Israel Warns Of Renewed Offensive

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Israel is strongly warning that Hezbollah's refusal to disarm will be likely to bring about renewed hostilities. They are also extremely unhappy with Kofi Annan. (I have been quite sure Mr. Annan is anti-Israeli for quite some time now).

The IDF will have to resume operations in Lebanon if the expanded United Nations force being assembled does not fulfill its obligation to dismantle Hizbullah, an official in the Prime Minister's Office warned on Tuesday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly reached a deal allowing Hizbullah to keep its weapons but refrain from exhibiting them in public. Israeli officials called the arrangement a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which passed over the weekend and was approved on Sunday by the cabinet.

"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is expected to raise the issue when she meets in New York on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected.

Israeli officials said the IDF would not complete its withdrawal from southern Lebanon until the international force was deployed - even if it took months - to prevent a vacuum in Lebanon that could endanger Israeli civilians. An official in the Prime Minister's Office accused Annan of having an anti-Israel agenda.

"He has been one-sided," the official said. "He tried to be even-handed in a situation that was clearly asymmetrical. When one side committed crimes against humanity and engaged in genocide and the other side defended itself, he cannot treat us in the same manner."

Annan rejected charges of bias, saying, "I have been very hard on Hizbullah and condemned Hizbullah for what it has done. I have condemned Israel for what I consider excessive use of force but it doesn't mean I am taking one side."

But treating a non-nation like Hezbollah as if it were an actual nation-state is not exactly a normal thing for the UN to do, either. At least until Annan's watch i the organization. I'd say this is not over yet now.

This Will Be Interesting To Watch

I've taken exception to David Ignatius of the Washington Post acting as an unofficial back channel for Hezbollah during the war in Lebanon. More than once, too. Today's column is still singing the praises of diplomacy and negotiation, despite those tactics absolute total lack of results for all these years. At best a negotiated settlement has held for a few years then collapsed whenever terror organizations have been the prime players. (Nations like Egypt and Jordan have been able to abide by their word.) But Ignatius says one thing here that may come back to haunt him:

The wild card in the deal is Hezbollah. As the war dragged on, most pundits judged the group's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, the big winner. But that will be true, paradoxically, only if he abides by the deal Siniora made and withdraws his armed fighters from southern Lebanon. If he tries to resume the war or continues to operate as Iran's proxy, he will lose his new halo. U.S. officials believe that Nasrallah may have resisted Iranian pressure to continue the fight when he agreed to Siniora's package. Meanwhile, the Syrians, Nasrallah's other patron, played no role at all in the diplomatic outcome, deepening their isolation.

I've interviewed Nasrallah twice in the past three years, and in both sessions, the key issue we discussed was how Hezbollah's armed might could be successfully absorbed into the fabric of the Lebanese state. Each time, he insisted that Hezbollah would never threaten Lebanon. But of course, that's precisely what Nasrallah did when his forces recklessly seized two Israeli soldiers July 12, triggering the Israeli attacks. If Nasrallah doesn't behave more responsibly and abide by the new U.N. framework, both he and Lebanon are doomed.

Given the previous post detailing Hezbollah's refusal to disarm or even leave Southern Lebanon, will Ignatius actually come to the realization that negotiations with terrorists are always, every time, without exception, useless?

It will be interesting to watch the convolutions.

Hezbollah Balks

Hezbollah is refusing to withdraw from Southern Lebanon unless the Lebanese army promises not to probe for bunkers or weapons caches. The Washington Post reports on negotiations within the Lebanese government.

BEIRUT, Aug. 15 — Hezbollah refused to disarm and withdraw its fighters from the battle-scarred hills along the border with Israel on Tuesday, threatening to delay deployment of the Lebanese army and endangering a fragile cease-fire.

The makings of a compromise emerged from all-day meetings in Beirut, according to senior officials involved in the negotiations, and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora scheduled a cabinet session Wednesday for what he hoped would be formal approval of the deal. Hezbollah indicated it would be willing to pull back its fighters and weapons in exchange for a promise from the army not to probe too carefully for underground bunkers and weapons caches, the officials said.

That isn't a compromise, that is altering the terms of the UN resolution. But never fear, the media can find a way to blame it on the Israelis:

At stake in the standoff was implementation of a crucial provision of the U.N. Security Council cease-fire that went into effect Monday. The accord called for quick deployment of 15,000 Lebanese army troops south of the Litani River along the border with Israel. They were to take up positions under the aegis of a reinforced contingent of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, to form a peacekeeping corps with a total strength of about 30,000.

Hezbollah's reluctance to get its men and arms out of the border zone reflected nervousness over the continuing presence of Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil. But it also demonstrated the militant Shiite Muslim movement's increased assertiveness here after a war of more than a month during which it stood off the Israeli army while Lebanon's national army stood aside. (Emphasis added).

Here is a paragraph that makes me think that things are not exactly going well right now:

Thousands of Lebanese families again filled the roads leading south, heeding a call from Hezbollah that they return immediately to their often-shattered villages. Leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft warned them to stay away, but cars loaded with children and household belongings streamed down the coastal road.

Hezbollah wants its human shields back in place and they are not obeying, or even apparently planning to obey, the terms they agreed to with respect to withdrawing. I am not at all sure this thing is over yet.

UPDATE: From the comment section, Hurricane Harry explains it all.

AP Still Defending “Green Helmet”

The AP attempts to whip up sympathy for the man who is being called "Green Helmet". This is the Lebanese man caught on tape staging photos and abusing a dead child for propaganda purposes. Which he admits doing in this article.

Salam Daher, dubbed the Green Helmet for the color of his civil defense headgear, said he was hit by debris Sunday when a bomb or missile fell on a building while he was helping to battle a fire at a gas station in the port city of Tyre.

"I fell over when the bomb hit, and I got some scratches from debris that flew up on my face," he said.

The 20-year veteran civil defense worker said he shows dead children to photographers to make clear that Israeli airstrikes killed young Lebanese during the monthlong conflict. Some Internet bloggers have accused him of setting up photos and of treating the dead insensitively.

In one photograph, taken after an Israeli airstrike hit a building in the village of Qana, Daher held a dead infant over his head. The boy's blue pacifier was pinned to his nightshirt.

"I did hold the baby up, but I was saying 'look at who the Israelis are killing. They are children,'" Daher said. "These are not fighters. They have no guns. They are children, civilians they are killing.' "

He said he had no regrets and he made no apologies. "I wanted people to see who was dying. They said they were killing fighters. They killed children."

Kathy Gannon appears to be the assigned defender of "Green Helmet" for the AP as this is her second article on the man. Her first was here. The Western media is completely unable to see the moral implications of what it is doing at this point. This latest piece demonstrates that quite clearly. Gannon acknowledges the video exists (only on one site, mind you. Never mind that it is all over the web) and reports that the subject of the article admits to the behavior he is being criticized for.

Then she tries to get readers to feel sorry for the guy.

I feel sorry for her. And for all of us.

UPDATE: Don't miss Rick's letter to the AP. Nobody has answered him yet. I'm betting they won't either.

Suicide Squirrel Shorts System

Electric customers in Kokomo, Indiana got an unpleasant surprise when a suicide squirrel made his way into an electric substation. The resultant fireball knocked out power to about 5,000 customers. The animal uprising is getting ugly. First it was kamikaze pigeons in Europe, now this.

Duke Energy restored the service from the South Main Street substation near Wildcat Creek after about an hour Sunday night.

"We lost the squirrel and 5,039 customers for the space of an hour," Duke spokesman Rob Norris said.

Actually, they didn't so much as lose the squirrel as vaporize him, but that's a matter of semantics. The addition of flammable bushy-tailed rats to the animal's arsenal is a bad development.

This Is Odd

The Cuban government just released a statement that says that the Cuban revolution will go forward under Raul Castro's leadership. This despite the fact that they also showed video of Hugo Chavez's visit with Fidel Castro.

HAVANA (AFP) - Cuba's ruling Communist Party vowed that the revolution launched almost 48 years ago by the now 80-year-old and ailing Fidel Castro would continue under the leadership of his brother Raul.

The statement, published by the state-run newspaper Granma, came after Cubans saw the first photographs and video footage of the communist strongman since he announced on July 31 that he had undergone intestinal surgery and ceded power to Raul Castro, 75.

Authorities have stressed the handover was only temporary, but they also appear to be preparing Cubans for an eventual transition.

Rolando Alfonso, who heads the Communist Party's ideological department, wrote in Granma that Cubans were ready to defend the revolution "under the guidance of the party" and "the firm leadership of Raul."

"Recover, commander," he said in reference to Castro, adding: "Our people are guarantors, and you know it, that the revolution is here to stay."

This is a very oddly constructed statement. Even though it ends with a call for Fidel to recover, it sounds as if it is almost an admission that Castro will not resume his leadership role.

Going Numb

Michael Totten writes from Northern Israel about living under the fall of terror weapons. As he describes the process, he calls it rejecting fear. I'd call it getting numb. But that is just a matter of semantics, the outcome is the same.

During my first several hours in the war zone I constantly tried to figure out what I could do to make myself safer. Should I stand here instead of there? How about if I crouch down a little bit? Maybe if I sit on the ground a rocket will miss my head? I figured it was better to stand near things than away from things, as long as those things were not cars.

All this thinking was useless. I would either be hit or I wouldn’t. Walking or driving fast could get me away from an incoming rocket, or it could get me closer. It was all totally random, and after every possibility was considered and rejected as useless the fear slipped away.

Fear forces you to think hard and fast about what you can do to protect yourself. As soon as you become 100 percent convinced that there is nothing more you can do to protect yourself, fear becomes a useless emotion. Then it goes away all on its own. You can’t talk yourself into or out of this mental space. It’s just something that happens.

This is the fatal weakness of terrorism.

Totten is arguably the best reporter covering the Middle East today. As always, if you can help out with a donation, it will enable him to continue to bring this kind of writing out of that area.

How Much Is That Mermaid In The Window?

Andy Manson, a custom luthier in the UK has created a very unique guitar and is auctioning it for a worthy cause. The guitar is shaped like a mermaid. A life-sized mermaid.

Andy Manson, a British luthier whose clients have included the instrumentalist and composer Mike Oldfield and members of the rock band Led Zeppelin, put the instrument up for auction on the site Shop4thelot.com.

By Tuesday afternoon the wooden instrument had attracted a bid of 5,000 pounds (9,500 dollars, 7,400 euros). Half of the proceeds of the sale are to go to the charity Harvest Help, which supports farmers in rural Africa.

"The original idea for this piece was the life size representation of a human as the resonating body of a musical instrument, the guitar frequently being compared with the female form," Manson said in a statement on the site.

The Mermaid took nearly three years to build, using 19 different types of wood.

Pictures of this guitar can be seen here. Manson's website is here. If you're smitten by the mermaid and want to try to buy it, the auction is here. There is also a lot of information about the guitar, its construction and the creative process Manson went through in building ii there.

On To Something?

Robert Cox asks if it might just be possible that Joe Lieberman is actually on to something.

In his Tuesday night speech, Lieberman, both conceding defeat and launching a new campaign for the U.S. Senate, decried the “old politics of partisan polarization” and said, “I went into public service to find solutions, not to point fingers. To unite, not to divide.”

Lieberman went on to describe a political environment within his own party in that “Every disagreement is considered disloyal. And every opponent it is not just an opponent but is seen as evil.” He vowed to continue fighting for stronger national security and work with Democrats and Republicans to “build a better life for the people of Connecticut … regardless of what the political consequences may be.” In staring into the abyss of an election loss, Lieberman may be on to something.

Cox goes on to describe several things that he observed while on vacation. Heartfelt applause for members of the military and their families is one thing he described, but the really telling one is this:

A few days later, as the Cox Family Tour moved north, we found ourselves at the Santa Monica Pier. As we looked north along the coast, we could see below us row upon row of white wooden crosses planted in the beach. Beside them was a row of a dozen coffin-sized boxes wrapped in American flags.

We watched from the pier above as the anti-war protestors, armed with clipboards approached beachgoers requesting their signature for what purpose I can only guess. Time and again, couples walking arm and arm, parents with families in tow and individuals strolling toward the surf, ignored them or waved them away. In the time we watched, we did not see a single person sign on to their cause.

When I picked up my son at the airport he described for me the scene as he and the other member of his company coming home on leave experienced. As soon as the two men, dressed as is required in their uniforms, stepped through the door into the concourse every single man, woman and child in that area stood up and applauded. My son said he did not see a single person not clapping. Later, he and I were talking and a woman walked up and simply told him, "Thank you. We appreciate your service".

Maybe Cox is onto something, too. Read the whole thing.

Vicarious Communists

Val Prieto, guesting at Michelle Malkin's blog, has a post up discussing a birthday celebration for Fidel Castro. One that happened to be held in San Francisco. Val is an escapee from Castro's little hell on earth so you can imagine how supportive he is of the artistic expressions in San Fran.

Unfortunately, fidel castro and socialism adulation is not unique to minorities. There are plenty of "white" Americans that suffer from that disease. There are the Hollywood set: the Kevin Costners, the Steven Spielbergs and the Oliver Stones. There are the Cindy Sheehans and Code Pinkers. There are the Noam Chomsky-ites. The list is heartbreakingly long. You'll find plenty of examples in the archives of this blog and Babalu as well as in Michelle's "Unhinged" and David Horowitz's "The Professors" to name just a few. It's not as much craving for socialism but sheer, unbridled anti-Americanism.

If I needed proof of the above, I need go no further than this from the San Francisco Sentinel titled "Happy Birthday, Fidel! San Franciscans honor the life of the world's longest reigning revolutionary leader." If you can stomach it, I urge you to scroll through the page linked above. What you'll find, other than the fact that some people live in Lala Land, is that anti-Americanism comes in all shapes and cultures and colors and sizes.

I've coined a term for people like the ones in the San Francisco and Harlem celebrating fidel castro's birthday: Vicarious Communists (or Marxists, or Socialist or fidelistas. The terms are interchangeable.)

The difference is that Val recognizes that even these leftists are still allowed to express this admiration for a brutal dictator. It is their right as Americans. What these people do not really grasp is that they would not enjoy anything even remotely close to that freedom in the "worker's paradise" they imagine in Cuba.

Perhaps a better term for these folks would be castro-atis. They appear not to have the, um, equipment to speak truth to the true evil that Castro represents and instead pay homage to a myth.

Iran To Send Aid To Lebanon

Iranian demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran chanting that Hezbollah had won and that Israel has been destroyed. The Iranian government, meanwhile, threatened to launch medium range ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv if Israel or the US attack it.

Iranians find cause for celebration. Upwards of 110 ambulances and mobile intensive care units rode through the center of Tehran Tuesday morning as a sign of solidarity with the Lebanese people, as reported by the Iranian news agency, Fars. Ambulance teams continued driving toward the mosque of Tehran University in order to show their willingness to help the Lebanese wounded in the past month.

Already Monday night thousands of Iranians took to the streets in celebration of what they defined as a Shiite and Hizbullah victory over the Zionist regime. In the streets of Iran , believers took advantage of the evening prayers to praise the Lebanese nation on Hizbullah's victory.

In parades toward the mosques calling "Allah is great, Khamenei is the leader," "Lebanon won with Hizbullah's help," Lebanon is victorious, Israel is destroyed," and "Hizbullah finally won." The daily internet newspaper Rooz Online, run by exiled Iranians, added that the marchers waived flags of Hizbullah and handed out miniature flags to children.

….

Alongside the celebrations, senior religious figure Ahmad Khatamei announced Tuesday that "if the United States or Israel attack Iran, Iran will shoot rockets at Tel Aviv."

'Take into account Iranian Shihab-3 missiles'

He added: "The missiles shot by Hizbullah into Israel had a range of 70 kilometers and managed to turn Israel into a 'ghost country.' If the United States is considering attacking us, it must take into account the Iranian Shihab-3 missiles, whose range is 2,000 kilometers, and can hit the center of Tel Aviv."

Just to show their fervent support for Lebanon, the Iranian Red Crescent is sending an immediate shipment of vital aid to the Lebanese puppets who did Tehran's dirty work. They are shipping in just the perfect 'thank you' gift for fighting Iran's proxy war. A plane full of chadors will be dispatched immediately. Welcome to the new Persian empire.

David Copperfield Discovers Fountain Of Youth

In a telephone interview with Reuters, magician and master illusionist David Copperfield reveals that he has discovered the fountain of youth. Copperfield, who recently bought four islands (for a mere $50 million) in the Souther Bahamas says the magical waters actually exist on one of them. There is an ultra-exclusive private resort on one of the islands that rents for $300,000 per week, while the other three islands act as a buffer to keep people away.

One of his islands in the Exuma chain, Musha Cay, is a private resort that rents for up to $300,000 a week and the other islands serve as buffers to keep prying eyes away from celebrity guests on the white sand beaches.

Copperfield is coy about his reasons for the Fountain of Youth claim, but the man best known for entertaining with grand deception insists his archipelago also contains the legendary waters that bestow perpetual youth. Seriously.

"I've discovered a true phenomenon," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again. … Bugs or insects that are near death, come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting."

Copperfield held the interview by phone for good reason. We have it on good authority that the waters do indeed grant one youth. There is a slight side effect, however. The waters make you young, alright. A young newt.

British Raid Internet Cafés

British authorities have raided two internet cafés in the town of Slough, near to where a number of the suspects from last weeks terror arrests lived. There is no indication of what they were looking for or what they found. There was also a stash of weapons recovered in a forest nearby.

The two Internet cafés were raided Thursday in central Slough, 25 miles west of London, not far from the neighborhood in the town of High Wycombe where several suspects were arrested last week, Thames Valley police said. They didn't say what, if anything, was found.

Police said they had increased their presence in Slough, but urged people to remain calm.

"There is no intelligence to suggest that there is any specific terrorist threat to anyone in this area," Chief Superintendent Brian Langston said.

Meanwhile, the British Broadcasting Corp. said a search of some suspects' homes and of a woodland area in High Wycombe turned up several firearms and other items of interest. It was not clear if they were related to the alleged jetliner plot, which authorities say involved a plan to smuggle liquid explosives aboard flights hidden in hand luggage.

The two developments came after several days of a near lockdown on information. The government has not briefed the media since last week, has not said where suspects are being held, and has not even released the names of some of them.

The British government is working on new security measures, including revised guidelines on who gets searched or selected for further scrutiny. These possible revisions have brought out the usual critics:

British Defense Secretary Des Browne said work was under way on new permanent security requirements for airports, but declined to say what the new measures might be.

A report by The Times newspaper said officials were considering a system of passenger-profiling that would select people behaving suspiciously, who had an unusual travel pattern or were of a certain ethnic or religious background.

Leaders in the Muslim community criticized that approach, saying it would further isolate British Muslims.

"The government needs to think very, very carefully before it considers putting this measure into practice," said Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. "There is concern that such profiling would perhaps only contribute to further alienating a group whose close co-operation is essential in countering terror."

Yeah, it has been working so very well up until now.

UPDATE: British authorities have arrested a 25th suspect in an unspecified location West of London.

(Ap)eHarmony

In another sure sign of the impending collapse of civilization, Dutch zookeepers are setting up an internet dating service to meet the romantic needs of orangutans.

Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates.

First things first: A romantic dinner for two.

"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.

Ballot said the primary aim of the computer link between Apenheul and an orangutan center on the Indonesian part of Borneo was to raise public awareness of the apes and their plight. Activists say that the spread of palm oil plantations, coupled with logging, especially on Malaysian and Indonesian territories on Borneo island, is threatening animals such as wild orangutans with extinction by chewing up their native jungle habitat.

We shudder to think where this will all lead. Will silverbacks be searching for the gorilla their dreams in cyberspace? What other kinds of monkey business will this lead to? Can ape cyberstalking be far behind?

The mind boggles.

The Straight Poop On Pickpockets

Reuters is reporting a new variation on what is actually an old crime. In the world of pickpockets, there is a technique sometimes called 'the mustard trick' where the criminal 'accidentally' squirts mustard on the victim then picks the pocket while helping to clean up the mess. A variation of that technique uses pigeon poop or a whitish liquid that resembles it. Both those techniques and many others are detailed here in a handy guide to avoiding pickpockets. The German authorities have been informed of a brand new and even more offensive technique, though.

Thieves throwing human excrement.

After withdrawing 8,000 euros from a bank for a holiday the man was struck in the back of the neck by what he described as human feces, police in the central town of Giessen said.

"Immediately afterwards two large women came up to him from behind and claimed they had seen someone excreting down onto the street from above," police said in a statement.

The two women then began briskly wiping the filth from the man's clothing with paper towels they had with them. They were soon joined by a third man, who also came bearing paper towels.

So, if you happen to get hit by flung dung, those helpful people with a ready supply of paper towels probably are not actually helpful at all.