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http://www.logipundit.com/2006/11/hezbollah-coming-soon-to-your-hometown.html

article from matthew rothschild

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:10:32 GMT

the following article appeared on common dreams, and it's good, and i suggest all read it, and then comment of course.

cheers

www.commondreams.org/views06/0906-23.htm

2 articles on IRAN and US

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:08:20 GMT

Two Views

The U.S. and Iran: War or Dialogue?

No War With Iran

By Charley Reese

If we allow the Bush administration to drag this country into a war with Iran, we should all burn our voter-registration cards and go ahead and admit that we are no longer worthy of being citizens of a self-governing republic.

For heaven�s sake, the administration is employing the same tactics it used to justify the war against Iraq�refusal to negotiate, lies, disinformation and demonization of the Iranian leader. Are we going to fall for the exact same con job all over again? If so, we are far too dumb to be trusted near a voting booth.

Recently, a story was floated that the Iranians had passed legislation requiring religious minorities to wear an identifying badge. �Nazi, Nazi� cried the neocon warmongers. Trouble is, the story was completely false [see article p. 23]. No such legislation was passed, and this bit of disinformation was knocked askew by the representative of Iran�s Jewish community in the Iranian parliament.

The source of the story was an Iranian who had been a big shot when the shah was in power and is now with a public-relations firm that represents�surprise�many of the neoconservatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also told a big whopper when he said Iran was only months away from making a nuclear bomb. No nuclear expert I�m aware of agrees with that assessment, and Olmert is no nuclear expert. Even assuming Iran wants a bomb, it is years away from being able to produce one.

It�s clear that the Bush administration has chosen war. One, it refuses to negotiate with Iran; two, it refuses to recognize Iran�s right, as a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes; three, it has already set up an office in the Pentagon and another in the State Department to agitate for regime change; and four, it has begun its anti-Iranian propaganda campaign.

President Bush is a liar when he says he wants to use diplomacy to end the crisis. In the first place, he created the crisis; in the second place, he refuses to negotiate; and in the third place, he has, for all practical purposes, issued an ultimatum: Give up your right to enrich uranium, or we�ll attack.

No country in the world wants us to attack Iran except Israel. That�s no surprise. If the American people haven�t figured out that Israel exerts an undue and injurious influence on the American government, then that�s another reason for them to tear up their voter-registration cards.

And if driving toward war with Iran isn�t bad enough, the Bush administration has restarted the Cold War with Russia by its incessant criticism of Vladimir Putin�s government. I think, sometimes, that the whole Bush administration is out of touch with reality and should be on medication, starting with the president and vice president.

When you consider the wars, the profligate spending, the out-of-control debt and trade deficits, the refusal to control the borders, the alienation of most of the world and the constant spitting on the Constitution and civil liberties, you can conclude that this administration is going to destroy the United States as we know it. I don�t say that lightly. I never in a million years would have imagined that this administration would do what it�s done.

And if you are one of those arm-chair jingoists who thinks it�s fun to kill foreigners, just keep that thought in mind when you have to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline and the economy comes crashing down on your head. Sure, we can damage Iran�s nuclear facilities and kill a lot of Iranians, but we can�t do it and keep the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf at the same time.

It isn�t out of concern for the Iranians that the rest of the world doesn�t want a war. It�s because other nations recognize the damage it will cause the world economy. It�s also because they recognize that this is a phony crisis, like Iraq�s mythical weapons of mass destruction.

Even if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, so what. We have thousands; the Israelis have hundreds. Iran isn�t going to attack anybody. It hasn�t attacked anyone in the past 100 years.

Charley Reese is a nationally syndicated columnist. This column was first syndicated June 2, 2006. Copyright �2006 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

If Iran Is Ready to Talk, the U.S. Must Do so Unconditionally

By Jonathan Steele

It is 50 years since the greatest misquotation of the Cold War. At a Kremlin reception for Western ambassadors in 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced: �We will bury you.� Those four words were seized on by American hawks as proof of aggressive Soviet intent.

Doves who pointed out that the full quotation gave a less threatening message were drowned out. Khrushchev had actually said: �Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.� It was a harmless boast about socialism�s eventual victory in the ideological competition with capitalism. He was not talking about war.

Now we face a similar propaganda distortion of remarks by Iran�s president. Ask anyone in Washington, London or Tel Aviv if they can cite any phrase uttered by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chances are high they will say he wants Israel �wiped off the map.�

Again it is four short words, though the distortion is worse than in the Khrushchev case. The remarks are not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple. Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran�s first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that �this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time� just as the shah�s regime in Iran had vanished.

He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The �page of time� phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it, felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about.

But the propaganda damage was done, and Western hawks bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he wants to exterminate Jews. At the recent annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobby group, huge screens switched between pictures of Ahmadinejad making the false �wiping off the map� statement and a ranting Hitler.

Misquoting Ahmadinejad is worse than taking Khrushchev out of context for a second reason. Although the Soviet Union had a collective leadership, the pudgy Russian was the undoubted No. 1 figure, particularly on foreign policy. The Iranian president is not.

The remarks are not out of context. Ahmadinejad never said them.

His predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, was seen in the West as a moderate reformer, and during his eight years in office Western politicians regularly lamented the fact that he was not Iran�s top decision-maker. Ultimate power lay with the conservative unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet now that Ahmadinejad is president, Western hawks behave as though he is in charge, when in fact nothing has changed. Ahmadinejad is not the only important voice in Tehran. Indeed Khamenei was quick to try to adjust the misperceptions of Ahmadinejad�s comments. A few days after the president made them, Khamenei said Iran �will not commit aggression against any nation.�

The evidence suggests that a debate is going on in Tehran over policy toward the West which is no less fierce than the one in Washington. Since 2003 the Iranians have made several overtures to the Bush administration, some more explicit than others. Ahmadinejad�s recent letter to Bush was a veiled invitation to dialogue. Iranians are also arguing over policy toward Israel. Trita Parsi, an analyst at Johns Hopkins University, says influential rivals to Ahmadinejad support a �Malaysian� model whereby Iran, like Islamic Malaysia, would not recognize Israel but would not support Palestinian groups such as Hamas, if relations with the U.S. were better.

The obvious way to develop the debate is for the two states to start talking to each other. Last winter the Americans said they were willing, provided talks were limited to Iraq. Then the hawks around Bush vetoed even that narrow agenda. Their victory made nonsense of the pressure the U.S. is putting on other U.N. Security Council members for tough action against Iran. Talk of sanctions is clearly premature until Washington and Tehran make an effort to negotiate. In advance of Condoleezza Rice�s June 1 meeting in Vienna yesterday with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, the factions in Washington hammered out a compromise. The U.S. is ready to talk to Tehran alongside the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany), but only after Tehran has abandoned its uranium-enrichment program.

To say the EU3�s dialogue with Tehran was sufficient, as Washington did until this week, was the most astonishing example of multilateralism in the Bush presidency. A government that makes a practice of ignoring allies and refuses to accept the jurisdiction of bodies such as the International Criminal Court was leaving all the talking to others on one of the hottest issues of the day. Unless Bush is set on war, this refusal to open a dialogue could not be taken seriously.

The EU3�s offer of carrots for Tehran was also meaningless without a U.S. role. Europe cannot give Iran security guarantees. Tehran does not want non-aggression pacts with Europe. It wants them with the only state that is threatening it both with military attack and foreign-funded programs for regime change.

The U.S. compromise on talks with Iran is a step in the right direction, though Rice�s hasty statement was poorly drafted, repeatedly calling Iran both a �government� and a �regime.� But it is absurd to expect Iran to make concessions before sitting down with the Americans. Dialogue is in the interest of all parties. Europe�s leaders, as well as Russia and China, should come out clearly and tell the Americans so.

Whatever Iran�s nuclear ambitions, even U.S. hawks admit it will be years before it could acquire a bomb, let alone the means to deliver it. This offers ample time for negotiations and a �grand bargain� between Iran and the U.S. over Middle Eastern security. Flanked by countries with U.S. bases, Iran has legitimate concerns about Washington�s intentions.

Even without the U.S. factor, instability in the Gulf worries all Iranians, whether or not they like being ruled by clerics. All-out civil war in Iraq, which could lead to intervention by Turkey and Iraq�s Arab neighbors, would be a disaster for Iran. If the U.S. wants to withdraw from Iraq in any kind of order, this too will require dialogue with Iran. If this is what Blair told Bush at the end of May, he did well. But he should go all the way, and urge the Americans to talk without conditions.

Human Rights Watch and Israel's attack on Lebanon

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:51:58 GMT

Please check out the article written by Executive Director of Human Rights Watch concerning the IDF's indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Lebanon, which resulted in so many civilian casualties.

I wonder if the criticism of Israel by another Jewish person will be met with similar ad hominem attacks like the "self-hating Jew" charge, which is ridiculous in my mind.

https://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/22/lebano14061.htm

Best

Scottie

Biden on Iraq

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 14:32:08 GMT

Finally a Democrat with a plan (thanks for contributing) . . .

I haven't quite formulated my opinion of Biden in the '08 Presidential contest - but I'm curious what the Logipundits think about his 5-point plan for Iraq that I just got an email on:

First, the plan calls for maintaining a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions. The central government would be left in charge of common interests, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenue.

Second, it would bind the Sunnis to the deal by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenue. Each group would have an incentive to maximize oil production, making oil the glue that binds the country together.

Third, the plan would create a massive jobs program while increasing reconstruction aid -- especially from the oil-rich Gulf states -- but tying it to the protection of minority rights.

Fourth, it would convene an international conference that would produce a regional nonaggression pact and create a Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.

Fifth, it would begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces this year and withdraw most of them by the end of 2007, while maintaining a small follow-on force to keep the neighbors honest and to strike any concentration of terrorists.

Lessons on Terrorism

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:27:37 GMT

Yet another article from the Boston Globe asking the question: Are we really at war with "Terror"?

As always, I appreciate your comments . . .

"Eleven suspects were brought to court in London this week, charged with involvement in the plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic. The foiling of their alleged conspiracy will inevitably be scrutinized for what it reveals about the terrorist threat five years after Sept. 11.

It should be reassuring that the plotters were not as well organized or as successful at keeping their plans secret as the Sept. 11 masterminds and the terrorists who did their bidding. If British and Pakistani officials are correct, knowledge of the airline plot was disseminated among scores of people. The conspirators failed to prevent a mole from infiltrating their network. And they were careless enough to permit U.S. agencies to intercept their communications.

If the scheme to use liquid explosives to blow up the airliners was conceived or directed by top Qaeda figures, as Pakistani intelligence has claimed, then it seems obvious that Osama bin Laden's lieutenants are less capable of carrying out a complex terrorist spectacular than they were before they lost their sanctuary and training camps in Afghanistan.

If Al Qaeda was not orchestrating the airline scheme, or if Qaeda figures were involved only tangentially, the thwarting of the plot suggests that local terrorists and jihadists are best fought with sound intelligence"

They may be capable of mass killing, as the London train bombings last summer showed, but the threat they represent is very different from that of Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany.

Inflating the danger from jihadi terrorists into an existential threat and invoking a grandiose third world war, as President George W. Bush and his advisers have been doing, only plays into the hands of bin Laden and the other deluded megalomaniacs hiding out with him in the mountains of South Waziristan.

- The Boston Globe

Jakarta

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:18:05 GMT

I'm sitting by the pool again, drinking Rum & Coke, playing online poker (not losing too badly), and just generally thinking about the world in which I live.

More and more I think people are generally good. Growing up, my father (who grew up in Iran) told me many parables from Persia. One of the ones that sticks out to me the most goes like this:

Back in the days when cities had walls around them, a very old blind man sat at the city gate and begged for alms. One day, a traveller came to the gates and asked the old man, "Sir, I have been travelling for many days. Tell me, what sort of people live in this city?"

"Son, what kind of people live in the city you are coming from?"

"Oh, people are very bad where I come from. It's hard to find work and people are always looking for ways to pull their neighbors down. I don't believe I've found one honest man in my city. That's why I've come here - looking for a place that's different."

The old man's face became sad. "I'm sorry," he replied. "I believe you'll find people here to be the same." The young man continued on in his search - determined to find a better place.

Later on that same day, another traveller came to the gates and asked the old man, "Sir, I have been travelling for many days. Tell me, what sort of people live in this city?"

"Son, what kind of people live in the city you are coming from?"

"Oh, the city I come from has people who are second to none on Earth. Everyone looks for ways to help each other. I don't believe I've met one unhappy man in my entire city. That's why I've come here - to see if people like that exist anywhere else."

The old man's face broke into a smile. "Welcome," he replied. "I believe you'll find people here to be the same."

Abraham Lincoln may have said it best: "If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will."

I have found the people here to be some of the most generous and welcoming people anywhere I have travelled to. I will miss their easy laughter and thoughtful questions. But most of all I will thank them for an added dimension to my own perspective that I will take with me forever.

Short Interview with Michael Scheuer (author of Imperial Hubris)

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:49:49 GMT

Full disclosure: I haven't yet read the book.

This article provides Scheuer's perspective on the current state of affairs with regards to Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel/Hezbollah.

I've got Israel fever...the cure?

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:43:54 GMT

You guessed it, more cowbell.

Let me start by saying I have a lot of sympathy for the people of Lebanon. In my opinion the country of Lebanon has for the most part been an innocent bystander in the Arab-Israeli conflict, sending only token forces if any in the great battles against Israel. In many ways Lebanon is similar to Israel, a very fragile and small country. And it has been hijacked by some brutal people (Iran via Hizbollah) in the name of regaining Palestine. Only recently have they ousted Syrian secret police only to have the power vacuum filled literally by Israeli bombs and Hizbollah. I share the sentiment of the (warning this links to an Israeli website which is designed to burn the eyeballs of all peace and justice loving individuals) Lebanese PM when he says, "I Hope the (Lebanese) army will be the only military entity to be recognized by all residents of southern Lebanon ," Amen, brother, and good luck with that.

I go on the record to say that the attack on Beirut by Israel was totally unfair, and Lebanese civilians surely suffered the most of this conflict. I don't think, however, Israel was unprovoked as Scottie implies. 10 men an invasion, when rockets are being shot into Israel, as they had been LONG before Israel set foot in Lebanon?

Can the U.N. enforce sanctions on a non-state like Hezbollah? Can Amnesty International report on them? Well, here's what the most recent report said,

"The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy," Gilmore said in a press release."

That transport infrastructure was "roads and bridges".

Meanwhile, from the same report,

"During the four week war Hezbollah fired 3,900 rockets at Israeli towns and cities with the aim of inflicting maximum civilian casualties.

The Israeli government says that 44 Israeli civilians were killed in the bombardments and 1,400 wounded.

AI has not issued a report accusing Hezbollah of war crimes."

There's a fine line between being harmless and being incompetant. AI wants to make Israel accountable for it's aggression that is understandable. But not to condemn Hezbollah for having bad equipment and missing targets is basically having a double standard, since Hezbollah's goal was to maximize Israeli casualties.

Then of course I have to put up a youtube clip.

Now, maybe this isn't legit, but hey, it's YouTube.

Seal the Border NOW!!

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:46:23 GMT

If you read Wonkette, you'll probably have gotten a good laugh out of this already:

Just a few months ago, the absolute greatest threat to American Freedom was a guy slipping across the southern border to pick lettuce for a few bucks an hour so that the U.S. agriculture industry could continue to operate. (Remember, no ag industry means no massive federal farming subsidies!)

Actually, that wasnt the real issue. Mexican migrants made the news only when they had the audacity to rally for the right to legally do menial jobs in the USA.

Then some other things happened, all forgotten now, and suddenly Mexico was no longer a big deal. Theres a civil war about to break out South of the Border, and yet the liberal mainstream media doesnt seem to care.

Leave it to the Christian Grassroots Conservative movement to finally put the spotlight back on the real problem (besides Iran and France and Frank Rich). We are, of course, speaking of the Islamic Terrorists crossing the border dressed as Mexicans.

CNS News reported Monday:

The chief law enforcement officers of several Texas counties along the southern U.S. border warn that Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish and integrating into Mexican culture before paying smugglers to sneak them into the United States. The Texas Sheriffs Border Coalition believes those individuals are likely terrorists and that drug cartels and some members of the Mexican military are helping them get across the border.

(CNS News is the wonderfully hysterical website run by L. Brent Bozell III, who has dedicated his life to revealing the horrific fraud known as the Main Stream Media which is three words now, because truth wants to be free.)

While the terrorists may be evil and cunning, they also seem to be retards. The Mexi-terrorists made a crucial misstep that got the attention of Texas sheriffs deputies working the border region, because the alleged terrorists have allegedly been leaving Iranian (or Arab) military uniforms and badges along the Rio Grande.

Jesus! Really? Is it time to start calling tortillas Freedom Pancakes?

Anyway, regardless of what your boss tells you to believe this week and El Presidente says Latin American immigrants deserve the chance to come here and do all the dirty jobs white kids wont do just try to imagine Washington before the Latino Invasion.

Yeah, were talking about the only Mexican food being Taco Bell and some dubious place in Alexandria selling Tex Mex food, which is about as Mexican as Frito-Lay. Were talking about no Latino markets selling delicious items you simply could not buy in D.C. even a dozen years ago. We are talking about the nannies who care for all the neglected children of the lobbyists and the members of Congress and the Senate the Latino immigrants who say te quiero to the children who will never hear I love you in English, because their parents are heartless criminals.

Texas Sheriffs Say Terrorists Entering US from Mexico [CNS News]

Hard-Line Immigration Stance Angers Some Business Groups [Wall Street Journal]

Bush's New Iraq Argument: It Could Be Worse

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:45:25 GMT

Bush's New Iraq Argument: It Could Be Worse

Finally the President seems to be getting realistic about the situation on the ground in Iraq. The transition from "unseen progress" being made - that the media was supposedly blatantly ignoring - to "Hey, it could be worse" actually is refreshing for its (long overdue) candor.

Now - what's the strategy to move forward, Mr. President? Can we move now from "Stay the Course" to something a little more . . . strategic?

Cameron rebuilding

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:39:44 GMT

A good article on Cameron, without the irritating commentary about how horrible America is:

The Boudreauxs are growing weary of the name Katrina, particularly the media�s coverage of New Orleans. Regina says, �You hear all these celebrities with Katrina this and Katrina that. They have a Katrina fund and all this stuff. I think our governor almost forgot us.�

�She�s beginning to wake up to the facts over there,� J.C. says. �We do exist. But we didn�t holler enough. We just sucked it up and went back on back to work. People in New Orleans there squawked and howled.�

amazing interview with candid Brit

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:26:31 GMT

   For a very candid interview with a British member of Parliament, George Galloway, in which he agrues positions with a SKY NEWS anchor woman :

     He ecchoes my exact sentiments on Israel's Lebanon campaign and tangentially discusses how Israel can achieve peace, and that is by letting justice occur by seeing Israel evacuate the OT, all of them, The West Bank, East Jerusalem, get the IDF out of the Gaza, and return the Golan Heights to Syria, and return Sheba Farms to Lebanon.

    Please view :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

test run

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 18:19:35 GMT

this is a test run for the email capacity of posting a blog

:-)

Where do we go from Here?

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:51:14 GMT

A vacuum in Lebanon, and Hezbollah fills it - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune

I've been struggling for a couple of days with Scottie's questions. This column will not completely answer his questions :), but it will give my thoughts about moving forward.

For more, visit DC Offline.

The article above really opened my eyes about the situation in the Middle East and helped me put the pieces together for the first time. My developing thoughts are below for your comments.

There is a stated aim of Bin Laden as well as a concerted effort that we are seeing right now with Iran's outstretched arm to the citizens of Lebanon through Hezbollah to recreate a Muslim Caliphate in the Middle East, free of Western influence and a world power in its own right.

There does seem to be a fight over which branch of Islam will own this Caliphate, once it emerges - the Shi'ite branch from Iran (and already we are seeing a Shia Crescent develop from Iran through Syria and down through Lebanon via Hezbollah), or a Sunni branch from Al Qaeda.

America has just helped this enterprise along, however unknowingly, by deposing Saddam Hussein (a pain-in-the-ass, but an avowed secularist who saw himself as the second coming of Hammurabi) and opening the door to a Shia vs. Sunni Civil War in Iraq.

It is no longer a question of whether this Civil War will happen - it is only a question of who will influence the outcome: The United States on the side of a secular outcome regardless of the brand of Islam OR Iran toward a definitive Shi'ite state under its direct influence if we vacate our position there as some statesmen (I use that term with some levity) here in the States are now advocating.

As should be apparent, I am no Bush fan. His policies have been so disastrous to our image and to the Region itself, it will take decades to recover - IF we can navigate the months ahead successfully. But the counterpoint to his Middle East policy is NOT to leave our position there right now. The certain occupant of that power vacuum would be Ahmedinejad and the Shi'ite influence from Iran with their bloated oil treasury buying influence and good will the exact way they are doing through Hezbollah in Lebanon right now.

The pattern is obvious and will be repeated in Iraq to win the cultural victory and repair all the infrastructure we have destroyed and have been, up to this point, unable to properly restore. Just read the above article to see the real effects of this on the ground in Lebanon and translate that to Iraq if we leave right now.

The correct counterpoint to the Bush policy in the Middle East is a change in strategy. A real battle to win "the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. Terence Daly notes: "This is scoffed at by many conservatives as the equivalent of sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya." But in fact it is a sophisticated, multifaceted, even ruthless struggle to wrest control of a population from cunning and often brutal foes. We must be ready and able to kill insurgents - lots of them - but as a means, not an end."

We were led to Iraq with false intelligence, false links to Al Qaeda, false motives, even false expectations and budget projections - but the question of "Should we have gone in there or not?" is no longer important. Rather, the question of "What do we do now?" is of paramount importance given the stakes of those we are playing this game against. They have already gamed out their strategy several moves ahead of us. Will we stop reacting to events as they take place, define victory and form a strategy to win, or continue to try to figure out how to retreat as quickly as we can from a war we never should have entered into in the first place?

Your 2008 Ohio State Buckeyes!

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:07:08 GMT

Read this story if you want to laugh (or cry) at Ohio Judges. Two kids set up deer decoys in the middle of the road to watch cars swerve. That's pretty kewl. But get this, the judge is suspending the sentencing until football season is over. I mean, who's going to be quarterback if this kid is in jail? Somebody should call up Jim Tressel so he can offer these boys a scholarship to join the rest of the criminals and thugs on his team.

Bali Update - Part II

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:30:56 GMT

Saying that I'm a little out of breath while posting this would be an understatement after the whirlwind tour of Bali that we got over the past two days. Let me first say that hiring a guide when you go to a foreign country is an investment that I will never second-guess again.

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and met our guide Mehde (which means "second" in Bahasa - literally the second child in the family. There are thousands of "Mehde" in Indonesia, which makes things very complicated . . . ) around 9am. We began by going to a Balinese outdoor theater and watching a morality play/dance called Barong-Rangda. The Barong is a mythical animal which represents the spirit of good and Rangda a mythological demon who represents all that is evil. This dance used to be a rite of exorcism in the ancient times, but is now a tourist attraction.

We then headed up into the center of the island to get something to eat and visit a couple of art merchants. The wood carvings are exquisite - carved from one large piece of wood and whittled into the most detailed carvings. Some are religious, some are sexual - but all are captivating for their beauty and detail. After buying some pieces, we headed up to the top of a mountain for lunch where you could see the devestation wrought by The Gunung Batur volcano, which has also given name to the largest lake on Bali and to a village. The volcano is still active and the smoke is constantly seeping out of the mountain which is located inside a huge caldera. The top is 1.717 meter and had it's last eruptions in 1917 and 1926. The 1917 eruption killed about 1.000 people and destroyed the Batur village on the southern slopes of the volcano. The villagers rebuilt their homes and continued to live there until 1926 when a new eruption left the village completely in ruins.

After lunch, we visited the Enchanted Monkey Forest in Ubu where the little bastards literally come up to you and try to steal your sunglasses, necklaces or anything else of value that you have on your person. One of the pictures I got has a monkey crawling all over a tourist that had been unlucky enough to sit down under his tree. The monkey is literally trying to tear his shirt poket off and ended up getting a good chunk of the guy's nipple in his teeth.

The next day (yesterday) I took the same guide to the jewel market where I picked up two Balinese Stone rings. 50,000rp per ring brought my total spent to about $10 for the two pieces. You'll see me wearing them when I get back ;). From the market, we went to the beach for scuba diving and para-sailing. Scuba I had done before, and the visibility yesterday was nothing to write about - maybe 5m or so.

However, para-sailing was amazing! Those of you who know me well, know I am not a small guy - I weigh about 110 kilos. There are two parachutes that this place had. One for people 55-80 kilos, and one for 80-150 kilos. Needless to say, they brough the smaller one by mistake. To me, it made no difference; I had never done it before and had a great time regardless. But the guy who was driving the boat explained that if I had taken the larger parachute, I would have gotten much higher in the air and been less drag to the boat. In his best English (which was not good to begin with), he said "I think my boat cry a little" because of my drag.

I couldn't see any more because I was laughing so hard, I was crying . . .

Bush's unchecked Executive power v. the Founding principles of the U.S.

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:08:14 GMT

[http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/bushs-unchecked-executive-power-v.html]

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Bush's unchecked Executive power v. the Founding principles of the U.S.

I recently found this blog by Glenn Greenwald. Glenn is the author of the New York Times Best-Selling book, How Would A Patriot Act?, a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released May, 2006.

For all you Federalists out there - and I know there are plenty, since I love the Federalist Papers with a passion myself - this article is perhaps the best critique of the Bush Administration's aggregation of unchecked Executive Power that I have read.

Just as Nixon famously said, "If the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

Glenn writes, "The Administration is expressly claiming that the President does have the right to violate laws of Congress because his executive power is absolute and thus cannot be restricted by anything. And rather than applying this theory of unchecked executive power to a single case (as the Reagan Administration did in Iran-contra), the Bush Administration has arrogated unto itself this monarchical power as a general proposition, applicable to each and every issue which can be said to relate, however generally, to this undeclared "war" against terrorism."

Iraq : Right or Wrong?

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:21:19 GMT

    To open up the discussion on the blogsite, I would like ANY blogger to state their position on whether the decision to invade Iraq was right or wrong.
    If your position has changed since 2003, please note how it has changed.
    If you claim that the Iraq invasion and occupation was the right course of action, please include your reasons why.
    If you argue that the Iraq episode was not justified, then or since other issues have come to the forefront, please note underlying arguments as well.

    John McCain recently stated the he feels thats the 2006 mid-term elections might turn out to be a referendum on the Iraq war, so I feel this discussion is important and timely.

    Below I am posting 2 articles, one discussing Chuck Hagel, whom I respect greatly, and the other written by Stephen Zunes, a professor at USF, and I know it might vex some to learn that the 2nd article concerns the US, Israel, and Lebanon's Hezbollah, but it is quite informative, and really puts certain issues in their proper perspectives.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060820/ap_on_el_pr/hagel_republicans

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0819-25.htm

cheers