Israel has saying since last May that they're eventually going to have to enter Gaza and stop the rockets. Israel did everything humanly possible to bring international, nonmilitary pressure to bear on Hamas. The New York consulate went the way up to starting a blog about the suffering in Sderot because the international press refused to cover it (although you cna be quite sure that there'll be a slight uptick in media interest when Israel rolls into Gaza). But - buoyed by the weakness of the Olmert-Peretz administration - Hamas thugs insisted that they would never stop trying to kill Israelis. Then Barak started moving tanks to the border in his new "well, if that's the way you want it..." campaign - and now Hamas is all rainbows and candy:

"Gaza's Hamas government is ready to offer a truce at this time," Mohammed Awad, a senior Hamas official, told a Gaza Web site affiliated with the Islamic group... Also Sunday, two Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip struck the western Negev, causing no damage or injuries... Awad said the truce would only be possible if it "helped to achieve some goals for our people" - likely meaning moves to open sealed border crossings into Israel and Egypt, relieve international economic sanctions and halt Israeli army operations against Palestinian rocket squads. The Arabic word Awad used, hudna, denotes a temporary cease-fire rather than a permanent peace. Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and EU.

Well, so much for the left's "there's no military solution to the rockets" argument. Guess there was at least one solution, huh? After the jump, great news about Egyptian cooperation with Hamas.

Perhaps putting his faith in Jimmy Carter's well-known abilities to analyze and deal with Iran, Democratic foreign policy expert and former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson wants you to know that Ahmadinejad is nothing to worry about:

Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, said that as president he would use his diplomatic experience to engage Muslim clerics, students, university professors and business leaders in Iran. He would leave Iranian President Ahmadinejad out of the loop, calling him "a minor player" in that nation's politics. "Forty percent of the vote in Iran in that last presidential election went to a moderate candidate," he said. "And I do believe that it makes sense to engage in a dialogue with Iran, knowing that it's going to be very difficult."

Forty percent? That's more than halfway to being more than half of the population! Sweet. Almost half of the Iranian population don't support the guy trying to start an apocalyptic war and thereby bring about the end of the world. If that's not a population ripe for engagement, we simply don't know what is.

As war looms over the entire Middle East, it's worth revisiting this diplomatic gem from a few months ago:

Dismissing claims that Hizbullah has returned to its former strength in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL commander Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview on Thursday that the guerrilla group was practically non-existent south of the Litani River and that if the peacekeeping mission continued, the threat of war would be completely removed within three years.

There's never a threat that justifies American or Israeli concerns. Hezbollah? Israeli concerns about how they've rearmed are just excuses to criticize UNIFIL - except for those Katyushas that hit Israel two days later. Opps. Hamas? Israeli concerns about their growing strength are just excuses not to give Abbas security concessions - except for how Hamas rolled over the Gaza Strip right afterwards.

Ahmadinejad? He's powerless. And if he's not powerless, then he's being mistranslated by evil neocons.

It's like the Simpsons joke about USA Today: nothing to worry about, everything is OK. And if diplomats are wrong and a concession really does end up costing thousands of Israeli lives - eh, at least they meant well. That's the great thing about being a left of center foreign policy expert - no one remembers how often you're wildly wrong.

References:
* Jimmy Carter: Iran Is Nothing To Worry About [MR]
* Richardson says war with Iran is unwise
* 'Hizbullah not rearming in S. Lebanon' [JPost]
* Katyushas Hit Israel Two Days After UNIFIL Commander Promises Peace [MR]
* Memo To Foreign Policy Sophisticates - You'd Sound A Lot Less Stupid If You Stopped Mixing Your Condescension With Demonstrably False Fantasies Of Competence [MR]

Previously:
* LAT: Relax, There's No Reason To Worry About Iran
* What Is It About Sophisticated Leftists That Causes Them To Condescendingly Give Advice When They Obviously Have No Idea What They're Talking About?
* Josh Marshall, Liberal Sophisticate: Conservatives Should "Grow Up" About Ahmadinejad's Desecration Of Ground Zero

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

It's come to this:

Miliband also underlined the need for an urgent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to remove an "excuse" for al-Qaeda to foment unrest in Iraq and elsewhere. "Al-Qaeda are using the suffering of the Palestinians as an excuse for violence," he said in a keynote address to the ruling Labor Party's annual conference. "We need to remove the excuse. We need urgent progress to address Israeli security and Palestinian rights through the only solution, a two-state solution in the Middle East," he added

"We know that AQ is just using media-supercharged images of Palestinian suffering as one of many, many pretexts for their jihad against the West, but we need urgent progress against this particular excuse anyway." It's almost like everyone has already decided - for reasons that we're not allowed to speculate about - that Israel has to make concessions to the Palestinians. It's almost like they're just looking for thin pretexts to justify those decisions.

After the jump, something Miliband said that's even dumber.

Behold the surreal consequences of combining pathological masculine insecurity with a system of de facto chattel slavery:

Saudi man divorced his wife for watching alone a television programme presented by a male, an act he deemed immoral, the Al Shams newspaper reported on Saturday. The man, whom the paper did not identify, ended his marriage on the grounds his wife was effectively alone with an unrelated man, which is forbidden under the strict Islamic law enforced in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the paper said. Men in Saudi Arabia have the authority to divorce their wives without resort to the courts.

We're beginning to suspect that Saudi Arabian men do not have what psychologists would deem a "normal" relationship to women.

References:
* Wife divorced for watching male TV host [Times Of India]

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - The New Game Is To Awesomely Pepper Spray Saudi Virtue And Vice Thugs
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Feminism Sweeps Pakistan
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Arabia Discovers Women Need To Eat Food

This is presumably part of the Britain's campaign to make sure that every single child is exposed to virulent anti-Western Islamist propaganda. They already get a little under a quarter of them in the mosques. Fifty percent of those mosques are already under quasi-Taliban control, which helps explain why they're supporting AQ leaders and putting out pamphlets encouraging their followers to prepare for jihad. And the kids who they can't get there, they get with TV shows:

Britain's former spy chief accused the BBC of "parroting" Al Qaeda propaganda to children as young as six. Dame Pauline Neville Jones, who is also a former BBC governor, is infuriated at the stance the corporation's Newsround programme took on the September 11 attacks. She accused the flagship children's news bulletin of feeding an "ugly undercurrent" which suggests the terrorist outrage was somehow justifiable. Newsround is aimed at viewers aged between six and 12. On its website it answered the question concerning 9/11, "Why did they do it" by saying: "The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al Qaeda - who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks."

What do you expect? That's what the European left thinks. They rarely if ever deign to talk to anyone who disagrees with them (why would they bother, since their superior sophistication has given them unique insight?) So you can see how they wouldn't know that you're still not supposed to say things like that in polite company. Academia, yes. Polite company, no.

Also, quick reminder: the BBC lies.

References:
* Disaster: Half of British mosques are under quasi-Taliban control; Update: Taliban reportedly killed South Korean hostage for refusing to convert [Hot Air]
* Birmingham Mosque Supporting Exiled al Qaeda Supporter? (Sticky) [Jawa]
* BBC's Newsround fed youngsters Al Qaeda propaganda, claims ex-spy chief [Daily Mail]
* The BBC Lies [MR]

Previously:
* Reporting Palestinian War Crimes And Israeli Responses, The BBC Way
* International Media: "But Saadat is a Grandfather!" Also, BBC Tells Demonstrable Lie About Past Kidnappings, Makes Up Conspiracy Theory, and Says "Foreigners mostly live harmoniously among the Palestinian population"
* BBC Board Of Governors: BBC Is Too Pro-Israel. No Seriously, We're Not Joking About This. They Said That.

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Walt and Mearsheimer - they of "the Israel Lobby is so powerful that it can't be criticized" - were brought into yet another college to bravely stand up to the Jews who control US policy (and also to the Christians that the Jews have corrupted - that's why it's not anti-Semitic). Normally we wouldn't bother blogging it, but this is annoying and stupid enough to merit attention:

The event, hosted by Alice Bach and the Hallinan Project for Peace and Social Justice, brought authors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to discuss their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Over 100 people from Case and the community attended the talk. Attendees came for many different reasons. Blogger Jeff Hess, having read the book and the Anti-Defamation League's response to it, was curious about the central question of the book, "Can you say anything critical of Israel or are you trapped as a cheerleader?" Students from other colleges were in attendance as well. "I don't know much about the U.S./ Israel relationship," said Patience Fiodembo, a student at John Carroll University. "I have heard some controversial things about John Mearsheimer; I want to see what he's about." Bach introduced the two authors, remarking that their book "provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo subject in America."

Yes, those decades of enforced censorship on American campuses, where saying anything bad about Israel would merely get you tenure and mountains of accolades for being edgy. It must have been so hard for anti-Israel academics before Walt And Mearsheimer broke the taboo. It's kind of weird that all anti-Israel library books have copyrights going back to the 1950s. Must be a conspiracy.

Also: we teach an intro to argument class. Pretty basic stuff, and we actually spend a lot more time discussing political controversies than we do on orthodox argumentation theory. Still: liberal blogger Jeff Hess? D+ at best.

We again remind the three liberals who read this blog: how someone says something reveals much about their motives and their character. If a right-wing politician criticized an NAACP campaign by complaining that "the NAACP is publicly lynching its opponents," the left would (correctly) howl in outrage. And yet hurling around the most disgusting anti-Semitic canards - greed, dual loyalty, well poisoning, etc - is taken as a sign of sophistication and bravery on the left. Anything in the name of anti-Semitism anti-Zionism we suppose (h/t: MR reader Doris).

References:
* Case hosts controversial talk on Israel lobby [Observer]

Previously:
* Israel And AIPAC: We'll Respond To Walt And Mearsheimer When Their Vicious Anti-Semitism Gets Sophisticated Or Relevant (Plus: MR Is Suspicious About Leftist Pro-Mearsheimer Enthusiasm)
* Walt and Mearsheimer Publish Insipid Anti-Semiticish Book. MR Officially Takes Back Original "No Way They're Anti-Semites" Position.
* Anti-Israel Censorship Watch - Walt and Mearsheimer Redux

Bob Franken is undoubtedly joking about this, but honestly: why not? What are they going to do - make the the country less secure?

SECURITY Replace those TSA officers people with guards from Blackwater. It won't make the search lines move any faster but it sure as hell will cut down on the whining about it.

We don't like his politics, but we like where his head's at. It's either this or another half-decade of having these idiots confiscate pudding and miss knives:

Porter says he accidentally left his Swiss Army knife in his backpack as he went through the TSA check point, an all too common mistake. Thankfully, the TSA agent spotted his package of pudding and confiscated it, missing the knife completely... Inside [his backpack TSA] found a package of unopened Hunts Pudding Snacks in my lunch. He confiscated the pudding "it's a liquid" and sent me on my way. Absurd, but forgettable. However later in the day I had a layover, and was going through my backpack looking for a pen and came across my Swiss Army Knife with a 4" locking blade... . the hand searcher got thrown off his game by the delicious, and apparently dangerous pudding

Petulant and apathetic morons are given virtually unlimited authority over millions of rushed and nervous passengers every day. It's hardly surprising that - as small-minded bureaucrats are wont to do - they wield it in the pettiest and most incompetent ways imaginable.

References:
* Air Travel Unravelled [HuffPo]
* TSA Confiscates Pudding, Misses Knife [Consumerist]
* It's Time For Another Rant About the TSA - Hardline On 1oz Pepsi, Not So Much On Boxcutters [Video] [MR]
* TSA Good At Grabbing Cups From Toddlers and Humiliating Mothers, Not So Good With Potential Bombs [MR]

Previously:
* Public Security In Los Angeles Sucks Disgracefully
* Airport Security in This Country is a Bad Joke
* Q: Could Airport Security Suck Worse?

Oh good:

The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane's wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs. That detail would escape notice for an astounding 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown across the country to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years... The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on the plane in Louisiana for nearly nine hours more before being discovered. In total, the warheads slipped from the Air Force's nuclear safety net for more than a day without anyone's knowledge. "I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing," retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, who served as U.S. Strategic Command chief from 1996 to 1998, said in an interview.The incident came on the heels of multiple warnings -- some of which went to the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the National Security Council -- of security problems at Air Force installations where nuclear weapons are kept. The risks are not that warheads might be accidentally detonated, but that sloppy procedures could leave room for theft or damage to a warhead, disseminating its toxic nuclear materials... "It is more significant than people first realized, and the more you look at it, the stranger it is," said Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress think tank and the author of a history of nuclear weapons. "These weapons -- the equivalent of 60 Hiroshimas -- were out of authorized command and control for more than a day."

Without peeking, how many paragraphs do you think it took the Washington Post to insinuate that the security breakdown happened because of the war in Iraq? Hint: it should be part of the blockquote, but we took it out because vertical real estate is limited enough without including reflexive anti-war propaganda that's both predictable and stupid.

The crazies, by the by, are saying that those nukes were actually bound for Iran but were turned back by a full USAF revolt against the evil neocons who control the Bush administration. Verdict: obviously wrong and insane, but not as insane as it sounds. There have been some suggestions in a couple of journals that Bush can't attack Iran because the USAF will bog him down in a "blue flu"-like slowdown if he tries. The theory here is that military commanders against the attack would fill out so much paperwork that it would make implementing the Commander In Chief's orders functionally impossible. We don't know if that's possible, but there seem to be some serious people who seem to believe that it's a theory worth airing.

Just to reiterate though: this version of the pushback theory - the suggestion that the USAF openly disobeyed the order of the President after starting to implement it - is conspiracy theory garbage of the dumbest kind.

References:
* Missteps in the Bunker [WaPo]
* News of B-52 Nukes Leaked by Personnel Opposed to Attack on Iran

Previously:
* At This Point, Journalists Are Literally Just Going Through The Motions Of Covering Up Their Bias
* Bombshell? The US Gave Israel IFF Codes Before The Syrian Airstrike
* Purdue Nuclear Strategy Expert: Bomb Iran Now

The article is behind a subscription wall, but if you search for it through Google News you'll be able to read the whole thing. The whole very, very worrying thing:

Unusual activity has been reported on the Syrian side of Israel's northern frontier along the Golan Heights, including helicopter activity and the movement of tanks and troops. Syria massing troops along its southern border is nothing out of the ordinary, particularly since Israel launched a major airstrike on its territory Sept. 6. But the Israelis appear to be a lot more concerned than usual about Syrian intentions as of late. When Israel scrambled its warplanes Sept. 27 for the third time in the past two weeks, Stratfor saw a pressing need to investigate why the Israelis are so spooked about a Syrian reprisal for the Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike, and why Israel has gone out of its way to reassure the Syrians that it is not looking for a fight. Israel's apparent skittishness could be caused by concerns circulating in the region that Syria might launch a surprise offensive to recapture the Golan Heights. A split has surfaced within the Syrian regime, where some are arguing that an offensive in the Golan Heights would be in Damascus' best interest and would galvanize Arab support and bring Syria out of regional isolation... the Israelis are giving every indication that they are preparing for the worst-case scenario.

Here's the problem: Syria knows that it would get brutally dismantled in a conventional war against the IDF. Their plan during the summer hinged on two things: (1) the ability to defend their airspace against IDF incursions and (2) the ability to to take a tiny bit of the Golan and hold on till global anti-Israel diplomacy was brought to against the Jewish State. But the lack of Arab support after Israel's air raid showed Syria that it can't count on diplomatic support, just as the air raid itself showed them that they had seriously underestimated the IAF's superiority. Syria has to know that. Israel knows that Syria has to know that. Syria knows that Israel knows... and so on.

So what could Syria possibly be thinking, and why is Israel so nervous? STRATFOR suggests that some of Syria's non-conventional arsenal is still intact (of course it is), and that Israel fears that Assad is going to use it against Israeli civilians. But even STRATFOR admits that this would mean the physical end of Assad and his regime - and they might have added that while Assad is a thug, he's not a suicidal theocrat. He doesn't go to war unless he thinks he can win.

Why Assad might think he can win - and why it amounts to an existential threat to the Jewish State - after the jump.

And here we were assured by our foreign policy experts that Shiites and Sunnis never work together:

Israel has already made a decision to attack Syria and was just mulling over where to land its first strike, Ahmad Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine... Jibril estimated that Israeli action, several weeks after an alleged IAF foray into Syria on September 6, would likely be a wide-scale operation, and would probably be answered with attacks by Iran, Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinians of Syria. "I believe Israel has prepared all likely scenarios for war with Syria, but they are still considering where they will land the first strike, which will come very soon," Jibril said. "They are weighing whether to attack on one front or on multiple fronts... The PFLP leader said also that Israel was wary of a "domino effect" that would drag other countries into the conflict. "The Israelis have not formed a final estimate regarding the possibility of Iranian intervention if they will attack Syria. Secondly, the Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah's Islamic resistance, will intervene and strike the Zionist home front with missiles," he said. "The Syrian brothers will not be afraid to protect their land and will continue the war with the Zionist enemy, and we, the Palestinians in Syria, will not sit by idly - we will be on the front lines," Jibril added.

One would certainly hope that the IDF has wargamed out different conflicts with Syria. The Syrians have been saber-rattling all summer. They repeatedly declared that they were "actively preparing for war". They allowed it to leak that they were modernizing their air defenses with Russian help as part of that preparation. And they went out of their way to highlight ongoing military coordination with Iran and Hezbollah. But if and when a war finally does start, you can be quite sure that Israel will get blamed anyway.

References:
* Jibril: Israel will attack Syria soon [JPost]
* This Summer's War With Syria - Syria Openly Brags About Preparing For War [MR]
* This Summer's War With Syria - Syria Says They're "Actively Preparing For War With Israel" [MR]
* Syria Modernizing Its Airforce With Russian Help - War With Israel On The Horizon [MR]
* This Summer's War With Syria, Iranian Coordination Edition [MR]
* Syria Sending Weapons To Hezbollah For The Next War. Of Course They Are. [MR]

Previously:
* This Summer's War With Syria - Assad To Respond To Tribunal By Trying To Kill Jews
* Syria In Full Pouting Mode About How Israel Humiliatingly Took Away Their Nuclear Toys
* This Summer's War With Syria - Assad To Respond To Tribunal By Trying To Kill Jews

But there's going to be hell to pay when K-Lo gets back from whatever vacation she's on. Hell. To. Pay:

The best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they’d follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive. Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare.

By the by, Steven Hayward is dead to us: "I hated - hated - Star Trek: TNG." Who says that? Clearly someone with a hollow shell where a human soul should be. Seriously.

References:
* The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Pelosians
* Get a Life! [NRO]
* Oh Captain, My Captain! [NRO]
* A Conservative Trek [NRO]
* Replacing Reagan [NRO]

Previously:
* Neat! Experiment Spectacularly and Productively Fails To Explain Problems With Physics
* Neat - Germs Taken To Space So They Can Mutate, Come Back Deadlier
* Neat - Israeli Nanobots To Revolutionize Medicine

No...

... and no...

... and absolutely not:

Please thank you.

References:
* Spooky robot cat from Japan won't scratch your eyes out [SciFi Tech]
* Roller-Walker robot changes modes on the go [SciFi Tech]
* Child robot is much more unsettling than a real child [SciFi Tech]

Previously:
* Video: Giant Sword Armed Wii Controlled Robot. What Could Go Wrong?
* Bad Week For The Future Of Humanity. Great Week For Future Robotic Overlords.
* Neat - Autonomous Robots With Weapons Strapped To Them

Cross-posted to:
* Icon Index Symbol

Having recently discovered that girls need to be allowed to eat food just like real people, pathologically sexist Saudi Arabian officials have been coming up with new ways to visibly highlight women's chattel status. Outstanding work gentlemen:

Commission members banned female shoppers from sitting in a makeshift outdoor restaurant to have their iftar meals in a low-income neighborhood in Jeddah because men were already seated at special tables set up for the fasting month... Muhammed Mehdawi [said] commission members forced his wife and children to eat their food while standing next to him. Other women stood by the stands that run the modest eatery. Ali Al-Hayyan, head of the commission’s Jeddah branch, said the agents’ actions were meant as a deterrent, “especially since some of the women were dolled up, and also to prevent the mixing of the sexes that could happen at such events and which our religion rejects,” the paper said. Siddeequa, a 52-year-old woman, said she had to eat her food standing after the commission’s members asked her to leave her seat at the restaurant.

They hate women. They just hate them. They control, degrade, and humiliate women simply to show they can. At least Western feminists haven't chosen to make common cause with these bigots (via Meryl).

References:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Arabia Discovers Women Need To Eat Food [MR]
* Woman Attacks Vice Cops With Pepper Spray [Arab News]
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - John McCain Responds To Code Pink's "We Should Surrender To The Most Vicious Sexists On The Planet" Platform [Videos] [MR]

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Israeli Biotech Industry Skyrockets As Women CEOs Lead the Way [Video]
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Islamists Really Hate Women
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Ahmadinejad Secretly A Pervert?

Not that it will actually do anything against the Merkava's fourth generation armor. But the international press will totally love it:

200 female suicide bombers are awaiting the Merkava tanks, Hamas senior Dr. Nizar Rian told the Kuweiti Al Jareeda Friday. Rian also said his organization had more than 50,000 armed fighters, who were endowed with "courage and are able to fight in the relevant territory."... "They sleep and walk about armed with explosives, ready to attack Israeli tanks and to prevent them from progressing," Rian said. Women, he added, were not a new addition to the terrorist group's arsenal. Women were sent in the past to hit the "heart of the Israeli occupier's home" and while some Palestinians were against the use of women in combat roles, "the duty to guard the motherland is more important than any other priority."

Women often end up becoming suicide bombers for Hamas as an alternative to getting murdered in an honor killing:

that's her in her suicide bombing video with the 3 year old toddler she abandoned when she blew herself up. She left that child motherless explicitly at her husband's urging, because otherwise he would have had her stoned to death for cheating on him. Instead of being the victim of an honor killing, she chose to "restore her honor" by killing herself and trying to take some Jewish mothers with her... Past crimes that warranted honor killings have included being seen with a male who is not a relative, being married to an impotent husband, and being raped.

In return, Hamas promises that female suicide bombers will be honored as the lead virgin in the harem of 72 virgins for some male suicide bomber.

References:
* '200 suicide bombers await the Merkava' [JPost]
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Mother Becomes Suicide Bomber To Avoid Honor Killing
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Female Suicide Bombers Get To Be Lead Virgins [MR]

Previously:
* Mere Rhetoric: Hey Gals, Check This Out - You Should All Have To ...
* Mere Rhetoric: Hey Gals, Check This Out - Enlightenment Breaks Out ...
* Mere Rhetoric: Hey Gals, Check This Out - Theo van Gogh's ...

Because there are still questions to be asked. This is like a particularly dangerous convergence of moronic leftist sophistication: Ahmadinejad comes to NYC to air some questions about the Holocaust, and the rest of the world returns the favor by airing some questions about Iran's nuclear program. You know - because who can be against asking questions?

Six key nations agreed Friday to delay a new UN resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran until November to see if Teheran answers questions about its suspect nuclear program .A joint statement from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief UN nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief "show a positive outcome of their efforts." The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Teheran additional time to comply with UN nuclear inspectors. Asked whether the agreement was tantamount to a surrender by the United States, Nicholas Burns, the US State Department's No. 3 diplomat, said "the alchemy of this group is such that anything is going to be a compromise."

The US, Britain, and France want to do something. Russia and China want to do nothing. Everyone agrees to do nothing. It's a compromise!

References:
* Key nations to delay new Iran sanctions [JPost]

Previously:
* Former Israeli Intelligence Official: Iranian Facilities Being Hardened "Around the Clock", Time Running Out
* Psst: Iran's Going Nuclear
* US Threatens Iran With Sanctions. Iran Responds By Starting New Nuke Facility.

Presumably from the department of shamelessly tempting the callous hand of fate:

From the writeup:

A three-legged robot with an unconventional and graceful walk has been developed by US researchers. Like humans, it exploits gravity to save energy with each step, but it also flips its entire body upside-down with each stride. The fearsome alien tripods in HG Well's book The War of The Worlds are described as moving like "a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground". STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot) has a far more graceful, and acrobatic, gait that sees its body flip 180 degrees with each step.

Looks awesome. Let's build a couple and see if they can reproduce on their own. Just to see what happens, ya know.

References:
* Tripedal robot swings itself into action Movie Camera
* STriDER 2.0's First Step [RoMeLaVT / YouTube]

Previously:
* Neat - Now We're Teaching Robots To Climb Walls [Video]
* Neat - Autonomous Robots With Weapons Strapped To Them
* Video: Neat - Blueprint For The 21st Century

What a bunch of retards:

A U.S. State Department-funded University of California program which provides business training for residents of the Middle East specifically excluded Israeli Jews - until Jewish journalists protested... Miriam Schwab uncovered the bias last week when she checked into applying to the university's San Diego branch Beyster Institute program for Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET). She discovered that the program was open to citizens of "Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen."...

The MEET program ostensibly "does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, religion, national origin, or handicap."... Israeli Jews originally were excluded despite the program’s stated advantage as "an important cultural exchange." Fuller did not explain the initial "confusion" in barring Israeli Jews....

The US Embassy of Yemen online document which announces the program was down for more than a day until the words "limited to Israeli Arab citizens" were deleted... The US official who made the online edit, however, reposted the story in "track changes" format so that the document displays in the left margin, at the time of this writing, the words: "Deleted: Limited to Israeli Arab citizens."

We're going to make you click through to Yid With Lid to get the rest of the story - including where things stand now - and for screenshots of the incompetently-cleansed document. We're a little more interested in the legal ramifications. This appears to be a clear case of discrimination by a US government agency dedicated to advancing US interests in the Middle East. It's a near-perfect example of the soft, everyday institutional anti-Semitism of the State Department. A lot of people should be fired, and at least a couple of them should be sued.

The State Department will begin walking this back, and they'll no doubt insist that any applications from Israeli Jews will be treated fairly - treated fairly by the very same people who wrote an explicitly anti-Semitic application in the first place. So in addition to having a perfect example of institutional anti-Semitism, we'll no doubt be treated to a paradigm case of nudge-nudge wink-wink "no bias against Israeli Jews here" diplomatic pretense.

State Department culture is obviously a complex and multileveled thing, but it does seem to produce officials who reflexively denigrate Israeli Jews in order to suck up to Arabs and Muslims. Sure there's all the stuff about the peace process, but we suppose that's at least somewhat debatable. Less debatable: the time that they wouldn't accept Israeli aid for post-Katrina New Orleans because they were afraid it would piss off Arab and Muslim donors.

References:
* Univ. of Cal. Backs Down from 'No Jews Allowed' Program [INN]
* U.S. State Dept Funded "No Jews Allowed" Program [Yid With Lid]
* State Department Anti-Israel Ideology Gets Silly, Kills Americans [MR]

Previously:
* US Public Diplomacy, Tact Don't Extend To Israel
* US State Department: By "Shun" Terrorist Governments We Mean "Not Shun"
* US State Department: Lebanon Is Not Responsible for Hezbollah

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

It had to happen some time:

New "morality police" has begun detaining Palestinians who eat or drink in public during the fasting month of Ramadan, a first in the West Bank where Muslim custom was always widely observed, but never before imposed. The 12-member squad with special red badges appears to be an attempt by PA President Mahmoud Abbas's West Bank government to challenge the claim of rival Hamas, the ruler of Gaza, to a monopoly on religious righteousness... In Ramallah, the seat of Abbas's West Bank government, the deployment this year of a Ramadan police seemed somewhat unexpected. Ramallah is the most cosmopolitan and well-to-do of the Palestinian cities. However, Lt. Murad Qendah of the vice squad said he's been assigned to stamp out public breaches.... The sudden appearance of Ramadan enforcers is being seen as an attempt by Abbas's largely secular Fatah movement to challenge Hamas on its traditional turf - religion... "It's an attempt to ride the wave of religion that is crashing into the Middle East," political analyst Nasser Laham... Police spokesman Adnan al-Damari said police arrested at least 50 alleged public morality offenders in Ramallah since the start of Ramadan... "The duty of the morality police is to preserve public manners in public places, and to preserve the feelings of the people who are fasting," he said. "Violating the holiness of Ramadan is a violation of people's freedom."

Of course we still managed to get hosed on this. The over/under was the beginning of September, and like idiots we bet the under. Screwed again. Anyway, Abbas is doing a great job creating a secular state in the West Bank. Let's give him some land and weapons.

References:
* West Bank: `Morality police' detain Ramadan fast-breakers [JPost]

Previously:
* Mere Rhetoric Evaluates Palestinian Opinion Poll, Walks Away Unsurprised
* The Day After
* AP: Gaza Christians Have Been Living Peacefully, Now Under Attack By Unknown Extremists

Of course it is:

The Israel Air Force fired missiles at a Qassam rocket launching cell in the northern Gaza Strip Thursday evening, killing one militant, Palestinian sources reported. The incident occurred in Beit Hanun, after 11 additional Palestinians had been killed in separate strikes in the Gaza Strip. Sources said the missile attack killed one gunman and wounded another, both belonging to the Fatah-affiliated militant group Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. An Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said "the army attacked a group of militants in northern Gaza who had just fired a rocket at Israel." Earlier Thursday, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israel Defense Forces strikes on the Gaza Strip, calling the operation a "massacre." The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported that Abbas, who is currently in New York, addressed the United Nations Security Council and world leaders demanding that they intervene to "stop the massacre of Palestinians being carried out by the army of the occupation in the Gaza Strip."

(1) You ever notice that Israel - despite being a genocidal, morally bankrupt apartheid state - carries out the weakest "massacres" in the history of warfare? They're rarely against civilians, and we can't remember a time when they've gone over like a dozen people. Iran probably kills more gays in a year than Israel kills Palestinians. It's almost like there's a double standard going on.

(2) The army that's currently in illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip? Isn't that Hamas? Cf. Gaza Occupation Fetish.

(3) Nice to see that Fatah soldiers still have enough spare time to fire rockets at Israeli schools and hospitals. Shouldn't they be, oh we don't know, working to roll back the humiliating defeat that Hamas handed when they streamrolled through the Gaza Strip?

References:
* One Palestinian killed in IAF strike on rocket launching cell in Gaza [Ha'aretz]
* BBC Slips, Proves Liberal Gaza Occupation Fetish [MR]

Previously:
* Memo To Foreign Policy Sophisticates - You'd Sound A Lot Less Stupid If You Stopped Mixing Your Condescension With Demonstrably False Fantasies Of Competence
* Hey, Guess What Happened Right Before Olmert Offered Abbas Security Concessions? Do You Think It Was A Successful, High Tech Fatah Rocket Attack?
* Abbas: "If You Don't Give Me Everything I Won't Accept Anything"

It's not exactly a neat trick, but reminders are sometimes useful. Here's a picture from this summer's gay rights march in Jerusalem:

Looks awful. A gay man being denied his rights? Not so much. Think more: an overeager ultraorthodox counter-protester who got a little too close to the parade route for the peace of mind of security officials. He was told to step back. As the brash young are wont to do, he refused. And so they arrested him. Because in Israel - in sharp contrast to the sophisticated and fascinating Iranian regime - gay people are people too:

Roughly 3,500 people marched in the much-contested gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, as some 1,500 ultra-Orthodox men and right-wing activists demonstrated against the event. Some 500 ultra-Orthodox protesters marched along Jaffa Street in the city, in an attempt to intersect the march and confront the participants. Police blocked the demonstrators, however, arresting 12 of them. "I am demanding my civil rights, including the right to get married and have children," said marcher Guy Frishman, 27. "I want to have rights like every other person."... The march took place under heavy guard, with more than 7,000 police officers protecting the participants. The Magen David Adom emergency medical service was expected to deploy 45 ambulances and 200 medical personnel along the parade route.

Agree or disagree with the much-vaunted "gay agenda," at least it's not this. In Israel when you see gay people in front of a crowd it's because they're marching for civil rights. In Iran when you see gay people in front of a crowd it's because the government has arrested them, publicly tortured and humiliated and hung them, and left them to dangle. But the left insists that Israel is the world's worst human rights abuser - because the UN, where Iran finds massive sympathy and support, told them so.

References:
* Some 3,500 march in gay pride parade in Jerusalem [Ha'aretz]
* Photographs To Help Explain Why There Are No Homosexuals In Iran [Content Warning: Graphic Photos] (Updated: Video Added) [MR]

Previously:
* Sophisticated Washington Post Debunking Of Terrorism Lacks Something In The Way Of Not Being Smugly Banal
* VDH on Israel
* Some De-Facto Republican Acceptance of Gays: Not Ideal, But We'll Take It

You ever feel like you're writing the same post over and over again? We're beginning to think that our entire blogging existence could be replaced by a very small, very efficient shell script. US readies new sanctions:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov exchanged sharp words as the Bush administration tried to cement support for new UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programs. Rice and Lavrov disagreed on the matter Wednesday at a German-hosted luncheon of foreign ministers from the G-8 group of industrialized nations, according to Lavrov and US and European diplomats present. Another participant, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed, called the exchange "very emotional." The lunch came as Rice and her top aides moved to capitalize on international frustration with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for declaring on Tuesday that the nuclear issue is "closed" and vowed to defy any UN Security Council move for more sanctions... Earlier, Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, had rebuked Ahmadinejad for his comments to the General Assembly. "We're going to keep going," Burns told reporters. "If Mr. Ahmadinejad thinks somehow that he has been given a pass, he is mistaken about that."

So when the reports reference how the US is getting ready to impose new sanctions, what they actually mean is that the US is getting ready to make a symbolic gesture that will be heavily watered down to avoid a Russian veto in the UNSC. Super. Maybe Ahmadinejad has a point about having been given a pass. At least it certainly looks that way:

An Iranian resistance group claimed on Thursday that Iran is constructing a secret, new underground military nuclear facility near its Natanz uranium enrichment plant. The claim, made by the National Council of Resistance of Iran at a Paris news conference, could not be independently verified. The group said it has passed its information, which it said came from sources inside Iran, to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, but has so far not received a response. Officials at the IAEA said they would have no comment on the claims. The opposition group claimed that the site is 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of the Natanz plant, under a mountain called Siah Kooh, which it said would help protect it from any air strike. It said the site includes two tunnels with entrances 6 meters (20 feet) in diameter and that a third tunnel links the alleged facility to Natanz. The group said the site has been under construction since late 2006 and that it believed it would be completed within six months.

On one hand, it's Iranian opposition and we wouldn't trust them to tell us the color of the sky. On the other hand it's the IAEA, and we wouldn't trust them to tell us not to trust Iranian opposition groups when they tell us the color of the sky. So, based on this report, it could be the case that Iran is building a playground filled with rainbows and unicorns just at the new site.

The Natanz plant though - that one they're definitely using to enrich nuclear material so that they can wipe millions of Jews off the face of the earth and then inaugurate an age of regional Iranian hegemony and global nuclear terrorism. That much everyone's pretty solid on.

References:
* US readies new sanctions against Iran [JPost]
* 'Iran building new nuclear facility' [JPost]

Previously:
* IAEA Plays Charlie Brown To Iran's Lucy
* IAEA: Maybe Iran Is Developing Nukes and Maybe They're Not
* NYT: The Media's "New IAEA Report Says Iran Is Not A Problem" Spin Is Basically A Lie

Seriously. What an asshole:

Sigh.

References:
* Keren Peles - "Itay" [asaflivni / YouTube]

Previously:
* Israeli Hottie Wednesdays - Esti Ginzburg Likes Summertime. We Like SummertimeToo. [Video]
* Israeli Hottie Yael Bar-Zohar Is Confused Because You Haven't Voted For MR In Round 2 Of The JIBs
* CNN Tries To Describe Maxim's Israeli Hottie Issue, Fails To Adequately Convey Sheer Hotness [Video]

So this happened:

Holy crap. I just read more of your blog....Jesus you really are out on the crazy-ass twig of the rightwingnutball branch, aren't you?

"The halls of academia are crawling with petulant pedants who make up for their simpering physical and emotional frailness by wallowing in a hollow thuggish braggadocio. They grin with open, ugly resentment when hearing or repeating news about American setbacks or Israeli hardships. They quite simply prefer Iranian and insurgent victories to American or Israeli progress. No amount of post-hoc rationalization or faux sophistication can alter that one very basic fact, which is written all over their smirking faces: they like it when Western countries lose and the representatives of the most brutal and backwards countries on the planet succeed. We'd suggest that they should be ashamed of themselves, but they've already lost what little pride they ever had - pride being a prerequisite to shame - in the bubbling cauldron of their churning self-loathing."

Can you fit another hysterical adjective into your rant? Nevermind dude, for some reason I thought I was chatting with a reasoned and intelligent member of the conservative wing and one that has respect for differing viewpoints...Just stay the fuck away from me and mine.

The tragedy, of course, is that we never found a way to work "pathetic" into that paragraph. Then we would have maxed out on hysterical adjectives.

We always feel so disappointed when sophisticated leftists explain to us that we're just not smart enough to engage them. Two Teachable Moments courtesy of this charming gentleman: (1) if you disagree too strenuously with a leftist of a particular ideolo