Brutal Truth

Mark Steyn on the situation in Lebanon.

A few years back, when folks talked airily about "the Middle East peace process" and "a two-state solution," I used to say that the trouble was the Palestinians saw a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to a one-state solution. I underestimated Islamist depravity. As we now see in Gaza and southern Lebanon, any two-state solution would be an interim stage en route to a no-state solution.

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

It gets better, or worse depending on your ability to grasp facts, from there. Steyn includes this utter gem of a paragraph:

But Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: It's finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the "Palestinian question" has helped deliver Gaza, and Lebanon and Syria, into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist Entity. Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

This one is a must read.

Feeling The Pinch?

Via Commenter (and blogger) Crosspatch, this article from the Jerusalem Post indicates that there may be a little problem in Hezbollah's terrorist paradise.

Hizbullah is organized along military lines, with regional commands in southern, northern and central Lebanon. The unit in the south, called the "Katyusha Unit" by the IDF, consists of some 1,000 fighters who have been responsible for most of the rocket attacks on communities north of Acre and Amiad.

The unit has been able to recruit reserves, but MI has noticed that it has run into difficulty convincing members of the terror group who reside in northern Lebanon to travel south to participate in the fighting.

Once the unit exhausts the missiles currently in its possession, it will, MI believes, have difficulty acquiring more, since most of the roads and supply routes have been destroyed by the IDF. Several Syrian and Iranian attempts to send supplies to Hizbullah have been thwarted by the IDF.

North of the Litani River, Hizbullah operates a unit called the "medium-range rocket unit" believed to be responsible for firing Katyushas at Haifa and Israel's northern coast. Most of that unit's missiles were supplied by Syria prior to the current conflict.

This unit is also believed to have an arsenal of long-range rockets - Iranian-made Fajr 5 and Zelzal missiles capable of reaching targets 200 km. away.

Hizbullah still has several functioning military command centers in different regions in Lebanon, according to MI assessments. Officials in these centers are still able to command Hizbullah's men in the field.

If Hezbollah terrorists from the North are actually refusing to head South, what are they seeing? Maybe not what they thought? This could be a very bad sign for Hezbollah.

Another Sherlock Holmes Manuscript Found!

Wow, I have to tell you, Blue Crab Boulevard is absolutely the luckiest site ever! We found yet another lost fragment of a manuscript written by Dr. Watson his very own self! It details yet another Sherlock Holmes mystery , this one is one for the ages!

            The Adventure of the Capitol Hill Blue Carbuncle

  I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, looking haggard and exhausted. A battered laptop computer lay next to him, seemingly thrown aside.
"You are engaged," said l; "perhaps I interrupt you."
"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one" — he jerked his thumb in the direction of the laptop — "but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction."
I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. "I suppose," I remarked, "that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it — that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime."
"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have Eight billion human beings all jostling each other within cyberspace. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such."

"You see, I have been following closely the investigations of Eric, the proprietor of a website called Classical Values and his investigation of the man who was not, one George Harleigh. An oft-quoted expert who simply did not exist."
"But how could he be oft-quoted if he did not actually exist," I  asked.
"Elementary, my dear Watson. Harleigh was the figment of imagination dreamed up by Capitol Hill Blue to prove their points. He never existed. When the truth came out, the folks at Capitol Hill Blue made all references to Harleigh disappear, one by one."
"But that cannot be," I exclaimed. "For is not the internet the place where all truth can be found forever? Even though it will not be invented for over a century?"
"Well, there are Google caches of many things, and yet the people at Capitol Hill Blues continue to rewrite history even now."
Holmes tossed off his Corona and waded into the surf for a quick swim. The sun beat down fiercely on the hot beach.
I ogled the waitress in her lovely sarong, even though I knew it was politically incorrect to do so.
"But how can reality be erased so quickly, Holmes?" I asked.
"Again, it is elementary, my dear Watson," He said as he shook the water from his hair. "The reality you think you see on the internet is not actually there at all."
Holmes strapped his snowshoes firmly to his feet and rose to stride briskly into the snowdrifts, imploring me to follow.
"Come, Watson, we are off to see the Wizard about a carbuncle! Do you by any chance know what a carbuncle is?"
I followed meekly, trying to remember. The waitress looked very, very cold indeed. A sarong is not the best dress for a blizzard.

Here endeth the fragment.

Shadows

Sideshow

My youngest boy was watching a show on TLC which reported on abnormally tall and abnormally short people. He was fascinated with it and was telling me about it excitedly after it ended. I mentioned General Tom Thumb, one of PT Barnum's star performers and we were off on an internet hunt. After consulting Wikipedia, I went over to this site which in addition to a lot of Tom Thumb items has quite a collection of ephemera dealing with various sideshow performers through the years. That in turn led over here to a site dedicated to the sideshow, past, present and future. Incidentally, Mr. Mundie's website features pictures of his own artwork as well as the sideshow ephemera.

So a sidetrack to a sideshow on a slow Sunday, if you are so inclined. Enjoy.

Arab Governments Pressing Syria?

The Associated Press headline for this article says that Arab governments are pressing Syria to drop support for Hezbollah. The governments involved are not identified. If true, this could be a significant development, indeed.

SIDON, Lebanon - Mideast diplomats were pressing Syria to stop backing Hezbollah as the guerrillas fired more deadly rockets onto Israel's third-largest city Sunday. Israel faced tougher-than-expected ground battles and bombarded targets in southern Lebanon, hitting a convoy of refugees.

Israel's defense minister said his country would accept an international force, preferably NATO, on its border after it drives back or weakens Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But his troops reported encountering an intelligent, well-prepared and ruthless guerrilla army whose fighters don't seem to fear death.

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arriving in Israel on Monday, both the Arabs and Israelis appeared to be trying to set out positions ahead of Washington's first diplomatic mission to the region since the fighting began. The United States backs Israel's refusal to talk about a cease-fire until it completes the military campaign against Hezbollah, but is under increasing pressure to foster a plan to end the growing suffering and destruction in Lebanon.

Still, daily casualty figures appeared to be lowering — about nine confirmed Sunday by Lebanese security officials, compared with dozens each day earlier in the week. The decrease could be a result of the exodus from the hardest-hit areas or because of the difficulty for authorities in getting figures from the war zone.

Depending on how hard the unnamed governments are pushing and who they are, of course, this could really spell trouble for Hezbollah.

We Note, With Our Regrets

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard wish to note, with our deepest regrets, the passing of some of the former staples of English cuisine. A recent survey shows that the younger generation of Britons have never even heard of, much less eaten such classically English culinary delights as bath chaps, jugged hare and brawn. What are these dishes you ask?

Just one percent of those surveyed under 25 recognised bath chaps — pigs' cheeks covered in breadcrumbs — while only 1.6 percent had heard of jugged hare — hare meat served in a sauce of its blood mixed with port.

Brawn (jellied pig's head) came third on the list, while squirrel casserole was fourth.

By contrast, the survey of 2,021 people carried out for British television channel UKTV Food showed that 40 percent of over-60s here were aware of bath chaps while a third of older respondents recognised jugged hare.

"While pigs' cheeks and squirrel casserole are clearly not to everyone's tastes, they are a powerful link to a bygone culinary era," said Paul Moreton, the food channel's head.

British politicians in the past have celebrated the seeming lack of a "national" cuisine as indicative of the country's integration of different cultures.

Then-foreign secretary Robin Cook said in 2001 that chicken tikka masala, an adaptation of an Indian dish to suit the British palate, was Britain's "true national dish".

Yes, it is with our deepest regrets. We regret we ever heard of these dishes. And we thought Scottish cuisine was based on a dare.

A Lose-Lose Proposition

Alan Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post points out the obvious. The terrorists not only welcome civilian casualties, but they promote them. They also count on the international community, the media and human rights organizations to condemn Israel for the civilian deaths. And by doing so, the international community, the media and the human rights groups guarantee more and more civilian deaths.

The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.

By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians.

This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option.

There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media and the so called "human rights" organizations could stop falling for this terrorist gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda.

Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of "overreaction," "disproportionality" and "violations of human rights."

In doing so they play right into the hands of the terrorists, causing more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides.
If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.

IT SHOULD BE obvious by now that Hizbullah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians; why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian "shields." They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities.

They regard these human shields as shahids - martyrs - even if they did not volunteer for this lethal job. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of the shields, even if the bullet that kills them came from the gun of a policeman.

Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them - on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the terrorists from killing their innocent civilians.

That this is so should be obvious to even the most partisan person. This is information war and the terrorists have learned very well indeed how to manipulate the media. There was a recently completed study that proved that.

That this is so should be obvious to even the most partisan person. This is information war and the terrorists have learned very well indeed how to manipulate the media. There was a recently completed study that proved that.

There Are Sock Puppets

And then there are sock puppets. I'm still fond of Sherlock Holmes, though.

UPDATE: And then there's video.

India’s Most Wanted - Whoops

The man arrested in Kenya last week was not the man the Indian authorities thought it was. The man turned out to be a West African and he was turned over to the Americans (wouldn't you love to know what this is all about?)

NEW DELHI: In a dramatic twist to the reports that one of India's most wanted men, Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda, had been nabbed in Mombasa, the Kenyan police said on Sunday that the arrested man was a West African national amid media reports that he had been handed over to the FBI.

Tunda, founder of the Laskher-e-Taiba in India and wanted for several blasts in Mumbai, Delhi and other places in the country during 1993-98, was said to have been arrested in Mombasa on Thursday night - news that had been received with great satisfaction by security agencies here.

However, Kenyan police spokesman M Kibunja said that the arrested person was not an Indian but a West African national. "He has nothing to do with the Mumbai blasts," Kibunja said.

This has taken a decidedly odd turn, hasn't it?

Expect More False Accusations!

In news sure to cause Frenchmen to hurl their Roquefort in dismay, an American has won the Tour de France.

PARIS - Floyd Landis won the Tour de France on Sunday, keeping cycling's most prestigious title in American hands for the eighth straight year.

The 30-year-old Landis cruised to victory on the Champs-Elysees, a day after regaining the leader's yellow jersey and building an insurmountable lead in the final time trial.

"I kept fighting, never stopped believing," Landis said, shortly after he received the winner's yellow jersey on the podium, joined by his daughter, Ryan.

Landis picked up where another American left off last year, when Lance Armstrong completed his seventh and final Tour triumph.

With the victory, Landis becomes the third American — joining Armstrong and three-time winner Greg LeMond — to win the Tour.

Sunday's champagne and Landis' fifth yellow jersey of the Tour were possible thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime ride Thursday in the Alps that put the Phonak team leader back in contention, one day after a disastrous ride dropped him from first to 11th, more than eight minutes back.

Oscar Pereiro of Spain finished second overall at 57 seconds back, and Germany's Andreas Kloeden was third, 1:29 behind Landis.

There will be many tears shed into the vin ordinaire this night. But the plotting to lodge false allegations against Landis is likely already underway.

Conspiracy Theory

Writing in the New York Times, Stanley Fish addresses the Kevin Barrett issue at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally predictable battle lines were drawn between those who disagree about what the doctrine of academic freedom does and does not allow.

Mr. Barrett’s critics argue that academic freedom has limits and should not be invoked to justify the dissemination of lies and fantasies. Mr. Barrett’s supporters (most of whom are not partisans of his conspiracy theory) insist that it is the very point of an academic institution to entertain all points of view, however unpopular. (This was the position taken by the university’s provost, Patrick Farrell, when he ruled on July 10 that Mr. Barrett would be retained: “We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas.”)

Both sides get it wrong. The problem is that each assumes that academic freedom is about protecting the content of a professor’s speech; one side thinks that no content should be ruled out in advance; while the other would draw the line at propositions (like the denial of the Holocaust or the flatness of the world) considered by almost everyone to be crazy or dangerous.

But in fact, academic freedom has nothing to do with content. It is not a subset of the general freedom of Americans to say anything they like (so long as it is not an incitement to violence or is treasonous or libelous). Rather, academic freedom is the freedom of academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any body of material, however unpromising it might seem, to academic interrogation and analysis.

Academic freedom means that if I think that there may be an intellectual payoff to be had by turning an academic lens on material others consider trivial — golf tees, gourmet coffee, lingerie ads, convenience stores, street names, whatever — I should get a chance to try. If I manage to demonstrate to my peers and students that studying this material yields insights into matters of general intellectual interest, there is a new topic under the academic sun and a new subject for classroom discussion.

In short, whether something is an appropriate object of academic study is a matter not of its content — a crackpot theory may have had a history of influence that well rewards scholarly scrutiny — but of its availability to serious analysis. This point was missed by the author of a comment posted to the blog of a University of Wisconsin law professor, Ann Althouse: “When is the University of Wisconsin hiring a professor of astrology?” The question is obviously sarcastic; its intention is to equate the 9/11-inside-job theory with believing in the predictive power of astrology, and to imply that since the university wouldn’t think of hiring someone to teach the one, it should have known better than to hire someone to teach the other.

My take on this all along has been quite simple. This is not an academic freedom or free speech issue. It is an employment issue. Mr. Barrett was hired to teach a course on Islam. A 9/11 conspiracy theory has nothing whatsoever to do with the course at hand (other than as an aside that the supposed motive was to stir up a war with Islam, which still does not apply to the course). To the extent Barret takes time away from the actual subject of the course to preach his contemptible theory, he is failing to meet the requirements for employment as an instructor.

As to Barrett's and other people's theory, I can offer one thing to prove that they are all out of their minds. A government that cannot prevent publication of the details of a legal program to monitor terrorist money transfers is supposed to be able to keep a monstrous plot secret?

Sure.

The Party Of Ambition

I've had a number of commenters on here who have blamed Hezbollah's rise on Israel. Here's an article from the Times of London that explains what is and has been the driving factor behind Hezbollah. Iran's regional ambitions.

What are the links between Hezbollah and Iran? In 1982 Iran had almost no influence in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shi’ite bourgeoisie that had had close ties with Iran when it was ruled by the Shah was horrified by the advent of the clerics who created an Islamic republic.

Seeking a bridgehead in Lebanon, Iran asked its ambassador to Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a radical mullah, to create one. Mohtashamipour decided to open a branch in Lebanon of the Iranian Hezbollah (the party of God).

After many meetings in Lebanon Mohtashamipour succeeded: in its founding statement it committed itself to the “creation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon”. To this end hundreds of Iranian mullahs, political “educators” and Islamic Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Beirut.

Within two years several radical Shi’ite groups in Lebanon, including some with Marxist backgrounds, had united under the Hezbollah name and became the main force resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon after the expulsion of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1983.

Terror has been its principal weapon. Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped more than 200 foreign nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or western Europeans (including Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy). It organised the hijacking of civilian aircraft and more or less pioneered the idea of suicide bombings against American and French targets, killing almost 1,000 people, including 241 US marines in Beirut and 58 French paratroopers.

The campaign produced results. After Hezbollah’s attacks, France reduced its support for Saddam Hussein. America went further by supplying Iran with TOW anti-tank missiles, shipped via Israel, which helped to tip the Iran-Iraq war in favour of Iran. In exchange Iran ordered Hezbollah to release French and American hostages.

Once the Iran-Iraq war was over, Tehran found other uses for its Lebanese asset. It purged and then reshaped Hezbollah to influence the broader course of regional politics while using it to wage a low-intensity war against Israel.

In 2000, when the Israelis evacuated the strip they controlled in southern Lebanon, Tehran presented the event as the “first victory of Islam over the Zionist crusader camp” and Hezbollah was lauded across the Arab world. Hezbollah taunted the Israelis with billboards on the border reading, “If you return, we return”.

To prop up that myth, Tehran invested in a propaganda campaign that included television “documentaries”, feature films and books and magazine articles. The message was simple: while secular ideologies — from pan-Arabism to Arab socialism — had failed to liberate an inch of Arab territory, Islamism, in its Iranian Khomeinist version working through Hezbollah, had achieved “total victory” over Israel in Lebanon.

Since 1984 Iran has created branches of Hezbollah in more than 20 countries. None has equalled the success of the Lebanese branch, which until recently enjoyed something akin to cult status among Arabs, including non-Muslims, because of the way it stood up to Israel.

It's quite a long and detailed article and it explains much of what is going on in the Middle East today. It also points to why the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated states are very unhappy with Hezbollah. On the question of timing the article has this to say:

The pincer war launched by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel is also related to domestic politics. In the occupied territories, Hamas needs to marginalise Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO and establish itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah wants to prevent the consolidation of power in the hands of a new pro-American coalition government led by Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, and Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader.

(Shi’ites make up about 40% of the population, Christians 39% and Sunnis, Druze and others the remainder.) If the pincer war against Israel is won, Iran would be able to expand its zone of influence, already taking shape in Iraq and assured in Syria, to take in Lebanon and Gaza. This would be the first time since the 7th century that Persian power has extended so far to the west.

The strategy is high risk. If the Israelis manage to crush Hamas and destroy Hezbollah’s military machine, Iran’s influence will diminish massively. Defeat could revive an internal Hezbollah debate between those who continue to support a total and exclusive alliance with Iran until the infidel, led by America, is driven out of the Middle East and those who want Hezbollah to distance itself from Tehran and emphasise its Lebanese identity. One reason why Hezbollah has found such little support among Arabs in Egypt and Saudi Arabia this time is the perception that it is fighting Israel on behalf of Iran, a Persian Shi’ite power that has been regarded by the majority of Arab Sunnis as an ancestral enemy.

There is much more at stake than just Lebanon. This may be one of the last chances to head off Iran without a major war. That this is understood by the West may be why the European calls for a ceasefire have been almost pro forma with no real urgency behind them.

The Next Order Of (Monkey) Business

In which the proprietor of the Humble Crabitat acquires a new title. My only question is, do I get vestments?

Lie Down With Dogs

Get up with fleas as the old saying goes. The ACLU is suing the state of Missouri on behalf of the Westboro cult. They contend that a ban on picketing at funerals passed by Missouri lawmakers is unconstitutional on freedom of religion and freedom of speech grounds.

The church and the Rev. Fred Phelps say God is allowing troops, coal miners and others to be killed because the United States tolerates gay men and lesbians.

Missouri lawmakers were spurred to action after members of the church protested in St. Joseph, Mo., last August at the funeral of Army Spec. Edward L. Myers.

The law bans picketing and protests "in front of or about" any location where a funeral is held, from an hour before it begins until an hour after it ends. Offenders can face fines and jail time.

A number of other state laws and a federal law, signed in May by President Bush, bar such protests within a certain distance of a cemetery or funeral.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the Missouri law tries to limit protesters' free speech based on the content of their message. It is asking the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and to issue an injunction to keep it from being enforced, which would allow the group to resume picketing.

"I told the nation, as each state went after these laws, that if the day came that they got in our way, that we would sue them," said Phelps's daughter Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for the church in Topeka, Kan. "At this hour, the wrath of God is pouring out on this country."

Scott Holste, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, said, "We're not going to acquiesce to anything that they're asking for in this lawsuit."

Although I've never been sure such laws could pass constitutional muster, I also understand that the sickeningly indecent behavior of the cultists provoked the passing of these laws in the first place. (By the way, the continued insistence of the media on calling this group a "fundamentalist sect" or even "Baptists" is sleazy. They have no problem calling other cults "cults" but they are using this as a way to take a swipe at Christians. Nor are these whackjobs part of the "Christian right" as the lefties like to charge. No responsible person would claim cults like this).

UPDATE: Ouch, that will leave a mark.

Defenders of the ACLU will proclaim this as proof of their dedication to free speech, but that's nonsense. The ACLU does not take every case that has free-speech implications, let alone Constitutional issues. Fred Phelps could get a lawyer on his own; the ACLU and its donors have no obligation to assist him in mocking the loss of family members at funerals. The ACLU has put itself on par with these soulless freaks, and their donors should take note that their money now supports the Phelps traveling hate show.