Silent Speed

A car that can go zero to sixty in four seconds and tops out at 135mph. Oh, and it is virtually silent when it does so. Welcome to the brave new world of electric cars.

This is not your father's electric car. The $100,000 vehicle, with its sports car looks, is more Ferrari than Prius — and more about testosterone than granola.

Silicon Valley start-up Tesla Motors Inc. raised $60 million in financing from San Francisco Bay area tech giants to get this car on the road. Those famous Toyota Prius owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin — yes, the Google guys — have invested, as have executives from eBay Inc. and PayPal.

The company is headed by entrepreneur Martin Eberhard, the man once behind a gadget called the RocketeBook. That product, sort of an iPod for books, didn't catch on, but Eberhard sold the company in 2000 to the media company Gemstar for $187 million.

Fittingly for a car designed in Silicon Valley, the Roadster comes with built-in satellite navigation technology and an iPod dock that allows drivers to control the music player via the car's standard Blaupunkt stereo. Owners will be able to check their service records online, naturally.

And, of course, there's a blog. At the Tesla Web site, Eberhard started making his case for the car and his company this week. Bottom line: Electric cars don't have to be for wimps.

"Most electric cars were designed by and for people who fundamentally don't think we should drive," Eberhard said in his Wednesday blog posting. "We at Tesla Motors love cars."

Unlike most electric cars, the company's literature notes, the Tesla Roadster holds enough juice to make the round trip between Silicon Valley and the Pebble Beach Golf Links.

While the flashy two-seater may be too expensive for most buyers to consider, the community of electric car aficionados has received Tesla warmly.

Man. I hope they have some massive liability insurance. When the first person gets run down by silent death on wheels it will get ugly! (By the way, I think this is a great development, all joking aside. A really fun electric car with a decent range will be a good thing. As the product gains in popularity, costs will fall as well. A good thing all around).

Isn’t It Time?

The Washington Post has an article that focuses on the Vice-President of Nigeria and his potential involvement in the William Jefferson corruption case. Nigeria has a very big reputation for corruption among it's elected officials but I frankly don't know what to make of the details in this story.

But one of the most puzzling and intriguing facets of the case is Jefferson's ties to Atiku Abubakar, the vice president of Nigeria. Abubakar, a wealthy businessman and one of the leading candidates in next year's race for president of Nigeria, divides his time between his homeland and Potomac, Md., where he and one of his four wives maintain a $2.2 million mansion.

Jefferson, who was a member of a House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, got to know Abubakar after the Nigerian was elected vice president in 1999. Later, Jefferson turned to Abubakar for help in winning a lucrative Nigerian telecommunications contract for a high-tech firm in Kentucky that was paying Jefferson bribes, according to an FBI affidavit. Jefferson told a business associate in a secretly taped conversation that Abubakar was "corrupt" and needed a hefty bribe and a cut of the profits in return for his help — allegations Abubakar has strongly denied.

Abubakar's involvement in the case has created a buzz in Washington's diplomatic circles and generated intense political controversy and media attention in Nigeria — a country that is trying to shed its long-standing reputation for corrupt government.

"I don't think it will be simply excused or trivialized," said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "I think his opponents will use it, certainly. Nigerian politics is hardball."

After operating a six-month sting, FBI agents raided Abubakar's Potomac home on Aug. 3 and searched for evidence relating to Jefferson, who was alleged to have bribed a foreign official. Federal authorities alleged in court filings that Jefferson took more than $400,000 in illegal payments in exchange for using his congressional position to promote high-tech business ventures in Africa. Neither Jefferson nor Abubakar has been charged in the case, although two others have pleaded guilty to providing bribes to Jefferson.

On Wednesday, Abubakar, 59, issued a statement through his Washington lawyer denying any wrongdoing and insisting that Jefferson had never "suggested — in any way — providing any personal economic benefits" to him.

Most of the cash the FBI sting provided, ostensibly as a bribe to Abubakar, turned up in Jefferson's freezer. So the evidence of a bribe to Abubakar seems shaky. On the other hand, there seems to be quite a lot on Jefferson. Please let's get on with formal charges already. It's time to move along.

61 Lawmakers Call For Instructors Dismissal

52 Wisconsin state legislators and 9 state senators have signed a letter demanding that the University of Wisconsin - Madison fire the 9/11 conspiracy believing instructor, Kevin Barrett. The adjunct instructor believes the US government conducted the events of 9/11 to foment war in the Middle East. The UW-M(oonbat) administration conducted a review of Mr. Barrett and decided his theories were acceptable to teach.

A letter sent Thursday and signed by 52 Assembly representatives and nine state senators condemns a decision to let Kevin Barrett teach an introductory class on Islam this fall.

UW-Madison Provost Pat Farrell launched a review after Barrett spoke last month on a talk show about his views that the terrorist attacks were the result of a government conspiracy to spark war in the Middle East. After the review, Farrell said Barrett was a qualified instructor who can present his views as one perspective on the attacks.

"I still have every expectation this will be a very positive educational experience for our students," Farrell said Thursday. "Some are upset about Mr. Barrett's viewpoints on 9/11 and don't want to pay much attention to what makes for a quality educational experience."

Republican Rep. Steve Nass said the lawmakers' letter, which called Barrett's views "academically dishonest," sends a strong message to top UW leaders.

"When 61 legislators condemn a decision by UW-Madison and demand the dismissal of Kevin Barrett, the leadership of the UW System operates at its own peril if it continues to ignore views of the taxpayers," Nass said in a statement.

Barrett has said Nass was "only interested in name-calling and witch hunting."

A quality educational experience apparently includes allowing Barrett a soapbox he can use to contaminate minds with utter nonsense. Because a government that can't keep the New York Times from publishing details of a top secret program is capable of conducting the orchestration of a devious plot to foment war and keeping it hidden from all but the Illuminati such as Mr. Barrett.

Uh. Sure. Someone might want to clue in UW-M(eathead) that academic freedom doesn't mean freedom from consequence. I suspect the next budget might suffer from the stance the university has chosen to take.

UPDATE: Same wire service story, but CNN has video. Also see Ann Althouse who has been following this story from the beginning. She teaches at Madison, of course, and is not at all happy with Barrett.

101st Blog Of The Day

Today my mission to visit one member of the fighting 101st each day took me to Point Five. They have determined through exhaustive research that everything in the entire blogosphere traces back to a single IP. Glenn Greenwald is actually talking to himself!

I wonder if that's what Sherlock found?

Genesis-1 Update

The space sausage/watermelon appears to still be functioning well and Space.com interviewed a few people who know a lot about space in general about the business venture.

SPACE.com asked prominent leaders in various space fields to appraise Bigelow's down payment on the future.

"This is as close as it gets to entrepreneurial orbital excellence … funded by private Bigelow dollars and an operating, subscale, test space station on-orbit," said Burt Rutan, head of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

Rutan and his team are busy building suborbital space transportation for the flying public–a fleet of SpaceShipTwo vessels and carrier motherships. He said that he heartily congratulates Bigelow…as do many of the other "little guys" in the new industry.

"Pioneers like this are what it takes to get out of our three-decades-long period of no progress toward opening the frontier for the people," Rutan explained. "Go, Bob! Go!"

There are quite a few others interviewed besides Rutan. It's an interesting take on the civilian space program.

India’s Most Wanted

One of India's most wanted terrorists was arrested in Kenya.

NEW DELHI: Abdul Karim Tunda, one of India's top terrorists, was arrested on Friday by the Kenyan police in the port city of Mombassa on the basis of an Interpol alert.

Though yet to be announced, the arrest was confirmed by sources. A relieved New Delhi, reeling under the impact of Mumbai serial blasts, will seek the deportation of Tunda who came to be regarded as the "Delhi bomber" after carrying out 41 low-intensity blasts across the capital, killing 24 and maiming scores of innocents in the late 90s.

Sought after by different jehadi outfits for his expertise in swiftly assembling IEDs which could go off on their own, Tunda is expected to provide valuable inputs for counter-terror agencies.

Tunda is on the list of 20 dreaded terrorists India has asked Pakistan to hand over.A native of Pilkhuwa, a small town near Hapur famous for its handlooms, he earned the nickname Tunda after one of his hands was blown up while making bombs. The close shave, however, failed to dull his passion for bombs.

Though the terrorist started off as an operative of the Deobandi Harkat-ul- Ansar, he was increasingly collaborating with Lashkar-e-Taiba whose commander in India, Azam Cheema, was said to be impressed with his bomb-making skills.

One bit of disturbing news in the story:

Intelligence agencies believe Tunda was part of the terror network which recently shifted to Kenya and other countries in East Africa from Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Expectations of help from the hard line Islamic regime in Sudan are believed to be one of the reasons encouraging the movement of terrorists towards Africa.

It appears that Africa is destined to be a battleground in the war on terror.

Perspective

The Australian reports the death of a monster. Evil does walk this earth, and it is not who the usual suspects blame. Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok has died before the UN backed war crimes tribunal could get around to prosecuting him for a couple of deaths.

A couple of million to be precise. Two. Million. Deaths.

PHNOM PENH: Former Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, known as "The Butcher", has died before his expected trial for the genocide of up to two million Cambodians under the brutal regime. He was believed to be 80 years old. Ta Mok, a military commander notorious for his brutality, became the communist Khmer Rouge's last leader before the movement disintegrated in 1998 after years of infighting and bloody purges. The only rebel who refused to surrender or strike a deal with the Government, Ta Mok was arrested a year later along the Thai border.

He was one of only two former top rebel leaders awaiting prosecution for their roles in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

"Ta Mok passed away at 4.45am. We feel very sad for his death, but what can we do?" his lawyer Benson Samay said.

Several other key Khmer Rouge figures, including top deputy Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan and former foreign minister Ieng Sary, remain free in Cambodia, angering Ta Mok's relatives, who say he was unfairly jailed. "It was a miserable situation because the other leaders live freely, but only Ta Mok was in jail until his death," sister-in-law Leng Mom said outside the hospital.

Ta Mok was taken to Phnom Penh military hospital last month suffering breathing problems, high blood pressure and tuberculosis. He had reportedly been slipping in and out of a coma.

He was expected to be the first person indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity in a Khmer Rouge tribunal that opened earlier this month and could have been a key witness against other former regime leaders.

And the monsters are all escaping judgment by being allowed to die natural deaths because the UN can't get around to prosecuting crimes that occurred between 1975 and 1979. Wouldn't want to rush anything, don't you know.

Kek Galabru, president of human rights group Licadho, said Ta Mok's death was "an omen" for the remaining ageing Khmer Rouge leaders, who could also cheat victims of the justice due to them by dying before they could stand trial.

"What we are afraid of is that one by one the former senior Khmer Rouge leaders will depart from our world," Kek Galabru said. "At the end, the tribunal will face difficulties in finding key people to prosecute."

There is evil in the world. It is not the ones you hear blamed so often these days.

Scout, It’s What’s For Dinner

Or that appears to be what a black bear thought anyway. A Boy Scout sleeping in a tent at a Utah camp woke up to find a bear grazing. Unfortunately, the bear was grazing on the Scout's upper arm. Needless to say, the Scout wasn't particularly fond of the idea of being an entrée, and he succeeded in scaring the bear away. The bear, having found what she thought was the happy hunting ground returned later looking for another taste, only to be met with a game warden with a gun.

Colton Stewart, 14, woke up early Wednesday to a burning sensation in his upper arm, then realized it was a bear biting his arm through the tent, state wildlife officials said. He pulled away and heard the bear run off through the brush.

"It wasn't biting viciously. They put their mouth on things to see what they taste like," said Anis Aoude, regional wildlife manager for the state Division of Wildlife Resources. "In this case, there just happened to be a kid's arm on the other side of the tent."

The bite wasn't serious, but camp officials notified the state, which sent a game warden to the Adventure Park Scout Camp in central Utah.

That evening, as barbecued ribs were being prepared for the 90 Scouts, the 2- to 3-year-old female bear wandered back into the area, DWR Central Region Supervisor John Fairchild said.

"It wasn't afraid of anybody," Fairchild said. "It paralleled the camp, and the conservation officer waited for the bear to get away from the people in a safe area before he shot it."

The bear had apparently become habituated to eating human food and had lost its fear of people, making it dangerous so close to the camp.

See how blithely the fish and game people treat this? The bear had become "habituated to eating HUMAN food". As in humans! And you all think we're nuts talking about this animal uprising. How many scouts have to become the bearish equivalent of a blue plate special before people wake up to the real danger?

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Jim at bRight and Early is waiting for the ACLU to weigh in. And they will.

A Lost Manuscript Found

A rare manuscript fragment written by none other than Doctor Watson has been discovered. Here, published for the first time is that manuscript. Remember, you saw it at Blue Crab Boulevard first!

A Case of Multiple Identities

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the bizarre things which are going on, the strange dressing habits, the poor hygiene, the bad home decor, the lousy Feng Shui planning and the complete misunderstanding of how a toilet actually works, it would make us launch that wonderful lunch of kippered herring on toast in a most spectacular fashion."

He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.

"Ah," said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Lower Slobovia in return for my assistance in the case of the missing Speedo. Which in the King's case, frankly should have remained missing. He's at least 350 pounds."

As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons. entered to announce Miss Mary X, while the lady herself loomed behind his small figure like a Mastiff eying a fireplug. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.

"So, how was your flight from Rio, Miss X?" Holmes inquired.

"Why, how could you possibly know I'd just arrived from Rio, Mr. Holmes?", she blurted.

"I see by your six-inch stiletto heels, your sequined bikini and the feather headdress you're wearing that you've just returned from Brazil."Holmes retorted. "So what brings you to see the most famous detective of all time?" Holmes said, modestly.

"Well, sir, I need your assistance in solving a mystery of such import that it could shake the very foundations of the world as we know it. In fact, it could well result in the very end of the world. Or not, it depends." (Miss X seemed a bit overexcited to my medical eye).

"Oh, the Greenwald incident you mean." Holmes answered. Miss X fainted.

After reviving her with a brisk application of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (she did look fetching in the sequined bikini after all), Holmes helped her regain her composure by handing her a glass with four fingers of Wild Turkey. Then another. (I suspected he had some ignoble intentions).

After gulping the contents, Miss X wanted to know how Holmes could have possibly known what she was going to ask him for help with. "Elementary, my dear Miss X, I read blogs, even though they will not be invented for over a century. I like to stay ahead of the technology", he answered.

"But the mystery of the multiple identities of the sock puppets has been solved. For the answer all you have to do is…..

The manuscript ended there and we will never know what Holmes found to reveal the solution to the case of the multiple identities. Or how his romance with Miss X ended up. But you can head over to Ace of Spades to see what he has to say about it.  Confederate Yankee also did some work on it, but his site is down. I'll update with a link when it comes back online. (Hat tip to The Anchoress for the idea for this post).

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee is back up and his post is here.

Countering The Netroots

The New York Sun has an article about the upcoming meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in Denver. One of the topics of the meeting appears to be the subject of the netroots and how to counter the excesses. David Sirota comes out swinging:

A former Congressional staffer sharply critical of the group, David Sirota, said the speeches to the group will carry some political cost. "Among a certain segment of voters, it's absolutely, positively negative. It's radioactive," Mr. Sirota said. "Candidates should at least consider the radioactivity."

The tension dates back to the last presidential race when council officials threw cold water on the populist, Webdriven campaign of Howard Dean. Dr. Dean, who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, derided the council as the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party." A sharp-tongued aide for a Dean rival told the New Republic that the Vermont governor's Internet-savvy backers resembled the grotesque denizens of the "bar scene from ‘Star Wars.'"

The conflict between the two camps is so intense that when Mrs. Clinton appeared before the council last year and called for a halt to the internecine fighting, bloggers unleashed attacks on her that are still reverberating. A newspaper report in May that Mrs.Clinton hoped to create a unified Democratic agenda under the council's aegis received two reactions from a leading liberal blogger, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com, "LOL," shorthand for "laugh out loud," and "DOA," meaning "dead on arrival."

I long held the opinion that extremes, either left or right, are essentially unelectable unless they can reach the center voters. The DLC is of pretty much the same opinion.

"If we're going to be a majority, we have to get bigger. We have to compete in places like Colorado and the Southwest where it's been an uphill battle in the past," said Mr. Reed, a former domestic policy adviser to Mr. Clinton. "We need to be winning over independents and disgruntled Republicans, not just talking amongst ourselves."

The council was founded in 1985 by Democrats determined to confront a party establishment controlled by union leaders and liberal lobbies.

"They were throwing bombs because the Democratic Party was being run by unalloyed liberals who were completely in the thrall of old-line interest groups," a White House aide under Mr. Clinton, Matthew Bennett, said. In the 1992 campaign, the formula was adopted by an Arkansas governor, Mr. Clinton, who saw the DLC as a way to set himself apart from other contenders for the presidential nomination.

Which really actually highlights something. A number of bloggers (Roger Simon for example) have called the left reactionary. They are trying to drag the Democratic party back to a failed doctrine that kept them reliably losing elections for decades. In that sense, they are reactionary, but they think they are leading the party in a new direction.

ANOTHER DDOS?

I can't reach the mu.nu blogs (Confederate Yankee and Ace of Spades among others) at the moment. Anyone know if there is yet another DDOS going on?

The Tale Of The Giant R Of Greencastle

"To the man who loves R for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish to the point of outrageous distortion, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes celebres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province."

"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records. Because I can embroider a simple act like your lighting a pipe into a mammoth best seller"

"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood–"you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."

"Thus it is that I come to my latest case, that of the Giant R of Greencastle, Indiana. I suppose you can embellish this little nothing of a case into a great mystery and garner us bundles of cold, hard cash. It was a slow news day and so I took up the paper and discovered a tiny filler piece buried at the bottom of the sports section, close aboard an ad for a nightclub featuring scantily clad women gyrating to loud music. Which I didn't even look at, really. The tiny clump of newsprint described the theft and subsequent return of dozens and dozens of R's from signs all about Greencastle. The police, being more familiar with minding their P's and Q's were baffled. For who would take dozens of letters from signs all over town, but taking none but the letter R. Then return all the ill-gotten R's in a box left in front of the police station itself.

"I promptly boarded a train to go to Greencastle but misread the schedule and ended up in Albuquerque. See if you can whip that into a masterful and salable bit of prose, won't you, Watson? I'm running low on tobacco."

Those Who Cannot Remember The Past

Are condemned to repeat it. So said George Santayana. And those who never learn history will repeat history over and over until the end of time. Thomas Sowell describes the terrible history of "peace" movements that inevitably cause wars.

One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements — that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia — not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

The ones who start the war will get a pass on the repercussions of their actions because certain well-meaning (usually, anyway) people will want to limit suffering and casualties. Even if that means the same cycle will repeat in a few years. This is another must read. There seem to be a few of them today.

Good Company

I have a (banned) commenter who likes to accuse me of a number of things, among other things, he enjoys telling me that I am shallow and biased. The most recent occasion for pulling out the ad hominems is the situation in Lebanon. Well, if I am shallow and biased on that subject, I appear to be in some exceedingly good company. Faoud Ajami, the Majid Khadduri Professor and director of the Middle East Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, for example.

Pity Lebanon: In a world of states, it has not had a state of its own. A garden without fences, was the way Beirut, its capital city, was once described.

A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the "gift" of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah's latest deed.

It did not seem to matter to Nasrallah that the ground that would burn in Lebanon would in the main be Shiite land in the south. Nor was it of great concern to he who lives on the subsidies of the Iranian theocrats that the ordinary Lebanese would pay for his adventure. The cruel and cynical hope was that Nasrallah's rivals would be bullied into submission and false solidarity, and that the man himself would emerge as the master of the game of Lebanon's politics.

The hotels are full in Damascus," read a dispatch in Beirut, as though to underline the swindle of this crisis, its bitter harvest for the Lebanese. History repeats here, endlessly it seems. There was something to Nasrallah's conduct that recalled the performance of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Six Day War of 1967. That leader, it should be recalled, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, asked for the evacuation of U.N. forces from the Sinai Peninsula– clear acts of war–but never expected the onset of war. He had only wanted the gains of war.

Nasrallah's brazen deed was, in the man's calculus, an invitation to an exchange of prisoners. Now, the man who triggered this crisis stands exposed as an Iranian proxy, doing the bidding of Tehran and Damascus. He had confidently asserted that "sources" in Israel had confided to Hezbollah that Israel's government would not strike into Lebanon because Hezbollah held northern Israel hostage to its rockets, and that the demand within Israel for an exchange of prisoners would force Ehud Olmert's hand. The time of the "warrior class" in Israel had passed, Nasrallah believed, and this new Israeli government, without decorated soldiers and former generals, was likely to capitulate. Now this knowingness has been exposed for the delusion it was.

There was steel in Israel and determination to be done with Hezbollah's presence on the border. States can't–and don't–share borders with militias. That abnormality on the Lebanese-Israeli border is sure not to survive this crisis. One way or other, the Lebanese army will have to take up its duty on the Lebanon-Israel border. By the time the dust settles, this terrible summer storm will have done what the Lebanese government had been unable to do on its own.

Read the whole thing. It an extraordinary analysis of a tragic situation. But it pulls no punches on laying the blame squarely where it belongs.

Oil From Plankton?

A Spanish firm claims to have developed a process that can grow plankton in a laboratory, then convert the marine plants into crude oil. The resulting compound has not been subjected to refining yet, so the scientists are not yet ready to gas up a car.

Bio Fuel Systems is a wholly Spanish firm, formed this year in eastern Spain after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante.

"Bio Fuel Systems has developed a process that converts energy, based on three elements: solar energy, photosynthesis and an electromagnetic field," it said in a press dossier.

"That process allows us to obtain biopetroleum, equivalent to that of fossil origin."

Phytoplankton, like other plants, absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. Scientists have examined the possibility of stimulating growth of the single cell plants as a means of reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

CO2, liberated by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, is widely held responsible for global warming.

Bio Fuel Systems said its new fuel would reduce CO2, was free of other contaminants like sulphur dioxide and would be cheaper than fossil oil is now.

If this were to actually work in a real-world production scenario, it would be the end of the reliance on petroleum (and the end to paying certain countries vast sums of money to finance their terrorism activities). I'll wait a while before celebrating, though, since I remember several announcements like this in the past that amounted to nothing in the end. I remember a process announced one time that allegedly converted garbage into crude oil.