Just Shake Your Head

Richard Holbrooke informs us of what America, and the Bus administration, is doing wrong in the  Middle East. Writing in the Washington Post, Holbrooke exclaims:

Two full-blown crises, in Lebanon and Iraq, are merging into a single emergency. A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay. Turkey is talking openly of invading northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish terrorists based there. Syria could easily get pulled into the war in southern Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are under pressure from jihadists to support Hezbollah, even though the governments in Cairo and Riyadh hate that organization. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of giving shelter to al-Qaeda and the Taliban; there is constant fighting on both sides of that border. NATO's own war in Afghanistan is not going well. India talks of taking punitive action against Pakistan for allegedly being behind the Bombay bombings. Uzbekistan is a repressive dictatorship with a growing Islamic resistance.

The only beneficiaries of this chaos are Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who last week held the largest anti-American, anti-Israel demonstration in the world in the very heart of Baghdad, even as 6,000 additional U.S. troops were rushing into the city to "prevent" a civil war that has already begun.

There is of course one problem with Holbrooke's view. He is treating all of these events as independent, isolated events that just happen to be happening at the same time.

This guy was a highly placed American diplomat? And he has no clue about all these events? There is a common thread that Holbrooke kind of understood. Who are the beneficiaries?

Who is driving all of the events that Holbrooke sees as separate? Here's a clue, Mr. Holbrooke: these are not isolated incidents. Iran is driving all of these things. Every one of them. Iran and it's partners North Korea and now Hugo Chavez are pushing the world to the brink. But you see it as discreet elements rather than as a gestalt, Mr. Holbrooke.

Sadly, so do all too many people.

On the diplomatic front, the United States cannot abandon the field to other nations (not even France!) or the United Nations. Every secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright negotiated with Syria, including those Republican icons George Shultz and James Baker. Why won't this administration follow suit, in full consultation with Israel at every step? This would clearly be in Israel's interest. Instead, administration officials refuse direct talks and say publicly, "Syria knows what it must do" — a statement that denies the very point of diplomacy.

The same is true of talks with Iran, although these would be more difficult. Why has the world's leading nation stood aside for over five years and allowed the international dialogue with Tehran to be conducted by Europeans, the Chinese and the United Nations? And why has that dialogue been restricted to the nuclear issue — vitally important, to be sure, but not as urgent at this moment as Iran's sponsorship and arming of Hezbollah and its support of actions against U.S. forces in Iraq?

Containing the violence must be Washington's first priority. Finding a stable and secure solution that protects Israel must follow. Then must come the unwinding of America's disastrous entanglement in Iraq in a manner that is not a complete humiliation and does not lead to even greater turmoil. All of this will take sustained high-level diplomacy — precisely what the American administration has avoided in the Middle East. Washington has, or at least used to have, leverage over the more moderate Arab states; it should use it again, in the closest consultation with and on behalf of Israel.

Holbrooke argues as if the US can unilaterally impose peace, while decrying the US failure to use dipolomacy more effectively. Kind of an awkward stance. Wasn't Holbrooke one of the people who decried American unilateralism? Just asking.

Frankly, Holbrooke has this all wrong.

Recycling

Recycling. It is supposed to be a good thing, right? Good for the environment, good for all the people of the earth. Save the world! Recycle!

And we have identified on of the world's foremost practitioners of recycling! A man so green, he should have his very own green helmet! Oh, wait. Green helmet was one of his recycling efforts. Never mind. Anyway, this year's Green as Can Be Recycling Award ™ goes to none other than Adnan Hajj, former lead freelance procurer of images for Reuters! (You need to click the link or the next part will not make sense).

We are happy to report that we have uncovered an even earlier example of Adnan Hajj's fine work! Yes indeed! A fine example of the work he is capable of and that Reuters will cheerfully pay the big bucks for! With nary an editor bothering to check! Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen! Adnan Hajj!

Misplaced Egyptians

About those missing Egyptian "exchange students". Michell Malkin has photographs up. They were obtained by Northeast Intelligence Network (which is NOT part of homeland security despite the URL).

You might want to keep an eye out. One was captured in Minneapolis and two surrendered in New Jersey. The rest are still out there.

Little Green Moment In The Sun

Hated, reviled and vilified by the left and especially by CAIR, Charles Johnson and his site, Little Green Footballs, is getting some serious positive press these last couple of days. Good for him. The latest comes from Brendan Bernhard writing in LA Weekly. It happens to be a monumental takedown of Reuters and the rest of the MSM coverage of the war in Lebanon as well.

Contacted by phone in Los Angeles, Johnson says he would like to see Reuters become more accountable in cases like this, but doubts that it will happen. “They’ve fired the guy [Hajj], but it goes beyond him, and people are starting to go over all those photos from Lebanon with a fine-tooth comb. It’s not always a question of fakery but also of propaganda, manipulation, whatever you want to call it.

“The issue is, if they’re using local stringers for reporting from these areas, they have to take more care that they’re reputable and not connected to groups like Hezbollah. I’m not saying they are connected, but Hezbollah has a media-relations department, they know very well what the power of the media is, and I’m not confident that news agencies like Reuters are ensuring it doesn’t happen. I think this scandal proves it doesn’t happen adequately… I really believe that Hezbollah is managing a lot of the stuff that’s coming out of Lebanon.”

The real thrust of Johnson’s critique, in other words, is to raise the delicate question of who exactly we are entrusting our “news gathering” to. Johnson and other bloggers have been criticized for claiming that the deaths of 28 civilians following an Israeli bombing of a house in the Lebanese village of Qana were deliberately staged by Hezbollah. But photos by the ubiquitous Hajj played a prominent role in the coverage, as Reuters has conceded. Bloggers claim many of them look, if not staged, then extremely posed. Particularly notorious was the number of photographs featuring a mysterious, green-helmeted Lebanese aid worker who, among other duties, seemed willing to hold up dead babies for hours on end for anyone with a working camera.

Johnson disputes the notion that he has tried to pretend no one died in Qana or that the death of children isn’t unequivocally horrifying. “None of the points I was making were intended to minimize the deaths in Qana, which did happen,” he says. “But because images like that have such a powerful hold over human nature — they invoke the strongest emotions we have, to see children dead — if someone is manipulating those effects for propaganda purposes, it’s vital they be exposed, because it’s loathsome. But yes, no one wants the children to be dead, and I don’t minimize that at all. But to dance on their corpses in this ghoulish propaganda display is almost worse.”

Dancing on corpses? Ghoulish propaganda display? A leaked interoffice memo from the Associated Press, or AP, congratulating its Qana photographers on “a stunning series of images . . . that beat the competition and scored huge play overnight,” suggests that such phrases, as well as some of Johnson’s other charges, may not be entirely hyperbolic.

“Nasser’s most haunting image,” reads one section of the memo, referring to a picture by AP photographer Nasser Nasser, “showed a man emerging from the rubble carrying the lifeless and dust-covered body of a child. Calm, morning light shone down on man and child, highlighting them against an almost monochrome background of pure rubble.” Monochrome background. Calm, morning light. Pure rubble (as opposed to that hideous rubbly kind of rubble). How nice. How poetic. How aesthetic. AP sounds less like a news organization than an ad agency.

In exposing Hajj’s manipulations, Johnson has raised the lid on a potential Pandora’s box. Namely, how our leading news agencies and newspapers increasingly rely on stringers from hostile nations to tell us how we, or our allies, behave in wartime. Since you’d be hard-pressed to find Muslims in the U.S., let alone Europe, who aren’t strongly anti-Israel and opposed to any American presence in the Middle East whatsoever, why on earth would you expect to find neutral Arab reporters in Baghdad or Beirut? This is the kind of question newspaper editors should be asking themselves (and their stringers). If the implications of this are followed through, or if more photographers like Adnan “Photoshop” Hajj are discovered, the ramifications are likely to be significant. In helping bring Hajj’s smoke-and-mirrors game to light, Johnson has performed a great service.

There's quite a lot more read it all. Let me raise an additional point I have not seen raised before. I worked for many years as a photographer. That was strictly a sideline job, but I was good enough at it to be continuously hired for jobs. (The income from that was a huge help at one of my financial low points, too). I was not a freelance news photographer per se, but a number of my pictures were published in a couple of publications. I took literally thousands and thousands of pictures, averaging at least five 36-exposure rolls of 35mm film per assignment. Only a very few (I am not bagging here) were not useful from any given shoot. Most were workmanlike at worst, good to very good at best.

But. Only a few pictures in all the years I did this work would be considered really great. Now, I'll grant that a "pro" might be considerably better than I am with a camera (there are a lot of my shots under the "because I Felt Like It" category - you can judge) and the percentage might well be higher. However, one might reasonably question a photographer who gets one after another after another iconic photographs in a very short span of time.

Ansel Adams iconic body of work took decades to make. Not two or three weeks. One can ask the question.

The Fringe As The Heart

Time magazine takes a look at the outcome of the primary in Connecticut. While noting that the netroots now have their very first scalp, reporter Perry Bacon also notes that that may not work out so well in the long run.

But while it may empower the bloggers, Republicans are predicting Lieberman's defeat will actually help them keep control of Congress this November — and many Democrats have the same worry. Lamont's victory will no doubt give Republicans ammunition to caricature the Democratic Party as too liberal.

Mary Matalin, an outside adviser to the White House, signaled the message when she said on Fox News Channel shortly after the polls closed: "MoveOn is not fringe. They're the heart of the party." One House Democratic official said party members had been "urgently trying to send the message to Connecticut voters that a Lieberman loss jeopardizes our ability to take back the House." Some Democratic officials said they can already imagine the ads in November races saying that Lieberman, once within a few hundred votes of being Vice President of the United States, is now "not liberal enough" for the Democratic Party.

On the other hand, Lamont's campaign strategy wasn't particularly different from the one Democrats are using all over the country against Republicans in every other race: he attacked Lieberman for his embrace of Bush’s Iraq policy and more generally of being too supportive of Bush. Lamont's victory also suggests there’s an anti-incumbent mood in Connecticut, which could spell trouble for the three House Republicans there.

Overlooking the fact that an anti-incumbent mood may also effect the majority of Democratic representatives as well is a bit disingenuous (*ahem*, McKinney), but let that pass. The fact is that if the party is pulled over to the hard left, they really do become unelectable. The fact that the demographics of Lamont's actually quite narrow victory also heavily shows the effect of very well off suburban voters over the traditional power base of the Democratic party may well spell a looming disaster for the national hopes of the party. The DLC types know that already. The netroots do not understand that.

It's going to be an interesting three months.

Hezbollah Rockets

More than 160 artillery rockets were fired at civilians today by Hezbollah. There were no reports of casualties, but damage is said to be heavy.

At least 160 rockets continued to rain down on northern Israel on Wednesday, with over 80 striking the region of Kiryat Shmona, causing no injuries but inflicting heavy damage.

One person was wounded and several were suffering from shock after a rocket barrage hit Safed on Wednesday afternoon.

Northern residents were being instructed to remain in sheltered areas.

Just a few hours earlier, four long-range rockets - apparently of the Khaibar 1 variety - were fired toward the Beit Shean region, and more were fired towards the Gilboa area later in the day. Another one hit Haifa; it was apparently intended for Hadera, but it missed its mark.

The rockets landed between Afula and Beit Shean, and no one was wounded in the attack.

The IAF immediately destroyed the launchers used to fire the rockets, near Tyre.

A barrage of rockets hit Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday afternoon. As a result, fires broke out near the town, and in the Galilee panhandle.

A number of missiles also landed in the Haifa and Acre areas.

Sirens continued to sound in Tiberias, Zichron Ya'akov, Binyamina, Acre and Haifa's suburbs.

Five long-range Hizbullah rockets landed in the West Bank as well. No one was wounded in the attack.

Note that Hezbollah doesn't care if it kills Palestinians in the West Bank. They're all just fodder for the Hezbollah murder mill.

61 Years - August 9th, 1945

May it never be used again.

Un-Moored

Curt over at Flopping Aces has the latest drivel from Michael Moore. Who is still resoundingly deranged. Must be that 30-second fast he tried to support Cindy Sheehan.

UPDATE: Mark Kilmer at Redstate: Michael Moore, the angel of political death - for the Democratic party.

Nothing To See, Move Along

One of the eleven missing Egyptian students has been arrested. Said group of students was last seen in New York City.

Said captured fugitive student was caught in Minneapolis.

WASHINGTON - An Egyptian exchange student, among the 11 who entered the United States but failed to report for their college program, was arrested Wednesday in Minneapolis, the FBI said. Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El-Dessouki, 21, was arrested "without incident" by FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said.

El-Dessouki is being held on an administrative immigration violation because he did not turn up for his monthlong exchange program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont., Kolko said.

The other 10 students remain at large. They arrived in New York on July 29 as part of a group of 17 students. Six students reported to Bozeman on time.

The missing students pose no terrorism threat, Kolko said.

Why am I not really reassured by that last remark? Oh, maybe because the FBI is apparently sparing no effort to capture these guys. Or maybe because he just happened to turn up in a city nowhere near where he was supposed to be heading.

Or maybe because I'm not stupid.

UPDATE: Two more of them have been found in New Jersey.

Nasrallah Warns Israeli Arabs To Leave Haifa

In a televised speech on Hezbollah television, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah and Iranian puppet, warned Israeli Arabs to get out of Haifa. The ostensible reason is to avoid shedding their blood when Hezbollah steps up attacks.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so his guerrilla organization could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.

"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. … Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood."

In a televised speech, Nasrallah said Israeli attacks had not weakened Hezbollah's rocket capabilities, and warned that his fighters would turn south Lebanon into a "graveyard" for invading Israel Defense Forces troops.

"You won't be able to stay in our land, and if you come in, we'll force you out," said Nasrallah in a recorded speech shown on Hezbollah's television station.

"We will turn our precious southern land into a graveyard for the invading Zionists."

In his first comments since the U.S.-French draft cease-fire resolution was unveiled on Sunday, Nasrallah gave a deeply negative assessment of the plan, calling it "unfair and unjust."

"The least we can describe this [draft resolution] is as unfair and unjust. It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said in a speech televised on all local and regional television networks.

In a major shift in the Hezbollah position, Nasrallah also said the militant organization was solidly behind a Lebanese government plan to deploy 15,000 soldiers in south Lebanon once a cease-fire is reached and Israel pulls out its forces.

"In the past we used to oppose or not agree on deployment of the army at the borders … because we were concerned about the army. … We agree on deployment of the army, but do note hide our fear for it," Nasrallah said.

"The army could be destroyed within few days," he said.

Nasrallah did not specify who would be doing the destroying, but it is not at all safe to assume he did not mean Hezbollah.

Cuban Government Warns Of Satellite Dish Crackdown

The Cuban government warned that it will be cracking down on people who have illegal satellite dishes. The estimated 10,000 illegal dishes are used to pirate Spanish language programming coming from the US. Owners of the dishes distribute the pirated signals by means of cables strung all over the place.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma warned that the dishes, which many Cubans use to watch Spanish-language TV programs from the exile bastion of Miami, could be used by the U.S. government to broadcast subversive information.

"They are fertile ground for those who want to carry out the Bush administration's plan to destroy the Cuban revolution," said the newspaper, the official voice of the government. Similar articles in Granma usually signal that action can be expected.

The article decried an "avalanche" of capitalist advertising in the commercial programs.

Since Castro provisionally relinquished power to his brother Raul on July 31 after undergoing stomach surgery, Cubans have been anxious for information.

U.S.-funded TV and Radio Marti, run out of Miami, have pumped up their output of anti-Castro programming, but few Cubans are believed to have access to the stations because of successful jamming by the Cuban government.

By contrast, there may be as many as 10,000 illegal TV satellite dishes in Cuba, each one linked to perhaps hundreds of televisions by cables that their owners snake over rooftops and between buildings, charging other users $10 a month.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega, longtime ally of the Cuban strongman, is complaining that he has not been allowed to visit Fidel. But that may just be because he's not quite ready yet, Danny. And the crackdown on satellite dishes may be to cut down on interference. Just in case.

Demographics

Hotline has a fascinating demographic breakdown of the Connecticut primary. It's really quite surprising and I think rather revealing.

If there was a way to obtain the per capita income and racial demographics of each Connecticut town, some politico cartographer wizard out there could have a field day portraying the economics and ethnicity of this race. Ned Lamont, scion of the Eastern Establishment, rolled up staggering margins in those places most likely to include his fellow anti-war WASPs. Joe Lieberman, son of a Stamford liquor store owner, won the workaday towns most likely to include other ethnic voters less motivated by opposition to Iraq.

With the exception of some of the cities or grittier suburbs, Lamont racked up victories of 10% or higher in town after town along the state's affluent shoreline. From his hometown of Greenwich (68-32%) on the Gold Coast next to NYC all the way up to Stonington (60-40%) on the RI line, Lamont won the Long Island Sound vote. He performed even better in the more wealthy parts of Litchfield Co, in the bucolic northwest corner of the state, crushing the three-term Senator with eye-popping numbers (Cornwall 91-9%; Canaan 83-17%) in some of the smaller towns there. The pattern was the same throughout the antique towns dotting the Connecticut River Valley, 15 point and higher margins throughout.

Lieberman's best returns came in the blue-collar and heavily-Irish and Italian Naugatuck River Valley, where he picked up 60-40 victories in places like Prospect, Beacon Falls, Naugatuck and Waterbury (where the rally with Pres Clinton was held).

So Lamont's win appears to have been driven by a well-off constituency, not the traditional base of the Democratic party. I rather suspect that does not bode well for that traditional base in the long run.

Switzerland - It’s Not Just Chocolate

Probably the most famous thing about Switzerland, after the chocolate, of course, is the legendary numbered Swiss bank account. This is the stuff of legends. The fabled numbered accounts are rumored, or have been proven, to hold countless treasures. Stolen art, stolen gold, ill gotten gains, bribes and payoffs - and all that just from Yasser Arafat. The picture of Dorian Gray Dick Clark that does all his aging for him, Michael Jackson's real nose, JFK's black book, grandmothers.

Ok, we made a few of those things up. At least we think we did. But not the grandmother thing.

ZURICH, Switzerland - An 85-year-old woman was found in the vault of a Swiss bank when she set off motion detectors hours after the bank was already closed, according to a statement released Wednesday.

Employees at the Zuercher Kantonalbank apparently forgot about the woman.

The director of the bank's safe allowed the woman into the vault on Monday before closing it punctually at 4:30 p.m. local time — with the woman still deep in study of her documents, ZKB said.

She remained so still that she initially failed to activate either the motion detector or the attached camera, the bank said in confirming a report that appeared in the Zurich-based daily "Tages-Anzeiger."

They finally got her out after four hours locked in the vault. Then they gave her some really handsome compensation for her ordeal.

A bouquet of flowers.

Boy, those Swiss are so tight they squeak.

Department Of Really Bad Ideas

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard pride ourselves on being the number one Google search engine hit if you should happen to query "40mm cannon shell". We reached this pinnacle of success by bringing the world accurate and timely advice like not to use 40mm cannon shells to swat flies.

But, we never really thought we'd actually have to explain this particular item to people: It is not a good idea, at all, in any way whatsoever, to use a hammer to try to open a grenade.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian man died on Tuesday when he tried to open what police believe was a rocket-propelled grenade with a sledgehammer in a mechanical workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Another man who was in the workshop at the time of the explosion was rushed to a hospital with severe burns, a police officer told Reuters. The workshop was destroyed and several cars parked outside caught fire.

So, let's just add that to our handy-dandy guide of things not to do with your spare time, shall we? Don't use 40mm cannon shells as flyswatters and don't try to hammer grenades open. (We'd recommend using a torch just as a joke, but after reading this story, we're afraid someone would actually take that advice).

Israeli Cabinet Approves Expansion Of Attack

The Israeli war cabinet has approved an expansion to the ground offensive and an advance all the way to the Litani River. This is a major expansion in the scope of the war but may also be part of a political strategy to force Lebanon to act a bit more responsibly than it has up until now.

The move came as fierce fighting was reported overnight with Hezbollah militants, and Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported that 11 Israeli soldiers had been killed in what would be the deadliest day for Israeli troops in Lebanon in four weeks of fighting.

In Beirut, at least four missiles fired from Israeli ships slammed into the southern suburbs as Israel continued its sporadic pounding of Shiite neighborhoods and Hezbollah strongholds, police said. TV pictures showed a cloud of smoke and dust rising over a several square blocks.

The Israeli Security Cabinet's decision — approved 9-0, with three abstentions — was risky. Israel could set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts, particularly after Lebanon offered to deploy its own troops in the border area.

A wider ground offensive also might do little to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israel, while sharply increasing the already-high number of casualties among Israeli troops.

In the six-hour meeting, Cabinet officials were told a new offensive could mean 100 to 200 more military deaths, a participant said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. So far, at least 65 Israeli soldiers have been confirmed killed.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke by telephone for a half-hour during the meeting, Israeli officials said. Olmert told the ministers the offensive will be accompanied by a diplomatic initiative, based on a U.S.-French truce proposal that would take Lebanon's concerns into account, a participant in the meeting said.

Under the army's plan, troops would push to Lebanon's Litani River, about 18 miles from the border. Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz will decide on the timing of the new push, said Trade Minister Eli Yishai, a member of the Security Cabinet.

"The assessment is it will last 30 days," Yishai said afterward. "I think it is wrong to make this assessment. I think it will take a lot longer," added Yishai, who had abstained in the vote.

The offensive won't require a new call-up of reserves, Cabinet officials said. The government approved a call-up of some 30,000 reserve soldiers earlier this month.

Currently, more than 10,000 troops are in Lebanon, many of them regular soldiers. They are fighting in a four-mile stretch, and have encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah.

The 12-member Security Cabinet's approval of a wider offensive came a day after the commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon was sidelined in an unusual midwar shake-up — another sign of the growing dissatisfaction with the military, which has been unable to stop Hezbollah's daily rocket barrages.

The army denied it was dissatisfied with Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, but military commentators said the commander was seen as too slow and cautious. The deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, was appointed to oversee the Lebanon fighting.

Earlier this week, the Israeli military declared a no-drive zone south of the Litani and threatened to blast any moving vehicles as guerrilla targets. Country roads and highways were deserted throughout the area. In the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, only pedestrians ventured into the streets.

This move could be designed to put pressure on the Lebanese government as well as Hezbollah.