Fan Letter

The Washington Post publishes what I can only call a fan letter from an American academic who has written a book about Syrian president Bashar Assad. It includes a "suggestion" that the US has to talk to Assad to bring about peace in the Middle East.

(Is it just me or is this attempt to use the WaPo as a negotiating tool just getting out of hand)?

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been a lonely man in international circles of late. Indeed, one of the few Americans with whom he has had contact in the past few years has been a professor (me) who wrote a book about him — not exactly high-powered diplomacy.

Assad was a tremendous disappointment to many U.S. officials after a promising beginning when he came to power in 2000. Considering the dilapidated, broken-down country he inherited, however, the expectations were misplaced. And because they were so high, so was the level of disappointment.

Along with accusations of Syrian support for the insurgency in Iraq, Washington began to view Assad as being on the wrong side of the war on terrorism. Indeed, with Syria's neo-patrimonial structure staring down the Bush administration's attempt to spread democracy in the region, the regime was seen as being on the wrong side of history.

Thus the long-held disdain among American neoconservatives for the Assads (Bashar and his late father, Hafez) became Bush administration policy, along with the strategic goal of weakening Syria. The young Syrian leader was dismissed as an inept buffoon who wasn't really in control. Regime change in Damascus became U.S. policy in all but name, especially after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in early 2005, in which Syria was seen as the culprit. The Syrian president couldn't even obtain a visa to attend a U.N. General Assembly summit meeting.

Assad is (I suspect) trying to play well above his weight class here, and he's getting David Lesch to carry water for him to make it happen. And it won't work out any time soon.

From Syria's perspective, the crisis is seen as a search for relevance. Damascus needs at least a few arrows in what has been an empty quiver of diplomatic leverage. Assad wants to be taken seriously. He believes the sincere overtures he made to the United States and even Israel in his first few years in power were categorically rebuffed — and in fact they were. After all, he was seen as being on the wrong side of history.

Once before, an Arab leader felt rebuffed in much the same way. That was in 1973, and the leader was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He launched an Arab-Israeli war to reactivate diplomacy and improve his bargaining position with regard to return of the Sinai Peninsula. The United States was smart enough to recognize these motives at the time, and it engaged in a diplomatic process that led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

Leaders reach out in interesting, and occasionally lethal, ways. The Bush administration should not, however, react to the current situation by continuing to isolate and threaten Syria. Recognize the situation for what it is, because, like it or not, Bashar al-Assad is sticking around. Just because diplomacy is what he is ultimately searching for should not obviate the possibility of diplomacy.

In coming weeks, one hopes, the Syrian president will be talking with someone from the United States other than a professor who wrote a book about him.

I suspect Syria's quiver will remain empty for the foreseeable future. Despite the best efforts of folks like Mr. Lesch.

Remember That Mexican Election Thingie?

Well, it still isn't settled - and it looks like Andrés Manuel López Obrador(AMLO) is still trying to upset Mexico and declare himself the winner - election results be damned.

MEXICO CITY — To illustrate the "ad terrorem" method by which truth was imposed in totalitarian societies, Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski told a story: Two girls race each other in a park, the one who is behind repeatedly proclaiming at the top of her lungs, "I'm winning! I'm winning!," until the one in the lead gives up and runs crying to her mother, saying: "I can't beat her, she always wins."

Minus the ending, something similar is happening in Mexico. After a model Election Day (free, orderly, peaceful) during which 41,791,322 Mexicans voted, their votes tabulated in 130,477 polling places by 909,575 citizens, the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) candidate for president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lost by a margin of 0.57 percentage point to Felipe Calderón, candidate of the National Action Party (PAN).

A preliminary electronic tally sponsored by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of México matched the final count taken in the 300 electoral districts where the official results from the polling places were collected. That negative outcome in the presidential vote aside, on the very same Election Day, the PRD became the second most powerful force in the legislature, considerably increasing its presence in both chambers, while its candidate for head of government for the Mexico City district won with 47 percent of the vote and the PRD swept nearly all the executive and legislative positions in the city.

This was the reality testified to by 1,800 district advisers, 970,000 representatives from all the parties, 24,769 national observers and 639 international observers. Nevertheless, López Obrador is unwilling to accept his personal defeat (although, of course, he considers the elections that produced unprecedented victories for his party to be valid).

Given the narrow margin of the presidential election, the PRD chose to exercise its legitimate right to challenge the results before the Federal Election Tribunal. The court's final and unappealable ruling will decide no later than Sept. 6 whether the irregularities claimed by the PRD are valid, in which polling places they occurred, whether a recount should take place and, ultimately, the result of the presidential election.

If the PRD candidate had simply implemented this legal strategy, his behavior would not have unforgivably sullied the process or undermined Mexico's fragile democracy. But as might have been predicted, López Obrador wasn't satisfied with legal action. Just as he's always done, he had to go for broke — resorting to "ad terrorem" methods.

AMLO is declaring himself the winner and is continuing his campaign of saying he was cheated even though the election results showed his party as gaining seats. This is a really bad, bad sign. He's been listening to former Gore staffers.

Aware from the night of July 2 that the outlook wasn't good, López Obrador behaved like the girl in the story above. He went to the Zócalo (that theological-political spot in the historical center of Mexico City) to declare: "We've won the presidency." Days later, after release of the official tally by the Federal Electoral Institute (the independent citizen body that since 1996 has been successfully organizing fair elections at every federal level, reversing a long history of fraud), López Obrador summoned the "people" to an "assembly" at which he called President Vicente Fox a "traitor to democracy" and used the most ominous word in the Mexican political dictionary: "fraud."

This denigration of the respected Mexican electoral system (which had just announced the triumph of hundreds of PRD candidates), and the incendiary speeches that have followed seriously threaten the peace in Mexico.

Besides proclaiming his own victory, insulting the president, personally threatening Calderón and his family, calling the officials of the Federal Electoral Institute "criminals," and anticipating the verdict of the judiciary's Federal Electoral Tribunal, López Obrador has employed tactics worthy of an Orwell novel. Arithmetical irregularities that are isolated, that are only presumed and not confirmed by the tribunal, are presented to the public as clear proof that the whole process was tainted. And if, as occurred on July 11, his own polling-place representatives deny a purported irregularity, López Obrador argues that they were "bought" or corrupted.

Most troubling of all is that López Obrador has called for demonstrations all over the country "in support of democracy" — the same democracy whose institutions he has impugned. Even though he insists that the marches will be "peaceful" and "won't get out of hand," he knows very well that in the atmosphere he has created, violent actions might be initiated by either side. It isn't hard to gauge his intentions. He's made them very plain, and since he's a man of his word, he must be believed: "I'll go as far as the people want me to go."

This is a coup attempt, plain and simple. The evidence does not point to AMLO having won given that his party did even if he did not. This could get ugly.

FALSE Charges

This one positively reeks of outright lies being reported as fact by a major media outlet. Period. There is no - none - zero - zip - reason Israel would use anything other than normal weapons. This one stinks out loud. And this may finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back on clamping down on outright hostile abuses of so-called journalism.

Israel using chemical weapons: doctors

Lebanon is investigating reports from doctors that Israel has used weapons in its 15-day-old bombardment of southern Lebanon that have caused wounds they have never seen before.

"We are sending off samples tomorrow, but we have no confirmation yet that illegal weapons have been used," Health Minister Mohammed Khalife said.

The Israeli army said it had used only conventional weapons and ammunition in attacks aimed at Hizbollah guerrillas and nothing contravening international law.

Blackened bodies have been showing up at hospitals in southern Lebanon two weeks into the war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas that has seen at least 418 people, mostly civilians, killed in Lebanon and at least 42 Israelis.

Killed by Israeli air raids, the Lebanese dead are charred in a way local doctors, who have lived through years of civil war and Israeli occupation, say they have not seen before.

Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.

He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.

Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."

"If you burnt someone with petrol their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone. The Israelis are 100 per cent using chemical weapons."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.

This one is so high and deep it defies belief. Throwing the flag on this one, folks.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee thoroughly dismantles this one.

Citizen Soldier/Citizen Journalist

Bruce Kesler from The Democracy Project has an outstanding post up about the rise of Milbloggers - and the failure of the MSM to grasp what that means. Media establishments continue to look down their noses at the citizen journalists who understand the subject matter of the military far better than the media "experts". But they do so at their own peril.

For an earlier generation of now middle-aged Vietnam servicepeople, whose voices largely went unheard and whose reputations were tarred by major media echoing of Kerryesque fabrications, the rise of the milbloggers is cheered, and many are now getting their voice heard.

The condescension toward milbloggers oozes from the head of establishment journalism’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, for whom the truth is his fellows’ “big picture,” rather than piecing together a better picture from the individual shards of first-hand facts:

If the overall picture is one of continued violence and a significant lack of stability in many parts of Iraq, the individual shards of good news could be more of a distortion than a reflection of the truth.

The former managing editor of American Journalism Review, another major center for establishment journalism, exhibits this failure to gather all the facts, in her AJR article reporting on the mainstream reporters of the Haditha incident. Near the end of her long piece, she does get to the core of the problem, but ends on the MSM’s note of agreement with their “big picture”:

Coverage of these incidents is only going to increase as the cases go to trial, presenting a challenge for the press to provide fair and contextual reporting.
Galloway [Joe Galloway, recently retired military affairs correspondent fro Knight Ridder] and others point out that mistakes and abuses happen in every armed conflict. "The slaughter of innocents, accidental and deliberate, has occurred in every war man has ever fought," Galloway wrote in a June 7 column. "It's especially true in the wars of insurgency."
I asked Galloway if he has seen that kind of context, a more realistic picture of war, in coverage of Haditha. "I can't say that I have," he answered.
Human Rights Watch's Sifton says that the media should be looking at systemic problems, the bigger picture, not simply "incident, incident, incident." He adds, "I don't think Haditha coverage alone is a good thing."

Read the whole thing - it's well worth the time.

Oh. My. God. Hillary’s Bust On Display!

Eyes burning. No. No. Must look away. But it's like a train wreck. No matter how horrified you are, you have to look. I know that The Anchoress supports is in favor of isn't against doesn't object to defends Hillary's cleavage (I just can't make that one come out favorably), but this is far, far different.

I hate you, John. You made me look!

UPDATE: Well, at least The Anchoress didn't smite me - her description of the bust is perfect.

Pay No Attention…

…To the Mullah behind the curtain. Mohammed at Iraq the Model is seeing the hand of Iran in the events in Iraq right now. He describes the problems that local "reconciliation initiatives" inside Baghdad present.

Let me put it this way, this Hussein has no problem with that Bakir and that Omar has no problem with this Haider; we share streets and neighborhoods and markets and we marry from different sects and we work together in the hospital, office or shop.
The attempt of the sectarian parties to drag the ordinary people to the catastrophe of civil war will not appeal to the simple citizen who seeks peace by nature and let's not forget that arm-bearers and violence inciters are always a minority.

What caught my attention these days is the phenomenon of localized reconciliation initiatives being organized between certain districts in Baghdad. These try to give the wrong impression that the division is between the people and makes the fighting parties look like the peace mediators.
Such practices have increased recently and taking the form of basically meetings between community leaders and tribal sheikhs of often adjacent sectors with difference in sectarian distribution where those participants would sign an honor code to stop killings and forced displacement.

For example, there are now talks and meetings between Sadr city, Azamiya and several other districts in north-eastern Baghdad similar to the so far more or less successful reconciliation that took place in other parts of central eastern Baghdad districts last week. This example of neighborhoods peace talks is echoing in Baghdad recently even that I heard yesterday that the clashes there were going on in Haifa street and adjacent streets were the result of residents from a Sunni district and a Shia one joining forces to confront a death squad disguised as police commandos.
No one knows for sure what happened but this is what people here are saying.

In one way or another I see this to confirm what was said above, that people need no reconciliation and the apparent success of the meetings supports this idea.
Still I believe such meetings between districts are necessary to clear the misunderstanding created by the fighting sectarian parties.

So if it is not the people themselves who need reconciliation, who is it - and why are they doing it? The answer may lie, Mohammed suspects, in who exactly is carrying the guns and what they want:

But again, why would they seek truce with all the deeply rooted differences between them?
Well the unpleasant scenario I'm expecting is basically that these parties want this truce to fix one front and pave the way for the beginning of a Sunni-Shia joint Islamic insurgency against the US and the UK in Iraq, and I call it Islamic because that's how the planning party wants it to look like to persuade militants of the other sect to join them in their next mischief or at least to guarantee that the other sect would remain neutral during the conflict they are planning to spark.

This is not a good scenario, and Mohammed lays the blame firmly at the feet of the Mullahs. I have long been noting that Iran's hand appears to be suspiciously nearby to far too many of the hotspots right now. And with North Korea also acting up, we are approaching a perfect storm. With the assistance of the useful idiots of the Western left, we are getting far too close to an eruption.

“Iraq Is Free…”

"…and the terrorists cannot stand this", said Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki today in an address to the US Congress. He spoke on many topics, but the defeat of terrorism was his major theme.

Thank you for your continued resolve in helping us fight the terrorists plaguing Iraq, which is a struggle to defend our nation's democracy and our people who aspire to liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. All of those are not Western values; they are universal values for humanity.

They are as much for me the pinnacle embodiment of my faith and religion, and they are for all free spirits.

The war on terror is a real war against those who wish to burn out the flame of freedom. And we are in this vanguard for defending the values of humanity.

I know that some of you here question whether Iraq is part of the war on terror. Let me be very clear: This is a battle between true Islam, for which a person's liberty and rights constitute essential cornerstones, and terrorism, which wraps itself in a fake Islamic cloak; in reality, waging a war on Islam and Muslims and values.

And spreads hatred between humanity, contrary to what come in our Koran, which says, "We have created you of male and female and made you tribes and families that you know each other." Surely (inaudible) of you in the sight of God is the best concept.

The truth is that terrorism has no religion. Our faith says that who kills an innocent, as if they have killed all mankind.

But even a visiting head of state is not immune to the boorishness of the left:

Protester: Iraqis want the troops to leave! Bring them home now! Iraqis want the troops to leave! Bring them home now!

Speaker Hastert: If our honored guest will suspend for the moment, the chair notes disturbance in the gallery. The sergeant at arms will secure order by removing those engaging in disruption.

Protester: Bring them home now!

Speaker Hastert: The gentleman may resume.

Prime Minister Maliki: Hope over fear; liberty over oppression; dignity over submission; democracy over dictatorship; federalism over a centralist state.

Let there be no doubt: Today Iraq is a democracy which stands firm because of the sacrifices of its people and the sacrifices of all those who stood with us in this crisis from nations and countries.

Poor behavior on a historic occasion. Sadly, to too many people these days, freedom of speech means freedom from manners. There are times and places for protest. This was not one.

His entire address is quite good. Do read it if you get a chance.

UPDATE: See Flopping Aces, too.

Travel Advisory!

This is extremely important! The government has issued a travel advisory warning citizens to either postpone or cancel trips to the dangerous, lawless, wild and woolly city where crime runs rampant in the streets! Which government you ask? Why the government of Thailand, of course. What city?

Paris, France.

BANGKOK, Thailand - The foreign ministry of Thailand cautioned Thai citizens to consider postponing or canceling traveling plans to France because of the threat of crime.

The ministry issued the warning in a statement which said that several robberies or thefts had occurred involving cars belonging to the Thai Embassy in Paris.

"In the past month, at least four robberies occurred to embassy cars and we would like to warn Thais who plan to travel to France to increase their safety measures or consider postponing or canceling travel to France in the summer," said the statement, released Tuesday.

It said a thief broke the window of an embassy car in which the Thai commercial attache was traveling when it had stopped at the intersection of a busy road. The diplomat was slightly injured when he resisted the thief, who attempted to snatch his bag, it added.

You know, I would never have been able to make that one up.

Canadian PM Doubts Israel Hit Peacekeepers Intentionally

The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, told reporters that he doubted that Israeli forces intentionally hit the UN peacekeepers. One of the four who died was Canadian. He also has a question for the irresponsible head of the UN, Kofi Annan:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday he doubts Israel's deadly attack on a UN observation post in Lebanon, which killed a Canadian observer, was deliberate.

Harper, speaking to reporters in eastern New Brunswick, said the Canadian military would consult with the United Nations and Israeli government to determine what happened.

Harper also said he wants to know why the post was still manned by UN observers even though it was in the middle of an obvious war zone.

Though Annan has suggested Israel targeted the outpost, Harper believes
otherwise.

"I certainly doubt that to be the case, given that the government of Israel has been cooperating with us in our evacuation efforts, in our efforts to move Canadian citizens out of Lebanon and also trying to keep our own troops that are on the ground involved in the evacuation out of harm's way," he said.

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals," Harper said.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday that he has instructed the military to carry out a thorough investigation into an Israel Air Force strike on a UN base in southern Lebanon, in which four peacekeepers were killed.

He told Annan that the results would be shared with him.

Peacekeepers had called the Israel Defense Forces 10 times in a six-hour period to ask it to halt its nearby bombing
before their observation post was hit, killing four people, according to details of a preliminary UN report on the incident released to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

During each phone call, an Israeli official promised to halt the bombing, according to a UN official who had seen the preliminary report.

The peacekeepers at the post said the area within a kilometer of the post was hit with precision munitions, including 17 bombs and 12 artillery shells, four of which directly hit the post Tuesday, the report said.

The IDF said it regrets the deaths of the UN personnel and said all offensive operations in Lebanon are directed at Hezbollah.

The IDF also said that Hezbollah gunners were firing at Israel from the concerned area and the IDF thus decided to operate there. Nevertheless, the IDF said it would conduct a compehensive investigation into the incident in full cooperation with the UN.

It certainly sounds as if Harper has a better grasp on reality than Annan who has still not pulled peacekeepers out of harms way. It sounds like Hezbollah was trying to stay close to the UN post in order to provoke retaliation, though, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Donald Sensing channels Dr. Suess! (And I thought A. Conan Doyle was fun!)

UPDATE: It also sounds like I was spot on. LGF links an interview with a retired Canadian general who says that Hezbollah was putting their positions right in among the UN - making them targets and yet another Hezbollah war crime. Time to pull the UN people back right now.

Your Eyes Say Yes, But Your Bikini Says…

"… GET THE HECK OUT OF THE SUN, YOU IDIOT". A Canadian company will market a bikini with a built in UV meter and an alarm to tell the wearer when they have broiled baked sunned themselves sufficiently.

The American Cancer Society advises that the best way to lower the risk of skin cancer, the most common form of the disease in humans, is to avoid too much exposure to the sun and other sources of ultraviolet light.

So the Canadian company Solestrom has come up with a new bikini that goes on sale next month with a UV meter built into its belt and an alarm that beeps to tell wearers when to head to the shade.

"There's so much concern about sun exposure and skin cancer that we saw the demand and designed something to be safe for the wearer," Solestrom spokeswoman Emily Garassa said.

Garassa said the meter on the $190 bikini displays a level of UV intensity on a scale from 0 to 20. A person's sensitivity to UV depends mainly on skin type, but generally three to five would be considered moderate strength, 8-10 very high and anything above 11 extreme.

Garassa said the company was already seeing high demand from Australia and South Africa, which have the world's highest skin cancer rates. The United States has about 1 million new skin cancer cases each year.

Despite increasing awareness of the sun's dangers, sales remain strong for the bikini, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this month.

You know, I'm glad I saw this article before I encountered one of these suits out on a beach somewhere. If I'd heard a swimsuit talking, I would have checked into the nearest mental ward!

Meanwhile On Another Front

Kim Jong Il, North Korea's Minimum Leader, has announced he plans to begin upgrading his nuclear weapons. More alarmingly, he has apparently begun equipping and training his civilians and readying artillery units.

North Korea will upgrade its arsenal "in every way by employing all possible means and methods" and will greet any aggressors with "all-out do-or-die resistance and unprecedented devastating strikes," Kim Il Chol said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

Kim said such a move is necessary to counter the United States' "extremely hostile act and the irresponsibility of the U.N. Security Council."

Kim spoke at a gathering to mark the 53rd anniversary of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War.

North Korea fired seven missiles in early July, including at least one believed capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. International condemnation prompted the Security Council to adopt a resolution sanctioning North Korea and banning member states from missile-related dealings with the communist country.

The defense minister warned that the U.N. resolution will not force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program. North Korea "can survive without sweets, but not without bullets," he said.

Separately, a South Korean civic group said the North is readying its forces for conflict.

Artillery units have been armed and civilian forces, composed of laborers and farmers, have been outfitted with uniforms, the Seoul-based Good Friends group said in a statement Wednesday.

Drills are being held for both active duty and civilian forces, and civilians have been issued vehicles covered with camouflage netting, Good Friends said without citing sources for its information.

The Iranians and the North Koreans are trying their best to stir something up. The world had better get on the same page or all hell will bust loose.

Things Fall Apart

The Anchoress quotes Yeats' The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

She takes the line fragment about the center not holding for her title. I took the other part for this post. Her post is about sockpuppetry and something darker, more sinister than that.

Too many people are beginning to fall into an “I have a blog and I’m not afraid to use it,” mentality, and that thought is morphing into an “I know where you live and where your children sleep” mentality.

The last thing we need is for the blogosphere to become a field of rampant bullies. Next thing you know, we’ll have to listen to Hillary droning on again about regulating bloggers and free speech.

So, I’m concerned, when I read stories that suggest intimidation tactics are being used by bloggers and “former intel people” against other bloggers, I’ve got to believe that some folks are simply losing their freaking minds. Or their humanity. Or both.

And while I am sorry to say this, because I know damn well that somewhere out there, there is a right-wing blogger capable of doing the same things, so far the strong-arm tactics and sock-puppetry have been largely perpetrated by “peace, love and tolerance folks”, in the “reality-based” left.

In fact, if anyone reading this knows of rampant sock-puppeting/life-threatening stuff originating from the rightwing blogs, please let me know, and I’ll highlight those, too. (Links removed)

It is scary when people begin to lose control. It is frightening when things begin to fall apart and the center yields. The last part of Yeats' poem is even scarier:

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries 
of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Ah, Anchoress. Reading Yeats is not good for us right now.

Caught In A Lie

Poor Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He no sooner gets his latest lie covered in the press when the Israelis produce hard evidence that he is lying.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a cease-fire in Lebanon and lambasted US policy in the Middle East on Wednesday, saying the United States wanted to "recarve the map" of the region with Israel's help.

In addition to a cease-fire, Ahmadinejad called for talks on the Lebanon crisis without conditions, and demanded Israel compensate the country and apologize for its actions. He also denied US claims that Iran provides military support for Hizbullah, saying it only supports the movement politically and morally.

"We are calling for a cease-fire and ending this war," the Iranian leader told reporters after meetings with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a two-day visit to the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan.

"We are calling on the parties to sit down for talks without any preliminary conditions," he said, adding: "The aggressor should compensate for the damage incurred on Lebanon and apologize before the entire world community."

….

In a clear reference to the United States, he also warned against any attempt to attack Iran, which Washington believes is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. The US administration has stressed it wants to resolve the issue through diplomacy but will not rule out any course of action.

"If they attack Iran, they know our country, our people," he said. "They should think better before doing that. We can defend ourselves. Iran is a great world power, which can protect its interests and its integrity. Only silly people would think about attacking Iran."

"Those who say that we provide military support for Hizbullah are lying. That is the way for America to cover up its failures," he said through an interpreter.

Whereupon the Israelis displayed an RPG launcher they recovered in Lebanon after a battle. It had Iranian military industry stamps on it. Whoopsie.

Cujoronimo!

Beware of falling Cujos in Poland! Saint Bernard dogs falling from the sky! Pedestrians crushed and beaten into the pavement by the hurtling hounds of Hell!

WARSAW (Reuters) - A man was bruised but alive on Wednesday after a Saint Bernard dog thrown out a two-story window landed on him as he was walking down the street in the southern-Polish city of Sosnowiec.

The 50-kg (110-pound) dog was pushed out of the window by its drunken owner on Monday, police said.

"The dog had a soft landing because it fell on a man," said police spokesman Grzegorz Wierzbicki. "The dog escaped with just a few scratches."

"The man was also more in a psychological state of shock than physically hurt," Wierzbicki added.

The one-year-old dog, named Oskar, was placed in an animal shelter while police investigate its owners for animal abuse.

Oh sure, blame the drunk guy. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard know the Real Truth™ - it's another manifestation of the animal uprising! The dastardly demon dog wasn't pushed, Oskar jumped!

Call The Crocodile Hunter!

Or not. Apparently South African authorities are searching for at least two crocodiles reported South of Johannesburg. The animals are not native to the area, so speculation is that they escaped from a zoo or from farms in the area. But the police don't want people hunting them, either.

Wild crocodiles are not found naturally in the region, leading to speculation that the reptiles have escaped from farms or zoos.

"We are concerned that people are shooting crocodiles," said Leon Lotter, Acting Director for Nature Conservation, the wildlife authority for Gauteng province.

An official is storing a metre-long crocodile in her home refrigerator which was believed to have been shot. Police hope to lay a charge of unlawful hunting next week against at least one local resident.

Lotter said wildlife officers would try and lure the reptiles with traps baited with rotten meat.

"Since the crocodiles don't occur there naturally, the idea is for us to catch them and take them back to a crocodile farm or a zoo," he said.

Well, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard would just like to warn the authorities in South Africa. While you are trying your traps baited with rotten meat, be sure you stay away from any newspapers you might see lying about. Don't say we didn't warn you.