Bush Commutes 2 Border Agents’ Sentences

The War On Terror; The War On Drugs; The War On Good Sense. First the border guards are imprisoned for doing everyone a big favor. Then President Bush does a half-assed job of rectifying the situation. Can you spell P-A-R-D-O-N? Commuting a sentence is a nice gesture, but it skirts the heart of the matter: these officers should have been given a parade, not a prison sentence. As for the fines, how about taking it out in trade... dope from some drug dealer who has continued to do business now that the guards are looking the other way.

The New York Times WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday commuted the sentences of two former border patrol agents who had been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for shooting and seriously wounding a Mexican drug dealer in Texas in 2005.

With a day left in his presidency, Mr. Bush exercised his constitutional power to grant clemency — for the last time, according to a senior White House official — in a case that has touched off fierce debate in the Southwest. The two former agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, had attracted considerable support among advocates of tougher border security, who argued that the agents were just doing their jobs.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” the lead prosecutor in the case said in 2007, scoffing at the idea that the defendants were defending themselves. The agents said at trial that they had scuffled with the dealer, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila.

“These agents shot someone whom they knew to be unarmed and running away,” said the prosecutor, United States Attorney Johnny Sutton. “They destroyed evidence, covered up a crime scene and then filed false reports about what happened. It is shocking that there are people who believe it is O.K. for agents to shoot an unarmed suspect who is running away.”

The incident touched off heated debate about law enforcement and illegal immigration. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2007 brought out the fact that Mr. Aldrete-Davila had crossed the United States-Mexican border illegally and driving a van containing 743 pounds of marijuana worth almost $1 million.

Nor did the furor over the case break along neat liberal-conservative lines, as demonstrated by statements made in 2007 by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California who is considered moderate to liberal. “It is true that the bullet left Aldrete-Davila permanently injured and that what the agents did was wrong,” the senator said. “But it is also true that Aldrete-Davila was not likely a low-level wrongdoer who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Those who rallied behind the defendants were furious that Mr. Aldrete-Davila was granted immunity from some drug crimes in return for his testimony against the defendants.

The defendants were convicted of shooting Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from the van. Not only did the defendants not report the shooting, but they tried to conceal what they had done by picking up spent cartridge casings, Mr. Sutton said.

Both agents were convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon and several other crimes. Mr. Compean was sentenced to 12 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised released, with a $2,000 fine. Mr. Ramos was sentenced to 11 years, with the same supervised release and fine.

Several members of Congress in both parties, including Senator Feinstein, have said they thought the sentences excessive.

The commutation granted by President Bush means the prison sentences of the men, both from El Paso, will expire on March 20, the Justice Department said. The supervised release and fines will still apply.

The leniency was granted to the former agents even though the Justice Department had not completed its review of the case, according to officials at the agency. A president’s constitutional power to grant pardons or commutations is unfettered, but Justice Department officials sometimes feel resentful if leniency without their full review.

A commutation is not as generous as a presidential pardon, which essentially erases a crime from a defendant’s record. There had been speculation that President Bush would grant clemency to some high-profile defendants, but the White House official said the two ex-agents would be the last to benefit.

I. Lewis Libby Jr., former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, could have been granted a pardon for his role in the leaking of a C.I.A. agent’s name and an attempted cover-up. In July 2007, Mr. Libby’s prison sentence was commuted. Nor was there any clemency for former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who in late October was convicted of ethics violations for not reporting gifts and services given by friends. Mr. Stevens would lose his bid for a seventh term.

In an interview with an El Paso television station two years ago, President Bush signaled that he would at least look at the case of the former border agents. “There are standards that need to be met in law enforcement, and according to a jury of their peers, these officers violated some standards,” Mr. Bush said.

But he went on to say that “people need to take a hard look at the facts” of the case and added, “I will do the same thing.”

Jim Rutenberg and Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting.

The root causes of the Gaza conflict in less than 6 minutes

Take common words in the English language and give them a decidedly non-Western perspective. Justice, peace, evil, darkness... and mean enslavement, war, non-Muslim, and Western values. Then stop wondering why Western nations can't seem to establish their version of peace in the Middle East.

From: Occidental Soapbox:

Forget everything the mainstream media tells you about the "cycle of violence" and the "peace process." The conflict in the Middle East boils down to one issue; the imposition of Islam upon the world. Hamas, as a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, is perfectly open about its desire for a global Islamic caliphate. Such an enemy by definition can never be appeased, and must be destroyed.



Full transcript with links follows:

From the dawn of Islam the universal Muslim community has been known as the Ummah, literally “the nation” . From the 7th century through the early 20th century the Ummah was ruled by a Caliph, who was considered to be the legitimate political successor to the Prophet Muhammad on earth. His domain was known as the Caliphate. The capital of the Caliphate and the amount of territory it controlled changed with the geopolitical currents of the day. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Ummayad Caliphs ruled from Damascus. From the 8th to the 14th century, the Abbasid Caliphs oversaw Islam’s "Golden Age" from Baghdad. The capital moved away from the Arab world to Constantinople with the ascendance of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the 16th century.

No matter what form the Caliphate took in a particular era, it was always ruled by one adaptation or another of Islamic Shariah law. The Koran was the highest legal authority, and Christians and Jews lived as insecure Dhimmis, inferior guests in the domain of Islam. Zoroastrians, Hindus and polytheists at the fringes of the Caliphate were considered even lower.

From the 19th century on, as the Western world modernized and industrialized, the obsolete Ottoman Empire steadily declined. Western concepts of nationalism influenced Arabs in the Middle East who wondered why they were being governed from a faraway Turkish capital, and influenced Turks to wonder why they were governed by an ancient religious empire rather than a Turkish nation-state.

It was this morally and physically weakened Caliphate that opposed the Allies in WWI, uniting with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. From the ashes of the Ottoman defeat at the hands of the Allies, the nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk declared the modern state of Turkey. On March 3, 1924 he constitutionally abolished the institution of the Caliphate, the first time this had happened in the almost 1300 years since the Prophet Muhammad walked the earth.

It was just four years after this spiritual-political blow that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 . The brotherhood railed against the new tide of nationalism in the Middle East. Their primary goal was to reinstate Islamic rule and Sharia law in the modern nations that used to belong to the Caliphate, and eventually extend that rule over the entire world .

The officially stated objectives of the Brotherhood are :

-Building the Muslim individual
-Building the Muslim family
-Building the Muslim society
-Building the Muslim state
-Building the Caliphate
-Mastering the world with Islam

Today the Brotherhood has branches in 70 countries. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood preacher, was the mentor of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden’s lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri got his start in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 14.

In 1991 the Muslim Brotherhood recognized some 29 “likeminded” organizations in the United States, including the Muslim American Society, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, The Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association and the forerunner of the Council on American Islamic Relations .

Meanwhile, Israel is struggling against the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 1987 Hamas Charter they explicitly refer to themselves as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.

And if we read Article 9 of the Hamas Charter, we can examine the Muslim Brotherhood influence:

“Hamas founded itself at a time when Islam had disappeared from life. Thus, rules were shaken, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place. When Islam is absent from the arena, everything changes."

This of course refers to the fall of the Islamic Caliphate.

"As for the objectives: They are fighting against the falsehoods, defeating them and vanquishing them so that justice can prevail, that the homelands be retrieved and from their mosques the voice of the mu'azen would emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places, as Allah is our helper."

The western concepts of peace and truces and territorial compromises are not relevant to the conflict with Hamas. No territorial concession will whet their appetite, as the violent reaction to the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip in 2005 has shown. Hamas’s stated goal as a Muslim Brotherhood organization is to establish the rule of Islam on earth. First over the Gaza Strip, then the West Bank and Israel, then the rest of the world. They believe the world was organized properly in the era of the Caliphate, and that the past 85 years of secular rule in the Middle East have been a hideous aberration. In their eyes Israel is not marked for destruction because it occupies this or that piece of territory, but because it exists at all as land not governed by Sharia. As such, a permanent settlement can never be reached with Hamas. The current conflict between Hamas and Israel will end when Israel accepts Islam, or when Hamas’ ideas of Islamic supremacy are obliterated… whichever comes first.

Israel 'to announce ceasefire'

Like a cop who has subdued the neighborhood bully, the Israeli military is set to give the bully a chance to stop being beaten. Of course, some bullies are just so stupid that they don't know when to quit picking on their neighbors... so the cop will probably have to continue using the "night stick."

From the BBC News:

The Israeli cabinet is set to back an end to offensive

military activities in the Gaza Strip, three weeks after

attacks began, the BBC understands.

Air strikes continued in Gaza as Israel prepared to announce a truce

Israel's leaders are expected to approve a ceasefire at a meeting later on Saturday, after which PM Ehud Olmert will address the nation, sources said.

The sources said the ceasefire deal did not involve Hamas.

It is not clear how Hamas will respond; its officials say the group will ignore any truce unless its demands are met.

Ahead of the move violence continued in Gaza, with 50 Israeli air strikes overnight. Rocket fire from Hamas militants also continued.

Nearly 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the violence began on 27 December. Thirteen Israelis - three civilians and 10 soldiers - have been killed during the campaign.

'H-Hour'

The Israeli move comes amid intense diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict.

Israeli sources told the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, that Mr Olmert would announce an end to offensive military operations from "H-Hour", the exact timing of which is not yet clear.

GAZA LATEST Bowen diary: Is this the end? BBC reporter reaches Rafah In pictures: Gaza conflict Voices from Gaza City Send us your comments

In a televised address set for 2200 (2000 GMT), Mr Olmert was expected to link the move to Israel having achieved its goal of curtailing rocket fire from Hamas-linked militants, the sources said.

If rocket fire continued after "H-Hour", Israel would respond, the sources said.

If there was a single incident, Israel would hit back "surgically"; if there were more attacks Israel would go back on the offensive, they said.

The sources stressed that this was a unilateral action by Israel.

It follows pledges from the US and several European Union nations to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza - one of Israel's key demands.

How Hamas responds remains to be seen. Its representatives have been attending talks hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

Hamas insists that any ceasefire must involve Israeli troops withdrawing from Gaza and an immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade.

Earlier Osama Hemdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, told the AFP news agency: "As long as it [the Israeli military] remains in Gaza, resistance and confrontation will continue."

UN strike

The announcement came on the 22nd day of violence in Gaza.

United Nations officials said two children, aged five and seven, were killed when Israeli tank fire hit a UN school where hundreds had taken shelter in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

GAZA CRISIS BACKGROUND In depth: Gaza conflict Q&A: Gaza conflict Who are Hamas? Middle East conflict: History in maps

John Ging, the Unrwa chief in Gaza, told the BBC that there was "nowhere safe in Gaza".

"I'm ashamed of this - there's international legal responsibility to protect civilians in conflict, and we're not doing it," Mr Ging said.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, told the BBC that Israel was waiting for more information on what happened.

The Israel military said Hamas fired seven rockets into Israel on Saturday; there were no casualties.

80 million barrels of oil floating in the ocean, owners betting and hoping for higher prices

Thursday 15 Jan 2009 | Posted By Patrick

Just to warn you, this post will be a bit lengthy, but may be incredibly insightful for some. First off, it looks like Ed has predicted a hike to $1.99. We’ll see if he’s right on… if you can get gas for around $1.80, fill up like I did tonight just in case. I’m not completely sold on a price hike, but we will see what happens.

Now to explain my post title. Was there a ship leak or some accident? No. There ARE 80 million barrels of oil floating on the sea protected by a thin layer of steel, sitting in huge supertankers. According to Bloomberg, Frontline Ltd., the world’s biggest owner of said tankers has made this claim. It would be the most oil stored at sea in 20 years, as traders seek to cash in on higher prices later in the year.

This is an idea that carries a good amount of risk if you ask me… but you don’t make money without risk. Oil prices haven’t really started a good climb yet this year, and prices have largely given up most of their gains they made the last two weeks. These supertankers are huge ships that cost large amounts of money to lease but some can hold well over a million barrels of oil. If prices jump $10/bbl, there’s a large amount to be gained. However, with oil supplies in Cushing, Oklahoma nearly at capacity (the delivery point for contracts traded on the NYMEX), what’s going to happen? We’re already awash in oil, sitting nearly 40 million barrels above where we were JUST LAST YEAR! Crude oil in storage this week, as reported by the DOE, was 326.6 million barrels. Like I said, storage in Cushing, OK, was at 33 million barrels, with capacity of 34 million barrels. This represents a 20% GAIN in oil inventories there in just 4 WEEKS! How are these traders betting on higher prices in a few months when we’re lush with oil in a recession?

Figuring those 80 million barrels could go anywhere in the world, let’s figure half goes to the U.S., the world’s leading consumer of oil. If that 40 million barrels (which is doing nothing) would eventually end up at U.S. ports in a few weeks, we could have the most oil in storage since September 21, 1990!
Even WITHOUT the 40 million barrels, we’re already at our highest level of storage for a January since 1999, when demand was strong and the economy was surging ahead… remember the .com era? So many startup companies… and to see us at the same level of oil now with a much different outlook?

Let’s throw a name out here… a banking company that used to actively trade oil contracts (and bet on higher prices). Remember Goldman Sachs? The company whose analysts predicted $150 oil? What ever happened to them? They seem to have gotten out of the oil trading business. Goldman is now forecasting oil prices in the $30’s for quite some time. Do they have any obvious interests in oil now? Not that I can see- and crazy enough they’re actually making some sense with their seemingly non-biased oil price forecasts!

What’s this all got to do with gas prices?

Lets think it over. I’ll even format it so it’s easy to read:

* U.S. January oil inventories highest since 1999 and economic outlook is much worse than that of 1999
* 80 million barrels of crude oil haven’t even hit the market, owners betting on higher prices
* Gasoline inventories healthy
* Excluding 2006 and two weeks in 2007, oil inventories (including SPR) are at their highest levels EVER
* Gasoline demand down 3-4%
* Diesel demand down 4-5%
* Jet fuel demand down 12-15%
* OPEC countries need to pump more to generate revenues
* Refinery utilization at just 85% and we’re still putting plenty of gasoline into storage

Point is-with such great news on the shape of oil inventories, how can oil and/or gasoline make a spring run-up in prices? Ed’s bet that we’d see $2 gas before we saw $1 gas is nearly the OFFICIAL winner, but I still think prices have more room to fall.

My short-term bet on oil (the next two months) is that prices fluctuate between $30-$45, but we may briefly break the $30 barrier. A gasoline prediction? I’ve already had that bet with Ed. Once he wins, MAYBE I’ll make another prediction.

This one's for Harry...

From Theo Spark:

Surprise!... Obama's Climate Czar Is Board Member of Major Carbon Offset Company

From: Gateway Pundit

It was reported yesterday that Barack Obama picked a radical socialist as his climate czar. Carol Browner belongs to organizations that call for "global governance" and demand that rich countries shrink their economies to address climate change. But since her pick, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from these socialist websites.

Now, it was discovered that this same radical eco-socialist is a board member of one of the leading carbon offset trading companies, APX!

William Teach passed on that Carol is a board member of a leading carbon offset trading company.

Mrs. Browner joined the board last March:

Carol Browner Joins APX's Board of Directors

Santa Clara, CA - March 10, 2008 - APX, Inc., the leading infrastructure provider for environmental and energy markets, announced today that Carol Browner, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has joined its Board of Directors. Ms. Browner, who has a distinguished career in public service, brings to APX's Board deep expertise in environmental policy, including climate change issues.

She is currently a Principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm that she co-founded with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a team of international negotiators and seasoned diplomats. The firm provides strategic counsel to clients around the world. She is also a Principal of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm.

Commenting on Ms. Browner's election to the Board, Brian Storms, APX's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said: "Carol is one of the world's foremost environmental policy experts and we are honored that she is joining our Board of Directors. APX's ability to attract such well-respected leaders as Carol to our Board underscores the trusted position we have established in supporting the rapidly developing environmental commodities markets. Her extensive experience and global perspective will be a tremendous asset to APX as we look to enhance our position as the leading environmental market infrastructure provider."

Said Ms. Browner: "The explosive growth in environmental commodities trading will result in a greater need for market oversight. APX's cutting-edge technology provides integrity and transparency, which are essential to the efficient and effective operations of these markets. APX is a world-class environmental infrastructure company with a long history of public private partnership, and I look forward to helping them capitalize on the full potential of these markets."

...Of course you do.
It is not clear if Browner is still a member of the APX Board or not.
You'd think the Obama Camp would have known this when she was selected as climate czar.
Is anyone vetting these people?

Let's look at Obama's net worth going into office and what it will be 2 years after leaving office.

Obama Sides With Consumer Groups Pressing for Digital TV Delay

By Renay San Miguel
E-Commerce Times
01/09/09 2:12 PM PT

As the long-advertised date for the switch from analog to digital television broadcasting looms, some consumer groups are agitating for a postponement. President-elect Obama has expressed sympathy with their argument that shortcomings in the government's $40 subsidy program for digital converter boxes would create a burden for many rural, elderly and low-income consumers.

Hey, $40 bucks for a digital converter box? I need to buy beer!

Detroit Goes for Electric Cars, but Will Drivers?

21st century automotive technology mated with 20th century battery technology may not be appealing to consumers. But it addresses government mandates and should be a major talking point for our new president.

The New York Times
DEARBORN, Mich. — Inside the Ford Motor Company, it was called Project M — to build a prototype of a totally electric, battery-powered car in just six months.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

When it was started last summer, the effort was considered a tall order by the small team of executives and engineers assigned to it. After all, the auto industry can take years to develop vehicles.

But Ford was feeling pressure from competitors, and decided it could not afford to fall behind in the rapidly expanding race to put electric cars in dealer showrooms.

“Frankly, I think it’s a gamble not to do it,” William C. Ford Jr., the company’s executive chairman, said in an interview. “It’s clear that society is headed down this road.”

Certainly, Ford and other carmakers are betting billions of dollars on this new direction, at a time when they can ill afford it and when Detroit is facing government scrutiny after the $17.4 billion bailout of G.M. and Chrysler.

Throughout the cavernous Detroit auto show hall, typically the high temple of brute horsepower, auto companies will be competing this week to establish their green and electric credentials. On Sunday, when the show opens, Ford will announce plans for its electric vehicle, including a goal to start selling them by 2011.

Tom Pidgeon/General Motors, via Bloomberg News

These are risky bets. There are no guarantees that consumers — for all their stated concerns about global warming, dependence on foreign oil and unpredictable gas prices — will buy enough of them. They may balk, for example, at the limits on how far they can drive on a single charge.

But the companies could get some help from President-elect Barack Obama. He has said he is committed to promoting cleaner cars, and may propose incentives to encourage consumers and businesses to buy them.

Ford plans to make only 10,000 of the electric vehicles a year at first — very few by Detroit standards — to test the market cautiously.

Still, Mr. Obama’s interest, and the scope of projects by Ford and others, is convincing some environmentalists that the industry is serious about electric cars.

“I think the days of the gasoline engine are numbered, even if we don’t know exactly what that number is,” said Daniel Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign, which is part of the Center for Auto Safety consumer advocacy group in Washington.

The competition over electrics is picking up speed and players. Toyota, which has so far focused its efforts on hybrid models, will display a battery-powered concept car at the Detroit show. Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, has promised to sell an electric car in the United States and Japan as early as next year.

Two Japanese automakers, Mitsubishi and Fuji Heavy Industries, the parent company of Subaru, are also testing electric cars. And Chrysler, the most troubled of Detroit’s three auto companies, has vowed to produce its first electric car by 2010.

The surge toward electric vehicles also appears to be jump-starting investments in advanced-battery production in the United States. General Motors will announce plans at the auto show to build a factory in the United States to assemble advanced batteries for its Chevrolet Volt model, which it expects to start selling next year.

American auto executives have warned that without homegrown suppliers, the country could potentially become as dependent on Asian-made batteries as it is on oil from the Middle East and elsewhere.

“Automakers cannot afford the batteries until they are produced in a certain volume,” said Brett Smith, an industry analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “But they can’t be produced in volume until companies make a big manufacturing investment.”

Strong consumer demand has to be part of that equation, too. And it remains unclear whether consumers will be comfortable with the idea of buying an electric car, or whether these vehicles will priced to compete with comparable gas-powered models.

Ford would not say what its electric car will cost. The Chevrolet Volt is expected to cost around $40,000.

“It’s the right time to take this step, but it would be presumptive to try and predict what the market is ultimately going to look like,” said Derrick M. Kuzak, Ford’s chief of global product development.

So far, consumers have proved to be fickle about how much they care about fuel economy. When gas prices soared above $4 a gallon last year, sales of the market-leading Prius hybrid surged so quickly that Toyota could not build them fast enough. But demand sagged when gas prices dropped below $2 a gallon.

Industry analysts also note that electric models could be a harder sell than hybrids, which have a gasoline engine to assist and recharge battery packs, freeing them from the need to be plugged in.

Most of the prospective electric models need to be charged for several hours to cover a day’s worth of driving. Ford estimates that its car will need at least a six-hour charge to travel 100 miles. The Volt can get 40 miles on battery power alone, and it has a small gasoline engine that drives a generator to extend its range.

Americans, on average, drive their cars less than 35 miles a day, according to the latest federal statistics, and the industry is likely to play up that fact in its advertising campaigns. With so many families owning two cars, they may see an electric vehicle as an attractive choice for short commutes and running errands.

One way to potentially take the worry out of being stuck with a spent battery is to allow consumers to change them on the fly. The firm Better Place, of Palo Alto, Calif., is working with Nissan and other carmakers to set up stations to offer quick battery exchanges or plug-in charging outlets in Japan, Israel, Denmark and elsewhere. The company has also signed partnership deals in Hawaii and California.

“What will determine the market is not going to be how far your battery can go, but how far your infrastructure is spread so power is available,” said Shai Agassi, the chief executive of Better Place.

The American auto industry’s most notable previous foray into electric vehicles came in the late 1990s, when G.M. introduced the EV-1. That car, which was available in limited numbers only through leases, was pulled from production before it could build a following (though a 2006 documentary about the EV-1 — “Who Killed the Electric Car?” — has developed a following of its own).

Now most of the major car companies have years of experience with hybrid vehicles and their electric systems. While Ford’s Project M was started last year, executives said the company had been moving in this direction since early this decade. Ford first started selling its Escape hybrid S.U.V. in 2004.

Mr. Ford recalled how he used to drive an experimental electric Ranger pickup truck to work each day. “The reason we used a Ranger was because the whole back bed was full of lead-acid batteries,” he said.

The advent of smaller, more advanced lithium-ion batteries has also allowed the car companies to develop electric cars that look, feel and handle much like conventional vehicles.

Ford and its supplier partner, the Canadian firm Magna International, built the Project M prototype in the body of a Ford Focus compact car. It is planning a more distinctive design for the finished product when it goes on the market in two years.

The modest expectations for initial sales are reflected in Ford’s plan for introducing the car at the auto show Sunday. There won’t be the usual dry ice, flashing lights and pounding music.

Instead, there will be a simple announcement at a news conference, and the car will be parked on the street in front of the convention center, available for short test drives by journalists through downtown Detroit.

Lindsay Brooke contributed reporting from Detroit.

..

Giant plasma TVs face ban in battle to green Britain

New rules will phase out energy-guzzling flatscreen televisions as the EU brings its climate campaign to the living room

By Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 11 January 2009

Energy-guzzling flatscreen plasma televisions will soon be banned as part of the battle against climate change, ministers have told The Independent on Sunday.

"Minimum energy performance standards" for televisions are expected to be agreed across Europe this spring, they say, and this should lead to "phasing out the most inefficient TVs". At the same time, a compulsory labelling system will be drawn up to identify the best and worst devices.

The moves, which follow last week's withdrawal of the 100W incandescent lightbulb, are part of a drive to slow the rapid growth of electricity consumption in homes by phasing out wasteful devices and introducing more efficient ones. Giant plasma televisions – dubbed "the 4x4s of the living room" – can consume four times as much energy as traditional TVs that used cathode ray tubes (CRTs).

Over the past 30 years, the number of electric appliances and gadgets in a typical home has almost trebled – from 17 to 47 – as a host of devices from scanners to security systems, cappuccino makers to computer game consoles have joined the more traditional kettles, irons, vacuum cleaners and cookers. And the number of televisions in homes has also grown rapidly; there are now 60 million of them, one for every person in the country.

The amount of power needed to run this electronic explosion has more than doubled in the same period, and the official Energy Savings Trust estimates that it will grow by another 12 per cent over the next four years.

The boom in flatscreen TVs, partly spurred by the digital changeover, is helping to fuel the increase, as is the growing size of the screens. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said last week: "In the past five years we have seen the main television in a household change from typically being a 24in to 32in CRT television to being a much larger flatscreen television, with screen sizes of between 32 and 42 inches becoming more and more common. Not surprisingly, this has seen the energy used by the main television in the house increase."

Different makes and models of television vary in their use of power, but a 42in plasma television may use some 822 kilowatt hours a year, compared to 350kWh by an LCD flat screen of the same size. A 32in CRT, the biggest available, would use 322kWh.

Power consumption goes up as the screens increase in size, so the trust says that a big plasma model could use four times as much electricity and be responsible for the emission of four times as much carbon dioxide as the biggest CRT; they now account for twice as much as a fridge-freezer.

Now European governments are finalising a mandatory EU regulation to set minimum standards for televisions. The worst performers will be phased out, and the rest will have to be labelled with energy ratings which, says Defra, "will make it easier for consumers to identify the most and least energy-efficient televisions available". The scheme is modelled on an existing one for fridges and other white goods which has greatly increased their efficiency over the past decade.

The EU has already agreed minimum standards for the electricity consumed in standby mode. Defra says this should cause a fourfold drop by early next year in the energy used by a TV when it has been switched off by remote control instead of the main switch. Similar steps are being taken in Australia and the United States; in the US, 275 million televisions gobble up as much electricity as is produced by 10 coal-fired power stations.

Manufacturers are responding by making their products greener. The best new plasma televisions now use one-third less energy than the average, and new LED televisions, which are more efficient, are being developed.

Global Warming Horror Flick Put on Ice

Via Marc Moreno at epw.senate.gov
By P.J. Gladnick
January 8, 2009 - 08:50 ET

How embarrassing is it when you produce a horror movie based on global warming and when the time comes to release it, the planet is experiencing some of the coldest weather in decades? Such is the case with The Thaw starring Val Kilmer. Filmed in Canada last summer, it should be ready for release by now but even though the trailer has been produced, no specific release date has been announced. Perhaps the producers realize how much of a laughingstock this movie would become if a movie based on the premise of global warming were released when their potential audience is freezing. Here is a description of "The Thaw" from Dread Central:

The Thaw will be produced by Anagram Pictures, the same team behind Andrew Currie’s badass debut Fido, with directing duties being handled by Mark A. Lewis. The story is about a group of ecological students who discover that a prehistoric parasite has come back to life after a woolly mammoth is defrosted and their race to stop the bug from infecting the entire world, even as they themselves fall victim to it.

We learned this week that The Thaw is finally getting ready to shoot in mid-June and that Val Kilmer (yes, that Val Kilmer) and Superbad’s Martha McIsaac have both signed on to the film! This brings The Thaw to a whole new level of respectability since you don’t attract that kind of talent with some throwaway script.

”I think ultimately where this story comes from is the idea or, more accurately, the feeling of vulnerability,” Lewis told me during a recent e-mail conversation about the origins of The Thaw. ”The discussion eventually evolved into one about the vulnerability of our species and how we’re about to experience the wrath of Mother Nature as a result of global warming. Remaining faithful to our inspiration [an experience Thaw's co-writer’s girlfriend had with bed bugs], we chose to make Mother Nature’s device the most hideous parasite we could imagine.”

Perhaps Lewis should drop "The Thaw" title and rename it, "Attack of the Mutant Bed Bugs!" More about the hideous wooly mammoth parasite released by global warming flick:

Don’t worry, though, The Thaw won’t be a preachy movie about how we’re facing the End of Days or anything. ”I don’t consider it my job to tell people about how or why we’re f---ing up the world,” Lewis continues. ”The older I get, the more vulnerable I see people are (as individuals and communities). Global warming is a very scary part of our place in time on this revolving rock in the middle of God knows where. I consider it my job to translate, into a story, the emotions (in particular the fear) I’m experiencing around an issue that is extremely interes ting to me. Hopefully people will find the result enjoyable, relatable, and perhaps even cathartic.”

...So far it sounds like we’re in pretty good hands for this one. Nothing like a good monster movie to point out just how weak humans can be in the face of Mother Nature. Keep it here for more updates on The Thaw as the film nears its production start date!

And your humble correspondent would like to point out just how ridiculous film producers trying to promote a PC global warming message can be made to appear in the face of Mother Nature which is why the they seem to be embarrassed to release "The Thaw" in the midst of record low temperatures. However, perhaps "The Thaw" can still be salvaged. Just rename it "The Guffaw" and edit in Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make snarky comments about the defrosted mammoth and the rest of the movie. Such a move could unfreeze the box office receipts (if "The Thaw" is ever released) and turn this movie into a campy cult classic.
—P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.

Wyandotte band won't be 'Chiefs' at Obama's inauguration

‼ When they perform at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural parade, the band members, the only high school musicians from Michigan playing, will be called the Roosevelt High School Marching Band. Patches will be sewn over the Indian logos on the band uniform sleeves and the band's Marching Chiefs banner will be retired for the day.

From the Detroit Free Press

Wyandotte's Roosevelt High School marching band, known as the Marching Chiefs since the 1950s, will drop the American Indian moniker on Jan. 20.

‼

The band is covering up for the day in response to a letter from Harvey Gunderson, president of Religious Americans Against Indian Nicknames and Logos, who protested the nickname of The Chiefs.

"We just don't want to bring any negative publicity," said Mark D'Angelo, the band's director.

The Wyandot tribe of the Huron Indians settled along the Detroit River in the early 1700s in an area now bounded by Oak Street and Eureka Avenue. The tribe, led by Chief Walks-in-the-Water, lived in the area until 1818.

Hail to the non-Chiefs!

Muslim Versus Jewish Nobel Prizes

In the category, "They are just too busy doing "other things."" From an email....

The global Islamic population is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION, or 20% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:

1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat

1994 - Yaser Arafat:

1990 - Elias James Corey

1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics: (zero)

Physics: (zero)

Medicine:

1960 - Peter Brian Medawar

1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000

FOURTEEN MILLION

Or about 0.02% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1910 - Paul Heyse

1927 - Henri Bergson

1958 - Boris Pasternak

1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

1966 - Nelly Sachs

1976 - Saul Bellow

1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer

1981 - Elias Canetti

1987 - Joseph Brodsky

1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:

1911 - Alfred Fried

1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser

1968 - Rene Cassin

1973 - Henry Kissinger

1978 - Menachem Begin

1986 - Elie Wiesel

1994 - Shimon Peres

1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:

1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer

1906 - Henri Moissan

1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson

1908 - Gabriel Lippmann

1910 - Otto Wallach

1915 - Richard Willstaetter

1918 - Fritz Haber

1921 - Albert Einstein

1922 - Niels Bohr

1925 - James Franck

1925 - Gustav Hertz

1943 - Gustav Stern

1943 - George Charles de Hevesy

1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi

1952 - Felix Bloch

1954 - Max Born

1958 - Igor Tamm

1959 - Emilio Segre

1960 - Donald A. Glaser

1961 - Robert Hofstadter

1961 - Melvin Calvin

1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau

1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz

1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman

1965 - Julian Schwinger

1969 - Murray Gell-Mann

1971 - Dennis Gabor

1972 - William Howard Stein

1973 - Brian David Josephson

1975 - Benjamin Mottleson

1976 - Bu! rton Richter

1977 - Ilya Prigogine

1978 - Arno Allan Penzias

1978 - Peter L Kapitza

1979 - Stephen Weinberg

1979 - Sheldon Glashow

1979 - Herbert Charle S Brown

1980 - Paul Berg

1980 - Walter Gilbert

1981 - Roald Hoffmann

1982 - Aaron Klug

1985 - Albert A. Hauptman

1985 - Jerome Karle

1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach

1988 - Robert Huber

1988 - Leon Lederman

1988 - Melvin Schwartz

1988 - Jack Steinberger

1989 - Sidney Altman

1990 - Jerome Friedman

1992 - Rudolph Marcus

1995 - Martin Perl

2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:

1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson

1971 - Simon Kuznets

1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow

1975 - Leonid Kantorovich

1976 - Milton Friedman

1978 - Herbert A. Simon

1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein

1985 - Franco Modigliani

1987 - Robert M. Solow

1990 - Harry Markowitz

1990 - Merton Miller

1992 - Gary Becker

1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:

1908 - Elie Metchnikoff

1908 - Paul Erlich

1914 - Robert Barany

1922 - Otto Meyerhof

1930 - Karl Landsteiner

1931 - Otto Warburg

1936 - Otto Loewi

1944 - Joseph Erlanger

1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser

1945 - Ernst Boris Chain

1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller

1950 - Tadeus Reichstein

1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman

1953 - Hans Krebs

1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann

1958 - Joshua Lederberg

1959 - Arthur Kornberg

1964 - Konrad Bloch

1965 - Francois Jacob

1965 - Andre Lwoff

1967 - George Wald

1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg

1969 - Salvador Luria

1970 - Julius Axelrod

1970 - Sir Bernard Katz

1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman

1975 - Howard Martin Temin

1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg

1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow

1978 - Daniel Nathans

1980 - Baruj Benacerraf

1984 - Cesar Milstein

1985 - Michael Stuart Brown

1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein

1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]

1988 - Gertrude Elion

1989 - Harold Varmus

1991 - Erwin Neher

1991 - Bert Sakmann

1993 - Richard J. Roberts

1993 - Phillip Sharp

1994 - Alfred Gilman

1995 - Edward B. Lewis

TOTAL: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY NINE ... almost 1,600 times the rate per million than the Muslims.

The Jews are not promoting brain-washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims!

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is not a single Jew that has destroyed a church. There is not a single Jew that protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Regardless of your feelings about the eternal crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.

If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel'

-Benjamin Netanyahu

One might speculate about genetic intelligence, but with the great genetic diversity among both Muslims and Jews, you are forced to conclude the difference is cultural. And with the great cultural diversity among both Muslims and Jews, you are forced to conclude that the comparative retardation among the Muslims is caused by their religion... the only real common cultural thread among the 1.2 billion adherents.

The real question you should consider is: "If either the Jews or the Muslims should vanish from the face of the earth, which group would be missed most by mankind?"

Perhaps they should consider that, too.

A Carbon Tax For Animal Emissions - More Unintended Consequences Of Carbon Policy In The Guise Of Climate Policy

‼ “The permit costs would mean $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 a head for beef cattle and $20 per hog, according to Liz Thompson, a research associate with the New Jersey Farm Bureau. A herd of 75 dairy cows would carry a price tag of about $13,000.”

From Climate Science

Thanks to Mike Smith for alerting us to this news article

New Jersey, Pennsylvania farmers don’t like the smell of a federal ‘cow tax’ by Bill Wichert on Sunday, December 28, 2008 in The Express-Times

The article includes the text

“The rear end of a cow could become the next source of financial hardship for farmers.”

“Facing lower milk prices and higher operational costs, dairy farmers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania say they couldn’t afford the so-called cow tax, a suggestion made by federal officials to charge permit fees for livestock as a way of regulating greenhouse gas emissions.”

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised the concept in a recent report on possible greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act. Those regulations also could be extended to small businesses, schools, hospitals and churches.”

“In its comments on the EPA proposal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the regulations might force permitting requirements on dairy farms with more than 25 cows, beef cattle operations with more than 50 cattle, swine facilities with more than 200 hogs and farms with 500 or more acres of corn.”

‼

This is the type of pandora’s box that Climate Science has weblogged on in the past; e.g. see

Has The IPCC Produced A Hydra?

The clear answer is that a wide range of consequences, with serious environmental, economic and social effects, are going to result as a result of the inappropriately narrow IPCC focus on carbon as the currency for a wide range of climate effects.

Look for your personal Carbon Tax Form in future Federal Taxes.

Proof that the Detroit school system works!

From an email...

This is an actual picture of a Burger King in Detroit .

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

Gas row spreads as supplies to Europe fall

‼ Russian natural gas exports to Europe fell sharply on Tuesday after Gazprom cut supplies to transit pipelines crossing Ukraine in a sharp escalation of the gas conflict between the two countries.

From Financial Times:

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow, Roman Olearchyk in Kiev, Delphine Strauss in Ankara and Chris Bryant in Berlin

Published: January 6 2009 10:45 | Last updated: January 6 2009 12:59

‼

Gas consumers in eastern Europe were hit overnight by the cutback, but by morning the impact was spreading further west towards Gazprom’s biggest European buyers.

Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas company, said shortages via its gas pipeline had hit countries further west and south because Gazprom had cut gas deliveries bound for Europe threefold.

But Gazprom blamed Ukraine for the cut-off, saying Naftogaz had refused to provide technical protocols for gas transit and sent gas pipeline dispatchers home late on Monday.

Alexander Medvedev, deputy chief executive of Gazprom, said the company “was being held hostage by Ukraine”.

Ukraine did not cut gas supplies to Europe, Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey Sergei Korsunsky insisted on Tuesday. Mr Korsunsky also told reporters Ukraine had enough gas in storage to meet its needs until April and that the country had forwarded a new offer to begin negotiations again with Gazprom

Bulgaria and Turkey said gas supplies through a pipeline running south from Ukraine halted altogether on Monday night.

Bulgaria, which is 100 per cent dependent on Russian gas, instructed industrial gas users to switch to alternative fuels and urged households to use other forms of heating.

Hilmi Guler, Turkey’s energy minister, said Turkey had increased Russian gas imports through a pipeline across the Black Sea although extra supplies were insufficient to compensate for the shortfall through the pipeline from Ukraine.

Romania said Russian gas supplies had fallen by 75 per cent below contract levels on Tuesday, accelerating a decline that began late last week.

Germany and the European Union are set to pile pressure on Gazprom to find a swift solution to the dispute later on Tuesday when Mr Medvedev meets officials in Berlin.

Brussels on Tuesday called for the immediate resumption of gas supplies to Europe and urged the two sides to resume talks immediately. ”Without prior warning and in clear contradiction with the reassurances given by the highest Russian and Ukrainian authorities to the European Union, gas supplies to some EU member states have beensubstantially cut,” the EU said in a statement.

”Gazprom must meet all its contractual obligations – this also applies to deliveries to other EU states,” Michael Glos, economics minister, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper prior to the meetings. He urged the two sides to resume talks ”immediately”. Germany relies on Russia for around 40 per cent of its natural gas imports.

”At stake is nothing less than Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier and Ukraine’s reputation as a secure transit country,” Mr Glos said.

German gas importers have so far reported few difficulties obtaining Russian gas deliveries but the problem is rapidly nearing the borders of Europe’s biggest economy. Austria on Tuesday said Russian supplies had fallen to just 10 per cent of their normal levels.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, on Monday ordered Gazprom to cut supplies to Ukraine, hours after Kiev took steps to annul a long-term contract signed with Russia in 2006 governing the transit of gas to Europe.

Gazprom urged Ukraine to return to gas talks that broke down on December 31st after the two sides failed to agree on gas pricing and transit terms for 2009.

Vadim Karasyov, a political advisor to Ukraine’s president Viktor Yushchenko, said the dispute had gone so far that it was ”less clear what agreement could be reached and what the losses and gains would be for each side.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Reid: Bush And McCain Still Don't Get It - We Cannot Drill Our Way Out Of This Energy Crisis

No, nothing we can do. Move along folks, move along.

Woman suicide bomber kills 35 near Baghdad shrine

The religion of pieces practicing it's primary ritual on its own members:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A female suicide bomber blew herself up near a Shiite holy shrine in north Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 35 people including women, children and Iranian pilgrims, a security official said.

The woman carried out the attack at a checkpoint as pilgrims participating in Muharram ceremonies converged on the mausoleum of Imam Musa al-Kadhim in Kadhimiyah neighbourhood, the most important religious site in Baghdad for Shiite Muslims, the official said.

"A woman wearing an explosives belt blew herself up near one of the gates of the shrine," Major General Qassim Atta, Iraq's spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, told AFP.

Atta said 35 people were killed and 65 injured, most of them Iranian pilgrims and women and children. He described the force of the blast as "very big."

An interior ministry official put the death toll at 40, including 17 Iranian pilgrims, while the the US military, citing a casualty report from the prime minister's national operations centre, said 36 had been killed.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi condemned the attack on the Kadhimiyah shrine as a "terrorist and inhuman act" which "serves the objectives of the enemies of Islam and Muslims."

"Unfortunately foreign occupiers have revealed grounds for intensified insecurity at this recent stage by their wrong acts and approaches," Iran's state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.

Police cordoned off the site and workers moved quickly to clean up the bloodstained street that was littered with broken glass and debris from the adjacent shops.

Sunday's attack came at about 11 am (0800 GMT) as pilgrims took part in the procession related to the Muharram ceremonies that climax on Ashura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar which this year falls on January 7.

The commemoration mourns the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in the year 680 and Shiite Muslim pilgrims from around the Middle East throng to Iraq to visit the nation's holy sites during Ashura.

Despite the chaos following Sunday's bombing, pilgrims continued to march on the shrine in Kadhimiyah, carrying out ritualistic wailing and devotional self-flagellation with chains as they walked.

The Ashura ceremonies across the country have in the past often been the target of attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Sunday's attack was the deadliest in Iraq since December 11 when at least 55 people were killed and 95 wounded in a suicide bombing at a restaurant outside the northern city of Kirkuk.

Is the Real Target Hamas Rule?

Well, duh!

Patrick Baz/Agence France-Presse

From The NY Times

Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers waited Saturday at the Gaza border for a ground assault. It is not clear who would lead Gaza if Israel were to push Hamas from power.

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: January 3, 2009

EREZ CROSSING, on the Israel-Gaza border — As Israel’s tanks and troops poured into Gaza on Saturday, the next phase in its fierce attempt to end rocket attacks, a question hung over the operation: can the rockets really be stopped for any length of time while Hamas remains in power in Gaza?

Ravid Biram/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israeli soldiers took position on Saturday before entering Gaza at its northern border. It is not clear whether Israel hopes to overthrow Hamas, or who would lead Gaza if Hamas were ousted.

And if the answer is determined to be no, then is the real aim of the operation to remove Hamas entirely, no matter the cost?

After her visit to Paris on Thursday to explain to French authorities why she thought this was not the time for a quick cease-fire, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”

Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.

“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern,” Mr. Ramon said on Channel One. “That is the most important thing.”

Neither Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak has made such a statement. Still, there is a growing and shared concern among Israeli leaders that any letup against Hamas would be problematic for Israel’s broad goals in the long term because it could bolster and validate the group, which says Israel should be destroyed.

“If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from re-occupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition,” wrote Aluf Benn, a political analyst, in the newspaper Haaretz on Friday. “No matter what you call it,” he added, “Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”

In addition, any potential truce deal would probably include an increase in commercial traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is Hamas’s central demand: to end the economic boycott and border closing it has been facing. To build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet withholding the commerce would continue to leave 1.5 million Gazans living in despair.

Implicit in Mr. Benn’s argument, however, is that the only way to stop Hamas from gaining legitimacy is for Israel to fully occupy Gaza again, more than three years after removing its soldiers and settlers. That is a prospect practically no one in Israel or abroad is advocating.

Moreover, while it may sound decisive to speak of taking Hamas out of power, almost no one familiar with Gaza and Palestinian politics considers it realistic. Hamas legislators won a democratic majority in elections four years ago, and the group has 15,000 to 20,000 men under arms. It has consolidated its rule in the past 18 months since pushing out its rivals loyal to the more Western-oriented and moderate Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, who sits in Ramallah in the West Bank.

And while there are plenty of Gazans who would prefer Fatah, they seem hardly organized or strong enough to become the new rulers, even with the help of former colleagues in exile in Ramallah who say, anyway, that they would never be willing to ride into Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank. In fact, the longer Israel pounds Gaza, the weaker Fatah is likely to become because it will be seen as collaborating.

The likelier result of a destruction of the Hamas infrastructure, then, would be chaos, anathema not only to the people of Gaza but also to those hoping for peace in southern Israel.

Yet in its campaign so far, which has killed scores of children and other bystanders, Israel has not spared the trappings of Hamas sovereignty or limited itself to military targets. It says that the mosques it has destroyed were weapons storehouses and that the Islamic University, which it has hit repeatedly, housed explosives factories. But it has also reduced many government buildings to rubble without any claim that they were military in nature.

“The government buildings are a place where financial, logistical and human resources serve to support terror,” said Capt. Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military. “Much of the government is involved in the active support and planning of terror.”

Taken together, it suggests that even if Israel intends to hold back from completely overthrowing Hamas, its choice of assault tactics could head that way anyway. And the Israelis may already be facing a kind of mission creep: after all, if enough of Hamas’s infrastructure is destroyed, the prospect of governing Gaza, a densely populated, refugee-filled area whose weak economy has been devastated by the Israeli-led boycott, will be exceedingly difficult.

In the background, too, is broad international criticism of this war on Gaza, not only because of the unspeakable suffering seen on television screens but also because of a feeling that Israel has tried such tactics in the past and never succeeded.

In particular, many point to the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel also tried to destroy rocket launchers and a hostile organization’s infrastructure, only to end up killing many civilians and leaving Hezbollah more popular and perhaps ultimately stronger than before the war.

But military planners here say that the parallel is inexact and that they, too, have learned a lesson. Gaza is smaller and flatter than southern Lebanon and, most important, does not have a sievelike border with a country like Syria where arms can be constantly resupplied. Destroying the smuggler tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai into Gaza and systematically eliminating weapons depots and launcher sites, along with their supporting infrastructures, will ultimately succeed, they contend.

It may take weeks or months, they assert, but it can work. If true, questions still remain: At what human cost? And who will be in charge when it is all over?

Comparing Gaza to Lebanon is like comparing the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Sure there's water in both. Sure there are opposing forces in both. End of comparison.

More Hot Air from Met Office

HT: Icecap

By Christopher Booker, UK Telegraph

Last week, as Britain shivered in sub-zero temperatures, the Met Office predicted that 2009 would be one of “the five warmest years on record”.

The UKMO temperate predictions have been comically inept. This statement entertained various US climate experts, such as Dr Roger Pielke Sr of Colorado University, who recalled how last September the Met Office forecast that this winter in the UK would be “milder than average”, just before we enjoyed the coldest autumn and winter for decades. Dr Pielke also recalled the Met Office’s prediction two years ago that 2007 would be globally “the warmest year on record”, beating the “peak” year of 1998 (see the Watts Up With That website). Even as they made that prediction, temperatures began their steepest plunge since they toppled off that 1998 highpoint, dropping by nearly 0.7C - equivalent to the entire net warming of the 20th century.

The reason why US scientists take a particular interest in the forecasting skills of the UK Met Office is that, through its Hadley Centre, its temperature data are one of the four official sources on which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bases all those projections of global warming which have the Western world’s politicians under such a spell. The Met Office, which played a key part in setting up the IPCC, has long since abandoned any pretence that it is an impartial scientific body when it comes to promoting its favourite cause of man-made climate change.

As the Met Office’s website boasts, its ‘’world-leading expertise’’ enables it to provide ‘’an understanding of the future through risk analysis and long-range forecasting’’. It stages seminars to equip ‘’professionals in Government and the public sector’’ to ‘’dispel scepticism about climate change in your organisation’’. It is just a pity that our Met Office’s comically consistent inability to predict weather even a few weeks ahead (let alone a century hence) is beginning to make it an international laughing stock. Read more here.

Roger Pielke Sr. addresses the UK Met Office issue advocacy instead of practicing true honest science in this excellent post on Climate Science.

Hamas Orders 'Day of Wrath' as Israel Strikes Homes

Stunned and angered that Israel actually had the chutzpah to retaliate against them for firing rockets into Israel at civilian targets, Hamas takes action:

From Fox News

Friday, January 02, 2009

Israel showed no sign of slowing a blistering seven-day offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza, destroying homes of more than a dozen of the group's operatives Friday and bombing one of its mosques as Hamas ordered a "day of wrath" against Israel over the killing of a senior commander.

Thousands of Israeli security personnel were placed on high alert and deployed around annexed Arab east Jerusalem after Hamas called for "massive marches" following the main weekly Muslim prayers.

"Police has been placed on a heightened state of alert throughout the country, just under the maximum level that is in effect in war time," a police spokesman told AFP.

Israel opened its border with Gaza Friday to allow nearly 300 Palestinians with foreign passports to flee, mostly Russian and Georgian women who are married to Gazans. The United Nations estimated Friday that around 100 civilians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its offensive in December.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the U.S. government continued to seek a "durable and sustainable" cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but blasted the militant group, which she said has "held the people of Gaza hostage" since taking power in a 2007 coup.

Rice said she was in "constant contact with key Arab states" as she tried to mediate the conflict, but said she had no plans to travel to the Middle East to broker any deal.

Click here for photos. (Warning: Graphic Content)

The White House, in a separate statement, said that Hamas must stop all of its rocket attacks on Israel, which has a right to defend itself, Reuters reported.

Israel destroyed the homes of more than a dozen Hamas operatives and bombed one of its mosques on Friday, while the Israeli army said troops massed on the Gaza border were ready for any order to invade.

In what appeared to be a new Israeli tactic, the military called at least some of the houses ahead of time to warn inhabitants of an impending attack. In some cases, it also fired a sound bomb to warn away civilians before flattening the homes with powerful missiles, Palestinians and Israeli defense officials said.

Israel launched the aerial campaign last Saturday in a bid to halt weeks of intensifying Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. The offensive has dealt a heavy blow to Hamas, but failed to halt the rocket fire. New attacks Friday struck apartment buildings in a southern Israeli city. No serious injuries were reported.

After destroying Hamas' security compounds, Israel has turned its attention to the group's leadership.

In airstrike after airstrike early Friday, Israeli warplanes hit some 20 houses believed to belong to Hamas militants and members of other armed groups, Palestinians said.

They said the Israelis either warned nearby residents by phone or fired a warning missile to reduce civilian casualties. Israeli planes also dropped leaflets east of Gaza giving a confidential phone number and e-mail address for people to report locations of rocket squads. Residents stepped over the leaflets.

Israel used similar tactics during its 2006 war in Lebanon.

Most of the targeted homes Friday belonged to activist leaders and appeared to be empty at the time, but one man was killed in a strike that flattened a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded in the Israeli campaign, Gaza health officials say. The number of combatants and civilians killed is unclear, but Hamas says around half of the dead are members of its security forces and the U.N. says more than 60 are civilians, 34 of them children.

Israel opened a border crossing with Gaza and allowed out nearly 300 Palestinians who hold citizenship from a number of other countries, including the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan. The evacuees were expected to continue on to their families abroad.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in the rocket attacks, which have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one-eighth of Israel's population of 7 million within rocket range.

The mosque destroyed Friday was known as a Hamas stronghold, and the army said it was used to store weapons. It also was identified with Nizar Rayan, the Hamas militant leader killed Thursday when Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on his home.

The explosion killed 20 people, including all four of Rayan's wives and 10 of his children. The strike on Rayan's home obliterated the four-story apartment building and peeled off the walls of others around it, carving out a vast field of rubble.

Israel's military said the homes of Hamas leaders are being used to store missiles and other weapons, and the hit on Rayan's house triggered secondary explosions from the stockpile there.

"After the last crime, all options are open to counter this aggression, including martyr operations against Zionist targets everywhere," Hamas official Ismail Radwan vowed after the attack.

Rayan, 49, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers. A professor of Islamic law, he was known for his close ties to the group's military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza.

Israel's military says the homes of Hamas leaders are being used to store missiles and other weapons, and it said the hit on Rayan's house triggered secondary explosions from the stockpile there.

Israeli defense officials said the military had called Rayan's home and fired a warning missile before destroying the building. That was impossible to confirm. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military tactics.

Israel has targeted Hamas leaders many times in the past, but halted the practice during a six-month truce that expired last month.

Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and many other Western nations. From 2000 to 2004, Hamas was responsible for killing nearly 400 Israelis and wounding more than 2,000 in 425 attacks, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

From 2001 through May 2008, Hamas launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks against Israeli targets.

Most of Hamas' leaders went into hiding at the start of Israel's offensive. Rayan, however, was known for openly defying Israel and in the past had led crowds to the homes of wanted Hamas figures — as if daring Israel to strike and risk the lives of civilians.

The offensive has not halted rocket fire at Israel, and a barrage landed in the city of Ashkelon early Friday. Two rockets hit apartment buildings, lightly wounding one man, police said. Sirens warning Israelis to take cover when military radar picks up an incoming rocket have helped reduce casualties in recent days.

The military said aircraft destroyed the three rocket launchers used to fire at Ashkelon.

Israel has been building up artillery, armor and infantry on Gaza's border in an indication the punishing air assault could continue with a ground incursion. At the same time, international pressure is building for a cease-fire that would block more fighting.

Israel appears to be maintaining an opening for the intense diplomatic efforts by leaders in the Middle East and, saying it would consider a halt to the fighting if international monitors were brought in to track compliance with any truce with Hamas.

Concerned about protests, Israeli police stepped up security and restricted access to Friday prayers at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque, barring all males under 50 from entering.

"We condemn these measures, and we believe they contradict the principle of freedom of worship," said Jerusalem's mufti, Mohammed Hussein.

Prayers in Jerusalem ended without incident, though in a nearby east Jerusalem neighborhood youths clashed with anti-riot police on horseback. There were no injuries reported.

The army also imposed a closure on the West Bank, barring nearly all of the area's more than 2 million Palestinians from entering Israel.

Thousands demonstrated in the West Bank in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Palestinian police loyal to Hamas' moderate rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, barred protesters from chanting pro-Hamas slogans or waving Hamas banners. Three Hamas activists were arrested.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.