A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Global Warming, Inc. - Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry--the global warming business. And like the energy barons of an earlier age, Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being named last week as a new partner at the famously successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. (READ MORE)
For Democrats, Iowa Still Up for Grabs - The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq... (READ MORE)
Bush Calls for More Community Service - In a speech at the historic Berkeley Plantation, where 38 English settlers held what many consider to be the nation's first Thanksgiving in 1619, President Bush on Monday saluted the military and the nation's "good Samaritans" and called on Americans to perform more ... (READ MORE)
Iraqis Joining Insurgency Less for Cause Than Cash - MOSUL, Iraq -- Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said he didn't join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a Muslim caliphate. He signed up for the cash. (READ MORE)
U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic - The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement. (READ MORE)
Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves - Iraqis are beginning to reclaim their lost lives five months after extra U.S. troops arrived, but the depth of the changes remains open to question. (READ MORE)
Suicide Attack in Afghanistan Kills 7 but Spares Governor - KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 19 — A provincial governor in southwestern Afghanistan narrowly escaped a suicide attack on Monday, but his 25-year-old son and five of his bodyguards were killed in the blast. A civilian bystander was also killed, and 14 others were wounded, the police said. (READ MORE)
Khmer Rouge Figure Appears in Open Court - More than 28 years after the killing stopped, the first Khmer Rouge defendant stepped into a public courtroom today to answer for the deaths of 1.7 million people. A tiny, self-effacing man who once commanded an efficient and ruthless torture house, the defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, 66, known as Duch, was seeking bail on charges of crimes against humanity. (READ MORE)
As Somali Crisis Swells, Experts See a Void in Aid - The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt, several top United Nations officials said. A year ago, the road between the market town of Afgooye and the capital of Mogadishu was just another typical Somali byway, lined with overgrown cactuses and the occasional bullet-riddled building. Now it is a corridor teeming with misery, with 200,000 recently displaced people crammed into swelling camps that are rapidly running out of food. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Eighty Deuce On The Loose In Iraq: My Baghdaddy vacation... - I sit down on a metal chair, complete with bent legs and a missing back piece, curtosey of the lack of care and extra weight of men lumbering down upon it with 60+ lbs. of gear affixed to their bodies. This chair will be my throne in this tiny castle, or should I say tomb, for the next 4 hours. I look over and see my grenadier who seems so comforable in the remnants of an officer chair stacked upon layers of sandbags, just high enough to be able to see over the machine gun and out the window of our fortified guard tower. This is going to be a long 4 hours. An hour is long in these towers, 4 hours feels like an eternity sometimes. (READ MORE)
IraqPundit: You Don't Say - Guess who wrote this today: "The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real." Gee, I thought we were victims of some propaganda. That's right, the NYT had no choice but to report: "As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish." (READ MORE)
Sgt Hook: Fallen Guardian - “Private First Class James!” the first sergeant called, standing in front of the formation. “PFC Horace James!” he repeated after not getting a reply. “Horace A. James!” he said a third time, again with no reply. “READY, AIM, FIRE,” ordered the color sergeant. His individual commands were answered with sharp, well practiced movements executed in unison by each of three riflemen in the honor guard formed up a safe distance from the hundreds of attendees; snapping their M16 rifles to the ready position, simultaneously aiming into the sky, then pulling the trigger, firing seemingly a single round with a loud retort. “READY, AIM, FIRE,” they reverently repeated two more times before silently returning their weapons to the position of present arms, standing steadfast at the position of attention. While the echo of the final volley of gunfire hung in the air, a lone bugler, standing off in the distant, solemnly played Taps on his well worn brass instrument. (READ MORE)
Yellowhammering Afghanistan: Pic-ing favorites - I have taken hundreds, perhaps thousands of pictures since I've been in Afghanistan. Most of them have made their way onto blog posts and in the two slideshows I've put together. While I did take photography classes in college, my skills are not such that any of the truly great photographers at The Birmingham News should fear for their jobs. But during the recent distribution of food and clothing to the Afghan Hazara refugees, I took a picture that I personally feel is my best. It may not have the technical makings of a great photo, but I have decided it is my personal favorite. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Bret Stephens: The Annapolis Fiasco - Henry Kissinger once observed that "when enough prestige has been invested in a policy it is easier to see it fail than abandon it." At the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., next week, the current secretary of state will illustrate her predecessor's point. "Annapolis," as it is spoken of in diplomatic circles, was conceived earlier this year by the Bush administration as a landmark conference that would revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and lead to a final settlement by January 2009. (READ MORE)
Richard B. Woodward: Cheap Technology, Shoddy Morals - "Peeping Tom," the chilly 1959 movie by Michael Powell, concerns a young psychopath who uses a 16mm movie camera to film his victims while he is killing them. The close-ups of terror that cross the faces of the women as he impales them on a spike attached to his tripod are for him a source of curiosity and pleasure. Widely reviled on its release--and credited with destroying the commercial career of Powell, a venerable English director ("The Red Shoes")--the work was rediscovered by Martin Scorsese and other cinéastes in the 1970s. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: Will Apple Pie Be Next? - If you want to gain greater insight into the mindset of much of Hillary Clinton's base -- the type of people she caters to, and will continue to cater to if she is elected -- you should familiarize yourselves with a couple of recent news stories involving the Boy Scouts and our troops. In Philadelphia, the glorious city where our unique experiment in constitutional governance began, the city solicitor issued the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scouts Council a dire ultimatum. Unless it renounces its policy excluding homosexuals by Dec. 3, it will forfeit the right to rent from the city a building it has rented for $1 a year since 1928. (READ MORE)
Dennis Prager: America, Here Are Your Democratic Presidential Candidates - If you want to know what the Democratic presidential candidates and the Democratic Party believe, the debates, often derided as intellectually inconsequential, reveal a great deal. The problem is that news media almost never report the most important statements the candidates make. Here then are some of those statements from the most recent debate, followed by a comment on their significance. Joseph Biden on how he'd handle Russia: "Who among us is going to pick up the phone and immediately interface with Putin and tell him to lay off Georgia because [Georgian President] Saakashvili is in real trouble?" (READ MORE)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Staticidal Zealotry - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is behaving like a zealot. In her ever-more-rash pursuit of a Palestinian state, she is exhibiting the syndrome defined by the philosopher George Santana, as one who redoubles her efforts upon losing sight of the objective. Let’s recall: The objective laid out by President Bush, when he decided in June 2002 to support the creation of a homeland for the Palestinian people, was to provide a stable, secure neighbor for Israel, committed to leaving peaceably with the Jewish State. (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: Income Confusion: Part II - When most of us look at income statistics, we are not just being numbers junkies. We want to find out something about actual flesh-and-blood human beings -- specifically what their standard of living is like. But you cannot always just take statistics at face value -- or, worse yet, with the spin that politicians and the media put on them. Income, for example, is not the same as earnings, and neither is the same as the economic resources on which people's standard of living is based. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: Democracy vs. Security - Which is more critical to the United States in the Islamic world -- that a government be democratic, or that it be a friend and ally in the war against al-Qaida and Islamic extremism? In the Bush era, the answer has seemed unequivocal. We are for democracy first. For democracy is the best guarantee of our security interests. As Condi Rice famously said in 2005 at Cairo University: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." (READ MORE)
Daniel Pipes: Lee Harvey Oswald's Malign Legacy - What's wrong with American liberalism? What happened to the self-assured, optimistic, and practical Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy? Why has Joe Lieberman, their closest contemporary incarnation, been run out of the party? How did anti-Americanism infect schools, the media, and Hollywood? And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented? In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers an historical explanation both novel and convincing. (READ MORE)
Richard H. Collins: Are the Democrats Up To Snuff? - Following last week’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas the media buzz was: Hillary Clinton is back. In contrast to the previous debate, Hillary largely avoided sounding evasive and getting tripped up by the attacks of her rivals. Instead, she seemed to go on the offensive and challenge them. This, and the raucous crowd’s seeming disapproval of any direct attacks on Hillary, kept Barack Obama and John Edwards on their heels most of the night. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Tagg Romney: Press Should Find Who Made Anti-Mormon Calls - Mitt Romney’s son and senior campaign advisor, Tagg, said the press should find out who is behind the anti-Mormon calls that were made in Iowa and New Hampshire in a phone interview Monday morning. When asked if the Romney campaign would make a push to find out who made the calls Tagg said: “We’re going to let the press do that. If there was something we could do, we would. The Attorney General in New Hampshire is going to look into it, so we’re going to let them pursue it.” (READ MORE)
Phyllis Schlafly: No Need to Tinker with the Constitution - Let's face it. Some people, especially liberals, just don't like the U.S. Constitution. Every few years, they come up with wild or devious plans to make major changes. The would-be rewriters of the Constitution do not merely propose amendments to remedy a problem, as allowed for in Article V. They seek structural change after hurling put-downs such as archaic and out-of-date. The latest to imagine that he can write a 21st century improvement on our great Constitution is University of Virginia professor Larry J. Sabato, whom the Washington Post once dubbed "the Mark McGwire of political analysts." (READ MORE)
Wolf Pangloss: News from the End of the World - The end of the world would be the Himalayan nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and perhaps India and Bangladesh. The US is planning to train and supply paramilitary forces in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Frontier Corps, in order to better counter the growing Al Qaeda insurgency in Pakistan. “It also marks a shift in favor of a locally recruited paramilitary force that many have considered unreliable because it is drawn from Pashtun tribes sympathetic to the Taliban. ‘We believe that, particularly in this part of Pakistan, it is more effective to work with a force raised from locals than it is to work with the Pak army,’ Morrell said.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Identity Politics At Its Dumbest - Over at the Huffington Post, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (who's pretty much been resting on the laurels of My Lai for almost literally my entire life) discussed how the United States needs to elect Barack Obama as president if we wish to mend our relations with the Muslim world. (Hat tip: my colleague Steve Crickmore at Blue. By the way, Steve, Hersh did not "break" Abu Ghraib; the US Army broke the story itself. He was just the first to actually report what they said.) I read Steve's piece, then over to HuffPo (after having all my shots) and read the piece. In a nutshell, the fact that Obama's biological father was a Muslim (as was the man his mother married next) will somehow win over those who currently dislike and distrust us. This is so barkingly stupid, it can only have been first published at HuffPo. (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: Republicans and Race - The Jayson Blair Times has an article today by Paul Krugman entitled “Republicans and Race.” I will not be providing the link because nothing positive has ever been gleamed from anything written by any of the race baiting left wing bullies that work at the JBT. Krugman tries to show why Ronald Reagan is a racist, and then concludes his monstrosity of an article by saying that “we should be able to discuss the role of race in American politics honestly.” Forget that Paul Krugman and honesty are contradictory. Let’s have a real honest conversation about race. Oh, and referring to that scourge of a left wing rag as the Jayson Blair Times is not racist. Pinch Sulzberger and Howell Raines promoting this incompetent man over better qualified coworkers because he is black is racist. (READ MORE)
Right Truth: Gender apartheid in Iran - Reader Ross R thought I would be very interested in this Boston Review article by Akbar Ganji on gender apartheid in Iran. He was right. According to Ross, "Ganji, as you may know, is Iran's leading political dissident. He has been given more than a dozen human-rights awards, most recently the 2007 John Humphrey Award (Canada's most prestigious human rights and democracy award). His article doesn’t just list the restrictions Shari’ah law puts on women, but suggests several provocative yet practical means of interpreting the Quran to allow for equal gender rights. Ganji shows modern examples of the interpretation of the Quran being changed such as Ayatollah Khomeini’s denial of the obligatory nature of prayer. The methods Ganji describes may be important to the future path of Iranian democracy." (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: AQI: The Sopranos Of Iraq - As it turns out, those of us who watched The Sopranos may have better insight into al-Qaeda in Iraq than we knew. Major General Rick Lynch, commanding US forces in central Iraq, claims that the sixth season of the show reveals all there is to know about AQI -- that it is nothing more than a crime syndicate, and most of its Iraqi members little more than hired guns. Cutting off the money has helped cripple the terrorist organization (via Memeorandum): (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Pham Xuan An Hussein - Did the Associated Press learn nothing from Vietnam? Pham Xuan An was one of the heroes of the Vietcong (which was the enemy in Vietnam). Pham was the first Vietnamese reporter for an American news organization in that war. And unknown to his employer, Time magazine, Pham was also an officer in the Vietcong army (which again was the enemy in Vietnam). Pham insisted that he never distorted the news. Frank McCullough, the guy at Time who hired him, agreed. (READ MORE)
Bryan Preston: Murtha wants Marines’ defamation suit tossed out - Senility is no defense. “Lawyers for Rep. John P. Murtha will appeal a recent ruling advancing a defamation lawsuit brought against the Pennsylvania Democrat by a U.S. Marine under investigation for killing Iraqi civilians. Justice Department lawyers representing Murtha on Nov. 16 filed notice that they planned to appeal a federal district court judge’s Sept. 28 ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed and ordering Murtha to give sworn testimony in the case.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Day in Court - UPDATED. Bilal Hussein, AP insurgent affairs photographer, is up for his day in court: “The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.” As Malkin notes, the AP that has been demanding legal steps would now prefer to forego them. While the AP insists the bulk of Hussein’s work was inocuous, Michelle’s got the art that wasn’t. News or propaganda? You decide. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: No way to run a war - The only thing worse than fighting a war is losing one. That said, I don’t know that there’s any good ways to fight a war, but there are distinctions to be drawn between “bad” and “worse” ways. This is an absurdly bad way to to do so, it seems to me: “Congress’s failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens of domestic military bases and imperil the livelihoods of tens of thousands of defense workers.” (READ MORE)
Rhymes with Right: Kennedy Calls For Rape Of Justice At Supreme Court - Senator Teddy the Hutt (D-Dead Girlfriend In The Passenger Seat) has a solution to the "problem" of Supreme Court decisions he dislikes -- require appointees to the Supreme Court (and, presumably, lower courts) to make a blood oath to rule in a liberal manner without reading the briefs, hearing the arguments, or knowing the facts of specific cases. “We know from their past decisions how all of the current justices interpret Roe v. Wade, yet they are not precluded from sitting on future cases involving abortion. Why shouldn't we also learn how Supreme Court nominees view that decision and other important cases? If all nominees were expected to answer these questions, the White House would no longer seek out ‘stealth’ nominees whose views are largely unknown.” (READ MORE)
Sister Toldjah: Revealed: Pro-lifers want to treat womyn as “property”! - *stands up, clears throat, looks around nervously at the rest of the people who are sitting in the group circle* Hi. I’m Sister Toldjah. I believe life begins at conception. But I don’t believe that a woman should be considered a human being, but instead as nothing more than a walking incubator, who should be on standby to be impregnated everytime her master decides it’s time for her to fulfill her “wifely duties.”* Ok. That last part was a whole lot untrue. But you wouldn’t know it if you read the predictable outrage being expressed by several feminist blogs today over a pro-life video released by InsideCatholic.com. (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Culture, Politics, and Economics - As we approach the culmination of the latest Middle East Diplodancing, expectations are being managed, anticipatory finger pointing is in full flower, and reality continues to insist upon its day. In the Middle East, more than in most parts of the world, fantasy has always had sovereignty over reality, yet reality stubbornly refuses to go away. The current liberal fantasy structure elaborates a number of tried and true failed assumptions. • The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the core of the problems for the Muslim world. • Palestinian anger and violence are caused by the oppressive Israeli occupation. • Israel has legitimate concerns about Palestinian terrorism but must address "root causes" (see above) and accept risks (ie, more dead Jews) before peace can come. • Restarting a Peace Precess is necessary to bring Hope to the area and from such hopeful starts, true acceptance and peace will eventually (perhaps magically) emerge. (READ MORE)
Melanie Phillips: Now investigate West Midlands police - The Ofcom ruling today totally exonerating the Channel Four Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque should not be the end of this disturbing episode. The programme exposed the preaching of extremism and hatred in a number of British mosques, several of them supposedly ‘moderate’ and mainstream. In any rational society those preachers, who were inciting hatred against gays, Jews, women and non-Muslims, would have been arrested and prosecuted. But this is Britain, and what happened after Undercover Mosque was transmitted was an object (or should that be abject) lesson in how to hand victory to the Islamists on a plate. (READ MORE)
Augean Stables: “Western Civilization is not Really a Civilization”: ‘Westophobia’ in Arab Culture - The following article is by Prof. Barry Rubin, contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center. Prof. Rubin discusses Islamic “Westophobia”, often overlooked in Western and Arab culture, both of whom tend to blame the West for the woes of underdeveloped regions. The idea that poverty, relative backwardness, violence and instability must be caused by external circumstances is ingrained in much of the Western intelligentsia. It contributes to a tendency to apologize for those regimes and radical groups that are the main cause of continued stagnation and suffering in the Middle East. (READ MORE)
Blue Star Chronicles: Vets for Freedom Speak Out Against Plethora of Anti-War Films - First Lieutenant Pete Hegseth, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom, went to see the hollywood film Redacted so that he would be able to speak on it. It seems he was one of about 10 people who actually paid to see American Soldiers slandered. The film actually grossed around $25,000 on its opening weekend. As you might know, Redacted is a movie by Brian De Palma based on the story of a sociopathic soldier who went into the home of an Iraqi girl, raped her and killed her and her family. This was a terrible incident in the war that took a dominant place on the front pages of news media for a good long period when it happened. It was an isolated incident and the soldiers involved in this incident have been tried and convicted and are serving life sentences. (READ MORE)
Michael Barone: Looking at Iraq in Macrotime - When my father returned from service as an Army doctor in Korea in 1953, he brought back slides of the photos he'd shot, showing a war-torn country of incredible poverty. We would have laughed if you had told us that Americans would one day buy Korean cars. But 50-some years later, South Korea has the 13th-largest economy in the world, and you see Hyundais and Kias everywhere in America. Looking at things in microtime frames is not always a reliable guide to the macrotime-frame future. So it may turn out to be with Iraq. We have been looking at Iraq in microtime frames—or, for many who oppose the war, frozen in the time frame of late 2006. A better picture of the microtime frame is that we have achieved considerable success this year. (READ MORE)
Ace of Spades: Congress' Funding Standoff Must End - Senate Majority Leader Reid has vowed to release no funding for the Iraq War this year unless the Republicans accept his retreat deadlines. That vow has put the mission and our troops in danger. Last week, I wrote about Secretary Gates' public condemnation of Democratic efforts to force a premature withdrawal and his announcement that if Reid persists in his refusal to support our troops in the field, Gates would have to lay off up to 200,000 people and begin closing stateside facilities in order to pay for the war. Now, Defense Link reports that the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization will have to curtail operations for lack of funding starting on December 1st. (READ MORE)
A Soldier's Mind: The Last Graduate - I’ll tell you right from the start…. have a box of tissues ready, because this will definitely cause those tears to flow. In the tiny town of Spade, Texas, May 2006 with it sadness, but more importantly, the chance to honor a Korean War Hero. May 2006 was the very last graduating class of Spade High School and the graduating Seniors, felt it was only fitting to honor a War Hero from Spade, who had never graduated, because he quit school, joined the military and went to Korea, where he was captured, held prisoner and eventually shot and left for dead. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Lawyering Up on the Second Floor - While investigations into the shennanigans on the Second Floor* continue apace, Gov. Spitzer's press flacks are avoiding answering questions as to whether Gov. Whiplash Spitzer is himself lawyering up in anticipation of being questioned. “Spitzer's communications director, Christine Anderson, asked for three days by The Post if the governor has hired his own lawyer, refused to say, insisting, ‘We are not commenting on the ongoing investigation.’” (READ MORE)
DRJ: Blogger may have Helped US Military Identify AP Photographer, Alleged Terrorist Sympathizer Bilal Hussein - Bilal Hussein is an Iraqi photographer who works for the AP in Baghdad. Some of his acclaimed photos show al-Qaeda insurgents with weapons aimed at and attacks against American and Iraqi targets. Michelle Malkin has a few of Hussein’s photos here. Hussein has been in American or Iraqi custody on unspecified charges for approximately 19 months. During that time, the AP lodged complaints aimed at gaining his release. A recent report indicates Hussein will now be charged by the Iraqis (at the request of the American military) because he “was caught in an apartment with known members of al Qaeda– with bomb making material.” (READ MORE)
Paul Mirengoff: Reality trumps public opinion - In a front page story in today's Washington Post, Peter Baker acknowledges that although the Bush administration is making advances in Iraq and elsewhere, the president's approval ratings have not improved appreciably. I don't think there's much of a mystery here. Most people believe one or both of these two propositions: (1) we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq and (2) the administration badly mishandled the war for at least several years. Under these circumstances, even those who have received (and believe) word that things are improving in Iraq are unlikely to think kindly of President Bush. That's not to say that Bush won't eventually see an improvement in his approval rating; indeed, I believe that if the economy holds together, he will. But I don't expect anything very dramatic. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Votes in the Middle East - Voters are headed to the polls in Jordan. "Tuesday’s elections for the 110 seats in the lower house are marked by rising expressions of cynicism from among the country’s 2.4 million voters, and from political analysts. Eighteen years after Jordan’s ruling family lifted martial law and restored parliament, King Abdullah II faces growing charges that the parliament in this Middle East monarchy is only superficially democratic." Oh really. You think that might have something to do with the fact that the country is ruled by a monarch who came to the throne on the strength of hereditary? (READ MORE)
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