Missing Egyptians All In Custody

The case of the eleven missing Egyptian "students" has resulted in all of them in custody. The problem is they were rounded up from all over the country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20, and Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17, at an apartment building in Richmond on Sunday night. Virginia State Police and the Richmond Police helped locate the students.

Last Wednesday, one of the Egyptian students was arrested in Minneapolis and two were detained in Manville, N.J. On Thursday, two were arrested in Dundalk, Md., and one was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Three more were arrested Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.

Something about this whole situation smells. Federal authorities have stressed that there was no apparent link to terrorism, but they also appear to have pulled out all the stops to get these guys. They were all supposed to heading to school in Montana and instead are arrested all over the country. In a lot of unusual places not known as tourism hot spots. At the same time there are five men in custody in two incidents for having thousands of cell phones.

Tightrope

The New York Times has an article that details some of the highwire acts that went into producing a ceasefire resolution. It is somewhat enlightening to see who took what positions during the negotiations.

Negotiators here and in Paris, Washington, Beirut, Jerusalem and Arab capitals were still fighting over central elements of a draft resolution to halt the combat.

The fact that a resolution was passed unanimously that night still amazes some of the participants.

“This is the most difficult crisis that I have had to handle since 2002, when I became diplomatic counselor for the president,” said Maurice Gourdeault-Montagne, an adviser to President Jacques Chirac of France, who was a principal contact in Paris as the Franco-American diplomacy moved in and out of agreement.

R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, a driving force on the American side, said, “We were banging our heads against the wall six or seven hours a day, working out the words of these resolutions among four or five capitals.” He added, “We’d go home at 10 or 11 at night and say, ‘Tomorrow will be a better day.’ But the next day was Groundhog Day all over again.”

A senior administration official said a crucial moment came when Ms. Rice decided to intervene personally in New York.

“Condi sat in her office Thursday night,” he said. “In a very clear moment, she decided to go to New York and just force this through by going there and sitting there until it got done.”

That official, like many of those who spoke for this article, did so under restrictions imposed by superiors barring talking to reporters on the record.

The week of diplomacy began last Saturday, when France and the United States announced they had agreed on a resolution that would halt the fighting, ask the current United Nations force, Unifil, to monitor the border, and lay out a plan for a permanent cease-fire and political settlement.

The Times paints this more as a Hezbollah victory than anything else. It may well be one diplomatically, just because the standards are so low for declaring victory in the Arab world. However, it remains to be seen exactly what if anything of real value has been accomplished at this point.

Final Hudna?

This is a highly disturbing comment by the Lebanese ambassador to the UN.

"Lebanon will be, I think, the last state to sign a peace treaty with Israel," UN ambassador Nouhad Mahmoud told CNN television's "Late Edition" program, without explaining the remark.

He called the agreement a "crucial" test for all the parties involved.

I do not think this bodes well at all.

Publicity

Well, George O'Dowd, also known as Boy George, reported for duty this morning to perform five days of court ordered community service. He'll be picking up trash from the streets of New York. If he had done this when the judge first ordered him to, there likely would have been almost no attention paid whatsoever. Because he made it into an issue, he is now being followed around by the media who are cheerfully posting his pictures all over the web.

It took less than an hour for the former Culture Club frontman to get into a spat with the media.

"You think you're better than me?" he yelled. "Go home. Let me do my community service."

Boy George took to the streets of Manhattan as a Department of Sanitation worker wearing an orange vest, dark capri pants, shoes without socks, and without the wild makeup and androgynous style that made him so recognizable as the '80s icon who sang "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"

"This is supposed to be making me humble. Let me do this," he said. "I just want to do my job."

The singer, born George O'Dowd, was ordered to spend five days working for the Department of Sanitation after pleading guilty in March to falsely reporting a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment. The officers who responded found cocaine instead.

Frankly, I rather doubt there are very many people who care what Boy George is doing these days. So, did he do this just to get his name in the papers again, or is he really so egotistical that he think he still matters? Earlier posts here and here.

Chavez Visits Castro

The Cuban government has released pictures of Hugo Chavez visiting a bedridden Fidel Castro. Unfortunately.

The official Granma newspaper posted the six photographs on its online edition, one day after the Communist Youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde published the first images of Castro since the Cuban leader announced two weeks ago he had undergone intestinal surgery and was temporarily ceding power to Raul, the defense minister and No. 2 in the government.

Chavez's visit came the same day Castro sent a message to the Cuban people, warning them that he faces a long and difficult recovery after his surgery.

In all of the most recent pictures, Castro is in bed, wearing what looks like a red sweatshirt. In a seventh photograph, Raul Castro is shown embracing Chavez when he arrived in Havana on Sunday. It was the younger Castro's debut appearance as acting Cuban president.

"An Unforgettable Afternoon Among Brothers," Granma said of the afternoon visit by Chavez, who is Castro's closest friend and political ally in Latin America.

The lead photo shows Chavez and Raul Castro standing at Fidel's bedside — all three smiling — next to a large portrait of the Cuban leader on an easel. The newspaper said Raul Castro gave Chavez the portrait, which formerly hung in his office and was painted in 1959 by famed Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Castro and Chavez shared "more than three hours of emotional exchange, anecdotes, laughs, photos, gifts, a frugal snack and the happiness of close friendship," Granma said.

The newspaper quoting Chavez as saying, "This is the best visit I've ever had in my life." Expressing surprise at his recovery, Chavez reportedly commented: "What kind of human being is this? What material is it made of?

We'd all like to know what it is made of. We have our suspicions. Interestingly, the AP photo again carries a disclaimer that the authenticity and the date the pictures were taken cannot be confirmed. I noted that recent development yesterday as well. It appears that the AP is becoming a lot more careful about how it presents photos all of a sudden.

Voter IDs

Jabari Asim, writing in the Washington Post makes an impassioned plea to allow unfettered voter fraud. He doesn't phrase it that way, instead saying it is wrong to require voters to be positively identified before casting a ballot. However, the arguments he uses amount to a defense of the indefensible.

Or so one would like to think. But the efforts of Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana and, most recently, Missouri seemed aimed at making it as difficult to vote beneath our spacious skies as it is in war-torn Third World nations. Missouri, my home state, became the third member of this notorious trio in June, when Gov. Matt Blunt signed into law a requirement that voters show government-issued photo IDs at the polls starting in November.

Blunt and others say the law will prevent fraud. Their opponents rightly point out that the measure disproportionately affects those who have been disfranchised in the past, such as the poor and racial minorities. Besides, they argue, Missouri hasn't exactly suffered from an epidemic of imposters showing up to vote.

As one of the lawsuits filed to block the measure puts it, "It is statistically more likely for a Missourian to be struck by a bolt of lightning than to have his or her vote canceled by someone posing as another voter to cast a ballot."

Lower-income Missourians will have to fork over their feeble funds to buy the documents needed to get the ID cards, which will be free. That most of those folks tend to vote Democratic is just a coincidence, proponents of the cards contend. Right, and I have some nice fertile Missouri mules for sale.

Two of the state's Democratic congressmen, William "Lacy" Clay Jr. of St. Louis and Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, are among those supporting the lawsuits. Cleaver said the law's "sole intention is to disenfranchise and reduce the number of citizens allowed to vote." Clay called the measure "nothing more than a 21st-century poll tax."

Jim over at Gateway Pundit has documented increasing numbers of vote fraud convictions. USA Today documented hundreds of potentially fraudulent voter registrations on Colorado alone for the 2004 election. A number of "activists" signing up voters have been caught and convicted of enrolling non-existent voters all across the country. So the problem is real.

As to the argument that getting an ID is unduly burdensome on a segment of the population, one needs to ask a simple question. How are these people able to drive or cash checks? Picture ID is required for both. The argument is false.

If the Democrats are truly interested in enabling legal voters to vote, why not help those people it says are being unfairly targeted instead of lawyering up and spending all that cash on legal challenges? I have said all along that requiring positive ID to vote is just good common sense. Opposing that requirement is to support the ongoing abuses of the system.

Fighting Stops In Lebanon

It appears as if a ceasefire did go into effect in Lebanon, even though it appears very fragile indeed. Despite that fragility and despite a few violations by Hezbollah, people are already moving back to Southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas. Israeli forces fired on two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon just hours after the guns fell silent, highlighting the tensions that could unravel the peace plan.

But for the first time in a month, no Hezbollah rockets were fired into northern Israel.

Lines of cars — some loaded with mattresses and luggage — snaked slowly around bomb craters and blasted bridges outside Beirut toward southern Lebanon as residents began heading home to find out what is left of their homes and businesses.

Israel has not lifted its threat to destroy any vehicle on the roads of most of south Lebanon. But Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday that aside from isolated skirmishes with Hezbollah, the cease-fire was holding and could have implications for future relations with Israel's neighbors.

In some places in the south, the rubble was still smoldering from a barrage of Israeli airstrikes just before the cease-fire took effect at 8 a.m. (1 a.m. EDT).

….

France and Italy, along with predominantly Muslim Turkey and Malaysia, signaled willingness to contribute troops to the peacekeeping force, but consultations are needed to hammer out the force's makeup and mandate.

Officials said Israeli troops would begin pulling out as soon as the Lebanese and international troops start deploying to the area. But it appeared Israeli forces were staying put for now. Some exhausted soldiers left Lebanon early Monday and were being replaced by fresh troops.

Israel also would maintain its air and sea blockade of Lebanon to prevent arms from reaching Hezbollah guerrillas, Israeli army officials said.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave the order Sunday to halt firing as of Monday morning, his spokesman Asaf Shariv said. However, "if someone fires at us we will fire back," he added.

Isaac Herzog, a senior minister in the Israeli Cabinet, said it was unlikely all fighting would be silenced immediately. "Experience teaches us that after that a process begins of phased relaxation," in the fighting, he said.

Just three hours after the cease-fire, Israeli troops fired on a group of Hezbollah militiamen approaching "in a threatening way," the army said. One Hezbollah fighter was hit, but it was not known if he was killed or wounded.

Israeli troops later shot a Hezbollah fighter aiming his rifle at them near the village of Ghanduriya. The army did not say if the man was killed.

No fighting was reported elsewhere.

I don't think it is a particularly good idea for civilians to move back just yet. Certainly not before the international force moves into the area.