Propaganda?

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html


Certainly, the photographs are distressing, and indeed they are meant to be. As this piece tells us:
Until recent years, images of civilian casualties in wars often took days to appear in newspapers, but now they can be captured and transmitted around the world to newspaper Web sites, where they are posted immediately, adding to the shock value that sketchy words by reporters often cannot capture. This happened again Sunday morning in the case of the Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana that left dozens dead, reportedly at least half of them children sleeping in their beds overnight.The photos, taken by The Associated Press, Reuters, and others, showed bodies in the rubble, or being taken away; survivors digging or wailing…But the photographers, it seems, are not too fussy about how they go about "adding to the shock value". These two sequences illustrate the extent to which photographers on the scene are prepared to ensure that the "shock value" is maximised.In this first of the two sequences, we see a shot by Reuters and taken by Adnan Hajj, timed at 2:21 pm. It has the caption:
Rescuers pull the body of a toddler victim of an Israeli air raid on Qana that killed more than 60 people, the majority of them women and children, in south Lebanon, July 30, 2006.Note the "rescue worker" in the foreground, complete with olive green military-style helmet and fluorescent jacket, with what appears to be a flack jacket underneath. His glasses, "designer stubble", blue tee-shirt and jeans make him quite a distinctive figure. Note also, he has a radio in his jacker pocket and he has bare hands, things which becomes relevant later.The next shot in this sequence is credited to AP's Kevin Frayer. Timed at 4.09 pm, it shows the same "rescue" worker, and has this caption:
Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defense workers carry the body of a small child covered in dust from the rubble of his home that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday. Lebanese Red Cross officials said 56 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.This is horrific, but a scrutiny of the framing does suggest that the subject is offering the victim to the photographer.Just in case you missed it, however, we get another view, courtesy of Reuter's Adnan Hajj, with a time given of 4:30 pm - some 20 minutes after the first shot. The caption reads:
A rescuer carries the body of a toddler victim of an Israeli air raid on Qana that killed more than 60 people, the majority of them women and children, in south Lebanon, July 30, 2006.Interestingly, in this sequence, the pocket radio is missing. And, although the positioning of the child looks the same, the angle of the shot looks to be about ninety degrees from the first, but in each case, the "worker" is facing towards the camera. The shots are clearly posed.But now, timed at 12:45 pm, an hour and twenty minutes before the child's body is pictured being pulled from the ruins, we get a picture from AP's Kevin Frayer of the same child's body being paraded by our ubiquitous helmeted rescue worker.
Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defense workers carry the body of a small child covered in dust from the rubble of his home that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Lebanese Red Cross officials said 56 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.At 12.53 pm, after an interval of eight minutes, Frayer photographs the child's body again, from a different angle. The caption is the same. This time, though, our helmeted worker is showing some distress, which was absent in the previous photograph.The photographs show the characters moving down the hill, with little distance between the scenes, which suggest that they have been taken sequentially and spontaneously. But they have not. The eight minute interval has allowed a crowd to gather around "green helmet". Furthermore, "orange jacket" has switched from left to right. Note also the tee-shirted man in the centre of the picture. Then, timed at 1:01 pm, eight minutes on, we get another picture from Frayer. Once again, the caption is the same but this time the child's body is being paraded aloft by our ubiquitous helmeted rescue worker, but the tee-shirted character had moved from centre to right and is taking his turn to displaying his emotion to the camera. The UN soldier in the background has turned away, confirming a time lapse. The scene is clearly staged, as have been those preceding it.Next, we have the second of the two sequences, the first shot of which, timed at 7.21 am shows a dead girl in an ambulance. Taken by AP, the caption reads:
Among others, the body of a child recovered under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, is placed in an ambulance Sunday July 30.In the next frame, we have the same girl, this time apparently being placed in the ambulance. Also taken by AP,this time by Mohammed Zaatari the caption here reads:
A Lebanese rescuer carries the body of a young girl recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli warplane missiles at the village of Qana, near the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Dozens of civilians, including many children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that flattened houses in this southern Lebanon village - the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.Intriguingly, though, the dateline given is 10.25 am, three hours after she has already been photographed in the ambulance.Also from AP's Nasser Nasser, we see the same worker, showing obvious distress, carrying the same girl. But now he is wearing his fluorescent jacket and helmet and has acquired latex gloves. He has also got his radio back. The photograph is timed at 10.44 am and the caption reads:
A civil defense worker carries the body of Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by an Israeli airstrike at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Israeli missiles struck this southern Lebanese village early Sunday, flattening houses on top of sleeping residents. The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500.Here we are now, same "worker" and same girl, but this time it is done for the benefit of EPA, the photographer, Mohamed Messara, the worker rushing towards a uniformed Red Cross worker. This caption (without a time) reads:
A rescue worker carries the body of a Lebanese girl after an Israeli air strike on the village of Qana, east of the southern port city of Tyre, on Sunday 30 July 2006. At least 51 people were killed, many of them children, and several others wounded in the raid Sunday, witnesses and rescue workers said.But now, for the benefit of AFP, the photgraph taken by Nicolas Asfouri, we have the same unfortunate child being handled by another worker, the original worker showing in the background, having passed the casualty on. The timing of the photograph is 7.16 pm (now apparently corrected to 6:46 am) and the caption reads:
A rescue worker puts the body of a dead girl on a gurney after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. Israel agreed to temporarily halt air strikes in south Lebanon a day after 52 people were killed, many of them sleeping children, when Israeli warplanes bombarded the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering global outrage and warnings of retribution for alleged "war crimes".Remember, however, earlier in the sequence, the girl is being carried to the ambulance, by the other worker, sans jacket, helmet and gloves.Finally, in this sequence, we get another shot from AP's Nasser Nasser, again without a timing but with this caption:
A civil defence worker carries a body of a young Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006.Whatever else, the event in Qana was a human tragedy. But the photographs do not show it honestly. Rather, they have been staged for effect, exploiting the victims in an unwholesome manner. In so doing, they are no longer news photographs - they are propaganda. And, whoever said the camera cannot lie forgot that photographers can and do. Those lies have spread throughout the world by now and will be in this morning's newspapers, accepted as real by the millions who view them.The profession of photo-journalism thereby is sadly diminished by them, and the trust in those who took them and in those who carried them is misplaced. Truly, we are dealing with loathesome creatures.COMMENT THREAD
permalink posted by Richard @ 12:46 AM Comments forum
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The pictures that acompanied this article were graphic, a limp lifeless body of a small child being held aloft and paraded around in most of these pictures. It is difficult to believe that someone could have been so callous, but it does appear the poor child's body was used for propaganda pictures. It is also disconcerting that the same "workers"holding the body appeared in most of the pictures taken at various times, while the captions suggested in most of the photos that the child had just been removed from the rubble.

This also correlates with some articles I read about one Israeli airstrike on the building occurring at 1 am local time, but that the building didn't fall until 7 hours later. There is no indication why , if the building didn't fall at 1 am, the women and children weren't evacuated at some time in those 7 hours prior to the structure's collapse. Some have speculated that the Hezbos had stored munitions of some sort there ( a tactic they have often used), and that for an unknown reason those munitions detonated at 8 am, destroying the building. Probably we won't ever know what happened for sure, but the village was warned with leaflets prior to the start of hostilites, and this is the same village where a similar incident happened back in the early 90's, so it is odd that they did not take the warnings to leave the area prior to the start of hostilities seriously. It is an odd "coincidence" that an attack on a place in the 90's that forced Israel to cease fighting at that time, is mirrored so closely by this new attack in the same village. One villager is even quoted in another article I read as saying 'we didn't think they would do anything', which indicates that they did get the Israeli warning, but surprisingly, in light of what happened a decade ago, chose to ignore it. So who's fault is it? All I can say is some 60 village women and children who could have escaped had they heeded the warnings, paid for that folly.

Time After Time

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060622-9999-lz1c22cause.html

Notice something wrong? Are our clocks ticking backward? The known laws of physics say there's no reason why the past, present and future must occur in that order. Backward works, too.By Scott LaFeeUNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 22, 2006
CRISTINA MARTINEZ BYVIK / Union-Tribune
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
The answer would seem to be yes, if only because time always moves forward, drawing not just “we few” but everyone and everything “onward to new era.”
But what if time is like the palindrome above? What if the so-called arrow of time flies both ways, forward and back? What then? What now? What next?
People have debated the nature of time since, well, people invented it. Time is, in many ways, a fabrication of our minds, a superficial construct that helps us explain the universe, plot our course through existence and show up when we're supposed to.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once,” Albert Einstein once said.
And so it goes, one thing happens, then another – a phenomenon called cause-and-effect. “It's a notion so deeply ingrained that it's hard to think about things any other way,” said Daniel Sheehan, a professor of physics at the University of San Diego.
But Sheehan does, as do other physicists who are meeting this week at USD to discuss and debate the concept of “reverse causation,” a fantastical notion that suggests effects can precede causes, and the future can influence the past, assuming the past and future actually “exist” in the first place.
(The symposium is part of the 87th annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)
“I don't think we've reached any kind of consensus coherent enough to be called a state of thinking,” said York Dobyns, a physicist at Princeton University who is attending the meeting. “There's a tremendous amount of disagreement about reverse causation between people who think the whole subject is just too speculative to deal with and people who have actually grappled with it, either theoretically or experimentally.”
This much, however, can be said: While reverse causation (also called backward or retro-causation) may sound like science fiction, it is firmly grounded in classical laws of physics. These laws say time is symmetrical, that it moves – or should be able to move – in all directions with equal ease.
Case in point: electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. (The others are gravity and strong and weak nuclear force.)
In the 19th century, Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell developed equations explaining how electricity and magnetism work in tandem. It was Maxwell, in fact, who determined that electromagnetic energy, such as light and radio, traveled in waves through empty space at the speed of light.
But Maxwell's equations say nothing about the direction of time. It's irrelevant. The equations work equally well whether electromagnetic waves arrive after or before they are transmitted. In effect, writes Paul Davies, a physicist at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology and author of “About Time,” the waves “are indifferent to the distinction between past and future.”
Feeling dizzy yet?
Most physicists accept the idea of time symmetry (at least in the context of things like Maxwell's equations). The same cannot be said of reverse causation, which goes farther by suggesting the future can influence the past.

CRISTINA MARTINEZ BYVIK / Union-Tribune“The tendency is to ignore it, to say it's just a fact of nature that time moves one way,” said Michael Ibison, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin.
If reverse causation is real, it most likely occurs at the largely theoretical and unseen level of quantum mechanics, a place where subatomic particles with names like mesons and quarks interact in ways contrary to both classical physics and common sense.
To wit: Mesons exist simultaneously as both particles and waves until they are observed. But until they are observed, they don't exist.
“Anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling dizzy hasn't yet understood the first word about it,” said the late, great Danish physicist Niels Bohr who, incidentally, invented much of the theory.
“People know how to calculate with quantum mechanics, but that's not to say they know what it means,” agreed Sheehan. “Quantum mechanics is like poetry. The poem is right there, for everyone to see, but it has many different interpretations.”
Sheehan offers a couple of scenarios to ponder:
First, imagine a large boulder at the top of a hill. The boulder begins rolling downhill. Now freeze the action with the boulder midway along its descent. Call this the boulder's present. At this point in time, Sheehan says the boulder is being influenced both by its past (when it was atop the hill) and by its future (when it will come to rest at the bottom of the hill). The boulder's current position midway down the hill cannot happen without the effect of both the past and the future.
“The present is always a negotiation between the past and the future,” said Sheehan.
Or think about this: You're invited to a Saturday wedding. On Friday, you go to the barber for a haircut. As you sit in the chair, the future is influencing the present. The wedding hasn't happened. It may not happen at all. And yet its possibility changes what will be the past.
The best evidence for reverse causation – perhaps the only evidence, said Sheehan – comes from parapsychology, which investigates phenomena not explained by the known laws of science, such as telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis (the alleged ability to move matter with the mind).
Numbers in limbo
In 1992, a paranormal investigator named Helmut Schmidt set up a radioactive decay counter to generate sequences of random numbers, both positive and negative. The numbers were recorded, but not seen by any person. Several months later, these numbers were shown to a group of students who had been asked to use their “mind power” to skew the sequences in favor of positive numbers. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent cheating.

According to fundamental physical laws, there should have been an equal number of positive and negative numbers. But Schmidt reported that the students saw more positive numbers; the probability of that happening was less than 1 in a 1,000.
Did the students actually influence the outcome of radioactive decay rates recorded months before? Henry Stapp, a theoretical physicist at UC Berkeley, thought so.
Stapp was one of the independent monitors of Schmidt's experiments. Two years later, he published a possible explanation for what had happened. In essence, he suggested that human consciousness had interacted with the numbers, effectively altering the past (when the numbers were recorded).
The idea, which Stapp and others have since expanded upon and promoted, is that human consciousness is an unexplained, nonlinear force of nature. Like subatomic particles in quantum mechanics, the numbers in Schmidt's experiment existed in a sort of limbo in which they were positive, negative and neither until the students saw them. At that point, human consciousness and intent (instructions to think positive) induced the numbers to assume a specific condition or quantum state.
The physics of consciousness is controversial, to say the least. And Stapp is first to say much more study and experimentation is necessary, especially by respected scientists in well-regarded scientific journals.
“You'd think people would want to either refute or confirm some of these reports,” said Stapp, “but the only people willing to test them are people who already tend to believe them. Most mainstream labs shy away for fear of sullying their reputations, as if they would be dirtying their hands by even imagining some of this is possible.”
Mind games
For Stapp, who now works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, it's not inconceivable that quantum mechanics plays some role in alleged paranormal phenomena like extrasensory perception (ESP) and remote viewing, which is the projection of one's consciousness to distant locations.
These abilities may be a consequence of nonlocality, a well-established quantum concept that says entities far-flung in distance or time are still entangled and interact via a faster-than-light, quantum mechanical connection.
Einstein called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance.” He couldn't explain it, didn't like it and regarded it as quantum trickery.
In recent decades, nonlocality has been repeatedly observed, tested and measured in experiments. In one seminal experiment in 1982, physicist Alan Aspect at the University of Paris noted that by changing the polarity of one speeding photon (a particle of light) he could induce another photon from the same source speeding in the opposite direction to change its polarity. The interaction happened faster than light, with sufficient distance between the photons that they shouldn't have “known” what was happening to the other. And yet, inexplicably, there was some sort of link.
In contrast, paranormal phenomena like ESP and remote viewing are not as well-substantiated. Supporting evidence tends to be anecdotal. Purposeful deception and fraud are common.
In the 1970s, the U.S. Army and the CIA spent millions investigating the potential of remote viewing, but that effort apparently went for naught and funding ceased. In 1979, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program began investigating interaction between human consciousness and the physical world. Over the years, PEAR has produced a wealth of data indicating human intent by itself, without any physical connection, can alter the behavior or results of unthinking machines. The PEAR experiments, many similar to Schmidt's 1992 random number generator test, produced only small effects, but they were observable, measurable and repeatable.
PEAR's operations, however, are now in the process of closing down, with researchers moving on to other institutions.
Dobyns, an analytical coordinator for PEAR, said he still thinks “parapsychology and related areas are useful places to look for evidence (of reverse causation).”
But he is not optimistic that many mainstream physicists will ever take up the cause. “They say it's impossible because there's no evidence and there's no evidence because it's impossible.”
But physicists like Sheehan say what we do understand about the universe fundamentally depends upon the idea that time is fluid and dynamic. “To say that it's impossible for the future to influence the past is to deny half of the predictions of the laws of physics,” he said.
Nobody's predicting a speedy or conclusive resolution to the question of reverse causation. Sheehan says it's the journey that counts, how we get from Point A to B to C – or, perhaps, from C to B to A.

I find this fascinating. The future may actually influence the past? LOL. I think it may be more likely that what we think of time, past, present, and future, may actually not be that way at all. I've read that time may be m0re like a river, where past, present and future can be compared to bends in the river, all are actually occurring at the same time, just from our perspective we can only experience one at a time. If that is the case, then the future isn't actually influencing the past, but contemporaneous events may be influencing each other, which would much easier for me to believe. Events that we view as having happened in the past, even the distant past, may be all actually be occurring in some sort of a"now' .( Sounds like one of those discussions you have with friends that seemed so wise at 2 in the morning, but in the light of day seem only too flakey LOL) Have to watch for more on this topic beofre I get too excited.

Pacifism, a Sure Recipe for War?

Pacifists Versus Peace by Thomas Sowell July21, 2006

"One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.
"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements — that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.
Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.
Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.
There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia — not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.
There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.
"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.
That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places — but who looks at track records?
Remember the Falkland Islands war, when Argentina sent troops into the Falklands to capture this little British colony in the South Atlantic?
Argentina had been claiming to be the rightful owner of those islands for more than a century. Why didn't it attack these little islands before? At no time did the British have enough troops there to defend them.
Before there were "peace" movements and the U.N., sending troops into those islands could easily have meant finding British troops or bombs in Buenos Aires. Now "world opinion" condemned the British just for sending armed forces into the South Atlantic to take back their islands.
Shamefully, our own government was one of those that opposed the British use of force. But fortunately British prime minister Margaret Thatcher ignored "world opinion" and took back the Falklands.
The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."
British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.
Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after that.
For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace" movements had left them with inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese knew that. That is why they launched the war.
"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war."


An excellent analysis of pacifism if I've ever read one. Most normal people are horrified by the thought of war, and they should be, but pacifism has made war not only more inevitable but more infinitely terrible when it eventually does come. There is an episode on Star Trek ( the original series) that brings this home in a graphic mannner. Capt Kirk arrives at a planet that has supposedly been at war with a neighboring planet for 500 years. This puzzles the Capt, because although the residents say how many citizens have been killed in this war, there is no evidence of any harm to the infrastructure and the citizens seem to be living an idyllic life. Kirk is horrified to discover that the way this has been accomplished has been by "sanitizing" the horrors of war. They have turned the conduct of the war over to computers, which periodically announce virtual attacks and virtual damage. As soon as an attack occurs, computers decide how many people would have been killed, who they would be, and orders those people to report to a "disintegration chamber" where they are vaporized to a very real death. Neat, and all so very civilized. Kirk destroys the computers that run the war, causing the leaders of the planet to panic because their enemy will now start a real war. Kirk says : "Actual war is a very messy business. Very, very messy business. Death. Destruction. Disease. Horror. That's what war is all about. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. "

Real war should be avoided because both sides want to negotiate to avoid or end its horrors. "Peace" movements, because they remove the cost for nations who want war, no matter how well intentioned they may be, just as they did after WWI serve only to make non aggressive nations less able, or even unable, to defend themselves against emboldened aggressor nations.

One side can not continue to to be forced to attempt to negotiate while the other side continues provocations with impunity. That is a recipe for the horror never ceasing since one side does not bear any serious consequences for initiating hostilities. There is no "tit for tat" here, unlike the media seem to want to portry , Israel has attempted to spare civilian lives as much as is possible, while Hezballah, and others like it, seek out civilian targets. In fact they often boast of how many Israeli civilians they have killed in this manner. The major figure Hezballah wants released is in an Israeli prison for attacking a family IN THEIR home, taking a four year old girl and the father captive, taking them both to a beach, shooting the father and killing the little girl by smashing her head against a rock. There will be no peace in the Middle East unless and until the Islamists are held to same standards of judgement as the world holds Israel to. Hopefully Israel will be able to ignore "world opinion" long enough this time to do decisively what should have been done before, defeat their enemies to the point where the cost of war will impel them to make a real and lasting peace.

Fish with Teeth?

This fish, a native of South America and not surprisingly, related to the "piranha" was found in a lake in Texas this week.

Lends new meaning to the phrase 'Are the fish biting?'

Miserable Ingrates

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071900249_pf.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_071906/content/anchorman_2.guest.html

The recent exodus of Americans from Lebanon has shown a less than flattering portrait of my countrymen. First of all, I am surprised that there would be 25,000 Americans staying in a country that the US State Dept had, four times since November 2005, issued warnings discouraging Americans from going there. One warning said:
The U.S. Government considers the potential threat to U.S. Government personnel assigned to Beirut sufficiently serious to require them to live and work under a strict security regime. This limits, and may occasionally prevent, the movement of U.S. Embassy officials in certain areas of the country. These factors, plus limited staffing, may hinder timely assistance to Americans in Lebanon. Unofficial travel to Lebanon by U.S. Government employees and their family members requires prior approval by the Department of State. U.S. citizens who travel to Lebanon despite this Travel Warning should exercise heightened caution when traveling in parts of the southern suburbs of Beirut, portions of the Bekaa Valley and South Lebanon, and the cities of Sidon and Tripoli. Hizballah has not been disarmed, it maintains a strong presence in many of these areas, and there is the potential for action by other extremist groups in Tripoli. American air carriers are prohibited from using Beirut International Airport (BIA) due to continuing concern about airport and aircraft security arrangements. For similar reasons, the Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines (MEA) is not permitted to operate service into the United States. Official U.S. government travelers exercise additional security measures when using Beirut International Airport. Palestinian groups hostile to both the Lebanese government and the U.S. operate largely autonomously inside refugee camps in different areas of the country. Intra-communal violence within the camps has resulted in violent incidents such as shootings and explosions. Occasionally this violence spills over into neighboring cities and towns. Travel by U.S. citizens to Palestinian camps should be avoided. Asbat al-Ansar, a terrorist group with apparent links to al-Qaeda, has targeted Lebanese, U.S. and other foreign government interests. It has been outlawed by the Lebanese government but continues to maintain a presence in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp. Dangers posed by landmines and unexploded ordnance throughout south Lebanon are significant and also exist in other areas where civil war fighting was intense. Travelers should be aware of posted landmine warnings and strictly avoid all areas where landmines and unexploded ordnance may be present. Tensions remain in Lebanon's southern border with the possibility of Hizballah and Palestinian militant activity at any time.

Another recent state dept bulletin says "Events in Lebanon underscore the need for caution and sound personal security precautions. Since March 2005, there have been 13 separate bombings in Lebanon, resulting in the deaths of at least 11 people and injuries to more than 100 others. " Would YOU got to a place that your government had issued this kind of warnings about? For a vacation? If you absolutely had to go for some urgent reason, would you take your family with you? So first off, I am curious as to what would prompt anyone to go to Lebanon considering these warnings. And could anyone credibly say they were caught unaware by the developments there?

There are a number of people complaining about how long it took for the American government to rescue them from a place they should never have gone to in the first place. The American government was castigated for not being as fast to have arrangements made for removing their citizens as some other countries. America has substantially more citizens in Lebanon than most other countries, and Americans would be "high profile" targets, so it would be reasonable to assume that it might take longer to set up removal plans for American citizens .

Then we have people complaining about the state of the accomodations that they are escaping on. One particularly vapid young woman ( we can be fairly certain she was vapid because she was identified as having been attending college in Lebanon despite the aforementioned warnings) complained that there was no food on board the cruise ship and complained even more that when US Marines arrived with 130 chicken sandwiches for Americans ONLY that they ( the Marines) should have brought more. Perhaps they should have brought more, but perhaps the cruise ship company should have stocked some food on the ship. Furthermore, the trip is only 100 miles, was hurriedly arranged, and under emergency evacuation conditions so perhaps the fact that these people were able to even get out of Lebanon should be given credit instead of whining about the conditions. A quick skim of the news today shows that citizens of many other countries also were whining and moaning about the service they received from their governments, instead of thanking God that they were able to escape.
These people were in Lebanon due to their own stupidity, either because they knew about the warnings and chose to ignore them ( really really dumb) or had no idea there even were any warnings ( breathtakingly uber-stupid). They should be ashamed to kvetch about the style in which they escaped Lebanon , and grateful to the government that had to rush to rescue them from their own stupidity.

Saying of the Week

"Let's not get stuck on stupid." said by General Russel Honore, Comm. La. National Guard to reporters who kept asking the same questions he'd already answered in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Rita

I don't usually comment on my "Saying of the Week" choice but this one is outstanding and will be a classic. Who hasn't been annoyed by reporters asking the same pointless question six ways from Sunday? I'd have paid money to see the expression on the face of that reporter, LOL. And I suspect many other military men who'd been similarly bombardly by the press quietly said "Right on!" when they heard about it.

Global Warming a Naturally Occurring Event?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/358953.stm
http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/06_Earth_Changes/060719.Sun-GW.html
These articles cite increasing evidence that man made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels may play less a part in global warming than originally thought. Indeed, the actions of humans may play such a minor role as to be neglible at best. It seems that the sun periodically goes through cycles where it is more active, and since the weather on earth is influenced directly by the sun, these periods of increased solar activity result in dynamic weather here on earth. There is evidence that the earth has gone through "global warming" such as we currently seem to be having now a number of times in the past, when there obviously was no possiblity that man was the culprit, and we eventually emerged from those periods in the natural course of events. In fact, one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for "global warming" being triggered by our sun and not by man made activity is the fact that several of the planets in our solar system have also indicated evidence of dramatic warming . Obviously man made emissions have not caused any "global warming" on Mars.
This latest research highlights the folly of the "we must do something, anything NOW" approach to global warming before we have a more complete understanding of the problem. Any of the current popular "solutions" to global warming carry the possibility of significant disruptions to our society, and should not be implemented without serious consideration of the benefits vs the enormous cost to our society. Additionally, the primary way suggested to deal with global warming currently is to drastically cut fossil fuel emissions in the industrialized countries ( a scientific smoke screen for the "soak the rich" school of thought) without addressing the fact that the vast majority of these emissions are currently produced by the "Second" and "Third World" countries. Without fully investigating the actual cause of the warming prior to advocating action, we run the risk of making the cure worse than the disease.

You Are Who You Are Thanks to Your Siblings?

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1209949,00.html
I found this article from Time magazine dealing with the relationship of siblings fascinating. The author says that "traditional" research has maintained that parents, friends, spouses and innate personality have been what shapes us most. The dynamics of siblings has, until fairly recently, not even been considered. We learn negotiation,sharing, arguing, fighting, many of our most significants traits from the time spent with our siblings. We will spend more time in the company of our siblings than with anyone else, and in our most formative years. Parents may pass away, spouses may go, but siblings will always be siblings. Even how well we can relate to the opposite sex may be related to whether we had a sibling of the opposite gender to "study". I found myself nodding in agreement with a great deal of what the article said. No matter how much or how little we are alike, for better or worse, those struggles with brothers and sisters have helped shape us to become the people we are today.
And if you don't have siblings, you've probably done just fine too. In the print article in Time there was a section that is not included in the online article that briefly delved into the dynamics of children from families with one child. The most recent research puts the lie to the thought that 'only children' are self centered and so forth. The latest studies have shown that single children do quite well with mastering social interaction and develop into just as well rounded, socially adept people as those with siblings. And my own thought, sometimes they are even better, aren't they?

Hard to Believe

http://jewishworldreview.com/0706/west071006.php3

This article by Diane West says a great deal. One of the things she mentions is that at a recent "rally" in London by Islamic militants, the 9/11 and the 7/7 murderers were praised as martyrs. She said demonstrators carried signs saying: "Behead Those Who Insult Islam," said one placard. "Slay Those Who Insult Islam," said another. "Kill Those Who Insult Islam," and (for variety) "Butcher Those Who Mock Islam". She went on to tell about a news piece about the demonstration. A van driver stopped and criticized the protestors. The interchange went :
"Listen to me, listen to me," said the policeman, shaking his finger at the van driver. "They have a right to protest. You let them do it. You say things like that you'll get them riled and I end up in (trouble). You say one more thing like that, mate, and you'll get yourself nicked (arrested) and I am not kidding you, d'you understand me?"
Van driver: "They can do whatever they want and I can't?"
Policeman: "They've got their way of doing it. The way you did it was wrong. You've got one second to get back in your van and get out of here."
Van driver: (bitter) "Freedom of speech."
This vignette wasn't law and order in action. It was desperate, craven appeasement. As the bobby put it, "You say things like that, you'll get them riled." And we mustn't get them riled. Let Choudary and his band of thugs praise mass killings, threaten more attacks and advocate murder by beheading on London streets in broad daylight — but don't get them riled. " ( D. West)

This isn't just happening in London folks, this attitude is common everywhere in the West. Once again, we pride ourselves on our "tolerance" and "diversity" towards it though. This isn't a polite difference of opinion over whether liberals are soft on criminals, or conservatives hard hearted toward the poor, over whether certain parts of society should be able to marry or not, or how to deal with illegal immigration. We are tolerating, no, encouraging, people who are praising and encouraging mass murder. And threatening to arrest those who find that talk offensive. It IS appeasement, whatever else you want to call it. No matter how many "sensitivity" courses we are forced to sit through, the fact remains that there is no give and take, we are told we must be "sensitive" to their cultural mores, but not them to the countries which have taken them in. We continue to tolerate this type of behavior, and they perceive us as weak, which encourages more of it. Just as we can't call " Fire!!" in a crowded theater, incitement to violence in this manner should not be tolerated. I am certain that if a group of marchers had been carrying signs saying "Death to Those Who Insult Christianity", " Butcher Those Who Mock Christ" and "Behead Those who Insult Christianity" and praising people who murdered in the name of Christianity, the response by authorities would be very different.

Political Correctness May Get Us Killed Yet

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/433227p-364959c.html
The news today is that a group of "jihadists" ( trans. Islamic terrrorists) has been discovered plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel in NY City . They hoped to not only destroy the tunnel, but to also flood lower Manhattan by doing so. (Obviously they were long on terrorist thoughts and short on physics since water usually stays in the lowest part of an area, and water rushing in to fill a blown tunnel under a river isn't likely to do much flooding onto the land surrounding the river banks). Had this plot succeeded however, there could have been many people killed, the tunnel would have been unusable for some period of time, perhaps even causing a great disruption of business in the area. So far only one foreign national, a Lebanese, has been arrested for this plot, leaving me to wonder what the nationalites are of the remaining plotters. Could they be Americans? If so, we have additional evidence that we have a critical problem, how do we find Americans in our midst who want to kill their fellow Americans? How do we begin to identify the danger from within?
This was an interesting article for another reason, for what it didn't say. I read the article carefully and no where did it mention any more about these people than that they were "jihadists". I suppose this means that when we profile people looking for possible terrorists, we should ask them if they are "jihadi" or not. The one thing carefully omitted from this article is that this operation was mounted by radical Islamics, but you'd be hard pressed to discover that from reading it. Had this plot been carried out by any other religious group, I suspect it would have been headlined " Shintoists Set Plot in Motion", " Baptists Bring Big Bomb Plot to City" , "Jews Jump at Chance to Get Even" or "Catholic Nuns Strap on Bombs" , but instead this article makes no mention of the crucial fact of what is behind this action, and behind most others like it recently. Certainly not all Muslims are terrorists, but the majority of terrorism lately is being carried out by people who profess to be doing it in the name of Islam. Until we can clearly acknowledge that fact, and utilize that knowledge as a tool to attempt to discover who are plotting these things, we are in danger of of letting them succeed because we are too "politcally correct" to admit the obvious. If we are unable to even mention the common thread among the many terrorist actions that have been occurring, then we are not likely to discover how to find the enemy within.