Betrayal

Mel Konner, a professor of anthropology at Emory University, was once Jimmy Carter's biggest fan. He never failed to defend the former president when someone attacked Carter. With the release of Carter's latest screed, however, Konner is not only no longer a fan, he now is actually afraid of the damage the former president is doing.

A former president whose legacy has rested on bringing about peace between Arabs and Jews has turned his back on that to become a partisan. A man whose Christian values made him see both sides in a tragic conflict has become blind to one side's suffering. A man who walked in paths of peace has now become an obstacle to peace.

For me, it means the loss of one of my greatest heroes. I have never allowed a snide remark about Jimmy Carter's "failed" presidency to pass without contradicting it. I have said countless times that he is the greatest former president, setting a new standard for that role.

I don't recognize Carter any more. I am afraid of him now, for myself and for my children. He has not just turned his back on the balance and fairness that all peacemaking depends on. He has become a spokesman for the enemies of my people. He has become an apologist for terrorists.

At this holiday season, Jews remember a time when our existence was threatened in our homeland; it is threatened again now. Christians remember the birth of a baby boy long dreamed of, to a Jewish mother who had to flee from terror to protect him. Jewish mothers shrink from terror in the same place today.

Read the whole thing. It is a damning indictment. Carter has damaged himself with this book. And his increasingly shrill defense of the book is doing even greater damage. He is addressing the important issues of the Middle East in a slanted and, in fact, anti-Semitic manner. When he loses strong supporters like Konner, he really has a problem. He's too arrogant to understand that, though.

UPDATE: Michael van der Galien, posting at The Moderate Voice, has some other thoughts on Carter and his book.

Tyrant Chic

Target has pulled a CD carrying case bearing the likeness of Che Guevara from its shelves following a public outcry and a barrage of bashing from some pundits. But they waited until just a few days before Christmas when there presumably have already been a large number of sales.

Target had touted a music disc carrying case for Che admirers emblazoned with the Argentine-born guerrilla's iconic 1960 portrait by Alberto Diaz, or "Korda." A set of small earphones was superimposed on the image, suggesting he was tuned in to an iPod or other music player.

"It is never our intent to offend any of our guests through the merchandise we carry," Target said in a statement. "We have made the decision to remove this item from our shelves and we sincerely apologize for any discomfort this situation may have caused our guests."

Some business columnists had decried the product, sold under Target's brand, saying the trendy discount chain was giving in to a misguided fashion craze while ignoring Guevara's role in bringing Fidel Castro's Communist rule to Cuba.

"What next? Hitler backpacks? Pol Pot cookware? Pinochet pantyhose?" wrote Investor's Business Daily in an editorial earlier this month, citing the Guevara case as a model of "tyrant-chic."

Guevara was a murderous thug, not a hero. Target ought to at least contribute any proceeds to a worthwhile charity. Pulling the merchandise just before Christmas is an empty gesture meant only to garner some good headlines.

Discovery Landing In Florida

NASA TV is carrying it live. They are just passing Houston.

UPDATE: And down safe, 5:32pm EST.

Winning Big

Residents of the small Spanish town of Almazan are dancing in the streets after winning big money in a lottery. The lottery, known as El Gordo, or The Fat One, has been around for 200 years. Tickets cost €200 and are often bought by a group of people.

Locals in Almazan, population 6,000, sang, danced and swigged champagne on the cobbled streets of their town in north-central Spain after some became millionaires in Spain's Christmas draw.

Up to 1,800 tickets carry the winning number 20297, and the majority of them were sold from Almazan's lottery office, most others being purchased in towns in the provinces of Seville, Valencia and Alicante.

"It's 10 million for the whole family, we don't believe it yet!" shouted a young mother in Almazan on national television, cradling a baby in one arm and a champagne bottle in the other.

El Gordo is hugely popular among Spaniards, who are among Europe's biggest gamblers, and shops, offices and cafes ground to a halt for the draw which this year dished out 2.14 billion euros in winnings.

I guess Spain has some, shall we say interesting, customs. Not just a 200 year old lottery where the winning numbers are sung out by a choir, either. They are also big on pastries shaped like feces.

Yet statuettes of "El Caganer," or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain's northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.

During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.

Maybe if we combine the two? It could be amusing.

Al Qaeda To Democrats:

"All your victories are belong to us." Ayman al Zawahri, the big number two in al Qaeda, Told Democrats that their electoral victory was earned for them by the terrorists.

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.

In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats.

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen — the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq — are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Gee, doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling just all over? Al Qaeda demands that the Democrats pay them back for the win by negotiating with them.

UPDATE: Others: The Jawa Report, Hot Air, Ace of Spades , Riehl World View, Wake up America, The Political Pit Bull, Little Green Footballs, Gay Patriot, One Hand Clapping, Leaning Straight Up, Redstate, USAToday On Deadline, The Rat Nest, Powerline, Captain's Quarters,

Incidentally, I agree with Ed Morrisey here. This is propaganda from al Qaeda. The Democrats did not court al Qaeda in the election. But it is also being perceived as a major victory for the islamists and Zawahri is trying to capitalize on that perception. That fact is very troubling. That our own media does not understand what they are doing when they accept al Qaeda's word at face value while doubting and discrediting America's is even more so.

A Bunny Bonanza

AllahPundit rounded up the definitive Bun-O-Vision Christmas. Merry Christmas!

Bomb Dog Drops Bomb

Security personnel at the airport in Cairo, Egypt thought they were doing the right thing by having a bomb sniffing dog check out the cabin of an airplane scheduled to make a flight from Cairo to New York. They were going through the cabin when the dog decided to drop a bomb of his own. On the carpet.

The flight had to be delayed for more than an hour when the unnamed animal did his business in a cabin filled with 179 passengers on Flight 985, a security source at Cairo international airport said Friday.

While checking the cabin for explosives and other dangerous materials and giving the all clear, the dog did what dogs do and produced something to be sniffed at.

The captain then ordered that the cabin be cleaned and disinfected, resulting in a delay of 65 minutes, the airport source said.

Apparently, this cost the airline some $10,000 in fees and penalties. I wonder if the dog has a new nickname now.

Cooperating In Their Own Destruction

Germany, at the demand of Eurocrats, is delivering itself right into the hands - er, paws - of the Animal Uprising™. The Euro-weenies are demanding that Germany repopulate Eastern Germany with giant, killer hamsters. Generations of East German farmers labored mightily under the former communist regime to eradicate the beasts. Now the EU wants them back.

This week, officials cleared the final bureaucratic hurdles for a pair of field hamsters from France immigrate to a region of the German countryside around Berlin where their kind had gone extinct. Biologists hope the population of European, or black-bellied hamsters, which used to be common from Belgium to the steppes of western China, will rebound in Germany.

Previously, the hamsters were kept at the Heidelberg Zoo in western Germany, but on Thursday they were to be released in the Prignitz district of the the eastern German state of Brandenburg, where the species had disappeared……

…..European hamsters (cricetus cricetus) can grow up to 32cm (12 inches) long, bringing them closer to the size of guinea pigs than the hamsters normally sold as pets. They also have large cheek pouches, which they fill with air while they swim.

Giant, killer, amphibious hamsters. Our informants tell us that the murderous beasts carry off small children, undermine the foundations of houses causing them to collapse on their owners, conduct Satanic rituals and steal cars. We are not exactly sure what our informants are on, but it must be very, very powerful.

Osama Shot Dead!

Sharpshooters shot and killed Osama bin Laden in India! This was right after Osama killed a woman near the forest grove in which he was living. Good thing, too. He'd killed fourteen people so far. He was a very bad elephant.

GAUHATI, India (AP) — A killer elephant named after Osama bin Laden by fearful villagers was killed by sharpshooters, officials said Sunday. The animal was blamed for 14 deaths in the northeastern state of Assam.

"A licensed shooter shot and killed the 10-foot tall bull near the Behali forest reserve in northern Assam," said wildlife warden Chandan Bora.

Wildlife authorities had ordered that the elephant be shot and killed by December 31.

The order came after the bull — dubbed "Laden" — was blamed for the death of a woman Wednesday near the thickly wooded evergreen jungle where it lived. The elephant evaded two previous attempts by officials to kill it.

Well, it wasn't quite the good news one would have hoped for.

Targeting Results

The Opinion Journal talks about the effectiveness of voluntary American charity and the ineffectiveness of government directed wealth redistribution schemes that some people call for. The former is an expression of hope, the latter one of guilt. Guess which works out better for all involved?

It's the season for giving–and that is more than a Salvation Army cliché. As Christmas approaches, Americans routinely reach deeper into their pockets for charity; according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, about a third of total giving in 2005 came in the last three months.

And for every philanthropic dollar, there is someone with an opinion about where it should go. We don't mind when the person with the opinion is ringing a bell outside the supermarket, standing in the cold and appealing to our goodwill. But when he has an appointment at an Ivy League university and makes larger moral claims, it pays to be wary.

This year's version of that moral instruction comes from Princeton Professor Peter Singer, who is most famous for his endorsement of certain kinds of infanticide. His theme for the 2006 holidays is "What Should a Billionaire Give–And What Should You?," a long essay in the New York Times Magazine arguing for a grand global transfer of wealth.

Like Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs and other famous liberals, Mr. Singer believes that the problem with the world's poor is a matter of financial arithmetic. If only each of us in the West would tithe to the Earth's poorer regions, all would be well, or at least much better than it is. The United Nations has posted Millennium Goals along similar lines. According to Mr. Sachs, a mere transfer of $189 billion by 2015 should do the trick.

It's a happy illusion that has the misfortune of ignoring the problems of human nature and dignity. As Adam Meyerson of the Philanthropy Roundtable notes, more important than check-writing are the "institutions that help people come out of poverty." The only real solution isn't a new global dole but giving the poor the means to create wealth for themselves. Unless we can bring "the rule of law and accountable government" to the Third World, Mr. Meyerson argues, there is no reason to believe that giving money will matter. Arthur Brooks, the author of "Who Really Cares," a new book about Americans' giving habits, agrees: "In a modern economy, the primary resource of value is not cash but ideas."

It should be instructive for the people pushing for handouts to instead look at the track record of micro loans. Small amounts loaned, not given away, to tiny business ventures are providing a way out of poverty for thousands around the world. They mention the old saying about teaching someone to fish versus giving away a fish in the O-J piece. It is still true.

More Poor, Suffering Farmers

The Washington Post continues its story about the farm subsidy program in the United States today. Taking up from where they left it yesterday, today they look at the farm subsidy lobby. There is a very large amount of money involved, and the agricultural interests have an extremely powerful lobby. They enjoy bipartisan support, too.

The farm bloc is an efficient, tightknit club of farmers, rural banks, insurance companies, real estate operators and tractor dealers. Many of its Washington lobbyists are former lawmakers or congressional aides. Harnessed to dozens of grass-roots groups, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cotton Council and the USA Rice Federation, farm-state lawmakers — the "aggies," as they call themselves — fight with the fervor of the embattled.

About 1.2 million farmers and farmland owners got $15 billion in income support or price guarantees in 2005, according to a Washington Post analysis of Agriculture Department payment records. The benefits are heavily tilted to large commercial farmers growing a few row crops in a handful of states. But the money also is widely distributed to a middle group of more than 130,000 farms, each receiving $25,000 to $100,000. The federal dollars ripple through local economies, adding to purchasing power at stores and businesses — and creating a political constituency for the programs.

The numbers appear to be a bit wacky (a straight average yields $12,500 per farm - which wouldn't be a lot if that was how it was distributed), but they don't give a good breakdown. Obviously there are some farm operations that are getting enormous amounts, while others only get a few dollars. But breaking the lobby's stranglehold on Congress will not be easy. There is a lot of cash involved. Yesterday's report showed that the subsidies are actually helping kill the family farm they were supposed to help. Today's report shows why it is happening. Money flows to members of Congress through these lobbies.

Guilty Of Bribery

A businessman from India entered a guilty plea to charges that he bribed a former UN official with cash and a steeply discounted luxury apartment. The man has also agreed to cooperate in further investigations of official corruption at the UN.

NEW YORK, Dec. 21 — A businessman representing an Indian state-owned company pleaded guilty to bribing a former senior U.N. official with an unspecified amount of cash, a cellphone and a discounted Manhattan apartment in exchange for more than $50 million worth of business contracts, federal authorities announced Thursday.

Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Nishan Kohli, 30, admitted making the illicit payments to Sanjay Bahel, then a high-ranking U.N. purchasing official, as compensation for steering business to Kohli from 1998 to 2003. Kohli faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Bahel last month pleaded not guilty to related charges.

Kohli's attorney, Jacob Laufer, declined to discuss his client's role in the scheme. But he said Kohli signed an agreement with federal authorities on Thursday to cooperate in their ongoing investigation into corruption at the United Nations. "He has made a mistake, and he's contrite about it," he said.

Bahel's attorney, Richard B. Herman, said his client never used his influence to favor Kohli's businesses. He "unequivocally denied" that Bahel received any cash payments. Herman also said that Bahel had already left the U.N. procurement division when he began renting an apartment from Kohli in 2003, suggesting that Bahel had no influence to sell.

It is a bit hard to determine exactly what happened here with the sketchy details reported in the WaPo. But it would appear that Kohli knows full well that he was going to be convicted and took the best deal he could get. The trial of the Bahel should be interesting. There was a lot of money at stake here. Deals worth more than $60 million are mentioned. It didn't begin or end with the oil for food fraud. In a rational world, the UN would be going after Kofi Annan themselves for the destruction his administration caused to the UNs reputation.