History Lesson

I've taken Washington Post opinion columnist EJ Dionne to task a number of times in the past (he hasn't exactly responded to - or even noticed - my criticism, but no matter). Oddly, in a column he filed from Australia of all places, I actually think he did a rather good job. The importance of History is a subject near and dear to my heart.

MELBOURNE, Australia — A battle over the future of the past broke out here last week. The fight explains a great deal about how Australia's conservative prime minister, John Howard, has hung on to power for a decade.

Pay attention to Howard. His approach could be a model for how parties of the right — including Republicans in the United States — manage to build majorities in turbulent times.

Last week, Howard organized a "history summit" to call attention to the decline of Australian history as a subject in high schools. In most states here, history has been subsumed within (and thus displaced by) a broader social studies curriculum focused on "studies of society and the environment."

"I think we have taught history as some kind of fragmented stew of moods and events," Howard declared, "rather than some kind of proper narrative."

This is the sort of cultural and educational fight familiar to Americans. My gut is with those who see history as a distinct subject. Wherever we live, we should know our country's national story.

Notice what has just happened: This writer, on the other side of politics from the Australian prime minister, has embraced his argument that old-fashioned history is worth teaching.

Howard has a genius for picking the right wedge issues. In this case, his argument appeals to conservatives who don't like what Howard has called "black armband history" — i.e., a history that is primarily critical of Australia's white settlers. But it also draws in many from outside the ranks of the right who have moderately traditional views about school curriculums.

This has been Howard's way since he defeated Paul Keating, a Labor Party prime minister, in 1996. Oddly, the two political enemies have a lot in common.

I do not agree with all of Dionne's points, but he does have a few that I find very interesting. I suspect it is somewhat less about the conventional wisdom phrase "wedge issues" as it is a good ear for what will play well with the electorate. (The term "wedge issue" implies a negative, I suspect Howard has a good ear for invoking the positive instead.)

So is it a lesson, as Dionne states, for the Republicans? Yes, in a way. But I think it is a lesson a tad different than Dionne. I think politicians who can find an issue to run for will beat politicians who are trying to run against something. (Which is why I think the Democrats rush to try to tar and feather Wal-Mart is stupid).

Oh - and teaching history as opposed to "social studies" is a really great idea.

Mathematical Impossibility

Charles Krauthammer flays the treachery of the French and their duplicity on the ceasefire in Lebanon that they helped craft. It is , he says, mathematically impossible to overestimate French perfidy. He starts out commenting on when allies are good to have - and why.

The cowboy has been retired. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is king. That's the conventional wisdom about George W. Bush's second term: Under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration has finally embraced "the allies."

This is considered a radical change of course. It is not. Even the most ardent unilateralist always prefers multilateral support under one of two conditions: (1) There is something the allies will actually help accomplish or (2) there is nothing to be done anyway, so multilateralism gives you the cover of appearing to do something.

North Korea, is an example of of the second case. Failing to do something to stop the demented dwarf of Pyongyang while Clinton (or Bush 41) was in office was a major mistake. Now nukes are the only thing that make the NK's mini-me relevant in the world - and he really won't give those up. But Iran could still be stopped.

But we underestimated French perfidy. (Overestimating it is mathematically impossible.) Once the resolution was passed, France announced that instead of the expected 5,000 troops, it would be sending 200. The French defense minister explained that France was not going to send out soldiers under a limited mandate and weak rules of engagement — precisely the mandate and rules of engagement that the French had just gotten us to agree to.

This breathtaking duplicity — payback for the Louisiana Purchase? — left the State Department red-faced. (It was offset somewhat when, last night, France agreed to send an additional 1,600 troops.) But the setback was minor compared with what we now face with Iran. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is a major irritant, but a nuclear Iran is a major strategic threat.

It is, of course, popular on the left to blame everything on Bush. Which is really an insidious form of elitism at work, actually. The meme goes that Bush destabilized everything by invading Iraq. Bush caused the Mullahs to pull the strings of their puppets in Iraq and Lebanon. It's all America's fault, you see.

Total bull, of course. Iran has been, by their own admission,  the sworn enemy of the US for decades. They have attacked the US over and over through proxies. To blame the situation completely on America and Bush is to denigrate and ignore the Iranian government's actions. They are not motivated by what the US does. They are motivated by a sworn oath to destroy America.

Realistically speaking, the point of this multilateral exercise cannot be to stop Iran's nuclear program by diplomacy. That has always been a fantasy. It will take military means. There would be terrible consequences from an attack. These must be weighed against the terrible consequences of allowing an openly apocalyptic Iranian leadership to acquire weapons of genocide.

The point of the current elaborate exercise in multilateral diplomacy is to slightly alter that future calculation. By demonstrating extraordinary forbearance and accommodation, perhaps we will have purchased the acquiescence of our closest allies — Britain, Germany and, yes, France — to a military strike on that fateful day when diplomacy has run its course.

Unless the world can get it's collective act together, war is coming. The actions of the left in Europe and America are making it more, not less, likely.

Tombaugh’s Widow “Shook Up”

Patricia Tombaugh, the widow of Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, says she is "shook up" by the decision of the International Astronomical Union to redefine Pluto as a non-planet.

"I'm not heartbroken. I'm just shook up," Patricia Tombaugh, 93, said in a telephone interview from her home in Las Cruces.

Clyde Tombaugh was 24 when he discovered Pluto while working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1930. He spent months meticulously examining images of the sky, looking for a planet observatory founder Percival Lowell theorized was affecting the orbit of Uranus. Lowell was wrong — Pluto is too small to affect giant Neptune's orbit — but Tombaugh found it anyway.

Tombaugh, who died in 1997, was the only person in the Western Hemisphere to have discovered a planet in our solar system until Thursday, when the International Astronomical Union separated it from the eight "classical planets" and lumped it in with two similarly sized "dwarf planets."

Tombaugh had fought off other attempts to relegate Pluto, but his widow said this time he probably would have endorsed the change, now that other planetary objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt, the belt of comets on the edge of the solar system where Pluto resides.

"He was a scientist. He would understand they had a real problem when they start finding several of these things flying around the place," Patricia Tombaugh said.

She added that her husband had been resigned to the change.

"He knew it was on the way," she said. "Before he died, they were going around and around. Of course, he was disappointed. After 75 years of seeing it one way, who wouldn't be?"

One can only speculate, of course, but one wonders what the folks who voted to strip Pluto out of the family of planets have actually discovered in their careers. Consider the fact that it took another 60 years for other astronomers, working with exponentially more advanced equipment to discover another object the size of Pluto and 73 years to discover an even larger object. Clyde Tombaugh did it with a telescope similar to this one he posed with in 1980. He did it all by himself. In 1930.

(AP Photo/Dale Wittner)

Cauldron

“It Has A Good Beat…”

"…And you can dance to it, Rusty"! The good Doctor has a rather amusing video that you'll enjoy. Turn the volume up and boogie!

Update To Austrian Kidnap Victim Story

Police have still not definitively identified the 18 year old woman who claims to have escaped from eight years in captivity. However, her family is quite sure it is her, citing a surgery scar on her arm. The DNA tests are due any time now. The police say that her alleged kidnapper killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train. That one is definitely waiting on a DNA test.

The man who allegedly held the woman killed himself Wednesday a few hours after she sought help at a home on the quiet, small-town street where she says she was held.

While expressing confidence in the women's identity, investigators said they were still waiting for DNA verification of the identity claim by the young woman, who turned up in a garden near the man's house.

But the missing girl's parents met with the woman and said they also were sure she is the daughter who disappeared on her way to school in nearby Vienna eight years ago. Police said she had a surgery scar like Natascha and reported finding the missing girl's passport in the house.

Police, who confirmed the identity of the alleged kidnapper as Wolfgang Priklopil, a 44-year-old communications technician, said he killed himself by throwing himself in front of a commuter train in Vienna.

They cordoned off the street where Priklopil lived in Strasshof, less than 10 miles northeast of Vienna, and released photos of the hiding place in his house where the young woman purportedly was held.

One photograph appeared to show a small, cluttered room and narrow concrete stairs leading down to it from an entrance so small it would have to be crawled through. Another photo showed a metal hatch that sealed the windowless, underground room.

Federal police spokesman Armin Halm said there was a bed and a toilet in the cramped space. Images on TV showed a small television in the room, which also had a sink and was littered with piles of books. Police said the woman was occasionally allowed to watch videos.

A female police officer, Sabine Freudenberger, said the young woman told of spending her days with her captor and even doing gardening. She described the woman as "quite chatty."

Freudenberger, one of the first officers to have contact with the woman Wednesday, told Austrian television the man apparently threatened her, saying that was probably the reason she didn't try to flee sooner.

Police said the young woman had been examined by a doctor and did not have signs of injuries, but added that her condition was still being studied.

Freudenberger said she believed the young woman had been sexually abused but didn't realize it. "It won't become clear to her … She did everything voluntarily, she said," Freudenberger said.

As I said when I originally posted about this, there are some crimes that deserve harsh punishment. As far as I am concerned, Priklopil got off far too lightly.

Rock, Paper, Scissors Is So Passé

The old game of rock, paper, scissors just would not do to settle a dispute between a supervisor and the employee who's grass cutting expertise he belittled. So they played a different game.

Bat, trimmer, hammer.

That's the scene St. Johns County authorities described Tuesday after a lawn service supervisor criticized one of his worker's grass-cutting skills, The Florida Times-Union reported.

Lance Tywan Wamley, 26, of Hollywood, Fla., is charged with threatening several men with a 34-inch baseball bat and then hitting one man in the chest. The worker, Eric J. Torres, 23, defended himself with a weed trimmer, authorities said.

Another worker, armed with a hammer, broke up the scuffle, authorities said.

Torres was treated at a hospital. Wamley was charged with felony assault and battery.

Gee, sounds like a good time was had by all, doesn't it? I wonder what the rules are…..

Tax Reform In Switzerland

A Swiss political party is touting its new, revolutionary half page tax form as a way to streamline the complicated tax system.

The Zurich branch of the centre-right Radical party (FDP), which is close to Swiss business, said its simplified "EasySwisstax" system would involve filling in half a sheet of A4 every year instead of the usual wad of pages.

Radical politician Hans-Peter Portmann claimed that a common twin rate system would lead to a 15-percent cut in the taxpayers's burden.

As we understand it, to fill out the form you enter your name and address information then answer the question, "How much did you make".

Then send it to them.

Pump or Bomb?

UPDATE: All charges have been dropped in this case. The TSA recommeded doing so.

Mardin Amin, who appeared in a Cook County circuit court Wednesday morning, has said he actually told the female security guard at O'Hare International Airport last month that the small, black object was a "pump" — as in a penis pump.

Prosecutors chose to follow the lead of the Transportation Safety Administration, which recently concluded that the matter did not warrant prosecution, said Cook County state's attorney spokesman John Gorman.

Amin, 29, of Skokie, had been charged with felony disorderly conduct and faced up to three years in prison if convicted.

His attorney, Eileen O'Neill-Burke, did not immediately return a message Wednesday seeking comment.

She explained earlier that her client was embarrassed to explain the object to the security guard in front of his mother, who was traveling with him — so he whispered. The guard misunderstood, and thought he had said "bomb," O'Neill-Burke said.

————————————————————— 

The man arrested for telling a TSA screener that his penis pump was a bomb to avoid embarrassing himself in front of his mother is now claiming he said, "Pump" not "Bomb". But a judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence to take the case to trial.

The female airport security guard held the small, black, squeezable rubber object she'd just plucked out of Mardin Amin's backpack, and eyed it suspiciously.

Standing next to his mother, an embarrassed Amin whispered out of one corner of his mouth that it was a "pump" — as in a penis pump. The guard misunderstood the Iraqi man and thought she heard the word "bomb," Amin's attorney told a Cook County judge Wednesday.

"He told her it's a pump," attorney Eileen O'Neill-Burke said as a cluster of burly, snickering police officers watched the court proceedings. "He's standing with his mother. Of course he's not going to shout this out."

But after listening to the female guard testify she heard Amin "clearly" say the word bomb during the Aug. 16 incident at O'Hare Airport, Judge Gerald Winiecki decided there was enough evidence for the case to move forward. Amin, 29, is charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

Other TSA people report that the man told them at least twice it was a "bomb" and only admitted what it actually was later. Amin told reporters that even though he didn't want his mother to know about it, that he wasn't embarrassed to have it:

"It's normal," he said. "Half of America they use it."

That's not necessarily true. We can only prove one judge uses one. And a guy at an airpport.

AP Notices Israeli Submarine Deal

And even with the Jerusalem Post and the Scotsman doing all the hard work for them, still gets it wrong. Or one of their sources did and they didn't catch it.

"They are very well-built, very well-prepared, lots of interesting equipment, one of the best conventional submarines available," Beaver said. "We are talking about a third string of deterrence capabilities."

Michael Karpin, an expert on Israel's nuclear capabilities who published a book on the issue in the United States, said nuclear submarines provide better second-strike capabilities than missiles launched from airplanes.

"Planes are vulnerable, unlike nuclear submarines that can operate for an almost unlimited amount of time without being struck," Karpin said. "Second-strike capabilities are a crucial element in any nuclear conflict."

These are diesel-electric or 'conventional' submarines. Nuclear submarines use nuclear propulsion systems. They are some of the most advanced conventional boats in history, though and armed to the teeth by all accounts.

One thing that the article mentions that I suspect is very true:

What also makes Tehran dangerous, Beaver said, is that it may not understand the consequences of carrying out a nuclear strike.

I think that is exactly what is wrong here. They simply do not comprehend what will happen to them. The reason the MAD doctrine worked with the Soviets is that they did understand what would happen, as did the US.

UPDATE: In comments, Quilly Mammoth catches the AP "correcting" the story. And actually making it even less accurate! (The link is to Just Barking Mad, QM is one of the proprietors thereof. His disassembly of the AP is quite amusing.)

And hey, if they make Web Fu into a television series, can we get David Carradine? Nah. I'm not that old…..

The Beating Continues

Allahpundit started the demolition of Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell yesterday. Today it is the Confederate Yankee's turn to apply the 2×4.

Did rightwing bloggers attempt to smear the entire media, as Mitchell alleges, or were they targeting specific questionable stories, specific questionable photographs, and photographers exhibiting a suspicious pattern of behavior?

The answer, quite obvious to those that actually read the blog posts and the commentary they generated, is that bloggers investigating specific instances uncovered general problems with how the media gathered news and verified the accuracy of the information, a fact that Mitchell begrudgingly admits. I'd like to know which "wacky conspiracy theories" Mitchell was referring to, as the Qana staging episode and the Red Cross ambulance stories most thought implausible when first proposed by bloggers, turned out to be absolutely correct.

In a significant number of the more widely disseminated blog posts asking questions and making accusations about suspicious media accounts, the suspicions of bloggers turned out to be quite well-founded. Contrary to Mitchell's suggestions, quite a few—more than a handful—of the more widely regarded questions raised by bloggers were exposed apparent staging or fraud–a remarkable achievement by people thousands of miles away from the story, doing the fact-checking and analysis that the media should have been doing, but much to their embarrassment, often did not.

Mitchell, apparently then unable to go much further on his own, decides to simply turn to the Lightstalkers photography forum, and quote heavily from media photographers denying that manipulation and staging took place. And while the much-respected Tim Fadek can say all he wants that the scene in Qana wasn't staged, and other photographers choose to take his observations as fact, when I see with my own eyes on YouTube that it was indeed directed by none other than Mr. Green Helmet himself, I have every right to doubt the veracity of Mr. Fadek and other photographers that denied Qana was staged, along with the media organizations that try to act that such compelling evidence of malfeasance does not exist.

I suspect that Mitchell's next groundbreaking column will expose that according to interviews with inmates at San Quentin, 99% are actually innocent.

This E&P editorial chooses to dodge the real issues of the media's vetting of the accuracy of the stories and photographs that they chose to print coming out of Lebanon and other venues, just as they dodged how so many pictures and events ever had reason to be questioned in the first place.

Bob also makes sure there is some historical perspective on Mitchell's politically motivated hackery, which he is trying desperately to project onto those who rightfully question the accuracy of faked news. As I responded in comments yesterday: Mitchell's opinion appears to be that is just so unfair that people demand accuracy and truth instead of just reading the media approved truthiness.

Ravaging Rodent Ransacks Room

A family in England came home after a weekend getaway and thought someone had broken into their house. The place was trashed, curtains and sofa ripped apart and window frames splintered. A deranged burglar perhaps?

Then they noticed the tiny, sooty paw prints. All over the place.

They thought burglars had broken in, but then noticed a set of sooty paws had left tracks all over the room.

The rodent had tried chewing through the window frames and tore the curtain and settee to shreds in its desperation to escape.

The 67-year-old retired engineer said: "We noticed that the fireguard had been knocked on to the carpet and there were coals on the floor.

"Then we noticed that the wooden window frame had been gnawed extensively - most of it was gone.

"There were pot plants and ornaments strewn across the room and we immediately thought someone had broken in. But my wife pointed out that the doors were still locked."

The couple's son, Shaun, found the squirrel's dead body behind the settee.

So it was another suicide squirrel.

France Ups Troop Contribution

French president Jacques Chirac has announced that France will commit 2,000 troops to the UNIFIL peacekeepers. He also wants to retain French command of the force.

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac announced Thursday night that France will send a total of 2,000 troops for the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. In a nationally televised address, Chirac said France will increase its deployment to 2,000 from an already announced 400 troops, and he hopes to retain command of the force.

The derision from just about everyone must have made an impression.

Dutch Authorities To Release Suspects

The twelve people who were removed from a Northwest Airlines aircraft that returned to Amsterdam will be released, according to Dutch authorities. They cite insufficient evidence that the men were engaged in terrorism.

HAARLEM, Netherlands - Prosecutors said Thursday they found no evidence of a terrorist threat aboard a Northwest Airlines flight to India that returned to Amsterdam, and they are releasing all 12 passengers arrested after the emergency landing.

The men, all Indian nationals, had aroused suspicions on Flight NW0042 to Bombay because they had a large number of cell phones and other equipment, and refused to follow the crew's instructions, prosecutors said.

Because of those actions by the passengers, the pilot of the DC-10 radioed for help shortly after takeoff Wednesday and the plane was escorted back to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport by two Dutch fighter jets. The 12 were arrested after the plane landed.

U.S. air marshals on the flight also were suspicious of the men, U.S. officials and passengers said.

"A thorough investigation of the cell phones in the plane found that the phones were not manipulated and no explosives were found on board the plane," said a statement from the prosecutor's office in Haarlem, which has jurisdiction over the airport.

"From the statements of the suspects and the witnesses, no evidence could be brought forward that these men were about to commit an act of violence," the statement said.

The incident reflected the jitters that persist in the airline industry in the two weeks since British police revealed an alleged plot to blow up several U.S.-bound airliners simultaneously using bombs crafted from ordinary consumer goods.

In New Delhi, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said he had no comment.

Well, if you want to a) test responses or b) desensitize people to odd behavior, how would you go about it? How about having a number of people act oddly on several airlines? Make sure they have nothing on them that can get them arrested, but just have them act up. Everything the witnesses describe was highly abnormal behavior for average passengers.

South Korea Reports Stepped Up Activity

South Korea is reporting seeing stepped up activity at a suspected North Korean nuclear testing facility. An increase in truck traffic in and out of the site has been noted.

The vehicles have been seen in recent days at what is thought to be a nuclear testing site in the northeast of North Korea, Kyodo News agency reported, citing an unnamed government official.

It was unclear whether any nuclear tests by the North were imminent, but Japan is closely monitoring the situation, the official was quoted as saying.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said Tokyo had boosted surveillance of the area and would continue to closely analyze intelligence, but said the government would not discuss specifics because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Defense officials also refused to confirm the Kyodo report.

American media reported last week that U.S. officials were monitoring potentially suspicious activity at a suspected underground nuclear site.

The report sent diplomats in the region scrambling to avert a possible test and get the North to return to multinational talks on its nuclear ambitions, which have stalled since November.

As has been speculated in comments previously, is this part of the reported "surprise" Iran has promised?