HOWIE KURTZ FINALLY RESPONDS TO THE EASON JORDAN SCANDAL

Or something like that ;)

THE BUSH EFFECT

President Bush, State of the Union Address, February 2, 2005:

To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, the United States will work with our friends in the region to fight the common threat of terror, while we encourage a higher standard of freedom. Hopeful reform is already taking hold in an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain. The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future. And the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.

Somebody was listening. A pro-democracy movement may already be brewing in Egypt:

About 100 people have taken part in a rare anti-government demonstration in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, demanding free elections for the presidency.

Reports say thousands of policemen were deployed near the Cairo international book fair, where the protest occurred. Protesters carried placards calling for an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who may run for a sixth term.

In a related development, Human Rights Watch has called on Egypt to release a number of recent detainees.

The US-based group says the detentions result from what it describes as politically motivated charges.

---

The protesters near the Cairo book fair held banners reading "Enough".

The slogan is a reference to the 24 years of uninterrupted rule by Mr Mubarak.
Al-Ghad protest
A recent protests called for the release of reformist Ayman Nour

Under the current system, the Egyptian parliament selects one candidate for the presidency.

This candidate then stands in a national referendum.

Protesters also denounced suggestions that the governing National Democratic Party might groom President Mubarak's son Gamal to take over from his father.

The demonstration was organised by the Egyptian Movement for Change, an umbrella group which wants the constitution changed to allow more than one candidate to run for president.

George W. Bush--doing more for human rights in one speech than Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have done in their entire existence.

ITALIAN JOURNALIST KIDNAPPED IN IRAQ

Let's give Eason Jordan three guesses who abducted her.

Taking things slightly more seriously, Jordan's Davos comments as they have been presented now by more than one source would put him far, far out on the moonbat fringe of the left. He lives in conspiracy land. Someone with the kind of judgement to a) believe such nonsense and b) utter it in a forum where it will do maximum damage to the US war effort should not hold such a position of influence at CNN or any other news organization. If he says what the witnesses say he said and if what he is supposed to have said is not true (and it's safe to assume that it's not), he should be fired.

When will one-man media empire Howard Kurtz pipe in?

STEALING MEMORIES, AGAIN

Why is the left out there insisting that "the hug" was staged?

Why is the left out there insisting that the Iraqi election was a "sham" that, at the very least, should not be "overhyped?" Or, absurdly, that the 2005 Iraqi election was less democratic than the 1997 Iranian elections--an election in which the mullahs hand-picked candidates and scrubbed their politics head to toe before letting the people vote on any of them?

It's all about memory theft. Shortly after the capture of Baghdad, in a post called "Stealing Memories," this blog opined:

The left hates this war, not because it's a war and deserves to be hated as such, but because it's justified in the narrow national interests and we're winning it. They hate it because it's been one long demonstration of American power, and has benefited the Commander in Chief who has ably led it. And because they hate it and him, they want to deny any good the war has done and push it down the memory hole.

At every instance of this war, the left has tried to besmirch our collective experience. Life is normally short of truly dramatic moments, but since 9-11 we have all lived through a lifetime of them. The left wants to steal them. We experienced the tragedy of 9-11 and rallied around our president, and the left accused him of mass murder. They tried to turn the heroes of Flight 93 into helpless victims of Bush's overzealous defense of the country. They tried to turn President Bush into a deserter, and the administration's hawks into a dangerous secret cabal. In pre-war diplomatic squabbles, they took France's side against America. As the war progressed, they groused about the plan, the rumored lack of troops and dissension within the officer corps. When the statue of Saddam fell, they turned that into a made-for-TV photo op and suggested that it was a set-up. Now that the war is won, they turn it into a terrible story of looting and rising radicalism. And when President Bush risked his life to fly out to meet sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, the left turned it into some kind of scandal. The president bonds with the troops and eloquently addresses the nation in victory, and the left can find no good in any of it. They would pick up their marbles and go home, except they're already home and they're finding it an inhospitable place.

It's all about politics, all about their own power and narrow self-interest, and not about the nation or its security at all. It's all about them, and at your and my expense. And as long as the left is this delusional, it deserves to spend some time in the political outer darkness. Until it learns to stop trying to steal our memories, it will.

Self-linking and self-quoting can be rude, but writing the same thing over and over and over and over again can be dull. And the fact is, writing a whole new post about behavior that hasn't changed in the past couple of years and shows no signs of changing is just a waste of time. It's best just to note the pattern and remind ourselves of who we are dealing with.

To the list above we can add the capture of Saddam Hussein, which many on the left concluded was staged to benefit the president's re-election campaign--Howard Dean, soon to be chairman of the DNC, and Hillary Clinton, junior senator from New York, were that theory's most prominent proponents. We could also add the beheading of Nick Berg, a terrible event that permanently galvanized most Americans against the terrorists and that the left tried to pin on the CIA. And we could add President Bush's re-election itself, which many on the left have downplayed while insisting that either voting irregularities or the relative closeness of the vote in Ohio mean the president has no mandate, ignoring the fact that he won by more than 3 million votes and more than a dozen electoral votes nationwide.

There are other similar moments that the left has tried to steal, and there will be more.

The left does hate this war, now more than ever. The left does hate this president, now more than ever. And the left does hate this country for rejecting leftwing nonsense, now more than ever. Anything good that happens, anything worth remembering for its moral quality or its beauty or its joy or sanctity, the left hates and will set out to steal or destroy.

(thanks to Chris, Chairman of the Memory Division of the JYB)

ARE BIZARRE COMMUNIST DICTATORS "THE NEW BLACK"?

One thing the 'sphere has done well is force most people who wish to be taken seriously to banish all mention of or comparion of anyone else to Nazis from their bag of tricks.

It hasn't worked on everyone, obviously. But no one takes Janene Garofolo seriously, especially when she compares blue fingers on Republican congressmen to Hitlerian salutes.

Slate's Jack Shafer is taken seriously, though, and he wants to keep on being taken seriously, so he knows no crude cartoonish article comparing George Bush to Adolf Hitler will cut it. He'd be savaged, and rightly so. The formula in punditdom is "Mention Hitler, lose your argument." Ms. Garofolo never got that memo.

Still, Shafer is often a lazy thinker and a sloppy smear artist who loves to accuse Republicans of all sorts of dastardly deeds while retaining his serious veneer. That's why he writes for Slate, a magazine that employs two writers worth reading--Mickey Kaus and Christopher Hitchens--and a bunch of entertainingly lightweight softheaded lefties and assorted college interns.

Since he knows comparing Bush to Hitler automatically casts him to the Kuiper Belt of commentary, Shafer must come up with some other crude and cartoonish comparison to make his point, which is that he doesn't much like Bush. So to whom does Shafer compare the recently re-elected President of the United States? To the extent it's possible, he compares Bush 43 to someone arguably even worse than Hitler: North Korea's Kim Jong-Il.

Hitler rose to power, after all, on his own wit, guile and initiative. Kim rose to power because his daddy once fought Japanese imperial armies. Hitler, for all his very obvious faults, at least did something. He invaded places like France. He fooled Stalin. He had a plan, albeit an awful one the likes of which this world should never tolerate again. Kim has no plan and appears content to sit on his throne watching American movies, executing families for sport, and traipsing around in that Dr. Evil jacket and that puffy hairdo firing off mad rants against American imperialism, Japanese treachery, etc. Oh, and he has managed to make his subjects 20 percent smaller than their South Korean cousins through a decade of starving them, when he wasn't busy selling nuclear technology for fun and profit.

President Bush and Kim Jong-Il have one thing--and only one thing--in common: Fathers who preceeded them in power. But Bush 43 was elected, twice. Kim just inherited the seat his crazy old coot of a father kept warm for several decades. And if we're going to use that single familial similarity as a springboard to turn Bush into Kim, we have to compare pretty much every other family with generational aspirations to power to the Kim cult as well. The Adamses of the 19th Century in America, all of the monarchies of all the world throughout time, the Roosevelts and even the Kennedy clan should get figured into the equation. Is Queen Elizabeth also Kim Jong-Il, Jack? How about Princess Stefanie of Monaco? FDR?

Oh sure, Shafer tries to make lame comparisons between President Bush's use of information and Kim's stranglehold on North Korea's media and propaganda. But in that country, there is one TV station, one radio station (and all TVs and radios are permanently fixed to those singular outlets), no internet access and no outside sources of information are allowed in at all. Possessing a South Korean newspaper will get you shot. Bush's America has given rise to the blogs and the White House has made no attempt at all to squelch any of the thousands of news and information outlets within its borders. It hasn't even tried to control the borders themselves. While Kim preaches nuclear holocaust for South Korea, Japan and even the United States, Bush tries to work with regional allies to keep Kim in a box and his technology on a very short leash in order to prevent that holocaust. The two men are enemies, not doppelgangers.

But with the death of Hitler-as-latest-opponent arguments, lazy leftists must fashion a new bat to beat up conservatives. So just as everything is always "the new black," so a wacked out Communist thug may soon become every leftist pundit's "new Hitler." We'll have Jack Shafer to thank for it.

UPDATE: Shafer's timing with this "Bush is Kim" schtick is about as bad as Al Gore's speech about global warming on the coldest day of the year.

PATRIOTS OR EAGIRLS

Contest time! Guess the score of the Super Bowl and win a month of free blogads here on the JYB. Just leave your guesses in the comments on this post. The person or persons who get closest to the final score of the game wins the ads. No guesses will be allowed once the game kicks off. Second and third place runner-ups get a free Gmail account.

Yes, I know that these are lavish prizes, the kind of prizes that everyone will clamor to claim. I know. You can thank me later.

MY PREDICTION: Patriots 38, Eagirls 16.

SPECIAL OPS CODY: THE FINAL CHAPTER

Intelefiles has the scoop.

BESLAN TERRORIST PLANNING A SEQUEL

We cannot deal with terrorists, and we cannot persuade them to stop killing. We have to capture or, preferrably, kill them:

The Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who ordered the Beslan school siege, has warned he is planning further attacks.

The rebel leader made the threat in an interview with Britain's Channel 4 News, filmed about three weeks ago.

Moscow condemned Thursday's broadcast as "irresponsible". It also rejected an apparent Chechen ceasefire offer, made on Wednesday, as a bluff.

More than 320 people - half of them children - were killed in the siege at a school in Beslan in September.

Rebels had stormed the school in the Russian province of North Ossetia, taking more than 1,000 children, teachers and parents hostage.

Don't you just love the Beeb's language here--the man who masterminded a plot that killed nearly 200 children on the first day of school is a "warlord," a "rebel leader," and his fellow terrorists are "rebels." They are never called what they are--mass murderers of children. You could add serial killer too:

"We are planning Beslan-style attacks in the future. Cynical though it may look, we are planning these operations, and we will conduct them, if only to show the world again and again, the true face of the Russian regime."

After three plus years of blogging this kind of stuff, I often wonder what the point is. The press keeps on masking the true evil of the terrorists, the terrorists keep on killing, the press keeps criticizing anyone who thinks a strong response to the terrorists is justified and necessary, the terrorists keep on killing, the press keeps on covering for them, ad infintum.

SO LONG, EMMITT

The NFL's greatest running back has retired. And he got to retire a Cowboy:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Remember the number: 18,355, the most career rushing yards in the history of the National Football League.

That's it, it will not budge ever again, and in all likelihood, will stand for at least a generation to come.

For Emmitt Smith, once the precocious 20-year-old kid from Pensacola, Fla., who in 1990 humbly began his NFL career with a one-yard run, called it quits here, and maybe fittingly, on this national Super Bowl stage late Thursday afternoon as a 35-year-old man 4,408 carries and 18,354 yards later.

What a 15-year ride it was, Smith spending the first 13 with the Dallas Cowboys, and then fading into the sunset these past two with the Arizona Cardinals, but ironically as productive his 15th year (937 yards) as he was his first year (937). And along the historic way, he collected three Super Bowl rings, three NFL rushing titles, nine Pro Bowl selections, a Super Bowl MVP and an NFL MVP.

---

Retiring as a Dallas Cowboy will come at a later date. Technically, Smith does not become a free agent until March 2, and it won't be at least until then that the Cowboys can sign him to the perfunctory one-day contract and then file his retirement papers. But no one will ever mistake, or forget, who Emmitt Smith played for during his career.

Indeed. Apparently his next move is to join a group seeking to buy the Minnesota Vikings. Too bad he couldn't buy the Boys.

THE GRUDGE

Just watched it. Didn't think much of it. However, Mrs. JYB found it terrifying. Must be a Japanese thing.

IF YOU DON'T RIDE A CAMEL, YOU AIN'T SHIITE

Don't blame me--that's an old Letterman joke from saner times when we all agreed popping Saddam was a good thing and terrorists deserved nothin' but a good carpet bombing.

Anyhow, early exit polls from Iraq ("early" being a relative term, four days after the vote) have the Shiites out in front. If their elections are anything like ours, look for the Kurds to eek out the win.

SPAIN DISSOLVING?

Here's the formula: Put a Socialist in power, screw up your country.

MADRID (Reuters) - Speculation swirled on Wednesday that the Basque government could call early elections to revive its stalled plan for virtual independence, as Spain's prime minister came under fire for offering the Basques a compromise.

Basque premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe's plan for "free association" with Spain was crushingly rejected by the Spanish parliament on Tuesday, but he defiantly vowed to push ahead with a referendum if armed separatists ETA end their violence.

Socialist leader Zapatero, hamstrung by his 10-month-old government's reliance on small regional parties, adopted a conciliatory tone at the debate, holding out the prospect of more autonomy from Madrid.

"Congress rejects the 'Ibarretxe plan' but Zapatero gives wings to the nationalists," said right-leaning paper El Mundo, blasting the Socialists for opening a Pandora's box of demands for more autonomy from Spain's powerful regions.

Basque separatist terrorists ETA have waged a bloody war against Spanish rule for decades. Zapatero, who took power after Spanish citizens were cowed into replacing a more conservative government by the Madrid bombings last year, came into office promising them the moon in exchange for their support. They're holding them to his promises, demanding more, and withholding support. That's what terrorists do. Because of all this, Zapatero is basically screwed:

Pressured by the opposition's calls for a tougher line on the Basques, Zapatero cannot afford to alienate regional allies in wealthy Catalonia, who support the Socialists in power there but are also pressing for far more autonomy from Madrid.

The Socialist prime minister is betting he can oust the Basque country's ruling coalition at upcoming elections, defusing what he calls a threat to Spain's 1978 Constitution.

While the prime minister took a conciliatory approach, his Socialist party adopted a tougher line in Tuesday's parliamentary debate, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism from the opposition Popular Party (PP).

So who may ride to his rescue? None other than the Popular Party of Jose Aznar. That's the party that Zapatero's Socialists ousted after the Madrid attacks:

On Wednesday, Socialist party spokesman Jose Blanco floated the possibility of an alliance with the PP in the Basque elections, to close ranks against nationalist parties. "The Basque premier has to call elections ... his mandate has finished," Blanco told a news conference. "We are in an election campaign in the Basque country and the people will decide."

Basically, Spain is in a big bloody mess now, with other regions demanding increased autonomy. Federalism is a good thing, of course, but this looks downright schismatic.

One more time, with feeling: Put a Socialist in power, screw up your country. Words to live by.

NBC REPORTER ON U.N. PAYROLL

Ahem. Howie Kurtz--as long as you're tweaking conservative columnists for their perfectly legitimate relationships with the Bush administration, fairness dictates that you write up a major column on the following:

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote a story the other day about how MSNBC President Rick Kaplan has put more NBC into MSNBC. Since Rick Kaplan was named president of MSNBC a year ago, Kurtz reported, his colleagues say that one of his main achievements has been "forging a tighter partnership with NBC News." The assumption is that NBC is a valuable resource. But on one of the hottest stories around, the U.N. corruption scandal, NBC has been out to lunch. Why? Its U.N. reporter has been on the payroll of the U.N. lobby.

Linda Fasulo, the U.N. correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, has written a pro-U.N. book, An Insider's Guide to the U.N., which reads like the U.N. paid for it. Actually, the pro-U.N. lobby paid for it. In a monstrous conflict of interest for a supposed straight news reporter, Fasulo acknowledges Ted Turner's U.N. Foundation and Better World Campaign for "their generous financial support" of her book project. She also thanks the Rockefeller Brothers Fund "for helping to fund the project."

The book is about "one of the finest and most important governing bodies," she says. Of the U.N. chief, she writes like a school girl with a crush. "It is hard to find anyone who can mount a serious criticism of [Kofi] Annan's performance as Secretary General," she claims. His performance is so "impressive" that she wonders if a "cult of personality" has risen up around him. One U.S. official is reported to be "astonished by just how good a Secretary General Kofi Annan has been."

Um, yeah. I guess that's why he got that big no confidence vote a few months back. Because he leads a cult of personality. Right. Then again, the no confidence vote was aimed at everyone around Annan, but not Annan himself even though he supposedly runs the place and has presided over the UN's deserved slide into irrelevance. So maybe there is a North Korean-style cult of personality building at the UN around Annan. But is that a good thing?

There's more for Kurtz's media mill to grind up:

Why would an NBC reporter (who also reports on the U.N. for National Public Radio) take money from the U.N. lobby? Perhaps because longtime NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw put his stamp of approval on the UNA-USA and BCUN by acting as master of ceremonies at their 2001 Global Leadership Dinner. Not surprisingly, Brokaw is listed on the Fasulo book jacket as saying it is a "must-read." Another endorsement of the book comes from Barbara Crossette, former New York Times bureau chief at the U.N. who now writes for U.N. Wire, a Ted Turner-funded online news service that covers the U.N.

Would you call these relationships payola? I would. Given the scale of the Oil-For-Food corruption scandal NBC has failed to report at any length, this payola scandal dwarfs even Armstrong Williams'.

(via Lucianne.com)

ALLIES, PART III

Pakistan

"Oh, s**t!"

The young jihadi would never swear to it under oath, but that is what he thought he heard the sheik mutter. He regared the bearded leader, sitting cross-legged on the bare dirt floor, with a kind of detached feeling. The jihad was not going well lately. Everyone knew it. But surely the leader had some kind of plan.

But he just sat there as if in a trance. The elections in Iraq had turned out to be a disaster. Only fourty-four killed, and eight of them were martyrs! Parades of people with those accursed purple fingers were everywhere, in pictures blasted all over the world within minutes. George Bush suddenly looked like the smartest man on earth. And after Zarqawi had promised to murder everyone who participated in that infidel notion called democracy--a pledge he obviously had no power to keep--these people defy him so brazenly as if daring him to strike. How can he kill 8,000,000 people?

But the leader remained listless.

His eyes darted about the room. Had the sheik heard something?

"I know what you are thinking, Abdul. You are thinking that we have no reason to expect anything other than death and defeat in Iraq. You are thinking that the Americans have proven to be more than mere paper tigers. You are thinking that I misjudged them, that I misjudged the Iraqi people, and that I misjudged our allies. And you are right.

"The trouble with our organization is that it no longer exists. We cannot order attacks from this mud hut and we cannot train our faithful when we always have to remain one step ahead of the ISI. We can no longer buy them off. We cannot use our satellite phones since we know Americans are listening--we can thank our allies for tipping us to that threat! So we must rely on the outlandish claims of that Jordanian chemist and we must rely on imbeciles who think it is a good idea to make a hostage of G. I Joe. As though anyone outside the American press would not sniff out that trick in a second. Idiots!"

A fly buzzed within the sheik's reach and he swatted it out of the air. He had the fastest reflexes Abdul had ever seen. In the distance, muffled sounds like explosions or gun shots drifted in on the sweltering breeze. Abdul gave a fleeting thought to grabbing that AK by the door and taking his chances.

"Fortunately, we still have allies where we need them most."

"Yes, in the American press and political establishment, right? But are not they all infidels? How can we put so much faith in infidels."

"They are infidels, Abdul. But they are useful infidels."

Davos, Switzerland

At a discussion moderated by David R. Gergen, the Director for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, the concept of truth, fairness, and balance in the news was weighed against corporate profit interest, the need for ratings, and how the media can affect democracy. The panel included Richard Sambrook, the worldwide director of BBC radio, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, Abdullah Abdullah, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, and Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN. The audience was a mix of journalists, WEF attendees (many from Arab countries), and a US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd.

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters.

Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real "sh--storm". What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.

Pakistan

"Useful infidels? Perhaps. But why do they go so far to help us? These infidels are making up better lies for our side than anything we have dreamed up. Why?"

"They disagree with us about many things, Abdul. They do not want to see the caliph restored to its true glory. They do not want to see Andalusia returned to its rightful place. And they do not believe in Allah at all. But they do hate George Bush and they are against America's power in the world, and that is enough for now. They will do what they can to undermine America's support for the war, which will do with lies what Zarqawi cannot do with bombs. The enemy of my enemy is indeed my friend, whether he realizes it or not."

GREATEST. STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. EVER.

That is my gut reaction to the speech I have just watched. Please know that I went into that speech in a terrible, foul mood thanks to a range of stuff I'm worrying about and dealing with, but that speech made me put those things aside for a while and focus on the big picture.

Say what you want about him, but President Bush doesn't deliver inconsequential speeches. In this one address he outlined why we are fighting in Iraq (brilliantly illustrated by the meeting between the Iraqi voter and the mother of a Marine who died securing that right to vote), what the larger war is about and why it is necessary, he put the Syrians and Iranian mullahs on notice and touched the "third rail" of American politics--Social Security reform. He is not a president of micro issues. He does not cower behind a phalanx of lawyers or blame problems on "malaise." He is Big Tex, a true leader.

This speech will stay with us. "The success of freedom will bring about peace." That is what the president said, and we will see that idea play out over the next years and probably decades.

So what say you?

MORE: Wizbang rounds up reax. Mostly positive. I think it was brilliant, especially when compared to past SOTUs and their laundry lists of pedestrian issues. This speech really worked, was bold and at the same time crafted so well that it forced the president's critics to stand up and applaud when it was obvious their first instinct was to chuck a tomato at him. It was really a tour de force.

I do think one thing was missing from this speech, which was any mention of border security. No, I didn't expect the president to mention it given where he stands on that issue relative to his own party, but as an issue it isn't going to just magically go away. It's only going to get bigger and bigger in the years ahead unless someone in Washington summons up the courage to change things.

Stories like this one illustrate how border security can even swamp Bush's entire presidency:

The discovery in Texas of a jacket featuring an Arabic military badge and an airplane headed toward a tower with the words "Midnight Mission" is fueling fears of a possible connection to terrorism.

According to a Department of Homeland Security morning brief marked "For official use only," a report from Customs and Border Protection noted that on Dec. 23, Border Patrol agents stationed in Hebbronville, Texas, found a jacket with an Arabic patch in a lay-up area on Highway 285.

The jacket is said to have a total of three patches, two sewn on the back, and one on the inside.

The two patches on the back were an Arabic military badge and one with the letters "Daiwa," while the patch on the inside read "Midnight Mission."

This "Midnight Mission" patch features a logo depicting "an airplane flying over a building and headed towards a tower," according to the brief.

Read the rest of the story, which includes pictures of the patches. Someone lost that jacket, someone who thought it was a good idea to sport a patch featuring airplanes flying into buildings and who had at least a passing interest in Arabic. The jacket was found in Texas, a border state.

Border security is a problem the president needs to fix now--one terrorist attack with Mexican roots will spend all his political capital and probably end his influence for good.

(story thanks to MR)

MORE: Ok, so he did mention immigration reform. It must have been when I was in the kitchen fetching something to drink. He's still wrong about it anyway.

STANLEY KURTZ

has some great and insightful posts in The Corner today. If you haven't already read them, you should.

Here's a great one on the "demonstration effect" that the Iraq war has had on North Korea.

Here's one on the WMD question with respect to Iraq and its connection to North Korea.

He argues that it makes no difference whom the Democrats choose to be their next chair. And his argument is as sound as can be: In order to regain lost political power, the Democrats must articulate a strong position on foreign policy that will resonate with the political center, yet doing so will inevitably cause a party schism as the radical left breaks off to form its own party. In this environment, it doesn't matter whether a Lieberman or a Dean chairs the party because it doesn't solve the schism problem. The heart of the problem is that the Democrats fundamentally disagree among themselves, with about half favoring a more or less strong response to terrorism and about half favoring virtually no self-defense against any threat at all. As long as that is the case, the Democrats cannot hope to appeal to the center without losing their left flank, and if they succumb to the left flank they lose the center for good. Contra Peter Beinart's call for a purge, then, what the Democrat really need is to engage in some internal discussions to establish a consensus that can at least mollify the left while not alienating everyone else. Since the left mostly believes America is the world's biggest problem, I don't see how such mollification is even possible. Perhaps if anti-war Dean becomes DNC chair and then starts incrementally pulling the party back to the center it's possible, but I don't see that happening. Howard Dean is Howard Dean after all, complete with the orange cap brigades, the "interesting theory" nuttiness and general lack of decorum and judgement. On foreign policy, he is no centrist. He's a Moore-ite.

Anyway here's a Kurtz post on the future challenges that demographic shifts will pose.

All good stuff.

SULLIVAN'S HIATUS

I have no reaction to it, since I hardly ever read the guy anymore. It's just too exhausting. And since he ignores the existence of about 99% of the blogosphere on a daily basis, I think it's fitting that that 99% mostly ignore him too.

But still, I can't help wondering if this article has had something to do with his voluntary exile. Written by blogger Justin Katz, it appeared in National Review not too long ago, and wades through Sullivan's voluminous writings on the subject of gay marriage like no other piece has or probably ever will. It isn't a polemic against Sulivan or his position, but its very comprehensiveness serves to expose just how incoherent, inconsistent and even disingenuous Sullivan has been on the subject through the years. If I had been exposed along the lines Sullivan has been in that article--which isn't possible, because my worldview is coherent and consistent and straightforward--I would be inclined to quit writing so much publicly and instead do a bit of inner maintanence.

I wish Sullivan well if that's what he's doing. Hopefully his mostly discarded faith can help him find some peace.

ARAFAT'S GRAVE NOW A SHRINE

This is why Yasser Arafat wasn't buried in Jerusalem:

Like a perpetual memory machine, the tomb of Yasser Arafat grows more elaborate with each passing day.

Just 11 weeks ago, as Arafat lay dying in a hospital bed outside Paris, this bare-dirt corner of the iconic Palestinian leader's debris-strewn Mukata headquarters was one of the most blighted sights in the entire West Bank.

Today, a national shrine is rising from the rubble, replete with landscaped gardens, newly transplanted mature olive trees and Palestinian flags framing a steel-and-glass burial chamber whose doors open toward the holy city of Mecca.

With all eyes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focused on the prospects of a long-overdue ceasefire, the high-speed deification of Arafat's wreath-strewn gravesite has passed almost unnoticed. But it is nonetheless fascinating to watch the almost daily adornments accrue.

They're Lenin-izing a dead Marxist/terrorist dictator, which makes sense I guess, but to have buried him in Jerusalem, where an even bigger shrine would surely have become a site for caliphascist pilgrimage, would have been suicidal for the Israelis.

Habash is now executive director of the National Committee for Immortalizing the Symbol of the Immortal Leader Yasser Arafat.

The astonishingly fanciful title means he oversees a 50-person committee charged with reinventing the Mukata compound as a kind of Arafat theme park.

What exists today, he says, is just the beginning. Plans are being hatched for a mosque, a library and a national archive on the grounds of this former British police headquarters.

The partially destroyed apartment complex nearby, where Arafat spent his final three years, has been under 24-hour guard since the former leader's death.

Habash's committee is viewing it as a future museum.

Habash, who has been at Arafat's side since their days of exile in Beirut in the 1980s, admits to being something of a packrat.

From reel-to-reel tapes of early Palestinian Liberation Organization meetings to the tiniest scraps of paper initialled by Arafat, he calculates some 5 million pieces of Araphernalia have been preserved for future historians.

Araphernalia? It sounds like a disease, which I suppose it is.

"WE WERE WARNED THAT BUSH WOULD TURN IRAQ INTO A PUPPET REGIME...

...but none of us suspected he'd use actual puppets."

(Tim Blair is a genius)

UPDATE: Evil Bert grabbed his turban from his head and threw it to the ground. "Screw you, action figure! There was no real election… the TV footage is all fake! Blue ink is easy to distribute! And election invalid anyway because not enough Sunnis voted. And Supreme Court may call for recount. And New York Times still not convinced. And…and…Jews! All their fault! Everything their fault! Jews! And Ernie only Platonic friend! Backrubs and handholding not any big deal! Ooooh…stupid American!" He stormed off.

MOLES

The person or persons who leaked the Iraq battle plan to the New York Times in July 2002 through the beginning of the war in March 2003 was never--and probably will never be--caught. So we still have one or more moles somewhere within the military structure.

AL QAEDA'S NEXT MOVE

Now that they have lost Iraq and Afghanistan, and with them possibly most of the Middle East, where will al Qaeda try to establish itself next? This article says Africa, and makes an interesting case.

Al-Qaeda sees Africa as a prize well worth going after. It is a graveyard of failed states, of corrupt governments whose power seldom goes much beyond capital city shantytowns and of areas of Muslim radicalism. The problems of the region are opportunities for Al-Qaeda.

At the same time, al-Qaeda strategic moves in Africa serve its larger purpose of attacking Western economies. In 2002, Ubeid al-Qurashi, a pseudonym of an Osama bin Laden lieutenant, wrote an article saying that Western economies cannot stand high oil prices. One way to strike fear into the West, he wrote, is by repeated attacks on oil installations or on tankers. After the attack on the French tanker Limburg, in October 2002, the al-Qaeda political bureau described the attack as not merely an attack on a tanker. Rather, al-Qaeda said, it was an attack against international transport lines and an attack on the West' s commercial lifeline, petroleum.

Terror and attacks on Western economies are one part of al-Qaeda ' s grand plan. A second part counts on the vulnerabilities in the continent that will allow al-Qaeda to establish radical Islamism in one state after another. Nigeria is a case in point. The tenth largest producer in the world, 95 percent of Nigeria's foreign exchange comes from oil. It has close to 25 billion barrels of proven reserves, and major explorations are underway for more.

Nigeria is a tempting target for al-Qaeda. According to Transparency International, Nigeria is the most corrupt state in Africa. It is also a state that has received the attention of Osama bin laden. In a tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television channel in February 2003, bin Laden urged Muslims to unite and mobilise the Islamic nation to "liberate themselves from unjust regimes". He named Nigeria as one of those nations where Muslims should unite.

Bin Laden's aim almost certainly was to foment civil war in Nigeria between the Muslim north and the largely Christian south.

To graft Tom Barnett's template onto this, Africa is probably the single largest gap zone in the world, meaning it is the largest mostly lawless region where human rights driven and trade-oriented rule sets either don't exist or are not in force. Such a legal and social vaccuum does represent an opportunity for al Qaeda--it's no accident that al Qaeda's two most recent homes were Sudan and Afghanistan, both lawless no-man's-lands operated, thought not necessarily ruled, by failing states with caliphascist bents, and it's also no accident that al Qaeda's remnants remain in the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border. They flow downhill to the worst spots on the planet, where government is nonexistent or arbitrary and heavily influenced by tribalism and radical Islam.

Africa makes a great deal of sense as al Qaeda's next springboard to empire. We're seeing caliphascist violence across that continent, from Nigeria to Sudan and beyond into Somalia and elsewhere. That is no accident, either.

GENOCIDE? WHAT GENOCIDE?

In Darfur, where tens of thousands have died in a one-sided mix of ethnic/religious fighting and civil war, the United Nations sees no genocide. Actually, what it sees is a way to embarass the United States, which has been calling Darfur a case of genocide for months.

STONES CRY OUT

is a new collaborative Christian blog. Looks good, even if they didn't blogroll the JYB ;)

BLACK DAYS AT BLACK ROCK

The New York Magazine has a behind-the-scenes view of the bloodletting within CBS in the wake of Rathergate. Relying heavily on anonymous sources within the network's news division and especially within the 60 Minutes regime, its thrust is that Leslie Moonves, Dan Rather and Andrew Heyward got off scott free while axing their underlings. Rather has already announced his retirement, but if I were either of the other two I would watch my back: The entire staff of CBS News is gunning for them.

At 10:30 a.m., once the public announcement [to "resign" the "CBS Three"] had been made, Howard addressed the 60 Minutes Wednesday staff outside his ninth-floor office. Heyward agreed to cross West 57th Street himself to join Howard; and so, after Howard’s brief, poignant farewell, greeted by tears and an ovation from the crowd of producers and assistants, Heyward stepped forward.

“I’m here to put a human face on today’s sad events,” the CBS News president said solemnly.

“Then why didn’t you get a human being to come over here and do it?” one producer was heard to mutter. Many in the room felt Heyward’s words rang particularly hollow, given that he had not demonstrated any particular humanity by sacrificing the careers of his trusted lieutenants and friends, while managing to preserve his own. When Heyward stopped speaking, he was met with stony silence.

Hey Andrew, what's that on you back? Oh, it's a target:

But the fact is that Moonves has never gotten much in the way of inspired ideas from Heyward, known among CBS producers and executives for his “tin eye”—his lack of skill at spotting and developing on-air talent. In a decade at CBS News, he has never found anyone with the star quality to rival that of Katie Couric at NBC or Diane Sawyer at ABC. Instead, his track record includes a $25 million, five-year deal in 1997 to lure Bryant Gumbel from NBC, and his hiring of such illustrious television talents as former U.S. representative Susan Molinari and MTV correspondent Alison Stewart.

But Heyward does have one crucial gift: He has proved himself an adept budget-cutter, reducing the overhead at CBS News so that profit margins remain high. The lack of stars has saved CBS News hundreds of millions of dollars, in contrast to ABC and NBC, whose bloated star contracts cut deeply into potential profits. Heyward delivers substantially to the network’s bottom line, and for that he has been richly rewarded.

That kind of comment is coming from the talent side of the house, most likely an on-air type resentful of a lack of promotion to more presigious work.

About that "myopic zeal" mentioned in the Thornburgh report:

Rather knew full well the story’s implications for the presidential election then only two months away. The anchorman’s experience at going after sitting presidents is well known, as is his dogged pursuit of tough assignments. But Rather’s reputation as a Bush hater, true or not, has allowed journalists to wonder whether Rather helped rush the story on the air partly for political reasons. “Elections have consequences,” the anchorman had been heard to mutter around the CBS News hallways last year, an apparent reference to his feelings about the crucial importance of replacing Bush this past November.

One fascinating, largely overlooked paragraph in the commission’s report strongly supports the theory that Rather actively pushed the story through without adequate concern for its factual basis. While Rather told the commission that he warned Heyward of the story’s “radioactive” nature, Heyward denied to the commission that Rather ever said such a thing. Indeed, Heyward—once Rather’s executive producer at the Evening News—told the panel that when he warned Rather, the weekend before the story aired, to make certain the documents were real, Rather replied simply: “Of course.” In a later conversation, Heyward recalled Rather’s saying he did not want to “lose the exclusive.” Heyward recalled getting the impression from Rather that they were trying to beat another news outlet to the “scoop.”

“Should Dan resign for his part in this story? Yes,” says one CBS News executive. “Will he? No. It’s just not his style.” It’s unclear from the commission report who bears the responsibility for the network’s ultimately foolish hang-tough strategy after the story aired, but some CBS News producers and executives increasingly suspect that Rather was one prime force behind it.

Apparently it is Rather's style to push forgeries on the air in order to turn a presidential election.

The Thornburgh commission won't like this revelation:

The commission’s interviews were conducted on the nineteenth floor of “Black Rock,” the CBS corporate headquarters on West 52nd Street, a short walk from the supersize office of Leslie Moonves. No tape recordings were made. The two commissioners and lawyers scribbled handwritten notes on the proceedings—when they were in the room, that is. At various times, either Boccardi or Thornburgh were said to be absent from interviews with witnesses. It seemed to the panel’s critics an oddly casual approach for a commission with a mandate to investigate unscrupulous journalistic practices.

That explains a lot, I think.

There is much more in that story that I'm sure will get the blogosphere buzzing. Rtwt.

LITTLE STALINS

The controversial ethnic studies professor whose appearance at Hamilton College sparked outrage--because he had defended the 9-11 hijackers, among other things--has resigned as chairman of his department. The crime is that such an idiot got to be chair in the first place. Actually, the crime is that he has a job at all.

But he manages to tell a big lie on his way out. He insists that only unfair and inaccurate press coverage got him into trouble, he's perfectly harmless, wouldn't kill a fly, etc.

Denying that he is a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, Churchill said, he had simply been "pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.

"I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, 'Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable'."

Roll the virtual video tape, back to April of '04. Professor Churchill lends himself to an interview with Satya, some far far far left publication. Bolds are in the original, and denote questions posed to the professor:

Some people feel that those who abuse animals or people negate their right to consideration and open themselves up to physical violence. What’s your response to this?

The individuals who are perpetrators in one way or another, the “little Eichmanns”* in the background—the technocrats, bureaucrats, technicians—who make the matrix of atrocity that we are opposing possible are used to operating with impunity. If you’re designing thermonuclear weapons, you’re subject to neutralization, in the same sense that somebody who is engaged in homicide would be, in terms of their capacity to perpetrate that offense. One or two steps removed should not have the effect of immunizing. Otherwise, only those who are in the frontline—usually the most expendable in the systemic sense—are subject to intervention. None of the decision-makers, the people who make it possible, would be subject to intervention that would prevent their action in any way at all.

Which means scientists working on weapons intended to improve the US arsenal--which is used by the military to defend us, I should add--are in Churchill's world subject to violence. He'd kill them. Which necessarily means that he had no problem with the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon on 9-11.

That brings me to one question, which is, in general, people like to think they’re pretty decent. They don’t like to think of themselves as violent or complying with a system that is oppressive...

Heinrich Himmler viewed himself in exactly that way. He was a family man, he had high moral values, he’d met his responsibilities, blah, blah, blah—a good and decent man in his own mind.

Do you think that applies to most American people?
In the sense that it applied to most Germans [during the Third Reich].

I'm not misquoting him, as you can go see for yourself. But how can anyone read his statements as anything other than total hatred for the average American, and what does he think we all deserve other than death by violent means? In his mind we're all just "little Eichmanns." Nazis, in other words.

What are some of the solutions? Extreme events, like 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, have mobilized people out of such complacency, albeit temporarily.

I don’t have a ready answer for that. One of the things I’ve suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary. This seems like such a no-brainer that I hate to frame it in terms of actual transformation of consciousness. ‘Hey those brown-skinned folks dying in the millions in order to maintain this way of life, they can wait forever for those who purport to be the opposition here to find some personally comfortable and pure manner of affecting the kind of transformation that brings not just lethal but genocidal processes to a halt.’ They have no obligation—moral, ethical, legal or otherwise—to sit on their thumbs while the opposition here dithers about doing anything to change the system. So it’s removing the sense of—and right to—impunity from the American opposition.

Yes, you read that right. Ward Churchill believes that the "brown skinned" people who voted in Iraq yesterday, many for the first time in their lives, should oppose the US and perpetrate more 9-11s on us in order to kill as many of us as it takes to get us to leave their country. Which we liberated, by the way. And he believes that the left here in this country should perpetrate more and more 9-11s until they can grab control of the political machinery. The man is a bona fide revolutionary, or at least strikes a pose as one.

How can one read this and come away with any idea that Ward Churchill approves of terrorism? Gee, I just don't know. It must be that unfair conservative media's fault.

So Professor Churchill is fringe, right? Not exactly. There are others on the left who believe Americans deserve to suffer and die because of our policies:

"I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end."

That's leftist hero Michael Moore, who cheered on the terrorists in Iraq as "Minutement" and who spent the past year in the bosom of the Democrat party.

So, Michael Moore and Ward Churchill are just two fringe wackos, right? The rest of the left just really wants peace?

Eh, I don't think so. The other afternoon I happened to be driving south of Baltimore on 295. I noticed a green Honda van some distance ahead of me with a bumper sticker on it. I could make out in black and white--"RELIGION"--and could see additional text below but couldn't read it. Intrigued, I sped up a little bit so that I could read the wisdom on the bumper. Here is the sticker's full text:

RELIGION:
It's what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Now isn't that nice? It has a very Marxist flavor, a sort of "opium for the masses" drive, doesn't it? Which tells me that the couple inside the van were in all likelihood rabid lefties.

And idiots. I don't suppose it ever occurred to them that even if religion's sole purpose was to keep the underclass from murdering the rich, that that would be a good thing. I don't suppose it ever occurred to them to think that if the restraint of religion were removed, and the poor did indeed murder the rich, that all that would do would spark yet another round of bloodletting once some of the former poor had managed to amass enough of the riches left behind by the dead.

I'm sure it never occurred to them that their bumper sticker politics could lead directly to civil war and to that unending cycle of violence the left is always decrying when that "cycle" includes US self-defense. It probably never entered their minds that they have become potential monsters, "little Stalins" to borrow and twist a phrase from Professor Churchill. If it did occur to them, it's hard to imagine that they cared more about that than about making their precious statement.

One more example. Shortly before the election last year I heard this story from a friend whose son is in college. That son attends a university in Indiana, Republican country, and has a friend who is both a Republican and politically active. The friend wanted to go back to his hometown, which was one of the few Democrat enclaves in Indiana. So he went to a town hall meeting in his hometown and prepared to make a few brief remarks. Well, he never got to speak because the people at the meeting decided that they didn't want to hear from any Republican. They told him to leave and ended up forcing him out of the meeting. This wasn't a Democrat party meeting, it was a town hall meeting ostensibly open to the entire city. Yet the tolerant Democrats decided that they just couldn't stand allowing a Republican to speak, even if he was well-known hometown boy. The drive to eject him wasn't led by a few radicals, but by the town's average Joes. And for what it's worth, the friend who told me this story is a Democrat, and he found it very disturbing.

More and more I think that this is where the left is going, though. Shut out of power by the voters, the left is developing a serious contempt for the American people and our beliefs. To such people, more 9-11s are fine, more US deaths in Iraq are fine, and civil strife is just fine as long as it leads to the left's return to power.

UNITY WATCH

As Iraqis prepared to vote for the first time in 50 years, probably DNC chair Howard Dean said to his supporters:

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization," the failed presidential hopeful told the crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel, where he and six other candidates spoke at the final DNC forum before the Feb. 12 vote for chairman.

Isn't it always the leftist bumper sticker philosophers who are always telling us that "hate is not a family value?"

So what is it that Dean hates? Besides the fact that a Republican president helped free about 50 million people from tyranny since 9-11?

The Republicans stand for: a strong national defense; American sovereignty as opposed to getting permission slips from the UN; a smaller tax burden as a path toward economic growth and opportunity; equality of opportunity for all Americans; the right to life of the unborn and the infirm; federalism as opposed to centralized state command; individual rights as opposed to collectivism; religious freedom, freedom of conscience and rationality as opposed to political correctness. That is pretty much the GOP platform, therefore that's what Howard Dean hates. And he hate, by his own words, people who hold those beliefs.

He is the authentic face of the Democrat left. And he's a pretty frightening character, if he hates Republicans and everything we stand for.

YOU SAY THAT YOU CAN'T LEGISLATE MORALITY?

In Germany they have legislated immorality:

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

---

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

As usual, such governmental nonsense begins with "good intentions":

Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

So now instead of criminals trafficking in women, government bureaucrats will condemn them to lives of sexual servitude:

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

Insane.

Is this the kind of international legal trend that leftist SCOTUS justices will use in the future on unsuspecting Americans? Probably.

UPDATE: This story appears to have been both fake and inaccurate.

(thanks to McGehee)

SENATOR CREDULOUS

We dodged a nuclear bullet when 51% of the country decided to keep John Kerry out of the White House. The man is a fool:

MR. RUSSERT: Is the United States safer with the newly elected Iraqi government than we would have been with Saddam Hussein?

SEN. KERRY: Sure. And I'm glad Saddam Hussein is gone, and I've said that a hundred times. But we've missed opportunity after opportunity along the way, Tim, to really make America safe and to bring the world to the cause. I mean, look, I sat with any number of Arab leaders, and I said to them, you know, "Mr. Prime Minister" or "Mr. President, is your country--do you believe Iraq, being successful there is important?" The answer is yes. "Do you believe that if it's a failed state, that's a threat to the region?" The answer is yes. "Do you believe that it could be a haven for terrorism even more than it is today?" and so forth. The answer is yes. Then you say, "Well, why aren't you there? What is the problem?" And the problem becomes one of the way in which this administration--they will tell you openly--has approached them and the world.

Nonsense. The Middle Eastern despots in Cairo and Damascus and Tehran and elsewhere resisted the invasion and have resisted just about everything we have done since, including the elections. They may tell Kerry that they object to the administration's "approach"--assuming he has even met with them--but he is a fool to just buy their line and spout it on Meet the Press like some kind of pompous parrot. Democracy is a threat to them. A pro-American government in Baghdad is a threat to them. So they feed Kerry lines, and he just takes them and passes them off as gospel truth. He's just a taller Jimmy Carter.

CRACK-UP IN NORTH KOREA?

The Kim cult's days may be numbered, thanks in no small part to Christianity:

As we shivered in the frontier post the portraits of Kim and his late father, Kim Il-sung, stared down from the wall as if nothing had changed. But the cult of the Kim dynasty, its “perfect” theory of Juche — patriotic self-reliance — and the utopian society of which the official guides boast are visibly breaking down.

Word has spread like wildfire of the Christian underground that helps fugitives to reach South Korea. People who lived in silent fear now dare to speak about escape. The regime has almost given up trying to stop them going, although it can savagely punish those caught and sent back.

“Everybody knows there is a way out,” said a woman, who for obvious reasons cannot be identified but who spoke in front of several witnesses.

“They know there is a Christian network to put them in contact with the underground, to break into embassies in Beijing or to get into Vietnam. They know, but you have to pay a lot of money to middlemen who have the Christian contacts.”

Her knowledge was remarkable. North Korean newspapers are stifled by state control. Televisions receive only one channel which is devoted to the Dear Leader’s deeds. Radios are fixed to a single frequency. For most citizens the internet is just a word.

Yet North Koreans confirmed that they knew that escapers to China should look for buildings displaying a Christian cross and should ask among Korean speakers for people who knew the word of Jesus.

“The information blockade is like a dam and when it bursts there will be a great wave,” said Shin, the crusading pastor.

Here in the north of the country, faith, crime and sheer cold are eroding the regime’s grip at a speed that may surprise the CIA’s analysts: facts that should give ammunition to conservatives in Washington who call for a hardline policy.

Bush’s re-election dealt a blow to Kim, 62, who had gambled on a win by John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. Kim used a strategy of divide and delay to drag out nuclear talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea through 2004.

Kim lost his bet and now faces four more years of Bush, who says that he “loathes” the North Korean leader and has vowed to strip him of atomic weapons.

The linked article is long and fascinating--well worth a read, especially for those who think it's possible to just get along with the likes of Kim or that the Bush administration has somehow mangled relations with North Korea. What do you want to bet that North Korea's Christian underground has found a friend in Washington?

We could be seeing the beginning of the end of Stalinist rule in North Korea.

8,000,OOO PURPLE FINGERS

I'm not sure that there's anything else that needs to be said. Those 8,000,000 purple fingers represent a rejection both of Baathist tyranny and the promise of caliphascist tyranny. Those 8,000,000 purple fingers represent defiance of al Qaeda, of Iran, of Zarqawi, of the naysaying press and the amoral left. Those 8,000,000 purple fingers suggest that something like normal life in Iraq is possible. And those 8,000,000 purple fingers say that we were right to invade Iraq and give its people the chance to do something most of us take for granted--to vote for a government that will rule by consent and not by decree.

This is a great day.

ONE OTHER THOUGHT: On 9-12-01, that French newspaper published that article titled "Today, We Are All Americans." It turned out to be a disingenuous piece of trash, utterly French in other words, yet the phrase has stuck around. We could redeem it somewhat by changing it to:

TODAY, WE ARE ALL IRAQIS

And of course, we would actually mean it.

(photos via InstaPundit and Chris R.)