IN MEMORIAM, FOR A GREAT AND BRAVE SOUL

Dr. Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald, who had diagnosed, operated on, and treated her own breast cancer while at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, died on June 23rd at the age of 57. Her cancer had returned in 2005.

The Globe and Mail quoted her husband as saying:“She fought bravely, she was able to make the best of what life and circumstance gave her, and she had the most resilience I have ever seen in anyone. She fought hard and she fought valiantly.”

I wish to offer my condolences to this brave woman's family.

WHAT???

I cannot believe it's been almost two weeks...

I guess I've been so weirded out by the Obamite non-response to Iran, and previously by the Obamite vigorous response to non-events perpetrated by "them Jews," that I've been struck dumb.

EL SUPREMO VERSUS COKE ZERO

The Czech online daily iDNES reports that Official Obama Pal and Soulmate (OOPS) Hugo Chavez decided to ban Coke Zero in Venezuela, claiming that it damages the health of his people.

Just how Coke Zero damages Venezuelans' health was not specified, but in a socialist regime, that is not necessary. All you need is El Supremo's ukase to that effect, and becomes Truth.

Kinda like Stalin's declaration that the sonata is the most perfect form of music (per my long-time friend, Prof. Dr. Herbert Thomas Mandl).

Given the chaotic economic developments in this country under the Obamites, one wonders how many OOPSes (of the same ilk as Chavez) beyond the current brace of White House czars and other shadowy apparatchiki are in charge of decisions about our economy. Let me see, a telephone type in charge of a car company...

It makes my head spin just to think about it.

THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF DISSENT

For years, the politico-scientific party line for global warming has been that the science is in, human-made global warming is the culprit, we will soon reach (or have now reached, or have long ago reached) the tipping point, and we are now sliding toward catastrophe. Those who remained skeptical were mercilessly skewered, persecuted, denied tenure and research funding, and called every name under the sun (joke!) by the true believers.

But the agnostics persisted, stubbornly digging out data that cast doubt on the standard anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) model, the computer models that presumably supported it, the research methodologies and even the data sets. In other words, instead of being true believers, they were true scientists. And, by degrees, as the facts became available, some of the faithful ones began to waver and, most important, lose their FEAR OF PERSECUTION.

Now AGW orthodoxy gets yet another black eye. NASA, for so long a temple of the AGW faith, has allowed itself to publish a study (see a report in Daily Tech) which states that solar activity, horribile dictu, has an impact on climate change. This is a conclusion that the AGW faithful had resisted ever since their new faith had been birthed.

This is yet another major victory for science and democracy. I hope it has come in time to influence Congress in its struggle with the Waxman-Markey "great big tax" whose only real purpose is to ensure that the self-appointed elect can have more money for their super-expensive toys and chimeric fantasies.

RUSSIAN THOUGHTS ON STRATEGY

Here’s an interesting insight about Russia and the recent antiballistic "missile crisis” by Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech ex-Foreign Minister, from a May 22, 2009 article called Russia still thinks that it can tell us what we can and can’t do.

Schwarzenberg thinks that, from the military perspective, the Russians really don’t care about the radar that was to have been installed in the Czech Republic (until Obama put it on ice, thinking that the concession would help “reset” U.S.-Russian relations). According to Schwarzenberg, the Russians know perfectly well that the radar in the Czech Republic and the antiballistic missiles in Poland are not aimed at them. Russia is primarily interested in staking out its territory. The former Warsaw pact countries are, in Moscow’s eyes, still imperial territories where the Russians can exert their veto. “A dachshund never changes its opinion about a sausage,” Schwarzenberg quipped.

THE FATE OF EGOMANIACS

We have by now been treated to many different manifestations of Barack Obama's egomania. There were the faux Greek columns and similar displays, there are claims such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for," there are grandiose world tours on which meaningless high-flying phrases are spouted and blood-stained hands eagerly shook. There is the apparently unshakeable conviction that certain extremely special individuals (namely He Himself) can talk reason to dictators and dominate them, there is the unquenchable hunger to take over, take over, and take over some more. And foolish people are already naming buildings and geographic landmarks for Obama, with nary a peep from the "House of Noncolor" that, perhaps, this is somewhat inappropriate with the honoree still alive and kicking. Soon, someone will start building a large statue, I am sure.

Speaking of statues of egomaniacs, here is a couple of images of a particularly cool one. I remember walking in the adjoining park in the late 1950s, staring upward at those huger-than-life Soviets, my prepubescent mind filled with wonderment.




















This monstrosity, 30 meters high with its 15-meter pedestal and 22 meters long, was unveiled in Prague, Czechoslovakia at a point overlooking the Vltava River on May Day, 1955. It consumed millions of skilled man-hours and 17 million tons of the best-quality stone. It could be seen from just about anywhere, which was the idea. The gratitude the Czechoslovak citizens were to show to Stalin for his genius and his beneficent leadership must be unbounded.

Until 1961, when the Czechoslovak Party was ordered to take the damn thing down due to de-Stalinization. Given that bureaucrats tend to follow excess with still more excess, the statue was surrounded by the secret police (no pictures, please!) and rapidly demolished. Rumor has it that the Party had ordered for the rubble reduced to such small size that no one could tell it had come from the statue, but that I cannot substantiate.

In any case, this is just a reminder that power and glory are fleeting and, despite relentless intrusion into the lives and minds of citizens and a hunger to control their thoughts, the truth can never be expunged and monuments (and those they represent) get pulled down.

I submit that there is no memory hole large enough to accommodate what Obama has already wrought, and anyone thinking of building monuments to him should bear that in mind.

THE HOLOCAUST IS SOMETHING THAT OBAMA MUST KEEP IN MIND DURING HIS MIDEASTERN TRAVELS

Herewith something that showed up in my mailbox the other day, from the Czech Republic. I added translations below. It's nice to think that some people are still thinking clearly on this issue, even if the Obamites are hell-bent on facilitating another Holocaust by dialoguing with tyrants and looking the other way while their favorite tyrants plan the destruction of Israel.



translation: IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE! General Dwight D. Eisenhower was right to order as much film and photographic documentation as possible.


translation: Over sixty years ago, he found a Nazi location that exactly illustrated their plans.

translation: It is a historic fact that, when the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, found victims of the concentration camps, he ordered that as much be photographed as possible. He brought German inhabitants of local occupied cities to the camps so they could see the atrocities with their own eyes. In some cases, he also compelled them to bury the dead.


translation: He explained it as follows - "It is necessary to collect as much proof, film and testimony, as possible, because the day will come when some idiot will claim that it never happened." (paraphrase of actual quote)



translation: "The only thing the devil needs to succeed is that moral people do nothing." (paraphrase of Edmund Burke)


translation: Recently, Great Britain removed the Holocaust from British school curricula because it "offended the belief of Moslem residents that the Holocaust never happened." Yes, Great Britain.


translation: This is a fair warning that fear rules the world and that each and every country should push for its simple elimination. More than sixty years have passed since the end of World War Two.


translation: You have received this e-mail as a reminder, for all of humanity, to honor the memory of six million Jews, twenty million Russians (translator's note: 'Russians' really means Soviet peoples, by far not all of them Russian - the actual figure is closer to 27 million), ten million Christians, priests and ministers, all murdered, massacred, incinerated, humiliated; all at a time when the Allies and Russia had other priorities...


translation: Now, more than ever, countries like Iran - among others - claim that the Holocaust was a myth. It is therefore imperative to remind the world never, never to forget. The purpose of this e-mail is to reach at least forty million people in the world so they can say that they saw and read it.


translation: Please be a member of this worldwide e-mail chain. Help spread the message throughout the world.


translation: Please do not delete this. It will only take you a minute to pass it on. Let us do it for those who did not survive the Holocaust.

MEMORY OR HEROISM, 67 YEARS LATER

Today, a memorial to honor a group of World War Two heroes was unveiled in Prague to honor SOE-trained Czechoslovak parachutists who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the feared Reichsprotektor of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust.

Operation Anthropoid bore fruit exactly 67 years ago, on May 27, 1942, when one of the teams, consisting of Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, caught Heydrich in the open and wounded him with a bomb. They managed to escape, and Heydrich succumbed to his wounds on June 04, 1942.

The reign of terror that the Nazis unleashed in Bohemia in revenge is the stuff of legend by now. Thousands were arrested, tortured and killed for either having protected the parachutists or simply for revenge. The town of Lidice was razed, its menfolk were shot, the women sent to concentration camps and the children to the Reich to be "Aryanized." Two weeks later, the same fate met the village of Ležáky. The parachutists, betrayed by Karel Čurda, one of their own, were ultimately run to ground in their hideout in the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Prague, where, after a long battle, they committed suicide to keep from being taken captive.

It is somehow appropriate that the unveiling would take place so close to our Memorial Day, as a reminder that heroism in the face of terror knows no boundaries.

EAST GERMAN SECRET POLICE BIRTHED THE BAADER-MEINHOF GANG

Two German historians accidentally found out that Stasi, the notorious East German version of the KGB and the Gestapo, kick-started massive student protests in West Germany, ultimately midwifing the birth of the Red Army Fraction, a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof gang.

In a May 21, 2009 interview with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Helmut Müller-Enbergs said that he and his colleague Cornelia Jabs “nearly fell off their chairs” when they made the discovery.

Here is what happened.

In June 1967, the Shah of Iran is on a state visit to West Germany. He is to attend a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin. On June 2, 1967, student activists are out in force, protesting the Shah’s visit. During the protests, a West German policeman by the name of Karl-Heinz Kurras “happens” to shoot a 26 year-old newlywed and first-time protester, Benno Ohnesorg, in the back of the head. Ohnesorg dies, leaving behind a pregnant widow. There is outrage. Kurras is suspended and the incident investigated. The verdict is accidental killing and Kurras is released. More outrage. On that very night, members of the West German SDS (Socialist German Student Organization) assemble on the West Berlin Kurfürstendamm square and call for armed resistance against the state. “Violence s the only answer to violence,” froths a young woman named Gudrun Ensslin.

Per the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the very next day, signs reading The Police – Your Enemy and Murderer, appear throughout Frankfurt. Thousands of students spill into the streets.

Three years later, Gudrun Ensslin and a few like-minded friends found the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction), a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and the rest is, well, history.

Except that…

• Karl-Heinz Kurras had been a member of Stasi since 1955. He even joined the East German Communist Party, the SED, in 1964.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, was vitally interested in creating discord in “enemy” countries to weaken them and their systems of alliances.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, had routinely used “wet affairs” (murder) to accomplish their ends.
• Stasi, like the KGB and the Gestapo, was a fertile breeding ground for terrorist organizations and “protest” movements that were willing to advance the interests of their ideologies.

The documentation that Müller-Enbergs and Jabs studied to date do not prove that Karl-Heinz Kurras had killed Ohnesorg on the order of Stasi, or even that he himself was the murderer. All the documents say is that he had carried out the order, but the order is not specified.

The 82 year-old Kurras, still very much alive in Berlin and enjoying the ample fruits of the German welfare state, is predictably silent on the matter. But he may not enjoy the rest of his retirement much, since the German Organization of the Victims of Stalinism (VOS) has filed a complaint against Kurras. The VOS seeks a new trial, this time for murder, for which there is no statute of limitations under German law.

Which brings me to the question of foreign control of “protest” movements elsewhere in the world, like the amply documented (North) Vietnamese ownership of the U.S. Vietnam-era “antiwar” movement. Ditto for whoever it is who really owns and operates today’s “antiwar” and anti-Jewish movements in the U.S.

But that’s another story that’s yet to be written, and hopefully very soon.

WILD WEST IN AUSTRIA

The Austrian news agency APA reported a brawl in a Viennese Sikh house of worship today. Apparently, attendees belonging to a particular sect took exception to a sermon being delivered and attacked two visiting gurus with knives and a pistol. Both gurus were taken to hospital in critical condition. In all, at least sixteen people were injured in the fight.

The fight had repercussions as far away as the Indian state of Punjab, where followers of the wounded gurus resorted to violence, with threats of more violence and strikes on Monday.

As I always say, faith is a wonderful thing as long as you don’t follow it too religiously.

SO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IS REGRESSING ON DDT...

Total phaseout by 2020? I am not really surprised, such is the power - and inhumanity - of today's green lobby. Anybody here think that the likes of Kohn-Bendit or Gore care one whit about African children?

So here goes a cruel bumper sticker...


May 6 should henceforth be declared a day of mourning.

MOMENTARY HEART STOPPAGE

While surfing the Net today, saw this headline on BBC news, and my heart fluttered palpably:

Speaker quits 'for sake of unity'

But, alas, the article was referring to Michael Martin, the Speaker of Britain's House of Commons.

Could that be the proverbial hint for, ahem, certain other people?

Certainly, where there is reason, there is hope. Therefore, there is no hope....

LEST WE FORGET THE RIGHTEOUS...

The Czech news Website iDNES reports that, on May 16, 2009, an old man named Nicholas Winton blew out a hundred candles on his birthday cake in the Czech Embassy in London. His birthday is actually on May 19, but the Czech Government wanted to honor Winton separately for his part in rescuing imperiled Czech children from the Nazis in 1939.

In 1938, Winton began to work in Prague for the British Committee for Czechoslovak Refugees, an organization that was helping Czechoslovaks who had been driven from the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia following its annexation by Nazi Germany. After the Munich diktat, he became convinced that the Nazis were planning to annex what was left of the country. Having heard of the Kindertransports that had brought 10,000 Austrian and German Jewish children to safety in Britain, he decided to do the same for Czech children. He was ultimately able to get at least 669 mostly Jewish children to Britain.

The first group left Prague on March 14, 1939, the day before the Nazis marched into rump Czechoslovakia. Over time, Winton had organized seven more transports, the last on August 02, 1939. The next group was to leave Prague on September 01, 1939, but the Nazis held it up due to outbreak of war. None of the 250 children aboard survived the war.

Winton’s remarkable rescue effort remained virtually unknown until 1988 when his wife Greta found his 1939 scrapbook filled with photos and information on 664 of the children. Since then, five more participants had been identified, and there may be even more.

In honor of Sir Nicholas’s heroism – he was knighted in 2002 – the Czech Railways will actually run the last train, with some of the “Winton children” and their descendants aboard. The Winton Train will consist of period cars and will be drawn by a steam locomotive, all found, after some effort, in Hungary. It will leave Prague on September 01, 2009 and reach London on September 04, where Winton will welcome it personally.

Winton’s reaction to all the fuss is somewhat bemused. “I am no hero,” he said, “ It just had to be done.”

The Winton children who, with all their descendants, now number over 5,500, would surely disagree. Doing the right thing the first time, simply because it was the right thing to do, has always seemed complicated; but never more than in this postmodern age when anyone wishing to avoid virtuous behavior can simply construct an alternative reality that includes no ethical challenges and walk away with not a single twinge of conscience.

However, the reality of ethical comportment that is timeless in nature can never be ignored or suppressed; and men like Nicholas Winton are living remainders of that happy fact. May he live another hundred years, in happiness and health.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CRICHTONITE

This, from our Fractured Reality Annals.

Crichtonite is a recently confirmed rare inert element, classified No. 118 on the periodic table of elements and initially hypothesized as ununoctium (UUh). First reported synthesized in scientific laboratories at Lawrence Livermore and in the Russian city of Dubna, crichtonite was accidentally discovered in useful quantities on May 1, 2009, during experimental oil shale and tar sand processing operations in the continental United States. Initial reports indicate that, when trace amounts of crichtonite are inhaled in the presence of naturally occurring atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide, they radically enhance critical thinking skills in humans

(Note: The informal name crichtonite is derived from the name of Michael Crichton, the recently deceased American physician and author, infamous for his cynical advocacy of extreme far-right causes such as double-blind experiments and strict adherence to empirical evidence. Ever the elitist cynic, Crichton even advocated controlling the masses through perennial intoxication, as detailed in his recent potboiler State of Beer.)

This unexpected effect of crichtonite on human cognitive processes ignited intense controversy as soon as it was announced. By May 4, numerous influential nongovernmental organizations, led by the Association of Politically Engaged Scientists (APES), called for a permanent ban on crichtonite extraction and any further crichtonite research. Ms. Lyudmila Chistka, the Belarussian-born President of APES, stressed that crichtonite poses such a threat to humanity that “all crichtonite research to now, I mean, must be put under strictest interdict.” When queried further, Ms. Chistka said: “Terrible, just terrible. Some world’s most prominently orthodox thinkers, after brief exposure to crichtonite, traitorously abandon unassailable scientific consensus on significant issues as that global warming tipping point is here now and imperialist essence of American Cross-Your-Heart brassiere. When everybody knows science is totally in! In, I tell you! You just must believe….Cross your heart, indeed,” she pouted, then unexpectedly began to rage and bang the lectern with her $540.00 5-inch spike Gucci: “Cross, get it? Cross! So now we are maybe fundamentalist gun-waving Christians from American overfly country, wanting to oppress women from showing breast, that universal symbol of peace and love? What next, whip women for showing any part of body, like is done by nazilike apartheidistic Jew?”

Ultimately recovering her focus, Ms. Chistka went on to pledge massive worldwide protests in support of the APES initiative and intense lobbying of progressive governments around the world to have even the informal name crichtonite banned and its use punishable as a crime against humanity. Her South African assistant, the Lithuanian-born Joe Puchadlo, added that APES is proposing the name algorite as the official name of the new element, to honor the Nobel Prize laureate Hameln Pfeiffer Algore, the universally acknowledged inventor of the permanent craniorectal insertion.

On May 5, Transnational Researchers for Immediate Climate Control (TRICC) put its considerable weight behind the APES effort. “We are mobilizing the world community to protect the disenfranchised masses,” said TRICC secretary Hlupaki Trouba to deafening applause. “We simply must prevent any of this new element from falling into the wrong hands, especially into the hands of lone wolf American white males who would then use it to subvert progress everywhere. For too long, the much-overrated and devastating Eurocentric notion of critical thinking has been used to oppress the world’s peoples.”

Almost simultaneously, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to declare crichtonite a deadly pollutant. “An outbreak of critical thinking would result in a pandemic worse than the Death-of-Color epidemic that struck Europe in the Middle Ages," declared Caryl Braunerals N’Sdap, the Obamite administration’s chief environmental policy czarina. “Anyone wishing for such a disaster is in dire need of intense progressive reeducation. Fortunately, we have already begun to set up camps just for that purpose, to be run by the new Youth Movement.”

In a related development, the Department of Motherland Security (DMS) has begun drafting an in-depth study on the disastrous effects of improved thinking skills on the administration of the first African-American President. “The damage to Our administration would be massive and irreversible,” said DMS Directrix Johnette de Littlebrain. “Imagine critically thinking white males, with all their guns and reactionary religions, analyzing information from non-approved sources like GetItOn.org and no longer cringing when accused of racism and sexism. It would be like a pack of rabid dogs suddenly slipping the leash inside a childcare center! They might end up demanding that the first truly progressive U.S. administration actually adhere to that ultimate instrument of white male repression, the Constitution. Why, Our administration might even lose the opportunity to make Our Party The One and Only Party, and We might actually be forced to balance the budget. No, crichtonite’s definitely got to go – even its name, even its memory! – or we’ll all soon find ourselves facing the unthinkable.”

Not to be outdone, National Organization for Just Us (NOJUs, pronounced no-Jews) got into the fray. NOJUs spokeswoman Monique Conn-Yew stated: “Our position is that the, you know, the c-element – it is racist to the core. From the perspective of Afrocentric science, which is the only real science there is, the outer electron shell configuration is totally unsatisfactory. Just look at it: three groups of six electrons! We all know what the number three represents to the shreks who specialize in oppressing black folk, don’t we? Remember the, you know, the triple-K organization? Need I say more? Ban the thing immediately or suffer the just rage of the black people!”

Finally, the much-maligned and unjustly silenced NASA scientist, Jimmy Henlein, long kept incommunicado and under virtual house arrest by far-right fundamentalist global warming deniers, was able to escape them long enough to be able to issue a statement calling for massive civil disobedience. “All oil and gas exploration must be brought to a permanent halt to prevent any release of crichtonite,” he said before being recaptured by the global-warming-and-Holocaust denying extremists. "I can just see people going out and scouting for more carbon-based fuels under the pretext of looking for this subversive element. This must never be allowed to happen, or else all our plans to bankrupt and enslave – I mean liberate, liberate – the world will collapse.”

This all gives rise to crucial questions:

• Will the Obamite policy of non-politicized science prevail?
• Or has it already prevailed?
• What is the definition of “non-politicized?”
• Will crichtonite ever see the light of day?

Stand by for further developments!

PAYING THE DONS FOR ENERGY

In Sicily, alternative energy is not only chic but, mirabile dictu, also profitable. No wonder: the island is touted as the land of wind and sun. Unfortunately, it is also the land of the Mafia. According to The Register (a.k.a.: biting the hands that feeds IT), Mafia-busting Italian magistrates:

“…have launched a major investigation into crooked windfarm projects in Sicily, according to reports. It is suggested that large sums in government support have been collected for wind power stations which in many cases produce no electricity…”

According to the Financial Times, Italy has very strong incentives for alternative energy production, guaranteeing producers prices of €180 ($240, £160) per kilowatt-hour. These must be paid even when no electricity is actually being generated. The money firehose continues to deliver if a wind farm produces power but cannot distribute or sell it.

This arrangement is a G-dsend for those with muscle and connections: i.e. organized crime. You get government money to build a Potemkin wind farm, then sit back and collect government largesse. Since you have muscle and connections, you also buy local officials who will keep the Minotaur at bay while you navigate the Labyrinth of Sicilian regulations to get all the requisite permits to build and operate. Then you sell the wind farm to a power corporation for lots more money.

To make a long story short, the situation is now seen as so corrupt that there is a freeze on all new wind farms in Sicily, Calabria and Basilicata, and a major investigation is in progress. Woof.

Which brings us to the Obama administration and all the huge open maws that eagerly await its largesse, like Al Gore and his brood. Gore wants to become the first green billionaire. Since he’s in like Flint with the government, he may make it pretty soon – with our money.

Like in Sicily, few outsiders will be allowed into the arena – only the anointed may get rich. Like in Sicily, we’ll pay for his success.

This, I think, is reason No. 135,999,938 why the Obamites are not to be trusted with our money and why they must not be allowed to pursue their nefarious “green” energy schemes.

In a smart editorial published in Jewish World Review today, Caroline Glick reviews the dismal state of Israeli-American relations. This, on top of the report that Rahm Emanuel, at the behest of the White House, is threatening Israel with no help vis-à-vis “kill-the-Jews” Iran and its nuclear program unless Israel gets busy engaging the Iranian ‘kill-the-Jews” proxies in Arab lands surrounding Israel.

Dismal, indeed. Caroline Glick makes a good point, though. Given the de facto hostile attitude of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state, Israel must take its message directly to the American people. (Funny, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty used to do the same thing by transmitting directly to the people then in Communist bondage, over the strenuous objections of their tyrannical governments.)

My impression is that Americans continue to feel a great deal of solidarity with Israel, and tend to understand the dangers well, so this is potentially a winning strategy. Trouble, is, where to find such a great communicator? In the early years, there was Abba Eban, of blessed memory. Who can perform the same function for the Jewish state today? I confess that I don’t know, but we’d better find him or her soon.

Here’s a first cut at a job description: statesmanlike, multilingual, thoroughly steeped in history, brilliant extemporaneous speaker, superb writer, tireless, willing to travel at a moment’s notice, willing to endure endless abuse and heckling with unlimited grace, willing to face injury or even death in the name of his or her convictions.

Any ideas?

Any takers?

WANTED: A SILVER TONGUE!

In a smart editorial published in Jewish World Review today, Caroline Glick reviews the dismal state of Israeli-American relations. This, on top of the report that Rahm Emanuel, at the behest of the White House, is threatening Israel with no help vis-à-vis “kill-the-Jews” Iran and its nuclear program unless Israel gets busy engaging the Iranian ‘kill-the-Jews” proxies in Arab lands surrounding Israel.

Dismal, indeed. Caroline Glick makes a good point, though. Given the de facto hostile attitude of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state, Israel must take its message directly to the American people. (Funny, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty used to do the same thing by transmitting directly to the people then in Communist bondage, over the strenuous objections of their tyrannical governments.)

My impression is that Americans continue to feel a great deal of solidarity with Israel, and tend to understand the dangers well, so this is potentially a winning strategy. Trouble, is, where to find such a great communicator? In the early years, there was Abba Eban, of blessed memory. Who can perform the same function for the Jewish state today? I confess that I don’t know, but we’d better find him or her soon.

Here’s a first cut at a job description: statesmanlike, multilingual, thoroughly steeped in history, brilliant extemporaneous speaker, superb writer, tireless, willing to travel at a moment’s notice, willing to endure endless abuse and heckling with unlimited grace, willing to face injury or even death in the name of his or her convictions.

Any takers?

THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT AND ISRAEL

With the appointment of such as Samantha “Force-a-Solution-on-the-Jews” Power and similarly-minded denizens of academe to highest policymaking positions, the Obama administration’s policy toward Israel may finally fall in line with hoary anti-Israel State Department perspectives. More change that we are supposed to believe in, I suppose.

The Foggy Bottom prejudice is as old as Israel itself, as well documented. Quoth Abba Eban, of blessed memory, on p. 151 of his Autobiography: “…on April 4, 1954, Assistant Secretary of State Byroade went back to his campaign for the de-Judaization of Israel.” Mr. Byroade apparently went on to encourage Israel to view itself as a Middle Eastern state vice a Jewish one, and to harangue Israelis not to view themselves as conquerors who believe that force is the only policy that their neighbors will understand. Finally, he stated that “…unlimited Jewish immigration [to Israel] was a matter of grave concern.”

Mr. Eban, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, had filed a protest against Mr. Byroade’s harangue, forcing a partial (!) retraction from the State Department. When, in a subsequent meeting with Mr. Byroade, he pointed out that the U.N. had asked Jews to form “a Jewish state, not another Middle Eastern state,” Byroade “could hardly believe his ears.”

“His ignorance is encyclopedic,” Abba Eban is reputed to have said about someone. One hopes it was about Mr. Byroade, but it might as well be about the State Department in general. Then, as now, Israel is always faced with the prospect of going it alone and being destroyed. To quote Abba Eban (again): “Israel was and is breathing with only a single lung.”

Naively playing footsie with terrorist states like Iran and Syria, as the administration is doing now, can only make matters worse for Israel. One hopes that President Obama gets burned quickly since, to quote the inimitable Abba Eban (yet again): “When all else fails, men turn to reason.”

An Obama administration that follows the dictates of cold, hard reason: now that would be change even I would believe in.

THE MYTH OF AFGHANISTAN AS THE CENTRAL FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM

For months now, I have been wondering who gives President Obama geopolitical and military advice.

To me, the idea that isolated and historically ungovernable Afghanistan is THE front in our (and NATO’s) fight against terrorism seems extraordinarily naïve. We have no secure land lines of communication into the country. The Khyber Pass from Pakistan is currently available, but insurgents throughout the ages (including in December 2008) have shown how easy it is to interdict this chokepoint, then melt away and await another opportunity. Also, if there is any truth to the widely reported rumors of Pakistan’s imminent collapse, Khyber Pass, vulnerable or not, will be off limits.

Will Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia or China allow NATO to move troops and equipment at will through their territories? Not on your life. None of them want us there, for their respective reasons.

Well then, if not by land, how about by air? For starters, Afghanistan is completely hemmed in by nations that are not friendly to us. This gives rise to the thorny problem of overflight rights that can be pulled at a moment’s notice. Air bases? We have use of the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan, but the BBC reported on February 6 that the Kyrgyz government has announced that the base will be closed. Karshi-Khanabad, an alternative in Uzbekistan, is still a pipedream.

As if on cue, the Russians and Tajiks have followed up with a promise, likewise reported by the BBC on the 6th, that they will allow transshipment of supplies through their territory, but only of a non-military nature.

In any case, any discussion of long-term air supply is moot. Moving sufficient troops, equipment and supplies by air seems out of the question even for the existing force in country, let alone the expanded force that Obama is planning to deploy.

If President Obama wanted to present the U.S. military with an opportunity for disaster, he would be hard-pressed to find a better way to do it. The whole thing looks like a potential country-wide Dien Bien Phu.

Iraq, on the other hand, was the right war, at the right place, at the right time. I know: this is a concept that is hard to swallow, given that the war was the nefarious doing of the Bushcheneyneoconreactionaryzionistcapitalist Evil Axis, but there it is.

THE ONE PARTY STRIKES AGAIN or BUCHENWALD, ANYONE?

The inimitable Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Fl), has introduced HR 645 (www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645), a bill requiring the Homeland Security Department to establish at least six “six national emergency centers” at military facilities in the U.S., for reasons of emergency preparedness, for housing “large numbers of individuals” for “an extended period of time” but also to “to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security” (Section 2.b.(4)). These sites will eventually be transferred from the Department of Defense to the Department of Homeland Security.

Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87757) has taken note of this bill but I have not yet seen it discussed elsewhere. I am assuming that “other appropriate needs” include detention of prisoners relocated from Gitmo but, given the totalitarian direction The One Party has taken and the language of HR 645 that refers to "large numbers of individuals" and "extended periods of time," it is fair to ask if detention of political opposition will also become an “appropriate need.” This question is especially urgent since a Bush Administration Executive Order NSPD-51/HSPD-20 of May 2007 also gives the President the authority to declare a national emergency and take over the direction of all governmental bodies, from federal to tribal, without even consulting Congress (Also reported by WorldNetDaily at (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825).

President Obama’s desire to create a “civilian national security force” is a well-known fact. He has let us know in no uncertain terms even before being elected that "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set[.]...We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded." Equally well known is his impatience with a Constitution with enumerated powers. I imagine that, to him, NSPD-51/HSPD-20 is a G-dsend.

Imagine this civilian security force (read "people's militia" or "Sturmabteilung"); well armed, I am sure, owned by The One Party and responsible only to The One, running these emergency centers...

At the very least, this bill needs extensive modifications to protect American civil liberties. I would propose at least the following:

• Opposition to the sitting government and political party in power, no matter how widespread, shall never be construed as a national emergency.
• The national emergency centers shall never be used to confine people specifically because of their political views or political party affiliation.
• In order to continue receiving funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall report to Congress each fiscal quarter that the national emergency centers are being used in accordance with the above guidelines, and that they are not being used in any manner that would abridge the rights of United States citizens.

Not that such language would ever deter any determined community organizer, but it sure is worth trying.