girls. Yes, Condi Rice is coming to town. The only concession she is willing to make is to defer arriving Saturday night during Shabbat (daylight savings Jerusalem time started last night).

According to Roni Sofer at YNETNEWS, Rice is expected to lay into the Israelis, once again, that they are not living up to their end of the bargain (lying down on their backs with their hands in the air). More importantly, Rice will express her displeasure with the Israelis for letting construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev continue.

Rice's baggage is likely to include harsh criticism for both Israel and the PA. Rice stands to rebuke Israel for what the US sees as a failure to evacuate illegal outposts, continued construction in settlements and insufficient goodwill gestures towards the Palestinians in an effort to boost Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' standing.

The majority of the secretary's claims against the Palestinians will likely surround their inability to combat terrorism.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3524598,00.html

Rice will be in Amman before she arrives in Israel to meet with Abbas before he goes to Damascus for the Iranian/Syrian Arab summit. She seems to believe that she can entice Abbas to give up alignment with Hamas and come back over to the good guys.

It is a fool’s errand. Abbas has to face his true constituency, like Olmert has been forced to face his. Abbas must come to terms with the Hamas. He already knows, as does everyone else in the political theater here, that all Rice wants is a deal. After that, the US will treat him like it treats Israel—leave him to the wolves. Rice is acting more and more like a desperate used car salesperson—she will say anything to close the deal. There have even been reports that Big Daddy Bush will sweeten the pot with an invitation to the home of the Great White Father.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3524423,00.html

The fact is that Olmert, like Abbas, has nowhere else to turn other than his power base. Like Abbas, Olmert knows that the Road Map and Condi Rice are a formula for doom. Olmert needs the continuance of the already begun housing in order to keep his coalition together. Without the coalition, Kadima evaporates, and the Olmert family will have to move to more pedestrian quarters.

The Syrian/Iranian puppet Hamas is now throughout the West Bank and everyone knows that the Jerusalem factor is a distraction. As long as the talks continue, the West Bank has time to fortify for the coming round of violence that most Israelis expect but dread. Abbas needs the talks to keep alive, let alone remain in political power.

But at a certain point, everyone but Rice will reach a point where the talks are useless. By then, Hamas and its Iranian rockets will be in position to put Jerusalem under direct fire, and Fatah will be able to use all those police security weapons supplied by the US to fight terror. Never mind that in the view of most Palestinians, Israel is the terrorist state.

Barak is predictably balking, maintaining key security position in the West Bank as well as being quite outspoken about the wisdom of supplying the PA with sophisticated weapons with which to fight terror. He will attend a meeting with Rice, but it is highly unlikely he will be quite as obliging to peace interests as he was with Bill Clinton.

Netanyahu is being quiet and letting others stir up support. Despite the hew and cry, even the most blatantly biased polls showed Likud trouncing Kadima in the coming election by more that 2 to 1. YNETNEWS carried an opinion piece by Professor Udi Lebel, a lecturer at Sapir College and Ariel University Center of Samaria, who admonished the Israeli media over the blatantly political coverage of Netanyahu’s London trip during the Second Lebanon War.

The reports about opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife's visit to ondon during the Second Lebanon War focused mainly on the cost of the visit – NIS 130,000 (about $37,000); but one aspect of the visit has been visibly absent from public debate – what was he doing there? One must ask not only who paid for the trip (The State of Israel Bonds, the Jewish community in the UK, the Israeli taxpayer – I haven't been able to figure it out yet); but what did the Israeli public gain from it.

The aforementioned war found me in the midst of researching the effectiveness of srael's PR both locally and around the world. My colleagues and I looked at the PR efforts of all the relevant players, including the Israeli government, Lebanon, Hizbullah and its affiliates, European countries and the US, as well as the many entrepreneurs who lent their support to any of the above.

The Israeli public's trust laid – as hard as it may seem to believe – with Hizbullah's leader Hassan Nasrallah. Any Jewish mother wanting to find a reliable source of information regarding the location and situation of the troops, whether or not the IDF had crossed the Litani River, and had we indeed taken Bint Jbeil – looked for it in the enemy's appearances.

Lebel goes on to question why Netanyahu was not put at the Israeli embassy in London speculating that petty governmental disputes were the cause.

Netanyahu's financial conduct may have been flawed. The Israeli elite has long been asked to get closer to the people, to reassure them it recognizes their hardships for being more than just statistics. I won't pretend to address any questions of ethics, proper administration (or lack thereof) or question pertaining to the politics of public or private funding, but I do know one thing: Even if the visit was funded by Israeli money, we still got off cheap.

Funding Netanyahu's stay in London yielded significant PR gains; and compared to the money needed to cover the costs of his London stay to what a leading European PR firm would have charged – we got a great deal. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3523954,00.html

So the week ends with a return to the usual SNAFU. Perhaps to highlight the return of Condi’s circus, the clowns promoting Syrian peace talks are sprouting up like the crocuses and pollen. The Israeli Arab MPs are chirping up about the Saudi peace plan; Ben Eliezer, the John Goodman of Israeli politics, happily declares that Israel can get a good deal with Syria. The post Pesach political parade has begun.

After Shabbat, I think I’ll drive into Jerusalem to see if anyone wants to buy a used bridge in Brooklyn.

Pilgrim's Progress

It takes several days for Jerusalem to regroup after Purim. Although the rest of Israel, and the Jewish world, celebrate Purim immediately after the Fast of Esther, Jerusalemites take an extra day before they party hardy. So, while the rest of us used Shabbat to clear our heads, Jerusalemites had a whole day to rest up for the event. Like Wall Street on New Years Day, Jerusalem on Purim day shuts down.

Religious or secular, there are three times a year that almost all Jewish Israelis take time off from work for a religious holiday—Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Purim, and the first night of Passover. In a way, these three times are about food. The first is a total abstinence from food and drink; the second has evolved as a festival of silliness with an emphasis on drink; and the third remains single most observed holiday in the Jewish world.

So, appropriately, the news has been relatively low-key with nothing truly exciting happening. True, McCain and Cheney came to town for Easter; both behaved as expected although Cheney gave a few interesting twists. After the usual “both sides will have to make terrible concessions” speech in Ramallah, Cheney met separately with Netanyahu and Barak after which he echoed McCain: “Israel has the right to defend itself” and “the US will not force Israel into a ‘peace’ it cannot accept”, or words to that effect. Then Cheney added, “You know that report that said that Iran was not a nuclear threat, well, it was wrong”. And then he was off to Saudi Arabia.

Hello? Is this one of those ‘hidden miracles’ of Purim?

There has been unseasonably hot weather in the region for the last two weeks. So, the word on the streets of Jerusalem has been, “You know how hot it’s been, well it’s going to be a lot hotter this summer, if you know what I mean”. Not a good season to spend weeks in a bomb shelter. Fatah and Hamas are sidling up to each other, Syria is up to its usual tricks, and Abbas says in April (thing Passover) he will cut off all talks.

So, now Israelis turn their attention to Passover, less than four weeks away and they are preparing for the inevitable. The Olmert government remains deeply mired in the Shas endgame having announced today it will continue to pursue peace AND build in East Jerusalem, and build in the settlement blocs. Can the tall guy juggle or what? http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446109366&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Meanwhile, the opposition is becoming stronger, the US heir apparent came on a pilgrimage, and Cheney tells us that that report that said Iran was not building a bomb—well, it was wrong. The only person missing, pointedly so, in the holiday festivities was Rice.

Yesterday, Kory Bardash and Marc Zell wrote in the Jerusalem Post their assessment of the McCain visit. Clearly writing for the American voter, they highlighted how the Republican candidate played in Israel. Make no mistake; McCain impressed Israelis more as a “righteous Gentile” than as a political contender. In a country of veterans and Holocaust survivors, McCain’s service, and especially his POW time are duly noted.

The first thing that must be noted is that McCain chose to come to Israel
at all. Originally the plan was to go to Iraq and make stops in one or two major
European venues. But the very fact that McCain chose to add Israel to itinerary
tells you something about the man's perspective on the Middle East and his
priorities.

Israel is important in his strategic thinking and that is good for
Israel. Among the Democrats, and many career foreign service officers in the
State Department, Israel is a sideshow that creates many problems and few
opportunities for US foreign policy. Many of these people see the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the source of instability in the Middle East and
predict that were only Israel to make peace with its neighbors, all would be
well in the region.

Like most of us, McCain wants there to be peace in the Middle East, but he is under no illusions about who are the principal troublemakers in the area. He stated unequivocally during his visit that he views Islamo-Fascism as the main culprit propelled primarily by the Iranians and semi-autonomous terror organizations. He understands as well that the outcome of the war in Iraq will play a central role in determining whether the West or the Islamo-Fascists will prevail here.

As one commentator recently noted, "McCain has a deep understanding of the region's strategic problems and publicly supports a nuclear deterrent for Israel." Additionally, McCain stated in a very clear and unequivocal way regarding the threat faced by Israel and the West that "the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran was a "nuclear armed Iran," and that the "regime must understand that it cannot win a showdown with the world." Since the dubious NIE report's release last December that cast a cloud over Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, McCain has been in the ranks of those dismissive of it. When have you heard that from either of the Democratic candidates?

McCain also made clear that the constant barrage of missiles and mortars against southern Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza is utterly intolerable. He indicated that had the same thing in his native Arizona; there would be little doubt about the American response - swift and brutal. Hamas is part of the crazy-quilt of organizations financed and controlled by the Iranians aimed at weakening, demoralizing and eventually destroying the Jewish State.

At the same time, McCain made it very clear that the proper response was Israel's and Israel's alone to make. There would be no dictating to Israel from a McCain White House what is necessary for her national defense and security. That, of course puts the ball squarely in our court here - where it belongs.

McCain also comprehends that the struggle of the Muslim extremists against Israel is not merely a matter of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, it is part and parcel of the general struggle between radical Islam and Western civilization as a whole. It is this struggle that America has been leading since 9-11 and which it must continue to lead for the foreseeable future.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205420770098&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Two small details of McCain’s trip, one he did not do and one he did, were noted by Israelis. First, he did not make a ritual trip to Ramallah. Second, when he went to the Western Wall, or to other places in Israel that require all visitors to where head covering, he chose the Kippa Srugah.

In Israel, people dress to their social and religious preference. At a glance, anyone here can identify not only the social class and ethnic community to which one belongs, but also their religious preference. Okay, it’s a form of profiling, but it is also a way people here can establish solidarity and group affiliation pretty quickly. It’s how the West Bank checkpoints work—who gets stopped, searched, or waved through. On a religious spectrum of secular at one end and ultra orthodox at the other, the religious center of the country, like the fathers who send their boys to parochial schools like the one where those eight boys were murdered, wear the Kippa Srugah. McCain in Jerusalem wore a Kippa Srugah as if that was what he always wore. He looked sharp and everyone here took notice.

There has been much concern in Israel over the US election. The feeling here is that a return to a Democratic administration would continue the dead end road map as well as the approach that Israel is the source of problems in the Middle East. The soft dollar is wrecking havoc on the economy and Olmert has become a life size cardboard cutout dragged out for a photo-op when important people come to Israel to see Netanyahu and Barak.

Passover, which starts in just under four weeks, celebrates the night when the Jews departed Mitzraim, Egypt, to begin their departure from bondage and servitude to freedom. The first night of Passover, the Seder dinner, celebrates the event by the recitation of the Haggadah, the ritual story of the Exodus recited by Jewish families for several thousand years. The Haggadah emphatically states that each Jew, in every generation, and in every location, must tell the story of the Exodus afresh as if it occurred on that very night—each should see that the miracle of deliverance is continuing eternally afresh each moment.

For almost all Israelis, this is a lesson that needs little reminder. Among the elderly from Europe and from Middle Eastern countries, deliverance from the land of tyrants, repression, and genocide to the Land of their Fathers is literal not figurative. When these men and women see men with hoods brandishing guns promising peace, they remember their oppressors and are not fooled. They remember their prisons, death camps, and pogroms and what it meant to leave those cells and walk free.

Mitzraim means “difficult straits” as in a narrow defile where the shadow of death awaits the unsuspecting. Deliverance from Mitzraim represents the removal of fear and danger. This year, Israelis have hope. Although the days ahead will be filled with conflict and “difficult straits”, someone has come who understands what it means to languish in prison, vilified and humiliated, surviving on faith, and then walk free again in the land of his fathers.

John McCain did not have to take a photo-op and say “I am a Berliner” to establish solidarity with Israelis. All he had to do was put on a Kippa Srugah and go kiss the Wall. Israelis recognize one delivered from Mitzraim to walk free in the light.

Oh yeah, you know that NIE report, the one that says Iran is not a risk? Well, I heard from some friends that it's not true.

Taxing you for looking out your window

"Families face soaring [tax] bills for the crime of living in a nice neighbourhood. Only Labour would think of taxing people for looking out of their windows."

Thus spake Briton Eric Pickles, a Conservative party member, of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government's decision to tax "value significant" features of all 23 million homes in England, including scenic views.

Again, precise details of whether the view is of the sea, hills, mountains, lakes, fields or golf courses have been recorded. Different codes are provided for a "partial view" and a "full view".

Homeowners will also pay a higher tax if their home features off-street parking, the more spaces the higher the tax. Heaven forbid that they have a garage!

Not that this is actually new in the UK:

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

(if you drive a car, car;) - I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) - I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) - I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) - I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson Brown)
If you don't want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister Heath Darling)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
'Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.

And you're working for no one but me.

Taxman!

The Beatles, Taxman.

Resurrection concept unclear, say scholars

Easter is the day when Christians celebrate the central tenet of their faith, that Jesus, having died on the cross on Friday, was raised from the dead by the power of God.

The concept of resurrection, though, was not original with Christians. It was a prominent, though not universal, belief among the Jews of Jesus' day. The Jewish Encyclopedia explains that one group of Jews, the Sadducees ("the party representing views and practises of the Law and interests of Temple and priesthood directly opposite to those of the Pharisees,"),did ...

... not accept the Pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection (Sanh. 90b; Mark xii. 12; Ber. ix. 5, "Minim"), which was a national rather than an individual hope. As to the immortality of the soul, they seem to have denied this as well (see Hippolytus, "Refutatio," ix. 29; "Ant." x. 11, § 7).

Furthermore,

The older Hebrew conception of life regarded the nation so entirely as a unit that no individual mortality or immortality was considered. Jeremiah (xxxi. 29) and Ezekiel (xviii.) had contended that the individual was the moral unit, and Job's hopes are based on this idea.

A different view, which made a resurrection unnecessary, was held by the authors of Ps. xlix. and lxxiii., who believed that at death only the wicked went to Sheol and that the souls of the righteous went directly to God. This, too, seem based on views analogous to those of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and probably was not widely held. In the long run the old national point of view asserted itself in the form of Messianic hopes. These gave rise to a belief in a resurrection in order that more might share in the glory of the Messianic kingdom. This hope first finds expression in Isa. xxvi. 19, a passage which Cheyne dates about 334 B.C. The hope was cherished for faithful Israelites. In Dan. xii. 1-4 (about 165 B.C.) a resurrection of "many . . . that sleep in the dust" is looked forward to. This resurrection included both righteous and wicked, for some will awake to everlasting life, others to "shame and everlasting contempt."

So by the time of Jesus, the idea of the resurrection of the dead, though not universally held among the Jewish people, was likely the majority view. To be fair, though, even among those who affirmed the resurrection, there was ongoing debate as to its extent - just whom would be resurrected and where, only in Israel or elsewhere also. As time went by, the concept of resurrection continued to evolve.

The Pharisees, a lay movement of Jews who devoted themselves to adhering to the covenantal law of ancient Judaism, affirmed the concept of the resurrection. The Christian apostle Paul was the son of a Pharisee and began his religious vocation as a Pharisee. (Pharisees generally get a bad rap in Sunday Schools but shouldn't. Jesus shared the religious devotion of Pharisees. Pharisaism was a lay movement, just as Jesus found his broadest support among the laity.)

Now, all this is to point out that modern-day Christian understanding of the resurrection is "deeply misunderstood, say scholars from varied faith traditions who have been trying to clear up the confusion in several recent books."

"We are troubled by the gap between the views on these things of the general public and the findings of contemporary scholarship," said Kevin Madigan and Jon Levenson, authors of the upcoming book, "Resurrection, The Power of God for Christians and Jews."

The book traces the overlooked Jewish roots of the Christian belief in resurrection, and builds on that history to challenge the idea that resurrection simply means life after death. To the authors, being raised up has a physical element, not just a spiritual one.

Levenson last year wrote a related book, "Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life." Meanwhile, N.T. Wright, a prominent New Testament scholar and author of the 2003 book "The Resurrection of the Son of God," has just published, "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church."

Debate about Christ's Resurrection has focused on whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead after the Romans crucified him on Good Friday, or whether Resurrection was something abstract.

Wright's 2003 book was considered one of the most important recent arguments that Jesus was physically resurrected.

The three scholars also have been challenging the idea, part of Greek philosophy and popular now, that resurrection for Jews and the followers of Jesus is simply the survival of an individual's soul in the hereafter. The scholars say resurrection occurs for the whole person — body and soul. For early Christians and some Jews, resurrection meant being given back one's body or possibly God creating a new similar body after death, Wright has said.

It's my experience that the vast majority of Christians readily agree that upon death, the souls of the saved enter immediately into heaven, but when asked about the resurrection of the dead, mumbling ensues. After all, if heaven is your reward instantly upon breathing your last, what purpose could being resurrected have?

Now, this whole debate won't interest many people but theologians, but it actually cuts to the core of the Christian proclamation, as Paul realized:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.

Paul is explaining that the resurrection of Christ is a subset of the larger category of resurrection. The Corinthian church apparently accepted Paul's teaching that Jesus had been raised, but rejected the idea that they (or other also) would be raised as well. That made no sense to Paul. It was like someone today saying, "I drive a Chevrolet but I don't think there is any such thing as General Motors."

The resurrection of Jesus, Paul insists, is of little utility unless it is to show that the promises of God are true, that the promise of the general resurrection is true. In fact, Paul understood the resurrection of Christ and the general resurrection yet to come as belonging to the one and same event, separated by a "time out," as it were. Hence, for Paul, Jesus was the "first fruit" of the general resurrection yet to come.

Yet Wright and others say the church should teach what the first Christians believed. Wright also has argued that the physical reality of a future world after death shows "the created order matters to God, and Jesus' Resurrection is the pilot project for that renewal."

Madigan and Levenson have an additional motivation. They said they wrote the book to help Jews and Christians understand more about their theological bonds.

Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School, said interest in resurrection — along with reincarnation, ghosts and contacting the dead — has grown in recent years.

"The more chaotic our world, with war and disease, hurricanes and famine," she said, "the more many seek a divine response to the problem of evil."

The problem of evil is, I think, the central problem of Christianity and is most often cited by people as the reason for their rejection of it.

(Amy-Jill Levine, btw, was my professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School.)

"I suspect I may get some abuse for this."

Pope to Osama: take that!

Please note, this is about Osama, not Obama, just in case Teddy is reading.

As you may recall, Osama bin Laden (or a claimant of his the identity) recently accused Pope Benedict of waging a "new crusade" againstIslam. The Pope responded, Who, me?

The Vatican on Thursday rejected an audiotaped accusation from Osama bin Laden that Pope Benedict XVI was leading a “new Crusade” against Muslims, but Italian security officials were concerned about the threats included in Mr. bin Laden’s new message.

“These accusations are absolutely unfounded,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope’s chief spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “There is nothing new in this, and it doesn’t have any particular significance for us.”

But just to make sure that bin Laden understands,

Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator, a journalist with iconoclastic views such as support for Israel, converted to Roman Catholicism Saturday when the pope baptized him at an Easter service.

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Magdi Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

"We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another," Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. "Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close."

Vatican television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. Allam later received his first Communion. [link]

You go, Benny!

A short Jerusalem photo tour

Photos copyright 2007 by the author; may not be used or hotlinked without permission.

The first photo is of the Gethsemane Church on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. The church's proper name is the Church of All Nations and was built from 1919-1924. It was to Gethsemane that Jesus and his disciples, except Judas, came after the Last Supper. It was here that Judas brought the Temple police to arrest Jesus.

The first thing Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to endure was flagellation, a whipping with a particular whip called a flagellum. Although probably not quite as brutal as depicted in Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, it was a bloody ordeal nonetheless, and considerably weakened Jesus before he was crucified, which may help account for the speed at which he expired on the cross.

As at most Christian holy sites in Israel, there is a church built at the site where Jesus was whipped. This plaque at the church explains its history.

This is the interior of the Church of the Flagellation. There is little historical doubt that this is indeed the actual site where the scourging took place. Jesus' trial took place only a half-block away; Pilate's "courtroom" is still there and is undeniably of Roman origin. The courtyard between that site and this church is verifiably also of Roman origin.

This is a small chapel along the via dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows that Jesus walked to his execution. At this station of the cross, Jesus stumbled and fell, depicted in the mural below. It was not at this place, but a later one, where the Roman soldiers made a bystander help carry the cross because Jesus was too weakened to continue alone.

The scene depicted is of the ancient Roman Catholic tradition of Jesus carrying the entire cross, the upright and crossbeam included. Relatively recent historical research has revealed, though, that almost certainly there were permanent uprights built outside Jerusalem, a sort of ready-to-use gallows, if you will. Jesus and other condemned would have carried only the crossbeam.

Below is a street scene along the via dolorosa. This and many other sections are lined with shops, all seeking the tourists' trade. In the first century, the streets were much wider and certainly not so commercialized.

Finally, you see the dome and cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This is a view from the courtyard of the church.



Another view. As you can see, the church is extremely large. Under one roof the church encompasses the site where Jesus was crucified, the place his body was (incompletely) prepared for burial, and his tomb.




A schematic of the church from Sacred Destinations Travel Guide.

This is a tableau on the wall next to the place where Jesus' body was prepared for burial. The rock of preparation is on the floor just beneath here. Except it is not actually the rock even if it is the actual location - the actual rock was taken away in bits and pieces centuries ago by religious pilgrims who wanted a relic.



Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, this is the entrance to the traditionally-sited tomb of Jesus. I did not go inside since the waiting line was more than an hour long.




The Sepulchre Church is, as I said, simply enormous. High above the tomb's site is this dome, which is not the largest dome of the church by any means.

Sacred Destinations' page on the church is worth reading and includes the arguments in favor of the site being the actual location of Jesus' death and entombment.

Execution day

At right, "The Three Crosses," by Rembrandt

Sometime on the Friday after Passover, almost 2,000 years ago, Roman soldiers, acting on orders of Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, took Jesus of Nazareth to a low hill outside Jerusalem and crucified him to death. As crucifixion deaths went, Jesus' death came pretty quickly, within a few hours. It was not unusual for victims to linger on the cross for days.

There were two criminals also crucified alongside Jesus. Because it was Passover week, emotions ran high among the Jews who had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holy observances. There were many thousands of pilgrims there, some historians say more than 100,000. At sunset on Fridays the Jewish Sabbath began then as now, and even hardened Roman soldiers were uneasy about the execution of these men continuing when the Sabbath began during this particular week. So they decided to break the victims' legs in order to make quick their suffocation to death. Crucifixion is, after all, a form of hanging, killing by suffocation. With their legs broken, the victims could not push up to take a breath and so would die a quick, though brutal death ("excruciating" derives from the same root as "crucifixion," and it is no accidental relationship).

But when they came to Jesus to break his legs, they discovered he had already died. Another soldier, probably more experienced and thus leaving nothing to chance, took his long spear and plunged it into Jesus' side, almost certainly penetrating his heart, since that would have been the whole point of spearing him to begin with.

Before sundown, the Romans permitted some of Jesus' friends to retrieve his body and entomb it.

One of the vexing problems about Jesus' execution is that we really don't know exactly why Jesus was crucified. Of course, we know why the Romans crucified people - political offense against the empire - but just what Jesus did, or was accused of doing, relating to that is unclear. Even stipulating that the Jewish high council, the Sanhedrin, wanted to be quit of Jesus, they could have ordered him stoned to death for religious offenses without getting the Romans involved. The Gospels are clear enough that religious charges against Jesus not only could easily be made, they were made.

"Ecce homo" - Behold, the man.

Whatever the reason, Pilate became persuaded that Jesus was defying the emperor's authority and so was guilty of a political offense against Rome. Pilate, we know from Roman historians, was a weak man, inclined to violence to solve his problems, and was unskilled as a procurator. In fact, most modern historians have concluded that Judea had the singular misfortune among Roman provinces to suffer uncharacteristically inept Roman governance for several decades, including those on both ends of Jesus' life. Certainly, Pilate thought almost nothing of crucifying Jews; during Jesus' own lifetime Pilate had sentenced hundreds, probably thousands, of Jews to the cross and had killed numberless more by other means. So one more was not even a statistic. (Jesus himself spoke of a time when Pilate had sent his cavalry, swords swinging, into a group of men making sacrifices, killing the lot of them, for reasons not related. Pilate seems to have been extremely paranoid about crowds of Jews who gathered for any reason.)

Somehow, perhaps with the Sanhedrin's collusion, perhaps not, Pilate became convinced that Jesus was a political insurrectionist, trying to claim the throne of David. A hugely false claim, of course, and one that Jesus easily and directly refuted under Pilate's own questioning. John's Gospel, chapter 18, relates that Pilate said to Jesus, "Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."

If Jesus had been a claimant to the throne of David, he would have built not only a popular base of support, but an armed faction. He had the former (but not as much as we prefer to think - chapter 10 of John reports that Jesus so angered a crowd he was speaking to that they "took up stones again to stone him," but "he escaped.") At any rate, Jesus swatted aside Pilate's interrogatory about Jesus' presumed kingship so that Pilate did not raise it again with him. He did poke the Sanhedrin in the eye with that presumption by placing a sign on Jesus' cross that mocked them, not Jesus, by saying, "This is the King of the Jews."

So what was the chain of events was that led Jesus to be executed? Only one Gospel states the case fairly clearly, the Gospel of John. In it, Jesus is presented as raising Lazarus, dead and entombed for four days, from death back to life (John 11). When word of this deed reached the high priest, Caiaphas, he became deeply fearful that Pilate would (in character) slaughter countless Jews as a consequence - not for raising Lazarus, but because of the enormous following Jesus would doubtless gain as a result. John relates,

So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ ... So from that day on they planned to put him to death.

The other three Gospels don't mention Lazarus' raising and are not clear just what Jesus did or said that got him into trouble with the Sanhedrin. But John presents a case (by some inference) that the Sanhedrin believed that Jesus would indeed make a political power play that would inevitably lead Pilate to "go Roman" on Judea. This was an entirely justified fear, justified, that is, only if Jesus really did have political ambitions. But he didn't.

My homiletics professor once lectured that one thing the Easter story proves is that sin, and the will to sin, is more deeply rooted in human beings than we really can imagine. Roman justice, he pointed out, was the best system of justice the world had ever seen until then; after all, it still forms the basis for most Western jurisprudence today. And among the lands and peoples of the empire, he said, the Jews were enormously respected for their religion, which was considered ancient even way back then. In the case of Jesus (his point being), the best justice and the best religion somehow, and not altogether clearly how, came together to cause the execution of a man entirely innocent of every capital charge brought against him - and for the best of putative reasons. "Even the best we can do has no promise of freedom from sin."

So Joseph of Arimathea and the women disciples of Jesus (the men having gone into hiding) took Jesus' corpse and began to prepare it for burial in Joseph's own tomb. They did not finish the job because of the beginning of the Sabbath, a day on which they could do no work. They laid the body in the tomb, had it sealed, and left. The women agreed to return on Sunday morning to finish anointing Jesus' body, that being the first daylight hours after the end of the Sabbath at sundown Saturday.

The sun set and mercifully brought an end to execution day.

Before you're crucified . . .

... make sure you get a tetanus shot.

Reminds me of the scene in True Lies when Ahnuld is about to be injected with truth serum before being interrogated for information, then killed. As the needle approaches his arm, he says, "You should swab that with alcohol to prevent an infection."

But remember that the Catholic church frowns upon crucifixion.

Generosity makes you happy

If you spend as little as $5 per day for the benefit of others, you will automatically be happier.

"We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn," said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

"Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not," Dunn said in a statement.

Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $3,000 and $8,000.

"Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

"Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves," they said.

Something else I've learned: generous people cope with their own mortality much better than others. In the years I've ministered to the terminally ill and people dealing with aging-toward-mortality, invariably the ones who have been generous towards others - routinely, not just for birthdays or holidays - finally die more peaceably than non-generous people.

Ahhh, there’s Good News tonight!

The Bank of Israel, several days ago, announced it was buying up US dollars the way Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy bought up orange juice futures in the 1983 film, Trading Places . Last week, the Bank refused to disclose just how many dollars they were picking up. The dollar was falling against the shekel like Galileo’s ball bearings off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

But today, at 5:57pm, Israeli time, the Bank followed through on its promise. The Jerusalem Post filed the following story on the Bank’s bail out project.

Starting next week, the Bank of Israel will begin purchasing foreign currency in order to increase the amount it holds.

According to the bank, a thorough examination conducted in recent months resulted in the decision to increase its foreign currency balance to a level of about 35 to 40 billion US dollars, compared to the approximately $28 billion it currently holds.

The bank said that the reasons leading to the move are "economy needs, fast growth in produce in recent years and the increasing integration of the Israeli economy in the global financial market."

"This is an important step, precisely because of the latest drop in the US dollar exchange rate," said Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On.

[Is this guy running for Finance Minister?]

Bank of Israel will increase its foreign currency balance by about 10 billion dollars over the period of two years by purchasing approximately 25 million dollars daily.

How effective was the Bank’s efforts? MSNBC carries the following report:

Stocks were rallying this afternoon, thanks to an upgrade for General Electric (GE, news, msgs),
a rising dollar and a continued slump in commodity prices.

At 3:20 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones industrials were up 255 points, or 2.1%, to 12,354,
taking back nearly all of Wednesday's big slump and continuing a trend of big, violent swings. Tuesday, the Dow was up 420 points; Wednesday, the blue chips lost 293 points.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 31 points, or 2.4%, to 1,329, and the Nasdaq Composite Index added 45 points, 2%, to 2,255.

A rebound in financial stocks was also helping the market. Volume was especially heavy, in part because a number of options were expiring, requiring investors to square up positions before the stock market closes for Good Friday.

Huh? Did I miss something? Now, one does not have to be celestial navigator to realize that the Bank of Israel’s announcement to increase its dollar holdings by 10 billion at 9:20 am ET, six hours before the market in New York rebounded may have some effect. Of course what is good for GE is good for the world; but in this case the boys from Tel Aviv share credit for saving the US market’s bacon—as it were.

The Jerusalem Post concludes:

In response to the bank's announcement, the US dollar has gained 1.86% in comparison to the shekel and currently stands at about 3.443 NIS per USdollar.

What’s most amusing about the two stories is the religious context overtly and covertly expressed that is a direct result of the two cultures. MSNBC tells us that the rebound of the stock market, entirely due to endogenous factors occurred before Good Friday, the precursor of Easter when Christ rose from the dead—Good News indeed.

What is left out of the Jerusalem Post story is that the Bank buyout announcement occurred on the Fast of Esther, the day before Purim when Queen Esther and her Prime Minister Mordecai stopped the Evil Haman from his genocidal plan to destroy the Jews. The essence of Purim is the hidden nature of the Hand of God in the affairs of people—subtle changes have big changes.

So, it would appear that the very public announcement of the Bank of Israel to rescue the US dollar, a public good if ever there was one, the act is entirely lost in the MSM. A Holy Weekend indeed.

Happy Holidays, y’all.

Just in case you didn't know

The Catholic Church frowns upon crucifixion.

Double Standards

For once, there is come clarity emerging within the confusion. Israelis have been at a loss, for quite some time I might add, over the apparent contradictory nature of the US formula for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Why is the State Department so insistent that a peace process go forward when one of the parties to said peace openly avows the continued destruction of the other party to the aforesaid peace?

Thus, we see a new definition of the word chutzpah. The old definition of chutzpah was told as a story: a man shots his parents and then throws himself upon the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. The Palestinians openly taunt the Israelis with guns, exploding belts, and rockets, hiding behind women and children. The Israelis understandably respond; the Palestinians photograph the results: women and children crying in pain. Chutzpah!

The plurality of Israelis themselves emigrated from Muslim dominated countries where they had been residents for many generations. For example, Iraqi Jews resided in Mesopotamia for over 2,000 years. There, they developed the Babylonian Talmud, which shaped the nature and customs of virtually all of Jewish practice and denominational differences to this day.

Yet, the conflict in Israel between the different religions is depicted as racial. Moreover, rather than working to promote co-existence and peace, Palestinian leaders increasingly threaten continued violence and annihilation as their version of a two state solution. Is it any wonder that Israelis become increasingly suspicious of Palestinian motives?

Now, however, Israelis get a chance to look, really look, inside the American cultural system itself during this year of Political Decision. After all, America’s election is really the World’s election. How the Americans decide what is appropriate political discourse affects everyone. America’s weaknesses, as well as its strengths, are everyone’s concern.

So, it is quite revealing to Israelis to look inside the Obama-Wright flap to understand to draw parallels to why the Americans are so duplicitous over the peace process. The US itself is deeply divided over racial issues. If their “mullahs” are preaching hatred and violence instead of politics of inclusion without question, what does this say about the export of the US co-existence model to the Middle East? Perhaps the chaotic nature of the State Department’s vision of unity amidst racial and religious plurality abroad is due to its own issues.

In his recent speech on his spiritual mentor, Obama was equivocal on the appropriateness of calling on God Almighty to Damn the United States of America. Now, there are people in this world who consider the word damn to be an emotive intensifier and more appropriate than the stronger "f" word. For them, this is no big deal. However, for a significant number of Americans and non-Americans, damnation is a process as well as a spiritual call to arms. In Israel, for example, such a prayer to the Holy One, Blessed Be He, is illegal with potential jail time.

Freedom of religion or poetic license may be part of US culture, but there is another part of the process that is very troubling. James Taranto, at the Best of the Web, sums the problem for American process well. Rebutting a statement Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of Wright's denomination, the United Church of Christ, excusing Wright on the ground that it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Taranto insightfully notes:

Whatever one's opinion of the Iraq war, this is a complete non sequitur. Wright is not responsible for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, and in any case there is no reason to think he has exercised any influence on it by virtue of striking an obnoxious tone. He is responsible for the spiritual sustenance of his congregation. Does he serve that responsibility well when he uses his pulpit to stir up parishioners' hatred and anger?

As for "the soul of our nation," we have heard a lot of late about America's need for racial reconciliation. Thanks to the Obama-Wright episode, we also have learned that racial antagonism and anti-Americanism are much more common than we would have guessed among predominantly black congregations in America.

Is this not an obstacle to reconciliation? In 21st-century America, does any greater obstacle remain?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120594190349248761.html?mod=Best+of+the+Web+Today

Why is this so germane for Israelis? Because similar statements are made in this part of the world daily, such comments made by political figures and religious leaders are taken seriously. Those who hear them are inspired by them and then use these words to justify violence and murder. While it might be no big deal in the States to Damn the government, it is a big deal else where.

Evelyn Gordon, in today’s Jerusalem Post, examines this process closely coming from PA President Abbas, “our man in Ramallah”, while preaching to his choir.

It is hard to decide which aspect of Mahmoud Abbas's recent "ethnic cleansing" accusation is more worrying: what it reveals about him, or what it reveals about the world's willingness to tolerate even the vilest and most obviously nonsensical slanders against Israel.

Addressing the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar last Thursday, the Palestinian Authority chairman declared: "Our people in the city [of Jerusalem] are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions, in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall."

If Jerusalem's Arabs are facing ethnic cleansing, then Israelis are surely the most incompetent ethnic cleansers in human history. After all, ethnic cleansing usually aims at removing an unwanted population and substituting your own nationals.

But according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies, Jerusalem's Arab population skyrocketed 266 percent between 1967, when Israel annexed east Jerusalem, and 2006 (the last year for which figures are available). That is almost double the Jewish population's growth during those years (143 percent); consequently, the city's ratio of Jews to Arabs shrank from 74:26 in 1967 to 66:34 in 2006.

Even during the intifada, which prompted the fence and the closed institutions that Abbas decries, the Arab population continued ballooning: It rose from 208,700 at the end of 2000 to 252,400 at the end of 2006, an increase of 21 percent in six years, or 3.5 percent a year. Jerusalem's Jewish population grew by only 4.7 percent during those years, or less than 1 percent a year. In absolute terms, the Arab increase (43,700 people) was double the Jewish increase (21,100).
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205420731816&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

So, here we have parallel construction—a presidential candidate parroting his spiritual leaders’ blood libel against a nation received by either nodding heads or appalling silent affirmation. What Gordon finds so troubling about Abbas applies equally to his American counterpart.

Far more important, however, is the message this sends to Palestinians. If Abbas can hurl such vicious and patently false accusations at Israel without even a pro forma protest from world leaders, that tells Palestinians that willingness to live in peace with Israel is not necessary to retain international support. If the world has no objection to even the most vicious Palestinian incitement - despite knowing that such incitement routinely leads to actual violence - then it clearly cares nothing about peace; what it cares about is satisfying Palestinian demands.

What troubles Israelis is that such silent affirmation has crept into the political process of both Democratic candidates. Israelis remember vividly the then US First Lady sharing a podium with Mrs. Arafat, then first wife of Chairman Arafat, while she accused the Israelis of blood libel—then it was the claim the Israelis were poisoning the water.

Israelis have seen this silent affirmation of racist and divisive culture grow in recent years in very interesting and peculiar ways—their Foreign Minister forced to use the side servant entrance to the Annapolis conference. Secretary of State Rice used her personal narrative of growing up Black in the Old South to identify with the plight of Palestinians forced to stop at check points. No mention was made that the check points were instituted to prevent the very acts southern racists carried out against Black religious establishments, not unlike the homicides and murder perpetrated against Israeli parochial schools or religious ceremonies.

Both Taranto and Gordon are correct. These statements by political leaders affirming inflammatory comments made from a bully pulpit are troubling. Taranto points us to examine carefully a fracture to the American culture that has been covered up too long and promises to get worse. Gordon raises the issue of the meta-message of such comments to the Palestinians.

The connection not said, that needs to be explicit, is that Obama’s statements, and those of his spiritual guide, as also heard here. More than the chump change of Abbas, Wright’s words are heard loud and clear by the same constituency. Abbas is running to be the new head of the new state. But Obama is running to be the President of the United States of America. His spiritual leader’s comments are not about unity and they are not about America.

Israeli leaders tend to be quite effacing. But the electorate is very sensitive to racial and ethnic conflict. Opening the racial Pandora’s Box of racial discord in American politics, especially with incendiary overtones to the peace process, is quite worrisome indeed. If Pastor Wright is so openly inflammatory about the White America, what does he have to say about Jewish America? What are his opinions about Israel and the peace process? If his words are met with agreement from many quarters of US politics and society, who else in political office listens to such sermons?

Peace Now, Ya’ Think?

The Jerusalem Post has this story on this morning’s website:

'84% of Palestinians back Mercaz attack'

The vast majority of Palestinian Authority residents support the terror
attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva that killed eight students earlier on March 6, according to a new poll cited in the New York Times on Wednesday.

According to the survey, which was conducted among 1,270 Palestinians in the West Bank, 84 percent of those polled stood behind the shooting attack. In addition, 64% supported firing Kassam rockets at Negev towns.

"The anger that this poll is registering is about equal to that at the very height of the second intifada," the paper quoted the pollster, Khalil Shikaki, as saying.

He added that he had never seen such a high level of support for an act of violence in all his 15 years of polling in Ramallah.

The survey also indicated that the majority of Palestinians would choose Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (47%) over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (46%) if elections were called now, and that three-quarters of Palestinians favored terminating negotiations between the Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The poll had a margin error of plus or minus three percentage points.

At least there some honesty on one side of the negotiating table. With these numbers, only a rube would buy into any more of this nonsense. That is unless, both Rice and Olmert each bought shares of that bridge in Brooklyn. And there is absolutely no doubt who Rice will blame for these results.

So, if this is what the majority of the Palaeostinians thinks and wants, just what exactly is the Peace Process? Is Condi’s Road Map the way to tranquility or the Road to Nowhere? Are Israelis supposed to walk willingly into the sea?

Here I thought the US State Department was beyond the Evian Conference of 1938. Guess the current charade is just a replay.

Global warming - old news?

"Olden Warming:"

There's more from the New York Times that Tim Blair cites:

1923:
Glaciers have disappeared and land once covered with field ice is bare.
• 1924:
Glaciers are moving from their age-old beds, pouring greater quantities of ice into the sea than recorded history has known. Broad areas of land are sinking to new levels. A number of islands have disappeared.
• 1930:
The Alpine glaciers are in full retreat. Out of 102 glaciers observed by Professor P.L. Mercanton of the University of Lausanne and his associates more than two thirds have been found to be shrinking.
• 1935:
The great glaciers of the West, last remnants of the Ice Age on continental United States, have been retreating from their strongholds in the mountains at double time since last year.

There are other citations going all the way back into the 1800s expressing alarm that the climate is getting either too hot or too cold. But somehow, unlike the third bear's porridge, it is never "just right."

Then we have National Public Radio's report, "The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat:"

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

There's more, including the admission by Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research that,

The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

Clouds are simply one form of water vapor, and despite all the alarmism about carbon-dioxide, water vapor is by magnitudes the major greenhouse gas. And yet, as Trenberth says (he's not alone is saying), the mathematical tools to account for clouds - and other water vapor - have not been developed.

The trouble with sharia-compliant investing

21st Century Schizoid Man explains:

But investing your money in an investment instrument that lacks even the most basic transparency, where you cannot know where the money is being invested? That blind trust, trust that no investor should ever grant except in very unusual circumstances, usually having to do with the necessity of avoiding conflicts of interest when elected to a political office.

I'd call such financial instruments an invitation to fraud, corruption and a great, great way of getting away with lying to your investors. Especially so when there is no standard law or practice for these instruments.

Others, of course, call them Sharia-compliant.

There's more, concisely stated.

Is Israel an abandoned child?

Shrinkwrapped blog explores whether Israelis have simply lost the will to survive as a nation. A spirited debate follows in the comments.

Shas Endgame: Olmert's Counterattack Part 2

In a major escalation in the political theater, the Olmert team has struck back at Netanyahu. Earlier today, Channel 10 in Israel filed a report that Netanyahu had misused thousands shekels of public money while on a trip to London in 2006. Netanyahu announced he would sue the television station and by this afternoon, he followed through on his promise. This man delivers.

Ha’aretz carries this story, updated regularly:

Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu's lawyer filed a NIS 2 million libel suit Sunday morning against Channel 10 following the network's exposé Friday which revealed that Netanyahu and his wife spent NIS 131,000 on a six-day trip to London during last year's Second Lebanon War.

The lawsuit maintains that Netanyahu was sent to London on a public relations campaign to make Israel's case for the war against Hezbollah, and that he did not indulge in a "pleasure voyage," as the expose had claimed.

According to Netanyahu, his private expenses during the trip, which was funded by the Israel Bonds organization and the Jewish community, were paid out of his own pocket. "Our stay in London didn't cost the State of Israel one shekel and was funded entirely by me, as I paid out of pocket for all my private expenses. What we have here is political persecution and an attempt to prevent the Likud, and me in particular, to achieve leadership of this country, as most of the public wants," Netanyahu said Saturday in response to the Channel 10 report.

He added: "Channel 10's reports are filled with evil fallacies and a systematic slant of data. During my trip in August 2006, I worked 20 hours a day giving interviews, lecturing, meeting journalists, editors, political leaders and Jewish leaders to repel Arab propaganda."

So, Netanyahu has opened the campaign and Olmert knows it. This is clearly part of the Olmert attack. In Israel, the first line of defense or attack on an opponent is to smear him or her in the press. In fact, the Israeli electorate will not take a candidate seriously unless there is some sort of monetary scandal in the works. Olmert has been fighting several such monetary issues ranging from possible conflicts of interest with the privatization of a public bank to questions about the large funds used by the missus in redoing their flat. Sharon successfully kept investigators at bay while his son succumbed to investigators and actually did time.

In this case, however, the political nature of the attack is not even thinly veiled as the Jerusalem Post reports:

Following the Channel 10 report, Kadima MK Yoel Hasson filed a complaint with the Knesset Ethics Committee, and Labor Youth asked Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz to open an investigation against Netanyahu.

The lawsuit filed Sunday further asserted that Netanyahu did not receive any benefits for lectures or speeches he delivered and that any claims regarding breaking an ethics code or donor law were baseless.

Of course, this fact is buried at the end of the article but it is most germane to the unfolding Purim drama of the past several weeks. This is truly a non-story given the tepid repose Chanel 10 has given to the suit. Elsewhere, the article in the Post reports:

Following the filing of the lawsuit, Channel 10's Raviv Drucker backed up the channel's claim, saying it was based on a document it had in its possession and that the allegations could be backed up in court. Speaking to Israel Radio, Drucker reiterated that Netanyahu had received NIS 98,000 on his trip from a single donor, not from several organizations.

Drucker called on Netanyahu to hand over all the documents from his trip and reveal exactly how it was funded.

The lawsuit maintained that Netanyahu was not on a "pleasure trip" but was rather conducting an "intensive and extensive hasbara campaign against Arab propaganda."
It also said that that all expenses for hosting guests at the hotel were credited to his own bill.

Netanyahu said there was neither a secret donor nor a "gap of dozens of thousands of shekels" between his expenses and funds received on the trip, a claim also made by Channel 10.

So, Channel 10 has a document in its possession. A document?! What is this: a Purim play of the McCarthy hearings? Now, I wonder where Channel 10 got that—not.

Yet, it remains the main point of the entire story. The story is, in fact, only important in that Olmert is trying his best to counteract Netanyahu while he tries to maintain his rapidly deteriorating hold on the government.

Make no mistake; Israelis are not fooled by these reports. The electorate knows what’s up. The election campaign season has begun. Israelis know what security costs and welcome a leader who knows how to look for outside grants to support his efforts. I know that during the Second Lebanon war, while my family was literally taking rounds, it was good to know someone was in London talking about what was really happening in the North. Yep, all Israel is at siege and the once and future prime minister is at the top of the hit list—especially when he goes out in public in London.

Moreover, the MSM in Israel has been in a downward spiral with its altered state of consciousness. Only last week, Channel 1 carried a report that students from the parochial high school where eight boys were gunned down were planning a counter attack on high ranking PA officials. This report was immediately challenged in the Knesset and Shin Bet, the secret service, took up the investigation.

As the Jerusalem Post reports:

While a prominent Israeli-Arab leader said on Saturday that Jewish extremists are plotting his assassination, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said it had completed a probe into media reports of such plans and has found them baseless.
The Shin Bet announcement came hours after Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, told supporters at a rally in Umm el-Fahm that an Arab country had warned him of plans by extreme right-wing Jews to assassinate him.

The Shin Bet statement dismissed a report that was broadcast on Channel 1 last week by diplomatic correspondent Ayala Hasson according to which a group of right-wing Jews had received permission from several rabbis to avenge the terrorist attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on March 6 in Jerusalem in which eight students were killed and nine were wounded.

Several days ago, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter told National Religious Party MK Zevulun Orlev that neither the police nor the Shin Bet had information concerning such a plot.

Security officials explained Saturday that one of the main reasons for issuing the statement was to prevent the defaming of an entire sector in society - the National-Religious camp - as well as Mercaz Harav, whose students were reported to have been involved in the alleged plot.

Orlev said, "Whoever is responsible for propagating this wicked blood libel must do some soul searching, admit his mistake and apologize publicly to both the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva and religious Zionism as a whole."

Orlev is correct. In order to stall the momentum against the peace process—as in enough is enough—the politician’s first attack is through the MSM. In the Endgame, the goal is to break the attack. The usual liberal approach has been to brand the moderate religious front as hot heads and crazies. The accusation on these students was absurd in the first place—these boys are in a program that prepares them to go to the military where the first order of the day is “wait”.

Ha’aretz ran the story as well but included the following picture to emphasize the point of how representative these boys were.


Meanwhile, Olmert is acting like everything is Jake. This afternoon’s Jerusalem Post carries a story of Olmert meeting Merkel at the airport. You’all provide the caption, ye’ hear?


German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks with PM Olmert.

If global warming gets any worse . . .

... we'll all freeze to death.

The problem with firing Adm. Fallon . . .

... is that it was not done near publicly enough and that Fallon has been allowed to retire with the myth that he resigned rather than got canned. Michael Barone explains Fallon's sins, an account congruent with others. If these accounts are reasonably accurate, as they certainly appear to be, then Fallon should have been fired most unmistakably to the American public.

In September 1990, then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney bounced Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Dugan out of his office so hard he bounced twice when he hit the pavement. Dugan, who finished barely a month in the chief's seat before getting axed, had run off at the mouth to reporters about sensitive operational details of the coming Gulf War.

Dugan, a West Point graduate, talked in considerable detail about classified operational plans, including the use of Saudi bases for American B-52 flights in wartime and training routines for the supersecret F-117A Stealth fighters. In comments deeply distressing to America's allies, Dugan advocated bombing Iraqi cities --including downtown Baghdad--and said, "I don't expect to be concerned" about political constraints.

But Dugan's biggest sin, in Cheney's eyes, was references to Israel's contribution to the U.S. military effort. Dugan said that Israel had supplied the U.S. with its latest high-tech, superaccurate missiles and that based on Jerusalem's advice that Saddam is a "one-man show," the U.S. had devised a plan to decapitate the Iraqi leadership -- beginning with Saddam, his family, his personal guard and his mistress.

Dugan's offense, grave though it was, was one of indiscretion rather than insubordination. Adm. Fallon seems to have taken upon himself defining national policy. As Barone writes,

In my view, George W. Bush has been unduly tolerant of the efforts of civilian career professionals to undercut his policies. But Fallon's abrupt resignation suggests that he and-or Gates decided that things had gone too far when a commanding military officer was lionized for opposing the president's policies in the pages of Esquire.

They had already gone too far, and Fallon's firing was already overdue.

The iCoffin?

Brian Gallutia wonders what Steve Jobs' coffin will look like, when that day comes.

Shas Endgame Continues

OOOH—Condi’s not happy. Tonight, Debka.com is reporting that Condi and her henchmen are not happy that Barak did not show up to their pre-Purim costume ball.

DEBKAfile’s Washington and Israeli sources report that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the three US generals, who act as US envoys for the Israel-Palestinian peace track have accused Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak of sabotaging Rice’s Middle East policy objectives. This accusation was first raised by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In protest against what he considered these officials’ anti-Israel positions, Barak absented himself from a meeting Friday, March 14, in Jerusalem with US Gen. William Fraser and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad. Instead, he sent Amos Gilead, senior political adviser at the defense ministry.

Gilead said that the minister was not scheduled to attend, but our sources confirm that at previous encounters of this sort Barak represented Israel in person.
The defense minister complained that Gen. Keith Dayton, one of the three US envoys, leveled harsh criticism against him personally and Israel’s defense community in general at a gathering of US consular staff serving in Israel.

According to our sources, Dayton faulted Israel on three points:

1. Israel, he said, was not giving Palestinian security and intelligence organs a chance to act in an orderly and continuous manner in the A areas of the West Bank under their control. This prevented the Palestinian Authority from exercising its authority over West Bank towns and rooting out terrorist structures, while strengthening Hamas elements and helping them build strongholds that would undermine Abbas.

2. Systematic Israel military operations in West Bank towns are driving wanted terrorists, criminal gangs and lawbreakers into Israel-controlled B and C areas in search of asylum. Gen. Dayton insinuated that the current anarchy in the West Bank was down to Israel, which he blamed for the inability of Abbas and Fayad to take charge of the territory.

3. The American general told the US diplomats that Ehud Barak and his defense establishment had spurned repeated American requests for a set of new security measures to be introduced on the West Bank as peace negotiations went forward.
A diplomatic source present at the meeting was convinced that Gen. Dayton’s severe remarks were backed by the secretary of state.

Wow. The General is not happy. Condi is not happy. On the other hand, Barak certainly expected that the State Department would turn up the heat on what they perceive to be the weak link.

Barak is reported by DEBKAfile’s military sources to have angrily rejected the US general’s charges and remarked such complaints should have been properly addressed to him, not laid before officials not directly involved in the Israel-Palestinian dialogue, some of whom are openly hostile to Israel. Those military sources also noted that Gen. Dayton had still not accomplished his mission to establish an effective Palestinian anti-terror force for the Ramallah government. That appears to be at the bottom of the controversy.

What is really at the bottom of the controversy is that Condi and her constituents reacted predictably to the sequence of events that unfolded last week. With Olmert in a bind, and his government faltering, it is predictable the pressure would be applied on Barak rather than Netanyahu or any other player in the unfolding drama. Unless the US reverses its current course of pressure tactics on a long standing ally in the war on terror, instead of typically supporting puppet dictators and thinly disguised terrorists, Olmert’s chances of survival are slim. Israelis are tired of continually taking another round. Barak, like Netanyahu, is listening to his constituency, which does not include Ms. Rice and Crew.

How the stock market works

Once upon a time in a jungle village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 ! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys. Then they never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

From the Braden Files.

This winter colder than most

Since the US started keeping national records in 1895, only 53 winters have been colder in the United States than this winter, meaning most winters have been warmer. The NOAA reports that not only is this winter the nation's coldest since 2001, the same is true for the whole globe.

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

A complete analysis is available online.

U.S. Winter Temperature Highlights

• In the contiguous United States, the average winter temperature was 33.2°F (0.6°C), which was 0.2°F (0.1°C) above the 20th century average – yet still ranks as the coolest since 2001. It was the 54th coolest winter since national records began in 1895.

There is growing awareness that the computational methodology used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed.

The IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 predicting global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if not mitigated, yet failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. A number of weaknesses in the measurements include the fact temperatures aren't recorded from large areas of the Earth's surface and many weather stations once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures resulting in an urban-heat-island effect.

Even using accurate temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics.

In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.

More than 400 scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the IPCC, have gone public with their skepticism that man-made global warming imperils the planet.

The Shas Endgame--Defections in the Ranks

Yesterday, Foreign Minister Livni spoke at Harvard and, in response to international pressure, announced that her government would not be permitting the proposed construction in Pisgat Zeev. There was not a peep from the prime minister’s office nor did Shas have anything to say. This is not the first time that domestic policy has been announced overseas by an Israeli dignitary; however, the fact that there was no other response for or against within Israel suggested that it was another one of Olmert’s lackeys firing wildly to please the crowd.

In Israel, sometimes the silence is more telling than the polemics. In a society where most adults have served in the military in one form or another, people will gripe about their high command but follow orders nevertheless. Every commander knows that a certain amount of grumbling is in order. The warning bell goes off when the grumbling stops, absenteeism increases, or vassals start acting independently. Since the report of Livni’s speech, all three signs appeared in three significant areas to suggest that the Shas-Pisgat Zeev endgame has begun: Netanyahu’s return, Barak’s absence, and the declining dollar against the shekel.

Currently, Netanyahu carries the most power in Israeli government. Although he is not a favorite (“bah, he’s just another politician”, my friend Udi Cohen tells me), the general feeling here is that when (not if) Kadima falls, Netanyahu will return. Among his many faults, Netanyahu wants to change the fundamental economic foundation of the country, pushing for more open market processes and away from the out of control free ride mindset of the collectivist mentality.

No stranger to the political process, however, Netanyahu did not take a position within Olmert’s unity government. Rather, he positioned himself outside Kadima as the leader of the opposition. Except for an explosive address to the Knesset in January with the release of the Winograd Report on the government’s deplorable management of the second Lebanon war, he has been very silent.

Ha’aretz explains:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert briefed opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu on the security situation for the first time in a few months on Thursday, at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.

Relations between the two men have deteriorated since a scathing speech Netanyahu delivered to the Knesset following the Winograd Report's publication in January and reached new heights last week amid mutual recriminations in a meeting at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Both sides described Thursday's meeting as businesslike and cordial and said that all security and diplomatic issues were discussed.

However, the JPost reports on the rest of Netanyahu’s day:

Also on Thursday, Netanyahu briefed 20 foreign ambassadors at Tel Aviv's Carlton hotel and told them that the situation in the western Negev was intolerable and that he could fix it. He criticized Olmert for telling Ashkelon residents to get used to living under rocket fire.

"A prime minister who says the public has to get used to rocket attacks must be replaced by a prime minister who can bring about quiet and serenity," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu also told the envoys that the negotiations with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas could cause harm, because if he returned to his people empty-handed it would cause him grave political damage.

He said that all of Jerusalem must remain in Israeli hands, to prevent it from falling to Hamas and to keep it safe for people from around the world.

So, there it is. Netanyahu holds his own press conference for foreign governments in which he says it is time to act against Hamas, this is not the political climate in which to negotiate with the PA, and if Olmert’s government will not help the Shas party rank and file continue to build new housing, his government will. Oh yes, there is no dividing Jerusalem.

The campaign has begun and the deal making begins. As every Israeli knows, unless the US annexes Israel before Bush leaves office, following the Clinton Road Map goes to nowhere. Israelis want safety for their children, they want a strong defense, and they want leaders who know that to look through binoculars you first have to take off the lens cap.

It is interesting, therefore, that the Jerusalem Post this morning reports on the first meeting of the current US Envoy:

Israeli and Palestinian representatives sat down Friday at Jerusalem's King David Hotel for their first meeting with a US general appointed to monitor their moves toward peace.

The US representative, Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, must confront an upsurge in violence between the sides and the fact that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have fulfilled their obligations under the peace plan promoted by US President George W. Bush.

The Palestinian Authority sent its prime minister, Salaam Fayad, while the Israelis sent a lower-level representative, Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad. PA officials privately expressed displeasure that Defense Minister Ehud Barak would not be attending the meeting himself.

The PA officials are correct to express displeasure—Barak is not going to play their game. Barak has been burned once by this con game; however, his political future rests entirely on his not being fooled again, and giving back large parts of Jerusalem is not part of that process. Barak is now the Defense Minister having been in exile during the second Lebanon war. He returned to power when he replaced Pathetic Peretz as Labor Party leader.

Although he was named in the Winograd Report as part of the miasma for his handling of the 2000 Lebanon bug-out, Barak has redeemed himself in recent months taking a hard-line on Israeli defense and determined to reinstate Israel’s deterrence. He has repeatedly taken a stance of non-agreement (for lack of a better term) with both Livni and Olmert especially siding with Gabi Ashkenazi, the man in charge of the IDF. In the last several weeks, he has the “yes we will” to the Olmert-Livni chorus of “no we won’t” to the new hit rap song, Hammer Hamas Hard. Like Netanyahu, he has been saying a better job can be done to make things safer and sitting down to twaddle with people who seek to buy time as well as guns is pointless.

Finally, there is the issue of what makes the world go round—money. Much of Israel’s economy is tied into the dollar. Rents are determined in dollars; wages are determined in dollars; and most commodity goods are bought with dollars. The dollar brings US Jews to Israel, especially their high school and college age children who then spend a year studying in religious schools like the school shot up last week. As a result, when the dollar began to fall against the shekel last January, a large sector of the Israeli economy was slammed. Add to this a series of unthinkable government expenditures and it is easy to see that the financial status of most Israelis are significantly less than they were three years ago, before the Gaza Disengagement. Over and above the increasing Israeli consumer price index (CPI), wages declined and rents spiraled as the exchange rate with the US Dollar went south.

Yesterday, the Bank of Israel acted on its own. As Ha’aretz reports:

The central bank surprised financial markets Thursday by intervening in foreign currency trade for the first time since 1997.

In response to the dollar's three percent fall against the shekel from a representative rate of NIS 3.48 on Wednesday to NIS 3.35 Thursday afternoon the Bank of Israel bought dollars in a move slated to strengthen the dollar against the shekel, despite the American currency's plunge on global markets.

The currency market is readying for another day of trading in dollars, while sources in the market expressed concerns that the move by Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer will not succeed in blocking the further drop in the dollar exchange rate. The move came as a shock because Fischer and Bank of Israel foreign currency department head Barry Topf had previously said it was unlikely that the bank would intervene in the currency market.

The Bank of Israel stubbornly refused Thursday to say how many dollars it had purchased. Its announcement said that "in light of the exceptional behavior of the shekel exchange rate in recent days, the Bank of Israel has purchased foreign currency during trading."

The bank also refused to say whether it would continue to intervene in coming days.

After the central bank started buying dollars and news of the move leaked to market players, the dollar rebounded against the shekel by over a percent, to reach NIS 3.43.

The intervention caught the Finance Ministry by complete surprise. Finance Minister Roni Bar-On and other senior officials refused to comment Thursday.

The fact that Olmert’s government was not in on this deal at this point in the game is quite telling. While none of the parties are talking, the fact that the Bank of Israel appears to have acted independently in a continuing financial crisis that is slowly choking key financial markets, especially consumers, is quite damning. Make no mistake; the financial issues facing Israeli society are just as serious as Kassams, Katyushas, and explosive belts. It will take nothing short of revolution to change the socialist predilection for high taxes, anti middle class, and large entitlement programs that survive the Collectivist Culture mythology.

More than anything else, Israelis want the sort of consumer economy found in the US. The sheer amount of creativity lost from Israel each year in terms of academic and business zeal to foreign cultures where such human capital has real currency is just staggering. Israelis are astoundingly hard workers and very creative; yet, the antediluvian structure of Israel’s economy is a drogue rather than a push.

Herein lies the real threat of Netanyahu to the old guard. While he, as is Barak, is a true secular son of the Land, he is an unabashed advocate for economic reform as well as a believer in the state of Israel. Like Barak, Netanyahu has already played the Jerusalem give-away game with Clinton and Arafat and, like Barak, has learned exactly how far the PA can be trusted. Like Barak, his political survival lies in not making the same mistake again.

It would appear that this Shabbat, and the days leading up to Purim, the off stage political process of change is underway. Olmert would appear to have three formidable parties with whom to contend—Netanyahu, Barak, and the Bank of Israel. Anyone of them is problematic, two would be risky, but all three are disastrous.

Hamas rockets own infants

Hamas has taken under rocket fire two Palestinian twin infants and their mother.

When a Palestinian woman gave birth to twins in an Israeli hospital she experienced what it is like to be the target of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Gaza resident Iman Shafii became pregant with quadruplets a little more than nine months ago. But two of the unborn babies died in utero. Gazan doctors then advised her that to save the other two she would have to go to Israel to receive proper medical care.

The Shafiis were lucky. Iman was permitted to enter Israel after only 24 hours. She took a taxi to a spot near the Eres border crossing, and then she was pushed in a wheelchair across the last 500 meters of bumpy ground. She reached the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon just in time. She gave birth on Feb. 25, by Caesarean section, to a girl, Bayan, and to the couple's long-awaited son, Faisal. ...

Dr. Shmuel Zangen, the director of the hospital's neonatal unit, doesn't care who he treats. "As a doctor, I enjoy the privilege of not having to think about it," he says. "It certainly is odd that we take care of Palestinian children while they shoot at us. It's the sort of thing that only happens in the Middle East."

Then Iman discovered what it was like to live under the gun of Hamas terror.

On the second day after the birth of Bayan and Faisal, a Soviet-made "Grad" rocket landed on the hospital grounds. "I heard it hit, 200 meters away from me," says Shafii. The neonatal unit was moved to a bunker the next day. "The groups that are firing the rockets are not fighting a just war," says the Palestinian mother, adding that they are not abiding by what the Prophet Muhammad said: that wars may only be waged between soldiers, but not against civilians. ...

[Her husband] Ashraf Shafii describes how young, masked men repeatedly set up their rocket launchers under the cover of houses in Beit Lahia. "They shoot at Israeli civilians, which is completely unacceptable," says Shafii. "And they put us Palestinian civilians in grave danger, because the Israelis shoot back."

Why doesn't he object? "They are armed," says Shafii, "and they shoot at anyone who gets in their way."

Yep, that's why they are called "terrorists."

The next time someone tries to decry Israeli "excesses," tell them the story of Iman Shafii and her twin babies.

France's last WW 1 vet dies

Lazare Ponticelli, France's last veteran of World War I, has died at age 110.

Olmert prepares to be bombed

The recent flap created with the announcement of restarting 1,100 housing units in the greater Jerusalem area will only get worse. The Jerusalem Post reports that, surprise, the permission to continue building was due to influence and political maneuvering by SHAS.

Construction of housing projects in several large settlement blocs will be authorized, while others already have the green light, according to Shas politicians, who took credit Tuesday for having broken a freeze on new West Bank construction.

The news of additional new homes comes amid harsh criticism leveled at Israel for Sunday's cabinet decision to authorize the 750-unit Agan Ha'ayalot project in the Givat Ze'ev settlement, north of Jerusalem, located 5 kilometers over the Green Line.

It also comes ahead of Thursday's visit by US Lt.-Gen. William Fraser, who is charged with monitoring compliance with the road map peace plan that, among other things, calls on Israel to halt settlement activity.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, who is due to arrive in Israel next week, is also expected to react harshly to settlement construction, which Palestinians have said is destroying the possibility of a two-state solution.

The facts on the ground, however, bespeak a different reality. These are religious neighborhoods, more to the right of the families who sent their teenagers to the parochial high school hit last week by violence. The Shas party has been, and remains, the political king-maker of Israeli politics. Without Shas, Olmert has no coalition—if Eli Yishai walks, Shas walks, and the House of Cards will fall, and the government in waiting is no friend to the results of the Annapolis conference of late last year, sponsored by the Bush administration.

So, while the rest of Israel has been wondering what Eli Yishai has been up to (i.e., not bringing down the government as was hoped by all in true free rider style), Shas has been working the system and backing Olmert into a deadly endgame. Olmert needs Shas and Shas needs the housing. With the foresight of headlights on bright in an English fog, Olmert made the deal without contemplating the next move. Now, all of the outsiders are screaming foul and Shas is asking for more.

All things being equal, this would have been a super strategy, and Olmert could have pulled his usual Clintonesque charm to keep all things moving with his classic do-nothingness. However, the storm over the killings at the parochial high school is only growing. There have been reports in the liberal media that students from the seminary were going to carry out a revenge killing but this has been challenged from right wing Knesset members calling for an investigation into the media reports.

More to the point, however, is an interesting story from Ha’aretz from the Shas rank and file as well as other extremist rabbinical figures.

A group of rightist rabbis on Wednesday called on Jews to avenge their enemies 'measure for measure,' a day after news reports circulated of an alleged Yeshiva plot to strike a senior Arab official in retaliation for the terror attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva last week.

In notices posted along Jerusalem's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, near the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the rabbis wrote: "Each and everyone is (sic) required to imagine what the enemy is plotting to do to us, and to match it measure for measure.

The rabbis' announcement calls on Jews "to work to create a proper Jewish leadership," and envisions the day when "Jews will congregate in their cities... and strike those who wish upon them ill," - in reference to a verse from the Book of Esther, which will be read next week on the Purim holiday. The announcement also urges Jews to "go forward with blessed local actions as well."

The overwhelming sentiment among Israelis (especially those who do not answer their phones or agree to telephone opinion polls) is that there is no equivalence for the attack on the religious high school. This is all the more so since the religious denomination that runs this school sends their graduates into the army—the same as any secular program in Israel. If the PA wanted to hit future citizen soldiers, they could have hit any public high school. Parental solidarity for an event here transcends denominational strife. Before this event, every parent with post high school children, boys and girls if you will, cringes at reports of someone’s baby hit at the front. Now, the threat is in the schools, and that is an unacceptable risk. All the more since many of Jerusalem’s finest are appalled at the lack of action of the police officers who arrived at the scene first but did not enter the building while the gunman continued shooting.

Meanwhile, Olmert continues to continue his headless horseman act. Yesterday, he was in Ashkelon meeting with leaders and touring improved bomb shelters. IMRA quotes him as saying that the current (as of noon yesterday) lack of missile barrages was due to the recent IDF victory in Gaza. IMRA reports that rocket fire resumed that night at 8 pm. IMRA quotes the Tall Guy:

At the end of his visit to Ashkelon, Prime Minister Olmert said that he was impressed with the preparations of the residents, the municipality and the various emergency services. Regarding the relative calm in recent days, he said that he regretted that we must be prepared for a situation in which missile fire is resumed. "Hamas suffered a harsh blow during the IDF's recent action in the northern Gaza Strip and the fact that it is not firing now is in wake of the blow that it suffered and not because its members have become lovers of Israel.

The Government will continue in its struggle against Hamas, in accordance with the Cabinet decisions until there is a stop to the terrorism and violence in the Gaza Strip, the missile fire and the strengthening of Hamas," the Prime Minister said.

Moreover, Olmert’s government will do everything in its power to make sure that the citizenry of Ashkelon will have the chance to make use of those emergency services real soon. It would appear that Olmert subscribes to the build them and bomb them theory of architecture and urban planning.

The empirical question is whether the death of eight high school boys will create pressure on Shas, rather than Olmert. The costs for the building are clear with respect to Olmert; but the attack on a religious high school can be deadly for Yishai directly and Olmert indirectly. The reference to Purim in the rabbinical handbills circulated around the moderate religious neighborhoods surrounding the parochial school is a chilling warning.

The Festival of Purim starts next week—people in Jerusalem celebrate Purim a day after the rest of Israel. The entire Book of Esther [yep, the whole Megillah scroll, which is about nine yards long] is read twice on Purim—once at night and once during the day. Every Israeli, religious or secular, knows the story—how the wicked prime minister gathered with his cronies and rolled the dice to determine the day on which their minions would descend upon all Jews to destroy them. However, their plot is discovered and Esther reports it to the king, who gives permission to the Jews to prevent this plot and take counter measures. Every time the prime minister’s name is read, the audience boo’s, hisses, and swirls groggers to drown out the sound of his name.

But the climatic moment of the Megillah, according Talmudic commentary, and why it is named after Esther, is when Mordecai, her uncle, teacher, and husband, informs Esther of the plot and the necessity of her going to the King. She balks telling Mordecai that she can only see the king when he calls her—to do otherwise would result in her certain death. Mordecai then responds that this is your moment. Do not think you will be safe from this death in your castle. God will find another way to save the Jews, even if you do not go. So, Esther agrees to go, knowing that she could be killed for insubordination but that for sure her personal relationship with her husband will cease.

Against this backdrop, the political situation is even more shaky than usual for Israeli politics. The name Shas is an abbreviation for the Six Orders of the Talmud. The premise of the religious party is to be a conduit through which Jewish cultural and religious values are brought into the secular political arena. Manipulating the political system for benefits to the party’s rank and file is one thing; but participating in a system that loses any shred of legitimation is deadly.

More idiocy from the EU

The Jerusalem Post just reported,

The European Union on Monday deplored Israel's plans to build some 400 new homes in the Givat Ze'ev settlement as a threat to peace efforts.

Now, you just have to love these guys. Months of rocket barrages into S'Derot, and now Ashkolon, to say nothing of blatant carnage of teenages in a parochial school, apparently do not have an impact on the peace process. But continuing construction of a religious neighborhood does.

The Post continues,

Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security affairs chief, said the bloc remained committed to supporting the peace process despite recent violence casting a shadow over the peace effort launched at the Annapolis summit.

"The position of the European Union is to continue to do the utmost to move the peace process forward," Solana said after discussing the Middle East with the EU foreign ministers.

But he said "we deplore" Israel's announcement of the construction of new homes in east Jerusalem. "That may put in jeopardy the peace process."

There is no way that anyone can seriously continue to believe in the Road Map to Hell, let alone the Annapolis (let-the-Jews-use-the-service-entrance) Summit, unless they have been ingesting large quantities of hashish or pot. Pipe dreams ain't in it, as Jack Aubrey would say.

The Peace Charade

MSNBC reports that permission has been given to continue construction of 750 units in Pisgat Zeev and 350 units in Givat Zeev. Aside from the coverage of the usual Paleostinian outrage, the image that accompanies the story is a complete hoot.

So, here is MSNBC's shot of new construction in the middle of nowhere that has a strong resemblence to the barren wastes of the West Bank those oh-so-bad-boys are destroying. I don't know which road Peter Dejong was on but this is not where the majority of the housing units are going up. They are being constructed in a neighborhood in Jerusalem, already established, and well within the city limits as defined by the Security Wall.

In fact, Pisgat Zeev is the first area of Jerusalem that one reaches when entering the city from the West Bank via the Ramallah Bypass. To give a better idea of the neighborhood as well as its location, below are two images taken during a recent commute into the city on a Monday Morning about 7 a.m.




In this "Morning Commute" image, the traffic winds its way next to the wall to the gate with Pisgat Zeev in the background. Not exactly in the middle of the empty wastes.






The second image, Blessed are the ones who come, shows the entrance to the city looking outside in with Pisgat Zeev in the background. The yellow sign, announces WELCOME, Baruchim HaBa'aim--literally, Blessed are the Ones Who Come--with the rules of entry--the most prominent is to roll down your window so security can look inside. Outrageous. The shooter came from inside the city--a cold reminder about the camel's nose in the tent. Israelis are just disgusted at the entire peace charade.

Online backups

Glenn Reynolds asks,

ADVICE ON backing up data for non-techies. It's not that hard, and -- trust me -- you can never have too many backups. One thing the discussion leaves out is the prospect of online backups like Carbonite, etc. I hear them advertised on the radio, but I've never tried 'em. Anybody out there have any experience with backups -- and restores -- using those services?

The linked essay describes some backup tips that don't include online backups. Hence, Glenn's question.

I do back up online. Glenn mentions Carbonite, which I tried (there is a free trial period, IIRC), but did not stick with. I use iDrive. iDrive offers 2 gigs free, which is not near enough to back up photos or home videos. Having once suffered a total hard drive failure - and losing two years worth of family photos - having the capacity to back them up online was essential for me. Fortunately, iDrive offers up to 150 gigs for $4.95 per month, which is a pittance for the capacity. (The site says "Unlimited storage space," the fine print of the agreement states it is actually 150 GB.)

You have to download their proprietary software, then use it to run the backup. The first backup will be dreadfully, painfully slow. I'm talking literally days here, and I am backing up only about 80 GB rather than the full 150 allowance. The software encrypts your files before uploading them. It took almost a week to accomplish the first upload. (I have cable broadband, btw.) You designate which folders you want backed up (for example, "My documents") and away you go. You can also select individual folders by right clicking.

After the first, full backup, I set the software for continuous backup, so iDrive automatically mirrors changes I make in near real time. You can also set it to backup changes periodically or do another full backup every so often.

There is the standard logon/password combo to log onto the site to change settings and user data. To perform a restore you have to set a different password for which there is no site-supplied hint if you forget. So don't forget it.

Accessing your remote file set is done through a Windows-like interface, so it is easy to use. You can also set it to email you every day with a status report.

I have not done a restore, even as a test, so I can't report on that. I will say that the first, full backup was frustratingly slow. But iDrive's instructions did say it would be (so did Carbonite's) so you just have to grit your teeth and bear it. All online backups are like that, though. After that, the backups are quick and transparent. Billing is, of course, automatic.

The only advantage of online backups is that it secure your file set so remotely from your computer that they cannot be destroyed in a common disaster. If you back up to a hard drive on your desk, one tornado or a fire can wipe you out.

Alternatively, if you want to backup your home files on your office computer, I recommend Foldershare.com, a free service altogether. I use it all the time. It forms an Internet network of two or more computers you designate and automatically syncs files between them in real time. I started using the service so I would not have to lug media between home and office. Now all my work-related files are auto-synced among my home desktop, my notebook and office machine. That is a form of backup all its own, although I do not include any personal files.

Foldershare has no inherent storage capacity, unlike iDrive; all the storage is done on computers you already use. But if your office is far enough away from your home to be safe from common calamity, then it would do very well for data files. It won't restore program installations, though, and it does not encrypt files for transmission over the Internet.

Good sense from George McGovern

Glenn reports it.

Antiquated equations and climate change

The QandO Blog reports on the findings of former global-warming enthusiast Miklós Zágoni, a physicist and environmental researcher. It turns out that the mathematics used by global warming alarmists assume that the earth's atmosphere is infinite. But it isn't, of course.

They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.

Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution — originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today — ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

Concludes QandO,

So - peer reviewed, supported by other research, much better matches and explains historical records - but bucks the present scientific "consensus" driving the politics today.

Bottom line: It will most likely be ignored.

Yep.

"new methods of rot"

That's what German funeral directors and cemetery managers are looking for. It seems that corpses in Germany are refusing to decompose, a problem because Germans re-use cemetery plots every 15 years or so. So a whole new industry has arisen that aims to make sure Grospoppa Ludwig properly turns to dust. "A Rotten Way to Go?" in Spiegel Online.

World ends, etc.

Continuing my TEOLAWKI (The End Of Life As We Know It) series, it seems the earth is again right smack dab in the middle of the line of fire:

The Earth may be in the firing line when one of the sky's most beautiful objects explodes, a Sydney astronomy expert claims.

University of Sydney astronomer Peter Tuthill discovered the elegant rotating pinwheel system, named WR104, eight years ago in the constellation Sagittarius.

It includes a highly unstable star known as a Wolf-Rayet, widely regarded by astronomers as ticking bombs – the last stop in a star’s life before a cataclysmic supernova explosion.

“When it finally explodes as a supernova, it could emit an intense beam of gamma rays coming our way”, says Dr Tuthill, whose work is published in the latest edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Well ain't that a swift kick in the rear? First there was the supernova and galaxy-attack scenarios. Then the predicted return of the comet Genondahwayanung, which pretty much annihilated most life in North America when it came here the first time. And then the massive gas cloud speeding toward a collision with the Milky Way! Then we learn that the earth's atmosphere may detonate. And then the asteroids. Then the black hole death stars! Then we'll be swallowed whole by the sun. I tell ya, I'm starting to think that sooner or later, every one of us is going to wind up dead.

Nokia nanotechnology look-ahead

What nanotechnology might hold for cell phones, according to Nokia. Not a short movie, but highly thought provoking.



Hat tip: Accelerating Future.

Sun setting on al Qaeda

The Financial Times, perhaps the most respected news journal in the English-speaking world, summarizes why al Qaeda is rapidly losing the hearts and minds of Arabs. Registration is required at the FT site, but AJStrata has an excellent summary. Quoting the FT piece:

In fact, in large measure because of what is unfolding in Iraq, the tide within the Islamic world is beginning to run strongly against al-Qaeda - and this, in turn, may be the single most important ideological development in recent years.

In November 2007 Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (”Dr Fadl”) published his book, Rationalizations on Jihad in Egypt and the World, in serialised form. Mr Sharif, who is Egyptian, argues that the use of violence to overthrow Islamic governments is religiously unlawful and practically harmful. He also recommends the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and its ideological leader, and calls the attacks on September 11 2001 a “catastrophe for all Muslims”. ...

Another important event occurred in October 2007, when Sheikh Abd Al-’Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. ...

A month earlier Sheikh Salman alAwdah, an influential Saudi cleric whom Mr bin Laden once lionised, wrote an “open letter” condemning Mr bin Laden. “Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al-Qaeda?” Sheikh Awdah wrote. “The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . cannot make Muslims happy.”

I pointed out in 2003 that Al Qaeda’s primary war is against other Muslims.

"the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones"

And the oil age will not end due to lack of oil. "The World Has Plenty of Oil."

The world is not running out of oil anytime soon. A gradual transitioning on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century. The root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior alternatives. The overused observation that "the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones" may in fact find its match.

The solutions to global energy needs require an intelligent integration of environmental, geopolitical and technical perspectives each with its own subsets of complexity. On one of these -- the oil supply component -- the news is positive. Sufficient liquid crude supplies do exist to sustain production rates at or near 100 million barrels per day almost to the end of this century.

As I have said before, there are excellent reasons to wean ourselves away from oil, but that we are running out of oil is not one of them.

Plug-in cars? Not so fast.

I wrote about the potential benefits of plug-in electric cars in, "The coming 500 mpg car." Whiloe the math still works, hybrid economics poses some tough nuts to crack, which some researchewrs at UC Berkeley tried to address for California.

Included among them: How many plug-in hybrids could California's current electrical grid support before new power plants are required to supply the necessary electricity? And how high do gas prices have to be, or how low do hybrid battery costs have to fall, before fuel savings balance out the additional costs associated with plug-in hybrids?

The bottom line is, well, the bottom line: "the price of plug-in batteries will need to fall by almost a 'factor of two' before switching to the cars is a prudent consumer decision."

21 accents

Two and one-half minutes. Very amusing, quite impressive.



HT: American Digest.

I toldja so...

Part the first:

Three weeks ago I wrote:

What is the difference between weather and climate?

If a meteorological phenomenon can be used to support your political bias, it's climate, as in "climate change," which is always bad, no matter what the change is.

Then I referenced that the world is getting colder quickly. "The total amount of cooling ... [in the last 12 months is] large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years."

So what does the NYT think about the dramatic cooling, which is the greatest temperature change over such a short tiem ever recorded? This way:

According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.

I refer you back to the top of this post.

Part the second:

In, "The Sederot Gambit" (I spent a day in Sederot last October), I wrote

What Israel has been doing is conducting "targeted assassinations" of senior Hamas leaders and of those involved in the manufacture and deployment of the rockets. The strikes have mainly been done by guided missiles fired from attack helicopters. But of course, the West condemns those strikes, apparently for no other reason that sometimes, despite Israel's pains to be precise, other Gazans are killed or wounded. That and the now-reflexive response that "it's Israel's fault" no matter what happens.

Well, ta-da!

(IsraelNN.com) United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned Israel in an emergency session of the Security Council on Saturday night. “While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children," he said. Hamas claims that dozens of civilians were killed in IDF operations in Gaza on Saturday, while IDF officials argue that most of those killed were armed Hamas terrorists.

I urge you to read "Sleepless in Sderot," by Laura Bialis, who is trying to work in Sederot. Excerpt:

I look at the press from the West and get very angry. Its mostly about their injuries. Another article about Palestinian protests about our attacks. This is ridiculous. If there were no rockets raining on us the IDF wouldn’t have anything to do there. I don’t like the way we are portrayed. We don’t want this war. They are dragging us in. What can we do? There are rockets raining on us daily. But in the media we look like the aggressors. It feels so unfair to be sitting here and reading that. My entire perspective has changed. I used to think that Israel needed to take care of how it looked to the western world — that we can’t look like monsters. Now I know it doesn’t matter. They will paint us however they want. I just can’t read the news anymore, it makes me too angry. We need to move forward with our lives, protect ourselves. The government has a responsibility to protect its people. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

There is a profoundly ignorant understanding among Israel's critics of what "proportionate" means in Just War Theory. It has never meant a tit for tat response. The principle of proportionality says that the means used to achieve the objective should not be greater in violence or extent that necessary to achieve the objective. This assumes that the end sought is a just end to begin with, of course. Since even the UN SecGen admits that Israel has a right to defend itself from the rocket attacks, it must be seen that any action by Israel which stops the attacks is definitionally proportionate, provided that lesser measures either were unsuccessful or have no reasonable prospect of success. Proportionality does not means that Israel is morally or legally bound to increase incrementally its attempts to stop the rockets. Indeed, Israel is morally obligated to protect its citizens by using immediately the measures, including overhwelming force if necessary, that achieves the just end of stopping the rocket attacks.

It is in fact unjust for a nation to wage war ineffectively when its cause is just.

See also:

"Proportionality: Tit-for-Tat or Demonstration of Values?" by Catholic cleric and Army Guard Lt. Col. John Krenson.

Just War blog, "The Just Cause."

Quote of the day

Seems especially apt for this political season:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. - George Orwell

Let those who have ears to hear ... .

A soldier's counter-parable

ABC News reports,

After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday. ...

Leyde couldn't believe it when he scratched a winning ticket, but he still plans to return to Iraq.

"It was a commitment I made about three months ago. I'm going to stick to it," Leyde said about his decision. ...

"For right now, I'm going to hold off [spending] and let reality sink back to earth. This is a true blessing. I'm going to turn it around and see if I can bless other people with this," Leyde said.

Now consider this parable that Jesus told:

“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

The farmer’s deficiency was not that he was wealthy. It was that he was self-centered, not God-centered. His every thought or word included the personal pronoun, “I.” Blessed with plenty, he was filled with worry: “What shall I do?” It would have been nice to hear a prayer of gratitude for his harvest, but there was none. He did not seek the Lord’s guidance in managing his affairs. He impulsively decided to tear down his old barns and build new ones. The farmer kept everything and decided to entertain himself with his abundance. His wealth was God’s gift to him, but the farmer only wanted to amuse himself with God’s gifts.

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

What does the LORD your God ask of you but to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul?

He has showed you what is good and what he requires: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

This is what the LORD says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will be revealed.”

Be not puffed up with desires that are not upright—the righteous will live by faith. The entire law is summed up in one command, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

I have no idea what religion Sgt. Leyde follows, or whether indeed he follows any at all. But he understands what so few seem to: that the primary question of wealth is not how to manage it, but why does one have it in the first place.

How low can you go . . .

... and live to tell the tale?



The runway at St. Maarten's Princess Juliana International Airport is renowned for perpendicularly adjoining (almost touching) the Maho beach. All airliners landing there must come in very low across the beach to land. But this heavy was much lower than normal even for that beach.

This, OTOH, is a normal landing.



Come to think of it, there's not that much difference!

The runway, btw, is 2,180 meters (1.3 miles) long. I'm guessing that because of the Caribbean clime, the density-altitude is somewhat higher than its sea-level true altitude would suggest. And any pilot will tell you few things are more useless than runway behind you, so may as well use all you can.

Afraid of snakes?

It's genetic, science shows.

Julia Dixon, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, thinks snakes have a bad rap, and said her agency spends time defending snakes. ...

Dixon said the easiest way to identify dangerous snakes in Virginia is to look into their eyes.

Ya know, by the time a snake gets close enough for me to look into its eyes, I'll be far, far away.

Even the book of Genesis (v. 3.15) recognizes that human beings can't stand snakes.

Georgia's water grab

Tennessee has water. Lots of it. Georgia wants it. A lot of it. From the Tennessee River, only a mile north of the border between the states. Georgia is setting legal steps into motion to claim that the border's survey in the early 1800s was in error and that the river at one stretch properly belongs inside Georgia.

Why? What's at stake? Bill Hobbs succinctly explains why Tennessee had better start taking this issue very seriously.

Army recruiting exceeds goals again

From Army Echoes, an offical newsletter by the Dept. of the Army for retirees. I got mine today. Click on image for larger version.


That last datum is pretty interesting.