February 26, 2005

Iran, Russia Postpone Nuclear Fuel Signing

Iran and Russia suddenly postponed on Saturday the signing of a key deal to supply Iran with fuel for its first nuclear reactor, and officials from the two countries were holding new talks, apparently to resolve last-minute differences.

The agreement had been scheduled to be signed Saturday morning. But after hours of delay, Yacoub Jabbarian, an official at Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters that talks had been prolonged and it was not clear when the signing would take place.
[Hopefully, it never will!--Jen]

He did not say why the talks had been reopened on the agreement, which had been worked out in months of negotiations between Moscow and Tehran.

The deal would pave the way for Iran to bring its nuclear reactor at Bushehr online, with Russia providing it fuel then taking back the spent fuel, a safeguard meant to banish fears Iran would use it to build nuclear weapons.

The United States strongly opposes the agreement, saying the Iranians could use the Bushehr reactor as part of a nuclear weapons program.

That's right.
And that's exactly what President Bush had his firm little talk about with Vladimir yesterday.
Seriously, Bush must have put the fear of God in Putin (literally!) as not only did Russia stand to make a lot of money on this deal, but they wanted be evil and give the moo-lahs nukes so badly!
I hope this is the beginning of the end of the Iranian nuke crisis--for our sake, Israel's, Iraq's and EUrope's.
Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers directed Heavenward!

Egypt's Mubarak orders election amendment

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday ordered a review and amendment of the country's presidential election law, paving the way for the possibility of multi-candidate polls in September.

The surprise announcement follows increasing opposition calls within Egypt for political reform.

"This morning I have asked the parliament and the Shura Council to amend Article 76 of the constitution, which deals with the election of the president, to discuss it and suggest the appropriate amendment to be in line with this stage of our nation's history," Mubarak said in a speech broadcast live on Egyptian television.
[I've been to Egypt and this mustn't happen very often.
Usually you get soccer games and weird Egyptian music concerts on their TV, all taped!--Jen]

He said the amendment would be put to a ,b>general public referendum before the presidential polls, scheduled for September.

"The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will," Mubarak said.

The audience broke into applause and calls of support, some shouting, "Long live Mubarak, mentor of freedom and democracy!" Others spontaneously recited verses of poetry praising the government.

Mubarak said his initiative came "out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy."
[Wow!
When President Bush speaks, people listen, don't they?!]

Egyptian television reported that parliament and the consultative Shura Council convened emergency sessions to begin discussing an amendment.

Mubarak was speaking at Menoufia University, 40 miles north of Cairo. The announcement was a turnaround for the president, who just last month had rejected opposition demands to open presidential balloting to other candidates.

Mubarak, who became president in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, has never faced off against an opponent in elections.

Terrific news!
Iraq's "Purple Revolution" continues to resound throughout the Middle East.
Of course, Mubarak will probably win this election, too, even with "opponents" but they'll get more opportunity to campaign and get out the vote in the next election after this one.
Freedom and democracy are on the march in the Arab world and Egypt has lots of problems, as well as lots of potential, for a democratic leader--with the consent, as well as the help, of the governed--to work on.
How refreshing for Mubarak to realize that the days of his ruling Egypt like a Pharaoh should come to an end!
(Wonder what changed his mind?
Dr. Condi was due for an official visit, but she had to cancel it.
Maybe it was Mubarak's trip to Crawford last year...?
Then, there's the isolation of the Palestinian territories, too, with no more Arafat.
And in Syria/Lebanon, self-appointed President-for-Life Assad ain't looking too popular.
It could be all of the above, plus something more.
Who knows?
We do indeed live in interesting and mysterious times!)

February 25, 2005

Fear and Loathing in the Press Room
It's only fitting that Gannon should borrow a Hunter S. Thompson title for his post;
Gannon is being exorciated by the Left right now because he used an alias or pen name ("phony I.D.") to get into the White House press room and he "concealed" the fact that he was a "gay Republican" and a "homosexual prostitute" in his private life at that (The jury's still out on that one!).
So what gives him the right to ask President Bush a VRWC-biased question casting aspersion on the fine Dimocrat Senators, a question which attracted the on-air attention of Conservative talk radio über-host Rush Limbaugh?
If one's personal vices or excesses were a bar to "real" journalists, Hunter S. Thompson would have been toast from day one.
And yet the Left lauds every bad thing Thompson committed as a virtue in their obits to him this week.
Vice, human failings and bad behavior would appear to be a boon to any would-be pundit.
This is not to mention the fact that the Dems are supposed to the party that champions "gay" "rights" and yet they've behaved as if Gannon isn't "allowed" to be gay and a Republican and a participating member of the White House press corps.
What kind of "tolerance" is this?
I haven't blogged about this "story" (non-story) until now because I could tell it's another one of those Leftist temper tantrums that isn't important and is based on innuendo, whining and fabrications, if not outright lies!
But it's gotten to such a point of ridiculous-ness that the feces-flinging monkeys on the Left (both in the MSM and the blogosphere) are trying to link Gannon with another of their non-issues, the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame "affair."
Un-frigging-believable.
Even the beyond-pitiful David Corn has been reduced to telling his faithful that maybe they made something out of nothing regarding "Gannongate:"

Here's a piece that might irritate our fellow bloggers--especially the folks who uncovered (so to speak) Jeff Gannon's secrets. I just posted it in my "Capital Games column at www.thenation.com. (If you've already seen it, scroll down to other original items on this blog, including a posting on Howard Dean's latest dumb remark.) In brief, I'm being a worrywart about the journalistic implications of the Gannon affair, and I note that two key aspects of the story--that Gannon is a gay GOP hypocrite and that Gannon was handed classified information regarding the Wilson leak investigation--are not fully supported by the known facts. In other words, this old-media guy (The Nation was founded in 1865!) is again sounding a cautionary note about investigation-via-blogs. Feel free to throw your keyboards at me.

I'd like to throw a lot more than that at Korn!
What's he really saying is that the Left side of the blogosphere tried to scare up some payback for Easongate (and also Rathergate) and failed miserably.
I love it! I love it! I love it!
Korn weasels out of Gannongate a little more in that Nation post:

The emails keep pouring in with this plea: Investigate Gannongate! These messages are obviously part of a campaign among liberal Internet activists who believe the controversy concerning Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert) has not received sufficient media attention. Gannon/Guckert was a conservative reporter for a marginal news outfit who obtained a daily pass to the White House press office and who also apparently was seeking customers as a gay, military-oriented prostitute. Serious questions do remain as to why and how the Bush White House's press operation granted access to Gannon/Guckert, a correspondent for the Talon News.
[Serious questions about what, David? Reporters' private lives? Their political affiliations?
Should journos be given a "morality/vice test" before being granted a White House press pass?
If so, would you qualify?--Jen]
Should a fellow with a fake identity--and a questionable background--be allowed into presidential press conferences?
[I dunno...Has Helen Thomas be thoroughly vetted? How about David Gregory?
How about Campbell Brown? Of course, Larry Flynt would "pass" for a pass with flying colors!--J.T.]
Talon News was connected to GOPUSA,
[Was it really?--Jen]
an organization run by Texas-based Republican activist Bobby Eberle, and Gannon/Guckert routinely asked softball questions of Bush's press secretaries during their daily White House briefings.
[There should be a federal law against that, certainly!--Jen]
But throughout this scandal, I have wondered if the Gannon affair may be smaller than it seems. I expressed several concerns in an earlier column. Still, in response to the emails, I decided to heed the call and look further. What I found leads me to ask--gasp!--if Gannon/Guckert, on a few but not all fronts, has received a quasi-bum rap.

It makes me physically ill to link to Korn once, much less twice, but I think this had to be seen to be believed.
I've heard Gannon may sue his Leftist "exposers" like Korn and closet case, ex-GOP operative turned DNC operative David Brock and I hope he does!
What the "Progressive" pundits are really objecting to here is that the White House press corps isn't a monolithic, Bush-hating, go for the "Gotcha!" questioning rabble of Leftist lousers!
Somehow, an enemy got into their camp and he must be purged!
Go, Gannon, go!
And for an even funnier summation of the whole "affair," don't miss the last word on this whole "kerfuffle" (new MSM fave word) by the Divine Miss Ann:
Republicans, bloggers and gays, oh my!

Four people killed in suicide bombing in TA

At least four people were killed and 40 others were wounded Friday night, when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a discotheque on the Tel Aviv promenade at around 11:20 P.M.
[...]
The suicide bomber apparently blew himself up outside the "Stage" nightclub, on the corner of Herbert Samuel and Yonah Hanavi streets, opposite the beachfront.

The militant Islamic Jihad organization claimed responsibility for the attack, while members of the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah was involved in the bombing.
[Bastards. Damn them to Hell.--Jen]
[...]
In the wake of the attack, security officials launched a search for two suspects after witnesses reported seeing two men fleeing the site of the explosion.
According to police, the terrorists could have come from the northern West Bank, and may be trying to return to the area.
[...]
The attack is first suicide bombing in some four months. It also marks the end to a period of relative calm in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

On February 8, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to hostilities between the two sides, after more than four years of violence.

The Paleo chapter of the IslamoFacists always launches these horrible attacks when "peace negotiations" are under way, because they think they can get more out of the Israelis if they bomb them into it.
Obviously, they want more than Gaza: they'll say they want the West Bank, the Golan Heights and at least the Eastern part of Jerusalem.
Although Sharon is fighting dissent within Israel about abandoning the Gaza settlements, he should hold firm--as I pray he will do--and keep to his plan, keep building the fence and maintaining the fence that is there.
The Israelis need to find out how these IslamoNazi killers and their bomb got inside the safe area.

HILL'S IRAQ SLAP

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has touched off a diplomatic flap with Iraq's incoming government by questioning whether the leading candidate to become the next prime minister is too close to Iran's ayatollahs.

The likely new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, shot back at Clinton, who just completed a visit to Iraq, by questioning her credibility as a spokeswoman for U.S. foreign policy.

"Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration and I don't know why she said this," al-Jaafari told The Times of London.

"She knows nothing about the Iraq situation," he added.
[WTG, you bossy bee-ach! Ha-ha-ha!
She's p*ssing people off all over the world.
At last, someone had b*lls bigger than hers!
I like al-Jaafari already!]
Clinton's office did not respond to requests for comments on al-Jaafari's remarks about her.

Al-Jaafari, a 58-year-old physician who spent decades in exile during Saddam's regime, was named a candidate for prime minister earlier this week by the Shia-dominated bloc that won the most seats in Iraq's National Assembly in last month's election.

He is facing a stiff challenge from current Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is putting together a secular bloc inside the new parliament despite the fact his party placed a distant third in the voting.

Although the Bush administration privately prefers Allawi, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said al-Jaafari is someone the United States can work with, despite his more fundamentalist Islamist leanings.

I think the Iraqis are liking democracy and freedom of speech just fine.
While we here over in the cradle of freedom (America) seem forced by law to discuss Hillary's run for the White House in 2008 every single day and we've been made to do so by the Leftist Media (including bloggers) for at least the last 6 months.
Can we give it a rest and live with President Bush for the next 4 years and fight the war, please?
Hillary should worry more about winning reelection to the Senate in 2006...or is that a "done deal?"
(If I were a New Yorker, I wouldn't be too happy with much of anything that Her Heinous has done for the Empire State as the junior senator!)

You're not gonna believe the enconium that the WashingtonComPost's Robin Givhans gives to Dr. Rice's "gear" in Germany--This is the same woman who skewered Katherine Harris for her makeup in 2000 and who tried to rake VP Cheney over the coals for his parka at Auschwitz!
(BTW, I believe that Ms. Givhans is herself an African-American..uh...professional.)
Condoleezza Rice's Commanding Clothes
Here's the final graph:

Rice's appearance at Wiesbaden -- a military base with all of its attendant images of machismo, strength and power -- was striking because she walked out draped in a banner of authority, power and toughness. She was not hiding behind matronliness, androgyny or the stereotype of the steel magnolia. Rice brought her full self to the world stage -- and that included her sexuality. It was not overt or inappropriate. If it was distracting, it is only because it is so rare.

The woman's right--Dr. Condi's got it going on!
And are those boots Manolos, hon?


Girlfriend! Do you go in those boots or what?!

February 22, 2005

Forgive me for citing Steyn twice in the same day, but he's really been on his game of late:
Atlanticist small talk is all that's left

"The change for the moment is more in tone than substance," wrote Alec Russell, reporting on President Bush's European outreach in yesterday's Telegraph. You don't say.

My colleague is almost right. In Brussels yesterday, the President's "charm offensive" consisted of saying the same things he always says – on Iraq, Iran, Palestine, the illusion of stability, the benefits of freedom, the need for Egypt and Saudi Arabia to get with the programme, etc. But, tone-wise, the Bush charm offensive did its best to keep the offensiveness reasonably charming – though his references to anti-Semitism and the murder of Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Islamist were a little more pointed than his hosts would have cared for.
[Kudos to President Bush that he mentioned this!
He also talked about the increased anti-Semitism in Old Europe, too.
We'd all like to know what the EUropeans plan to do about the ticking time bomb of jihadis in their midst.--Jen]

But, in the broader sense vis-à-vis Europe, the administration is changing the tone precisely because it understands there can be no substance. And, if there's no substance that can be changed, what's to quarrel about? International relations are like ex-girlfriends: if you're still deluding yourself you can get her back, every encounter will perforce be fraught and turbulent; once you realise that's never gonna happen, you can meet for a quick decaf latte every six – make that 10 – months and do the whole hey-isn't-it-terrific-the-way-we're-able-to-be-such-great-friends routine because you couldn't care less. You can even make a few pleasant noises about her new romance (the so-called European Constitution) secure in the knowledge he's a total loser.

World leaders are always most expansive when there's least at stake: the Queen's Christmas message to the Commonwealth is the ne plus ultra of this basic rule. In Her Majesty's beloved Commonwealth family, talking about enduring ties became a substitute for having them.

That's the salient feature of transatlantic dialogue since 9/11: it's become Commonwealth-esque - all airy assertions about common values, ties of history, all meaningless. Even Donald Rumsfeld is doing it. At the Munich Conference on Collective Security the other day, he gave a note-perfect rendition of empty Atlanticist Euro-goo: "Our collective security depends on our co-operation and mutual respect and understanding," he declared, with a straight face.

Rummy's appearance in Munich was unscheduled. A German federal prosecutor was investigating a war crimes complaint against the US Defence Secretary and, although it seems unlikely even the silliest showboating Europoseurs would have been foolish enough to pull a Pinochet on him, Rumsfeld made a point of not setting foot on German soil until Berlin put an end to that nonsense. That tells you more about transatlantic relations than anything in the speech.
[Isn't Rummy the greatest?--J.T.]

But, just for the record, the "collective security" blather is completely bogus. In the column I wrote on September 11, 2001, I mentioned en passant that among the day's consequences would be the end of Nato - "a military alliance for countries that no longer in any recognisable sense have militaries". I can't remember why I mentioned Europe and Nato in that 9/11 column. It seems an odd thing to be thinking about as the towers were falling.

But it was clear, even then, that the day's events would test the Atlantic relationship and equally clear that it would fail that test. Later that week, for the first time in its history, Nato invoked its famous Article Five - the one about how an attack on one member is an attack on all. But, even as the press release was rolling off the photocopier, most of the "allies" in this post-modern alliance were insisting that the declaration didn't mean anything. "We are not at war," said Belgium. Norway and Germany announced that there would be no deployment of their forces.
[...]
A few months before 9/11, I happened to find myself sitting next to an eminent older statesman. "What is Nato for?" he wondered. "Well, you should know," I said. "You were secretary-general. You went into the office every day." With hindsight, he was asking the right question. On the other hand, if Nato is useless to America, it looks like being a goldmine for the Chinese, to whom the Europeans are bent on selling their military technology. Jacques Chirac is pitching this outreach to the politburo in lofty terms, modifying Harold Macmillan and casting Europe as Athens to China's Rome. I can't see it working, but the very attempt presumes that the transatlantic relationship is now bereft of meaning.
[...and that old Jacques is even acting "unilaterally," shall we say?, to promote France's military companies by letting the Chinese sign big contracts.]

Nato will not be around circa 2015 - which is why the Americans are talking it up right now. An organisation that represents the fading residual military will of mostly post-military nations is marginally less harmful than the EU, which is the embodiment of their pacifist delusionsBut, either way, there's not a lot to talk about. Try to imagine significant numbers of French, German or Belgian troops fighting alongside American forces anywhere the Yanks are likely to find themselves in the next decade or so: it's not going to happen.

America and Europe both face security threats. But the difference is America's are external, and require hard choices in tough neighbourhoods around the world, while the EU's are internal and, as they see it, unlikely to be lessened by the sight of European soldiers joining the Great Satan in liberating, say, Syria. That's not exactly going to help keep the lid on the noisier Continental mosques.

So what would you do in Bush's shoes? Slap 'em around a bit? What for? Where would it get you? Or would you do exactly what he's doing? Climb into the old soup-and-fish, make small talk with Mme Chirac and raise a glass of champagne to the enduring friendship of our peoples: what else is left? This week we're toasting the end of an idea: the death of "the West".

Gulp. Mark, that's pretty rough talk, but it's probably true.
I can't help but think that he's right also about what President Bush is up to with this trip--just to "make nice."
And to give the EUros one last chance to be on the right side of the fight when all h*ll breaks loose (again).
Yes, the EU and more specifically France, will most likely sell weapons to the Chinese and that will put us all into an interesting new world.
And the Iranians will continue to "negotiate" with the E3 (Britain, France and Germany) about halting their development of nuclear weapons, but the mullahs don't mean it: they're merely stalling for time.
Is part of the EUro smugness due the certain knowledge that if Iran becomes a real problem, the U.S. and President Bush will do the heavy lifting to take care of them, something we've been doing in NATO since its inception?
What if Iran does have nuke-tipped missiles that can reach EUrope?
The Israelis say that Iran is 6 months' away from having a nuke, but I think they're "making nice" also--I think Iran has a least one bomb already.
But back to those EUro small sausages...EUrope has painted itself into a corner militarily, economically and politically.
One thing they're good at, however, is listening to speeches followed by 5-course haute cuisine dinners and this Bush is able to provide them along with the straight talk.
Bush is stating what needs to be said to our "friends" and "allies;" you can't ask more of our President than that.
He's made it clear through our actions since 9/11 (and before) that America will do what she has to do to protect and defend herself, with or without the Axis of Weasels.
The President pointed out certain ways that EUrope was headed for trouble and warned them accordingly.
Don't be surprised, though, if our soldiers end up going back over there someday soon to bail them out for the 3rd time.
(Maybe President Bush went to see for himself if they're in a big a mess as he was told it was by Rice and Rumsfeld...No! It's worse!)
We do live in interesting times and in a brave, new world.

Here's Stephen Schwartz's excellent take on the final meaning of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide (As ever, read it all, but here are some highlights):
The End of the Counter-Culture

THE SUICIDE of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture."

"Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism.
[...]...He [Thompson] may well have understood that the drugs, gunfire, motorcycle mishaps, public rantings, and widespread adulation in which he was immersed were evanescent, and that his books were too thin to keep his memory alive for very long.

One must imagine that in his own middle '60s Hunter Thompson looked into the mirror and saw that nobody needed a gonzo interpretation of the world after September 11, that nobody was amused by his capacity to survive fatal doses of sinister concoctions, and that, increasingly, nobody knew or cared who he was.

He was flattered to be described as chronicler of "the death of the American dream." In reality, he described a nightmare from which America awoke years ago.

This makes the second "artist" this week who died whose work's theme was the "death of the American dream," the other being Arthur Miller.
(There's a message there, when the dream lives on well into the future and these bitter cynics don't.)
For Miller, the dream died when he couldn't make his marriage to Marilyn Monroe work.
For Thompson, this is what happens when one's idea of the American dream is to abuse drugs and alcohol and to go through life with untreated mental illness and depression.
(Note that neither man was failed by the American dream in terms of money, success and fame.)
Poor Hunter--he was probably very bright, but very disturbed.
It must finally have been "weird" enough for him...
All I'll remember is his virulent hatred of President Bush in the last few years and for those who support Bush's vision, like me.
Guess I'm not cool, after all.
As for Miller's demise, no-one sums up what the playwright's contributions ultimately meant and makes it so killingly funny as Mark Steyn:
Ballyhooed 'Crucible' was way out in left field

That, by the way, would be a better name for his Centre for the Advancement of American Studies: the Arthur Miller Sad Hollow Center of the American Dream. But that's why attention's paid: The author of "The Crucible'' gave the American left its enduring metaphor for the McCarthy era -- the witch hunts -- and, indeed, for the post-9/11 Bush-Ashcroft reign of terror, and for terrors yet to come. It's the all-purpose portable metaphor for anti-Americanism.
[...]
Miller was the most useful of the useful idiots. It was a marvelous inspiration to recast the communist "hysteria" of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw with ''The Crucible'' -- that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists....[...]His genius was to give his fellow lefties what's become their most cherished article of faith -- that any kind of urgent national defense is, by definition, paranoid and hysterical. It was untrue in the '50s, and it's untrue today. Indeed, the hysteria about hysteria -- the ''criminalization'' of ''dissent'' -- is far more hysterical than the hysteria about Reds.

'The Crucible'' will survive because it's the modular furniture of left-wing agitprop: Whatever the cause du jour, you can attach it to, and it functions no better or worse than to anything else, mainly because it's perfectly pitched to the narcissism of the left. But I'd happily have a bet with David Thacker that in 20 years even the subsidized British theater will have given up on its favorite heavy-handed doctrinaire American leftist. And round about 2020 the Arthur Miller Centre will be running a week of lectures headlined, ''Why Is Attention Not Being Paid?''

I'm sorry, but I thought this was hysterically funny and spot on...!
(I can remember suffering through a performance of Miller's excruciatingly auto-biographical "Under Milkwood" years ago and I want revenge!)