Tony Blair: New Media "can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five"

Tony Blair has harsh words for the New Media.

The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before. They are not the masters of this change but its victims. The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by 'impact'. Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else....

Again, I would say, yes. In my 10 years, I've noticed all these elements evolve with ever greater momentum. It used to be thought - and I include myself in this - that help was on the horizon. New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media. In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five. But here is also the opportunity. At present, we are all being dragged down by the way media and public life interact....

The PCC is for traditional newspaper publishing. OFCOM regulate broadcasting, except for the BBC, which has its own system of regulation. But under the new European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by OFCOM. As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way....

Yikes! Good thing he's getting out of the Hexenkessel of politics.

I'm here to help you kill Jews -- but first...

The old joke about the oxymoron, "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help," applies many-fold to the situation in Lebanon and Gaza. In January 2006, the Palestinians elected Hamas based on its reputation for cleanliness (from corruption), efficiency (in providing social services), and militancy (in resistance to Israel). By throwing out the corrupt Fatah regime, it was thought, the new Hamas government would be able to demonstrate that it knew how to run a country and put it on a solid footing for the struggle with the Zionist entity.

About six months later, a wanted terrorist named Shaker Youssef al-Absi showed up in Lebanon and offered to the Fatah leadership in the Palestinian refugee camps his services and those of his 60 or so followers to fight the Israelis, who at the time Fatah feared might attack the refugee camps to pressure the Palestinians in Gaza to release kidnapped IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit. The Fatah leaders welcomed al-Absi, not asking, if Syria viewed him as a dangerous terrorist, why he wasn't in a Syrian prison or extradited to Jordan to stand trial for murdering a U.S. diplomat. And soon al-Absi's cadres multiplied -- and started to worry their hosts.

Al-Absi, who is wanted in Jordan for involvement in a 2004 assassination of a U.S. diplomat there, spread out increasing numbers of recruits to several Palestinian camps - about 120 in Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh, 60 in Beddawi in the north and 150 in Nahr el-Bared.

Abu Mohammed and another Fatah Uprising official, Mahmoud Doulla, told The Associated Press that their leaders were so impressed with al-Absi's selfless dedication to the Palestinian cause that, at first, they ignored warning signs of other trouble.

"We weren't of the same ideology," explained Abu Mohammed. "They followed a more puritan kind of Islam, you can say fanatic Islam. ... They were ready to kill disbelievers."

Abu Mohammed and Doulla said they were concerned when they noticed al-Absi and his men were hostile toward allies of Fatah Uprising, such as the Syrian government, Lebanon's Shiites and the militant Shiite group Hezbollah.

When Fatah Uprising officials in Lebanon alerted their superiors in Damascus that al-Absi's men "were behaving strangely," they were swiftly dismissed and told the group was in Lebanon for the "struggle" and to fight the "Zionist enemy," said Abu Mohammed.

Al-Absi's forces grew quickly. At the Shatilla camp, what started as 20 militants reached 100 during last summer's Hezbollah war with Israel, Abu Mohammed said.

Over time, it became clear that al-Absi wasn't going to fight Israel until he took on the Fatah leadership first.

Al-Absi's relationship with Fatah Uprising showed its first public sign of cracks last Nov. 23, when Palestinian and Lebanese security forces raided an apartment occupied by his gunmen in the Beddawi camp in northern Lebanon.

In the ensuing battles, a Palestinian security man was killed and two of al-Absi's militants were wounded and handed over to Lebanese security by the camp's Palestinian security. Al-Absi was angered that Fatah Uprising did not protect the men or protest their handover to Lebanese authorities.

On Dec. 5, Fatah Uprising leader Saeed Moussa ordered al-Absi and his fighters to leave his group's bases in the Shatilla and Bourj el-Barajneh camps. Al-Absi withdrew to the Beddawi camp.

In a new ultimatum three days later, Abu Moussa gave al-Absi 24 hours to leave Beddawi.

"Where am I going to take 400 men in 24 hours? Throw them in the sea?" Abu Mohammed quoted al-Absi as telling a Fatah Uprising official. Other Palestinians confirmed the remark.

The following day, al-Absi seized Fatah Uprising positions and weapons in Nahr el-Bared, where he had regrouped his fighters - and he announced the creation of Fatah Islam.

Now Fatah al-Islam has called down the wrath of the Lebanese Army on the Palestinians, with thousands fleeing the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp and thousands more trapped there in the crossfire. The Islamic fundamentalists of Fatah al-Islam are clearly willing to defer the battle against the Zionist enemy until they remake the Palestinian refugee camps -- and possibly all of Lebanon -- in their Salafist image.

At the same time, Hamas in Gaza has been willing to launch Qassam rockets at Israeli civilians and stage sporadic attempts to kidnap more IDF soldiers. But they've also been willing to direct attacks at Fatah members in Gaza, on an escalating scale. It's rapidly reaching a point where the leadership of Fatah can no longer surf along above the turmoil: the attacks are aiming higher and higher in their eschelons.

After sundown Monday, gunmen, apparently from Hamas, laid siege to the house of Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, the senior Fatah official in northern Gaza. They then dragged him outside and killed him, security officials said. Medics said he was hit by 45 bullets.

Al-Jediyan was a top aide to Gaza Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan and al-Jediyan's brother was also killed, apparently in the same shootout.

Fatah spokesman Maher Mikdad harshly denounced the killing and pledged revenge.

"What is this, if not a war," he said.

Fatah called on its members to target all Hamas political and military leaders.

"What is this, if not a war?" What, indeed? How about a purge?

The Oslo Accords demonstrated that Fatah could not be trusted to maintain purity of ideology and purpose against Israel. Even though they never implemented their obligations toward peace, and perhaps only undertook those obligations to mask their intention to build a base for destroying Israel at a future date, still the fact remains that they did undertake those obligations. For the true believers of Hamas and of the Salafist movement, this indicated that Fatah was a more immediate danger to the struggle against Zionism than Israel itself. Only a Palestinian society purged of such wobbly pragmatists could find the unity and strength to take on Israel.

Thus the Palestinian communities in Gaza and in the refugee camps of Lebanon needed to be purged, to be brought under the complete control of orthodox and unwavering Islamists. Any accommodation with Fatah was tactical, a brand of taqqiya toward unbelievers in the West to attempt to free up frozen finances and toward unbelievers in Fatah to attempt to co-opt them.

The Palestinians must choose one path or another before there is any point in pursuing talks with Israel. If the Palestinians choose Hamas and Fatah al-Islam, then talks with Israel will be pointless in the first place; if they reject Hamas and Fatah al-Islam, there may be a chance for peace.

Surprise! Murderers don't want to die

Sometimes science does validate common sense. A case in point: a number of studies since 2001 of the deterrent effect of the death penalty.

To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, trying to tease out the impact of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.

Among the conclusions:

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

• Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

In 2005, there were 16,692 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter nationally. There were 60 executions.

The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein. A critic of the death penalty, in 2005 he co-authored a paper titled "Is capital punishment morally required?"

"If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

Death penalty supporters could have told these scientists all along that the death penalty deters murderers. Our evidence? Once caught, murderers seek to avoid the death penalty. The fact that so many murderers so often can, through plea bargains and through moratoriums on executions (or, as in San Francisco, moratoriums on seeking the death penalty even for cop-killers), affects the risk calculations of others contemplating acts of murder.

The sentence of death should be handed down much more often than it is, and death sentences should be carried out far more swiftly and reliably. Investing in a robust appeals process -- something that those sentenced to "execution by incarceration," life without possibility of parole, deserve no less than those sentenced to death -- would help shorten the time from conviction to execution, and save many innocent lives.

Is "universal preschool" a bad idea?

California has a program, First Five, funded by tobacco taxes, that includes a "preschool for all" initiative to promote universal nursery school to California children.

First 5 Power of Preschool (PoP) is a high-quality, free, voluntary, part-day preschool program for all four year-olds (or three- and four-year olds). The program will assist children in becoming personally, socially, and physically competent, effective learners, and ready to transition into kindergarten. The long-term goal is to implement California 's Master Plan for Education Preschool Recommendations (2002). The foundation for PoP was established by the First 5 School Readiness Initiative, by California 's Master Plan for Education (2002), and by the Universal Preschool Task Force Report (1998).

One of the main arguments used in advertisements to promote this initiative is data from studies in the 1960s and 1970s purporting to show that for every dollar spent on preschool education, society saves four to seven dollars on reduced needs for social services later as the children grow up to be less likely to be arrested or go on welfare support. However, some new studies are indicating something quite different.

EVIDENCE is mounting that young children who spend significant periods of time in daycare while their parents work are more prone to developing aggressive and antisocial behaviour.

A new study from the United States suggests that children who went to nursery during their pre-school years rather than staying at home were more likely to be disruptive once formal education began.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) has followed the progress and development of 1,300 children since 1991. It concluded that the longer above 10 hours a week a child spent in group care, the more likely teachers were to report difficult behaviour once they started school.

The findings are strikingly similar to the results of a recently published government-funded research project carried out by Oxford University and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

It concluded that children under the age of three who spend more than 35 hours a week at nursery show higher levels of antisocial behaviour than those spending less time in daycare.

One possible reason for the shift is that more women are working full-time outside the home today as compared to the 1960s and 1970s. The earlier programs were an adjunct to mother's daytime care in the home, whereas today preschool tends to be a substitute for it.

Of course, none of this will cause Hillary Clinton to revise her proposed new $10 billion Federal universal preschool program. But it should.

They've got flair! They've got style!

Hamas, I mean:

Muhammad Sawirki, a 24-year-old officer in the Palestinian Authority's Force 17 "Presidential Guard," died Sunday when he was thrown from the 18th floor of a Gaza City building.

PA security officials said Sawirki and another officer were kidnapped earlier in the day by members of Hamas's paramilitary Executive Force.

The two were taken to the Ghafari Tower, where the Hamas militiamen handcuffed Sawirki and threw him from the highest building in Gaza City, the officials said.

Following the incident, fierce fighting erupted between Hamas and Fatah militiamen, delaying the evacuation of Sawirki's body. Two passersby, an elderly woman and her daughter, managed to drag the body to a secure place before an ambulance took it away.

One person was killed and 12 were wounded in the fighting.

Kidnapping officers from the Presidential Guard AND heaving one off the 18th floor -- now THAT'S chutzpah.

By contrast, Fatah is quite unimaginative -- and ineffectual.

Gunmen opened fire overnight Sunday on the house of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City, security officials said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Britain - funfair for criminals

If someone breaks into your house and steals your money and possessions, and then is caught by the police, you want that person locked up for a good long while -- long enough to learn not to rob people's houses, preferably someplace far from where you live. Right?

Well, according to a senior prisons official in England, you're just being selfish:

Mitch Egan, who oversees nine English prisons, has called for all but the most serious offenders to walk free from court and be given community sentences instead.

She claimed the rising prison population had added to a feeling of insecurity among the public -because people feared criminals who were locked up out of sight.

"For me, prison is an inappropriate punishment for all but the most actively dangerous of offenders, and using incarceration at the current rates actively contributes to the fear of crime," she said....

Miss Egan called for a full debate on imprisonment: "We sanitise our society by displacing justice from communities affected by crime.

"Dislocating punishment from the community, allowing criminal justice to become, and to feel that it becomes, active and impersonal... this makes us all more fearful."

She accused the public of being "lazy" by leaving public protection to the police, courts and prisons, declaring: "Society asks far too much of the criminal justice system."

She also admitted prison chiefs "simply don't know" how to reduce re-offending, adding: "As a place where offenders are cured, prison makes absolutely no sense."

If that last bit is true, it's a failure on Ms. Egan's part -- if she's got a vision for how to rehabilitate offenders, she should demonstrate how to run her nine prisons in such a way that the inmates who serve their terms in them walk out to become useful, law-abiding citizens.

Unfortunately, the new Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh has pretty much the same mushy-brained ideas.

THOUSANDS of criminals, including thieves, housebreakers, vandals and fine-defaulters, will be spared prison sentences under radical plans announced yesterday by the new Scottish Executive.

Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, said he wanted to adopt a more liberal approach to penal policy....

Stealing a well-known line from Tony Blair, Mr MacAskill said it was time to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime".

He said the government would come down hard on serious offenders, but it would concentrate on the social and economic problems that led to many other crimes.

"We will detain the dangerous but treat the troubled," he said.

On drugs, he said: "We must stop the situation where young people - whether because of low self esteem or lack of opportunity - shoot up and opt out."

He went on: "Our clear aim is to prevent and deter crimes. But those who offend must face the consequences of their actions."

But it was on prison policy that he was most detailed and controversial.

He said: "We need a coherent penal policy. Prison should be for serious and dangerous offenders, not fine-defaulters or the flotsam and jetsam of our communities.

"So we need to shift the balance, with less serious offenders currently cluttering our prisons sentenced to community punishments."

The minister added: "I want tough community punishments which will protect the public, help offenders turn their lives around and involve some payback to communities they harmed."

Wow, I never knew that young people used drugs because of low self-esteem and lack of opportunity. I always thought it was because using drugs gave them instant sensations of pleasure -- the same reason yuppies became the stereotypical cocaine users of the 1970s and 1980s, and why the gay community has such a huge problem with crystal meth.

I wonder what Britain will look like by 2012, when the Olympics come to London. Will the country have reached the nadir of social decay and fear caused by communities overwhelmed with so-called "non-serious" crime, or will it be past that point and into a law-and-order reaction to clean up the mess?

Will this become a Steven Spielberg film?

The tale of a Nazi mascot
By Olga Craig, Sunday Telegraph


The Littlest Nazi: Alex Kurzem was paraded before Hitler in an SS uniform


Almost all his life Alex Kurzem has kept a lonely secret. Born in Koidanov in the Minsk region of Belarus in 1935, he emigrated to Australia at 15, married and raised a family in Melbourne.

His sons grew up listening, spellbound, to their father's poignant, though light-hearted, wartime tale: of how, as a five-year-old pigherd, he became separated from his peasant family and had to fend for himself for months in a forest before being found by a kindly Latvian family who brought him up.

It was little more than a fairy story: the truth of Mr Kurzem's early life was, in fact, even more extraordinary and so brutally shocking that he had all but obliterated it from his memory.

The reality was that as a five-year-old boy he had witnessed the massacre of his fellow villagers, among them his mother, baby brother and sister. Kurzem escaped into nearby woods where he survived by scavenging and stealing clothes from dead bodies, until he was found and handed over to Latvian police, who "adopted" him as a mascot.

When the battalion changed its identity to that of a Nazi SS unit, it had a miniature uniform made for Kurzem, complete with the SS insignia and a full-length black leather coat and pistol. He was paraded for newsreels and newspapers as ''the Reich's youngest Nazi'' and taken to the Russian front with his squad.

There he witnessed atrocities. He saw rapes, murders and massacres of Jews, and on one occasion was forced to fire his pistol at a Jewish teenager captured by the soldiers, as the unit rampaged across the country. On another, he had to watch the slaughter of 1,600 Jews who were herded into a synagogue at Slonim.

The whole time, the young Kurzen was frantically trying to hide a secret that would have meant certain death for him: he, too, was a Jew. He watched atrocity after atrocity, unable to show the slightest compassion for those of his own faith.

His commandant was Karlis Lobe, a notorious Latvian Nazi responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews. Mr Kurzen is unsure, but suspects that the unit was responsible for the slaughter of his family.

Still, when the war ended the child had no choice but to speak up for Lobe: the man who had sadistically murdered so many of Kurzem's countrymen had also protected him and ensured his survival while all around Jews were dying in massacres, in concentration camps and in the gas chambers.

Today, Mr Kurzem is a grey-haired man in his seventies. He believes himself to be 72, though is uncertain of his exact age. His lined face and pained expression are testament to his torturous past.

Until a decade ago, he kept his solitary secret. Then, one night in 1997, no longer able to live with his nightmares, or his sketchy memories, he began haltingly to pour out the true story to his son Mark.

He gave a statement to the Holocaust Commission but, to his horror, it dismissed his tale, saying it could find no trace of the massacre in his home village, and going so far as to suggest he was a collaborator who was complicit in Lobe's war crimes.

"I was devastated," Mr Kurzem says. "During those terrible years with the SS I could trust no one. My own people, the Russians, despised me because I wore the Nazi uniform. I was terrified the Nazis would discover I was Jewish.

"Lobe was a monster, but he saved me and survival was all I had. I had to keep so many secrets that secrecy was a way of life. And then, to find that my own people didn't believe me when I finally told my story, was heart-breaking."

But Kurzem's son was determined to discover the truth. Painstakingly, over the past 10 years he has investigated his father's past. Finally able to verify it all with documents and pictures, the Holocaust Commission has reversed its decision and Mark has now written a powerful book, The Mascot, revealing his father's remarkable and horrific story.

Kurzem, of course, is not Alex's real name: that was the name given to him by the soldiers. He now knows he was born Ilya Galperin. His first clear memory is of October 21, 1941, the day his family was slaughtered. The day before his father and the men of the village had been shot.


Now in his seventies, Alex tells the story of his time as a Nazi mascot

That night two soldiers broke in and beat his mother. Once they departed, leaving her bloodied and bruised, she told her eldest son: "We are all going to die tomorrow." She knew the massacre of the Jewish women and children would be the next morning.

She told him he must be brave and help her with his brother and sister. That night the young boy awoke thinking: "I don't want to die." In his nightclothes he fled, stumbling through pits filled with the bodies of the Jews shot the day before. In the morning he awoke to the sound of screams. From the tree in which he was hidden, he saw women and children, weeping in terror, being lined up in front of newly dug pits.

"If only I had not looked," Mr Kurzem says softly. But he did. In front of him he saw his mother and siblings among those waiting to be shot. "I could see soldiers forcing people down the hill, using the bayonets. Then I saw my family. I wanted to call out. I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't. The soldiers shot my mother. They put the bayonets into my brother and sister. I had to bite my hands to stop myself screaming."

As he recalls his family's deaths, Kurzem grows pale and his hands tremble. "People have asked me why I didn't take my brother and sister with me when I fled, but I had no idea where I was going. I was just a child myself. Then, to see them murdered. I did not want to watch but I could not look away. I felt I owed it to my mother. If she could bear to endure it, then surely I should bear to watch and be with her in my heart."

Kurzem was in the woods for about nine months. He ate berries and dragged the great coat off a dead soldier. "What I remember most is the terrible cold and the constant hunger. And being so very alone," he recalls.

On July 12, 1942, he was found by a local who was not a Jew and handed over to the Latvian soldiers. Lined up along with others to be shot, he knew he had to take any opportunity. While others cowered, he ran to the soldiers, begging on bended knee for bread. His antics amused them and one, a Sgt Kulis, took pity on him and dragged him out of the line. He decided to clean up the filthy little boy and bathed him. When he saw Kurzem naked, he saw he had been circumcised and realised that, although the child was fair haired and of "Aryan" appearance, he was a Jew.

"I will never know why he saved and protected me," Mr Kurzem says. "But he did. He warned me no one must know or it would be certain death for us both."

Before long the little boy, now about six, had become the Latvian SS's famous mascot. In his uniform he was feted before the Führer, filmed keeping charge of German children ("Me, a Jew.Had they but known," he says incredulously) and taken to the Russian Front.

"I hated the soldiers' brutality, their inhumanity. But I don't deny that, as a little boy, I at times loved being the centre of attention. I was doing it to survive. To please them. But all the time I was terrified they would discover my real identity and I would also be shot for my faith."

It was at the front that he witnessed the infamous Slonim massacre in which 1,600 Jews were burned alive. "Soldiers were prodding people into the synagogue, then they hammered wooden planks across the doors and windows. They put bunches of burning sticks and branches against the building and in a flash it caught fire. The flames spread quickly and then terrible wails began. Women and children broke out, running into the road in flames. No one helped them, they burned where they fell."

On another occasion, the soldiers used the young boy to lure local girls to their camp where they savagely beat and raped them. And when the unit was used to round up Jews for the cattle trains to the death camps, Kurzem, resplendent in his uniform, was given the task of handing out chocolate bars to lure them inside.

"They were smiling, they thought it a kindness. I didn't know where these trains were going but I had heard enough of the soldiers' talk to know they were going to despair and death."

In 1944, as the tide of the war started to turn against the Nazis, Lobe sent Kurzem to live with a Latvian family who bullied him into writing an affidavit exonerating Lobe. Before long he was receiving anonymous hate mail from Jews who knew the truth of Lobe's atrocities.

Terrified, he booked a working passage to Australia aboard the SS Nelly, late in 1949. "I just wanted to start a new life, away from all the memories that I wanted to lose." His only luggage was a battered brown suitcase in which he kept photographs and documents of his past life. He took odd jobs, one of them with a circus. Eventually, he set up his own carpentry business and set about assimilating himself into his adopted country. He never, he told friends, wanted to return to eastern Europe. He told his wife, Patricia, and his children nothing of the truth of his past.

Then, that night in 1997, he could keep silent no longer. Since then, he and his son have travelled to his home village many times. He found pictures of his parents under the wardrobe of his old home and, when he summoned the courage, stood by the tree from which he had watched his mother and his siblings murdered.

"Finally, after all this time, I have been able to lay a rose on the grave of my mother," he says, smiling at the memory. "But when I stood at that spot, as a grown man, where I saw her die so bravely, I still had to cram my fist in my mouth to stop screaming."

Mr Kurzem is silent, his eyes moist. "Should I have been standing there with her, holding her hand? Holding the little ones? I have tortured myself with this. But one thing I know: my mother would have died desperately hoping I had survived."

• The Mascot: The Extraordinary Story of a Young Jewish Boy and an SS Extermination Squad, by Mark Kurzem, is published by Rider Books

What do these two have in common?

Other than baring their teeth when they are unhappy, that is?

Here's a clue, from a McCain campaign stop in Newton, Iowa.

He spoke after a town hall event in Newton, where immigration dominated discussion and McCain spent much time defending the stalled proposal.

Opponents of the legislation, he said, are not listening to the public.

"People want us to resolve this issue. The majority of Americans support a comprehensive approach to it," McCain said.

The Senator has a tin ear for public opinion: he hears it, but he doesn't get the melody.

"This is a burning issue," he said. "Every town hall meeting I have there is this kind of deep concern. But there's also a desire to see us do something. They wonder, 'Why won't you fix it?' That's why they send us to Washington. To fix things."

Bear with me here, and I'll connect McCain to Paris. Lots of people are fascinated with Paris Hilton -- that's why she's a celebrity. But she -- or her counsel, or her parents, or L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, or all of the above -- badly misread public opinion when they confused public fascination with the heiress with public love and support for her. I'm sure there are many people who think Paris Hilton is the victim of a grave injustice, being tossed back into the clink after the Sheriff promised her she could go home, but far, far more Americans think she should serve her time as punishment for flouting her probation.

Which brings us back to Senator McCain and immigration. Yes, the majority of Americans want our immigration system fixed. However, that doesn't mean that "majority of Americans support a comprehensive approach to it," as the Senator claims -- at least, not the form of "comprehensive approach" that the Senator crafted with Jon Kyl and Ted Kennedy.

I believe that the majority of Americans want illegal aliens residing in this country to be given equal treatment under the law with Paris Hilton and every other person residing in this country. That is, we want them to obey the law and be held accountable when they flout it.

Senators McCain and Kyl bought into the idea that a "probationary Z-visa" is a step toward tough enforcement. However, it's anything but. The probationary Z-visa is instantaneous normalization of an illegal immigrant's status. It doesn't set a deadline for that person to resolve his illegal status, and it's voluntary. It's tied to "triggers" for border security and employment eligibility verification, along with fines and penalties, but since it doesn't set a deadline for the Federal government to activate those triggers, the probationary Z-visas can become a permanent amnesty program.

This is what drives anger at and opposition to the McCain-Kyl-Kennedy bill, and why President Bush's party doesn't line up with him on this issue. Most Americans, Democrat and Republican alike, believe that (in Bill Clinton's famous phrase) we should all play by the rules if we want the rewards of participation in American society. Senators McCain and Kyl, along with President Bush, are far too willing to overlook the fact that illegally crossing the border into this country breaks a lot of rules.

Lebanon is doing some heavy lifting

Lebanon is increasingly becoming the Western front of the Iraq war.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - Five Lebanese soldiers were killed on Saturday in the latest bout of heavy fighting against al Qaeda-inspired militants entrenched in a Palestinian refugee camp, a military source said.

At least 125 people, including 53 soldiers and 42 militants, have been killed since the fighting began on May 20 -- almost three weeks ago -- making it Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Security sources said several soldiers were wounded in Saturday's fighting in which machinegun fire reverberated and heavy artillery shelling rocked the north Lebanon camp from early morning.

The military source said another soldier had died from wounds sustained earlier.

In the eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanese security forces arrested three suspected al Qaeda members, including a Belgian, security sources said.

One suspect, a Lebanese man, was arrested in the village of Bar Elias where earlier this week, security forces dismantled what they say is as an al Qaeda cell preparing for car bomb attacks in Lebanon and seized weapons and explosives.

At least nine people have now been arrested in connection with the cell, the sources said.

An interesting analysis (by Lebanese news Website Ya Libnan) of the Lebanese Army's casualties in its recent battles with Fatah al-Islam shows that the Lebanese Army has lost more soldiers in 4 weeks on a per capita basis than the U.S. has lost in 4 years in Iraq.

Lebanon so far has lost 47 of its soldiers in less than 3 weeks of fighting against terrorists of Fatah al Islam, an Al-Qaeda inspired group which is backed by Syria.

47 may sound a small number of casualties for some countries, but on a per capita basis 47 is greater than all the US losses for the past 4 years in Iraq. This may sound ridiculous, but let me explain why it is true.

The population of USA is 300 million, which is 75 times the population of Lebanon (4 million).

The number of US casualties stands at 3,500 as of yesterday.
The number of Lebanese casualties stands at 47 as of yesterday.
Now in order to scale the Lebanese Army casualties to America's population, multiply the total number of Lebanese casualties (47) by the population factor (75) and the result is 3,525.

The battle in whicn the Lebanese Army is currently engaged is really a Western front in the Iraqi War.

The fighting erupted on May 20 when the militants attacked army units deployed around Nahr al-Bared after one of their hideouts in a nearby city was stormed. At least 115 people, including 47 soldiers and 38 militants, have been killed.

The Lebanese authorities have demanded the unconditional surrender of the gunmen, who have vowed to fight till death.

Fatah al-Islam was officially formed late last year. Its leader, veteran Palestinian guerrilla Shaker al-Absi, says he shares the same ideology as al Qaeda but has no organizational links with that group.

Many of his men are foreign Arab fighters, some of whom have fought in Iraq.

What's going on is that Syria is using Iraq as a training ground for fighters that it can then send into Lebanon to keep the Lebanese on the defensive in an effort to distract the Lebanese government from pressing for the Hariri assassination tribunal and from shutting down arms smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

The violence has come with Lebanon already in the grips of a nearly seven-month-old deadlock between pro- and anti-Syrian factions that has paralyzed all government legislation.

The pro-Syrian speaker of parliament Nabih Berri has refused to convene MPs to debate draft legislation proposed by Siniora's government since six pro-Damascus ministers quit last November.

Lebanon's parliament -backed prime minister, a staunch opponent of Syria, accused intelligence agents of the country's former powerbroker of being connected to the internal unrest … by far the deadliest since the 1975-90 civil war.

"Undoubtedly ... there is a link between them and some of the Syrian intelligence services," Siniora told reporters

He said foreign fighters among the militants had entered Lebanon from Syria and appealed to the Damascus authorities to exercise greater control over the border.

"They passed through Syria, and the responsibility is joint. I do not deny Lebanon's responsibility, but nobody can deny Syria's responsibility either," he said.

"We call on the Syrians to take up the responsibility of controlling the border and prevent the infiltration of individuals and arms smuggling into Lebanon."

The United States should be grateful to Lebanon insofar as Syria's meddling is causing it to pull fighters out of the Iraq theater of operations and put them into Lebanon. The more Syria insists on fighting a proxy war in Lebanon, the more its illegal activities are exposed, and the more likely that the international community will finally act.

Lebanon has already interrogated 35 Fatah al Islam detainees, since this group declared war on the army 19 days ago at the Nahr el Bared Palestinian refugee camp .

The interrogations clearly revealed that Fatah al Islam has plotted attacks against the enlarged UN peacekeeping force deployed after last summer's devastating conflict between Israel and Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

As a result of the above information UNIFIL peacekeeping forces were put on high alert in south Lebanon .

Concerns were heightened on Thursday after a time bomb was discovered and defused on a road leading to beaches in the southern port of Tyre which are popular with off-duty UN troops.
UNIFIL spokesman Milos Strugar said he was aware of threats from Fatah al-Islam.

"We take these statements seriously, but we have full trust in the Lebanese authorities and armed forces, who are responsible for law and order in the country," he said.

UNIFIL has heightened security measures since the fighting broke out, beefing up fortifications and keeping a tight rein on the off-duty movements of its peacekeepers.

The Ya Libnan editorialist who compared his national army's death toll to the Americans' has a recommendation for UNIFIL:

It is time for the UNIFIL forces to station themselves along our borders with Syria to monitor border crossings and prevent arms smuggling. Predictably Syria will be furious and shut down its border, a move that will ultimately hurt the Syrian regime more than the Lebanese government. Syria after all does not recognize Lebanon, so perhaps UNIFIL presence will pressure Syria to agree to border demarcation, which will finally articulate the legal borders to enable proper monitoring by the Lebanese Internal Security Forces.

Good idea.

"Even the Jews did not do such cruel things to us"

Israel is often accused of torturing its Palestinian prisoners. What the Palestinians do to each other makes Israeli jails look like kindergarten.

Hassan al-Bazam, 20, who works as a bodyguard for Haniyeh, was kidnapped Monday night by Fatah gunmen. He said the kidnappers tortured him and forced him to curse God and the prophet Muhammad.

"I was on my way to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood [in Gaza City] when I was kidnapped by Fatah gunmen who were in two cars," Bazam said. "They took me to a building next to the beach, where they beat me severely with clubs and rifles.

"They extinguished cigarettes on my body and melted candles on my back. They also hung me from my hands and started shooting between my legs."

He said the kidnappers demanded a list of Hamas activists in his neighborhood and questioned him about the killing last month of a senior Fatah militiaman.

Bazam said he was released seven hours later, but only after he agreed to curse God and Muhammad. Bazam said the kidnappers also shaved his eyebrows, beard and part of his head, which was then marked with a Force 17 [Presidential Guard] sign.

"These people are real murderers," Bazam said. "Even the Jews did not do such cruel things to us."

And look at what the members of a PA security organization did to the brother of one of the new members of the PA's Presidential Guard, and a doctor, no less:

Fayez Barawi, a prominent physician from the northern Gaza Strip with close links to Hamas, was kidnapped, shot and moderately wounded on Thursday by members of one of the PA security organizations. He was abducted while attending a graduation ceremony of members of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Presidential Guard at a local security installation. His brother was one of the officers who graduated.

Barawi was taken to a nearby security base where PA officers shot him five times in different parts of the body.

Abdel Latif Kanu, a senior Hamas official in the northern Gaza Strip, strongly condemned the attack on Barawi, saying he had been shot in one of the bases belonging to Abbas's security forces.

Amnesty International, are you listening?

Ten Thousand New Hostages, Ten Million New Terrorists

A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln advises, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Unfortunately for John Edwards, he can't remain silent throughout a Presidential campaign and expect to win over voters, so he opens his mouth and reveals the truth of another aphorism: "Beauty is only skin deep, but stupid goes clean to the bone" (apologies to Dorothy Parker).

Case in point: his remarks today in New York City.

And this is actually the worst part of Bush’s ‘War on Terror Doctrine’: not only is it a distraction from the real war of stopping terrorists, it’s actually backfired. Today, we have more terrorists and fewer allies. And I want to say that again. Today, as a result of what George Bush has done, we have more terrorists and fewer allies. There was no group called “Al Qaeda in Iraq” before this president’s war in Iraq. But there was nearly global support for America in the period immediately following September the 11th.

"Nearly global support for America"? Hmmm. Is he thinking of the Palestinians dancing in the streets as the Twin Towers fell? Is he referring to the America-supporters who slit Daniel Pearl's throat in Pakistan? Did 9/11 cause a change of heart on the part of the al-Qaeda minions who had a few years earlier bombed U.S. embassies in East Africa and the U.S.S. Cole? Does he think that the expressions of sympathy offered by the regimes in Iran and Syria after 9/11 were genuine? Did he think that Saddam Hussein repented of his evil ways when he heard that America had been attacked?

The aftermath of 9/11 consisted of Islamicists barely concealing their glee and plotting to follow up on the WTC attack with more and grander operations, and with the genteel civilized nations of the West mainly clucking their tongues sympathetically and offering pats on the back. Although a number of nations offered to join both the NATO operation in Afghanistan and the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, when the lifting proved heavier than predicted, most of those allies proved less than willing to keep at the task until it was complete.

But here's the real stupidity: John Edwards's "mission-focused plan" for the collapse of Western civilization.

I want to talk for just a minute about my plan, and what I think we need to do, and what I will do as commander in chief.

I’ll strengthen our military so that we can better address the threat that is posed by terrorist groups to the United States. We’re going to strengthen our force structure. I will hold regular conferences with my top military leadership so that they’re advice is not filtered through civilians—it comes directly to me, as president of the United States. And I will give back military professionals control over operational decisions, not have those operational decisions made by civilians.

Second, I recognize what our military commanders have already made clear. Military action is only one of the tools that should be used to fight terrorism. We have to supplant the lore of violent extremists with the hope of education, opportunity and prosperity. There are today thousands who are committed to violence. I fully recognize that. And they have to be stopped, wherever they are, using whatever means are available to us. But there are millions more who today are sitting on the fence. We have to offer them a hand to our side instead of a shove to the other side of that fence. I’ll launch a global—a sweeping global effort to provide education and fight poverty. Here in the United States we’ll create a 10,000-member-strong Marshall Corps, all to ensure that terrorism does not take root in weak and failing states, which is exactly what is happing in Iraq.

My strategy will actually put America on the offensive footing. We not only will go find terrorists where they are today, using every tool available to us -- military, intelligence, work and information gathered by our allies and alliances -- but also, we’re going to undermine the long term forces of terrorism. We’re going to fight terror—potential terrorists, those who are sitting on the fence, toward us, toward opportunity and hope. And the way we’re going to do it is America is going to lead an international effort that once again reestablishes America as a leader in the world.

I know that there are terrorists who mean us harm today, and they have to be stopped. To suggest otherwise is to do exactly what I have criticized the Bush Administration of doing: to reduce the fight against terrorists to a bumper sticker slogan and use it for political gains. Using fear as a wedge issue may help win elections, but it will not protect Americans. For more than 200 years we have defeated our enemies though strength, through ideas, with confidence and with honor. To win the struggle against terror and uphold the greatness of America, we have to do the same. We have to come together and we have to cast fear aside.

"But there are millions more who today are sitting on the fence. We have to offer them a hand to our side instead of a shove to the other side of that fence." Reminds me of the old joke: My doctor is so good, if you're at death's door, he's sure to pull you through!

What "hand" does Edwards think we should offer those considering jihad against the West? "We have to supplant the lore of violent extremists with the hope of education, opportunity and prosperity." Incredible! The "lore" of these particular violent extremists is called the Quran, and it's precisely the West's success in "supplanting" it with education, opportunity and prosperity that drives extremists to become jihadists. The 9/11 plotters and the 7/7 bombers in London were not poor, uneducated and downtrodden: they were middle-class men who saw Western society as irredeemably corrupt and decadent, an irresistible temptation from the upright path and therefore something that must be annihilated utterly and erased from the pages of history (as Iran's Ahmadinejad declares will happen to Israel).

If Edwards is truly serious about winning over the fence-sitters, he should offer to envelop America's women in the burqa and the abaya, and promise to round up and exterminate America's homosexuals, atheists and pagans. Perhaps then those sitting on the fence will see that America is not so incompatible with their ideals, and will decide not to join the jihad. But if Edwards is not prepared to do those things, he had better recognize that his prescriptions for a helping hand will truly create more terrorists by the millions, for they will see America as not only morally corrupting but weak and unwilling to defend itself.

His counter-argument is that he is very willing to use force in defense of America, and to send American force to trouble spots whenever and wherever they arise, or, as he says in his position papers, "to deploy in Afghanistan and any other trouble spots that could develop." Not only is he lying, but he is stupid enough to think that we are stupid enough not to realize that he is lying. As he says, "There was no group called 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' before this president’s war in Iraq" -- but there is now, and rather than seeking to strengthen our deployment in the newly-arisen trouble spot that is Iraq, he has repeatedly promised to pull American forces out.

His proposal for a "10,000-member strong Marshall Corps" is equally revealing. This corps would consist of "professionals, modeled on the Reserves systems, who will work on stabilization and humanitarian missions." Professional what? Accountants? Lawyers? Their mission will be to stabilize weak and failing states. Well, two obvious candidates are Afghanistan and Iraq, weak states struggling to become democracies after decades of tyrrany. How would the Marshall Corps operate in Iraq after the withdrawal of American combat forces? Another weak state on the brink of failure is Pakistan, where an authoritarian but pro-American leader struggles to maintain power in the face of left-leaning politicians on one side and Islamic fundamentalists on the other. Will the Marshall Corps be able to give him the backbone to oust the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the Tribal Areas, or ensure that his successor -- and guardian of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- is neither an Islamic fundamentalist nor an anti-American socialist, either of which would allow Pakistan to be used with impunity as a base for al-Qaeda and the Taliban? What about Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Zimbabwe, or Burma (illegitimately renamed Myanmar), or any of the dozens of other weak and failing states?

The simple fact is, without massive American force deployed to protect them and to intimidate potential attackers, those 10,000 Marshall Corpsmen will be 10,000 potential American hostages, ripe for the plucking. We've had the Peace Corps for 40 years, and it didn't save the Cambodians, Rwandans, Congolese, Darfur Sudanese... how long must the death rolls be before even so well-coiffed an empty head as John Edwards's understands the lesson?

Ironically, Edwards made his inane remarks on the day after the anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. As resolute as FDR was in 1944, and as good an ally as he was to the British during the Battle of Britain, the D-Day landings represented the culmination of a failure of the United States to lead the world eight years earlier, when Hitler moved his military forces back into the Rhineland. Failing to require the European powers to stand up to this treaty violation, and unwilling to send American troops to deal with a "European matter," FDR allowed Hitler's plans for European conquest to take root, and D-Day saw the United States having to deal with them in full flower.

It is far too late to prevent al-Qaeda from marching into its Rhineland, for it is already infiltrated into Muslim communities in nations around the world, and has the unprecedented capacity to appeal to any devout Muslim to become, first, a fundamentalist believer, and then an al-Qaeda sleeper. We will not be able to pre-empt them with lawyers, accountants and social workers. We will have to show them that terrorism will not work against us, and the best method, time and place to do that is through military and political victory now, and support for a democratic government over the coming decades, in Iraq.

"Truman's Sixty-Year War"?

From the e-mail outbox of Gov. Howard Dean and the Democratic Party:

Dear [stuiec],

According to the White House, Iraq isn't George W. Bush's Vietnam -- it's his Korea.

Last week, Reuters reported that "President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role. The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years."

The American people voted last November to end the war in Iraq -- not occupy a country engulfed in civil war for decades. A 50-year plan for Iraq is not a strategy and it's certainly not acceptable. But tonight, as the Republicans square off in their third big presidential debate, you can be sure you'll hear the Republican candidates fall in line with their Commander-in-Chief.

Write a letter to your local newspaper, and let your neighbors know just how out of touch the Republican Party is with your community:

http://www.democrats.org/50years

The 2008 presidential hopefuls are already offering their support for the "Korea plan." On Friday, John McCain said:

"We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds...If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied."

In the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 72 percent of Americans disapproved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. Looking back, 61 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. never should have taken military action against Iraq in the first place.

The American people opposed the escalation. They opposed President Bush's timetable veto. And they oppose a 50-year war.

Now the dozen or so Republican presidential candidates vying for his job want to continue this same failed strategy. We can't let that happen.

Write a letter to your local paper about the Republican Party's plan for failure:

http://www.democrats.org/50years

The Democratic Party agrees: it's time to end the war and refocus on fighting terrorism and strengthening our national security.

Those are our values, and those are America's values.

Sincerely,

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

Funny, isn't it? The Korean War was the result of a Democrat President, Harry Truman, trying to make the United Nations appear strong by wielding military power. The result was less than decisive and necessitated outside forces remaining to defend South Korea for nearly sixty years. I guess back then, Democrats and Republicans agreed that the aftermath of World War II meant that the United States needed to remain not only vigilant but on the scene of regional conflicts with global implications.

Unfortunately, the Democrats unlearned this lesson in the 1960s, and countless millions have paid for their backsliding with their lives. But you never hear the Korean War called "Truman's War."

This isn't really new, but it's certainly nifty

Why Western ingenuity will triumph over Islamic fanaticism.

A robot could soon be a soldier's best friend on the battlefield under a proposal being developed by the Pentagon.

The mechanical warrior, called Bear, looks like an oversized toy with a teddy bear's face. However, it can squeeze through doorways while carrying a wounded serviceman.

The 6ft-tall remote-controlled device can travel long distances over bumpy terrain and carry out the toughest assignments.

Bear, short for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, is part of the new generation of "steel soldiers" being developed for Afghanistan and Iraq, reports New Scientist.

More on the program from the company developing it, VECNA Technologies:

The BEAR: Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot™

The patent-pending BEAR robot is Vecna Robotics' flagship program. Designed to find, pick up and rescue people in harm's way, the humanoid BEAR robot can do what humans can't: Lift heavy loads and carry them long distances. Whether on a battlefield, in a nuclear reactor core, near a toxic chemical spill, or inside a structurally-compromised building after an earthquake, the BEAR can rescue those in need as well as or better than humans can, without risking additional human life.


Above: Visualization of the BEAR robot PV2 carrying an injured servicemember.

The Vecna Robotics BEAR project has won key seed funding in the form of a grant from the US Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), a part of the US Army Medical Research and Material Command (USAMRMC).

One question: why only seed funding? This deserves full development funding, so it can go operational sooner than the projected four to five years from now.

The Palestinians have at least one growth industry

The Palestinian internicine killing industry showed robust growth in 2006, up 100% over the prior year.

The number of Palestinians killed by internal violence doubled in 2006 from the year before and is still rising, according to report presented Tuesday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The number of Palestinians killed by fellow Palestinians rose to 345 last year from 176 the year before, according to the report from the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights.

Through the first five months of 2007, the figure - which includes both gunmen and civilians - already had reached 271, said Mamdouh al-Aker, head of the group.

He blamed the increase on rising conflict between the Islamic Hamas and Abbas' more moderate Fatah. The two set up a coalition government in March to try to put a stop to months of street fighting that resulted in heavy casualties. On Tuesday, Abbas warned that internal violence posed a serious threat to his people.

"I told the president that there is no political will to fight chaos," al-Aker said, charging that the 80,000 members of the Palestinian security forces "are incapable of protecting the homeland and its citizens." Some of the security officers have been involved in the infighting.

Among last year's Palestinian victims, 106 died in clan violence and 100 were killed by infighting and faulty weapons use, including 40 children, said Lamis Alami, director of the commission.

After the disastrous failure of the greenhouse farming business that Israel and American Jewish donors transferred to the Gaza Palestinians, it looks like the U.S. and Israel now want to back this sure winner instead.

High-ranking defense officials told the Post Wednesday that security chiefs in Abbas's office passed on a "weapons shopping list" to Gen. Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator to Israel and the Gaza Strip, in the middle of May, asking for millions of bullets and thousands of rifle magazines, hand grenades and Kalashnikov automatic rifles.

The officials said Dayton then passed the list on to the Egyptians, who would need to provide the arms and ammunition, as well as to Israel's Defense Ministry, which would need to authorize the transfer.

The defense officials said that Dayton personally recommended that Israel permit the weapons supply. Two weeks ago, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East in Washington, Dayton stressed the importance of American efforts to bolster forces loyal to Fatah and said further help was necessary.

"We are entering a rough patch," Dayton said in reference to the recent escalation in factional fighting in Gaza, "but all is not lost and our regional partners share that sentiment. However, it is critical that those who support the legitimate authority and forces represented by President Abbas receive the critical assistance they need."

I wonder if backbones were on that "shopping list"? Fatah forces haven't really distinguished themselves in their recent clashes with Hamas fighters.

Gitmo? This is a case for Barney Miller!

Why did they send this guy to Guantanamo Bay?

WASHINGTON — A suspected Al Qaeda terrorist was captured in East Africa and taken to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

He was identified as Abdullahi Sudi Arale.

"We believe him to be an extremely dangerous member of the Al Qaeda network," said Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Whitman alleged the prisoner served as a courier between East African Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and helped African extremists get weapons and explosives.

The military judges at Gitmo say he can't get justice there! Rep. Jane Harman and Sen. Dianne Feinstein say it's an evil place that should be shut down! According to Sen. John McCain, he's at risk of torture there! And according to John Edwards, we aren't even at war!

So I suggest he be booked at the 12th Precinct. I bet Fish could get him to talk.