City Council Passes Motions Criticizing Marines Office

Good old Berkeley, after all these years, still putting the "less" in "classless".

Full article (here).

Members of the Berkeley City Council showed their opposition to a Marine Corps recruiting office in Downtown Berkeley last night.

Council members supported the two resolutions-one supporting anti-war protests and the other criticizing military recruitment practices-citing opposition to the war in Iraq, deceptive recruitment practices and the right to protest.

"By taking a stand against recruitment we are protecting the health and safety of our youth," said PhoeBe sorgen, a member of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission. "I see the protest as taking a proud and courageous stand."

Code Pink, a national anti-war grassroots organization, will be granted a parking spot for their regular Wednesday afternoon protests and will not need to apply for a sound permit for the next six months, under one resolution.

The other resolution more directly criticizes the presence of the center in Berkeley. The city manager was directed to send a letter to the U.S. Marine Corps saying they are "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" in the city.

Why lovers of Israel should vote for McCain (according to Lieberman)

Full article (here).

So why McCain?

We started with Iran. McCain, Lieberman says, is the candidate to be trusted on this crucial matter. Every candidate states that he does not want Iran to become a nuclear power. The question is, Lieberman says, "how far will they go." And off course, McCain, like everybody else, wants to solve the problem peacefully, by diplomatic means, and sanctions when necessary. But "there's no question in my mind," Lieberman says, that McCain is a leader with "very strong views" when it comes to a nuclear Iran.

He does not believe that talks with Iran will make the difference. Lieberman calls this approach "just naive". You can't expect that "words" will do the trick. The Iranians will react to "strength." And in McCain Lieberman found the "principled leader in time of war" that will not be swayed by public opinion. "He is fearless" when it comes to "political popularity," Lieberman reminds the voters, and "does not change with the wind." He was fighting for the surge in Iraq when it was unpopular, which "speaks volumes to me."

And Lieberman also says that McCain understands how significant the establishment of the state of Israel was. He is an avid reader of history and also has "a sense of history." He is familiar with the story of the country. He will not do anything that will "compromise Israel's security." Lieberman has real confidence in McCain, a "total comfort level" because "I know this man."

How Bush Decided on the Surge

This is from an excellent article that attempts to explain the Presidents decision making process.

Full article (here).

For an unpopular president facing a Democratic Congress ferociously opposed to the war in Iraq, it was a risky and defiant decision. Now, a year later, it's clear the surge has been a success. Violence is down, Baghdad mostly pacified, many Sunni leaders have abandoned their insurgency, and Al Qaeda in Iraq has been crushed (though not eliminated).

The war is not over, nor have the Iraqi government's steps toward sectarian reconciliation between Shia and Sunnis amounted to much. But should progress continue to the point that American troops begin coming home in large numbers and Iraq emerge as a reasonably secure democracy, a possibility arises: that because of his surge decision, Bush not only won the war in Iraq but saved his presidency.

Mexican politicians say migrants returning because of AZ law

Full story here.

Politicians from the Mexican state bordering Arizona say they are receiving reports of migrants who are "self-deporting" and landing in border communities because of Arizona's employer sanctions law.

The full effect of the law, which calls for punishing Arizona employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants but hasn't been used yet, is troublesome and unknown for Mexican lawmakers along the border.

"We have yet to feel the full impact, but the moment (immigrants) leave Arizona, we're going to have problems," said Enrique Flores Lopez, director of the state migrant advocacy department in the state of Sonora.

A delegation of politicians from Sonora plans to travel to Mexico City next week to seek help to house and feed workers who may flee Arizona.

"We're going to demand resources," said Irma Villalobos, a state legislator who heads the commission of border affairs in Sonora.

Nogales legislator Leticia Amparano, who met with Arizona lawmakers to learn more about the new law and its enforcement, said Mexican lawmakers have collected anecdotes about crowded classrooms and more people roaming the streets of downtown Nogales, Mexico, in search of assistance.

(Video) A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Here's a short video about the Canadian health care system that you won't see on 60 Minutes.

Col. Rod Coffey honors the fallen

From a eulogy given in Iraq for six soldiers and one Iraqi interpreter killed in a booby-trapped house in Sinsil, Iraq on January 9, 2008.

Full article here:

And so I need to speak of what else they died for, and what I believe our honored dead would now expect of us.

I’ll begin by saying what they would not want. They would not wish to be seen as victims of a misguided war, victims of stop loss – or victims of anything else for that matter.

We know we are fighting extremism here in a thousand ways. And as the hometown news articles are getting written several of these fallen heroes are on record stating they believed the war in Iraq is a noble cause.

For those who want to support us by getting us out of Iraq as soon as possible, without a victory, I have but one comment. You’re too late. We have sacrificed too much and all we ask of you is the necessary time to finish the job.

Our children and yours, our grandchildren and yours will be safer for it.

This squadron and the formations on its left and right have in the balance sheet of history, already achieved far more than extremist reckless hatred will ever accomplish.

Breach in Gaza

From an op-ed in the Washington Post.

Full article here.

Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert committed themselves to reaching a peace accord in 2008 during President Bush's visit this month. Yet since then, political attention in the region has been focused on the rocket attacks, Israel's retaliatory strikes against militants in Gaza and the subsequent blockade, and yesterday's dramatic breach of the border. Naturally it is impossible for the peace negotiations to make progress in these conditions. So those who say their priority is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement ought to be trying to stop Hamas's disruptions.

That obligation doesn't just fall on Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert -- though Israel may have a lesson to learn from the way Hamas exploited its temporary shutdown of fuel supplies. Mr. Mubarak and other Arab leaders have to resist the urge to roll over every time they are challenged by Hamas and al-Jazeera television. Would Mr. Mubarak allow tens of thousands of Darfur refugees to illegally enter Egypt from Sudan, where a real humanitarian crisis is underway? Surely not. Egypt's obligation as a law-abiding state is to restore order on the border and prevent the ongoing and massive smuggling of armaments into Gaza. That would go a long way toward stopping the rockets.

The Bush administration and European governments should act to stop the ongoing farce at the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which have ignored months of daily rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians but now rush to condemn a partial, three-day disruption of Gaza's power supplies. Hamas, and the people of Gaza, should get a consistent message that relief lies not in blowing up international borders but in ending attacks on Israel and allowing a peace process to go forward.

One Man's Terrorist, Another's Freedom Fighter

Remember this the next time you have the inkling to watch NBC news.

It is hard for me to describe Ahmed Sanakreh as a terrorist, although I know it's true. Hard, because I got to know him and his family quite well, and when you understand people, it's hard to hate them: Twenty-year-old Ahmed, baby-faced with black hair sticking up in gelled spikes, and a passion for his Nokia 90 cell phone; and his elder brother, Alaa, the intense, hollow-cheeked leader of the Palestinian al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. They are the hard core of the hard core.

Although Alaa was the leader, Ahmed was the one Israel most wanted dead. I often asked Alaa why his younger brother had so many bodyguards, and Alaa would only smile mysteriously. But one day he confirmed Israel's claims: that Ahmed blew up an Israeli officer, and was the bomb-maker behind other suicide bombers.

Full article here.

NY Times Endorses John McCain

It's hard to tell if this is an endorsement of McCain or just an excuse to bash Republicans.

We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice.

Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field.

We have shuddered at Mr. McCain’s occasional, tactical pander to the right because he has demonstrated that he has the character to stand on principle. He was an early advocate for battling global warming and risked his presidential bid to uphold fundamental American values in the immigration debate. A genuine war hero among Republicans who proclaim their zeal to be commander in chief, Mr. McCain argues passionately that a country’s treatment of prisoners in the worst of times says a great deal about its character.

Full article here.

Medics Under Fire Save Soldiers

Read the whole story here:

"We lowered the ramp (of the Stryker) to get out and be able to get to the aircraft, and (the sniper) started shooting," Congdon said.

McQuown, a native of Florida, picked up one patient while Congdon and an infantry soldier helped the other patient, and they broke for it.

"They ran out of litters, and the guy was shooting at us," Congdon said. "The longer we wait on the ground, the worse it is on the patient, so at some point we had to just leave and get the patients to the hospital."

The medics loaded the remaining two patients on the medvac birds. After a quick count of heads to make sure no one was left behind, they departed while the Apaches continued to lay down suppressing fire.

"The five patients we hauled all survived," Fricks said.

He said watching the two medics struggling to bring their patients to safety was almost like something you'd see in a Hollywood production. "I just thought it was awesome," he said.

Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

From the BBC:

The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".

They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".

The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"

It's all very odd, 'that's for sure'

Here, Mark Steyn weighs in on the Canadian "Human Rights" trails:

In a free society, justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. And when you see what's being done at the CHRC it's hard not to conclude that the genius of the English legal system — the balance between prosecutor, judge, and jury — has been all but destroyed. The American website Pundita has a sharp analysis of Section XIII, comparing it to Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel The Minority Report, set in a world in which citizens can be sentenced for "pre-crime" — for criminal acts which have not occurred but are "likely" to. Who needs futuristic novels when we're living it here and now in one of the oldest constitutional democracies on the planet? What kind of countries have tribunals with 100 per cent conviction rates that replace the presumption of innocence with the presumption of guilt and in which truth is not only no defence but compelling evidence of that guilt? Consider this statement, part of the criteria by which the star chamber determines when a Section XIII crime has occurred. What does it look for as evidence?

"Messages that make use of allegedly true stories, news reports, pictures and references to apparently reputable sources in an attempt to lend an air of objectivity and truthfulness to the extremely negative characterization of the targeted group have been found to be likely to expose members of the targeted group to hatred and contempt."

Read that again slowly. Citing news reports, reputable sources, facts, statistics, documentation, quotations, references, scholarly studies, etc., has been "found" to be clear evidence of your "likely" "pre-crime."

Man who keyed car gets day in court; so do Marines

Full story here.

So Grodner received a $600 fine, which will go to a Marine charity, 30 hours of community service and a year of court supervision. If he doesn't pay up in a month, the judge promised to put him in jail for a year.

Judge O'Malley had something to say. He looked out into his courtroom, at all those men who'd come to support a Marine they didn't know.

"You caused damage to this young Marine sergeant's car because you were offended by his Marine Corps license plates," said Judge O'Malley.

Grodner stood there, hands behind his back. He grasped the fingers of his left hand with his right, and held it there, so they wouldn't wiggle.

"You're probably also wondering why there was a whole crowd of people here, Mr. Grodner," said Judge O'Malley.

"I don't want to wonder," said Grodner, continuing in his new meek voice, not in his tough divorce lawyer voice, but the gentle, inside voice he'd just learned.

"That's because there is a little principle that the Marine Corps has had since 1775," the judge continued. "When they fought and lost their lives so that people like you could enjoy the freedom of this country. It is a little proverb that we follow:

"No Marine is left behind.

"So Sgt. McNulty couldn't be here. But other Marines showed up in his stead. Take him away," said the judge and former Marine.

Ice returns as Greenland temps plummet

While the rest of Europe is debating the prospects of global warming during an unseasonably mild winter, a brutal cold snap is raging across the semi-autonomous nation of Greenland.

On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.

'The ice is up to 50cm thick,' said Henrik Matthiesen, an employee at Denmark's Meteorological Institute who has also sailed the Greenlandic coastline for the Royal Arctic Line. 'We've had loads of northerly winds since Christmas which has made the area miserably cold.'

Matthiesen suggested the cold weather marked a return to the frigid temperatures common a decade ago.

(Source)

Photos from a global warming protest frosted with snow

(Source)

A Letter to the Candidates

From an open letter written by a soldier in Iraq to the presidential candidates:

I have been witness to Iraqi citizens who previously cowered behind mud walls come out into the light and demand their neighborhoods back. They've found the courage to stand in their streets and dare evil to return. They do so because they trust the American Soldier and that he/she has got their backs. I'm sure you are aware of just how hard it is to build trust, and then keep that trust once it's established. So I ask, what happens to that trust, to those Iraqi citizen neighborhood watch groups, to the Iraqi children once again attending school when we immediately withdraw our troops?

It may not be important to you, but I'd also like to know if you've considered how our men and women serving in uniform, our heroes, will handle letting down an entire people? We are here, boots on the ground, showing that the trust we've asked for is not misplaced. Should we be immediately withdrawn, our warriors will face having to live their lives with the knowledge that they've failed that trust. As Soldiers we take an oath and our word means everything to us. The thought of not living up to our word is both foreign and frightening.

Smearing Soldiers

From an op-ed by Ralph Peters in the New York Post:

THE New York Times is trashing our troops again. With no new "atrocities" to report from Iraq for many a month, the limping Gray Lady turned to the home front. Front and center, above the fold, on the front page of Sunday's Times, the week's feature story sought to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home.

Heart-wringing tales of madness and murder not only made the front page, but filled two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth.

The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began.

Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.

Public and Media Perceptions on Iraq Success Diverging

This article was comforting to read.

"Americans are discerning, through a maze of information sources, the truth about our status in Iraq. They see more success than the media is reporting," said Jerry C. Lindsley, director of the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute. He added, "They are especially disturbed that negative media reports damage U.S. troop morale."

Nearly three-quarters of all Americans surveyed, 70.7%, indicated they strongly or somewhat agreed that negative media reporting damages troop morale.

Over half of all survey respondents, 59.8%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that negative media coverage damages prospects for success in Iraq because it encourages terrorists, and about half, 49.1%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that things are likely going better for the U.S. than the U.S. media portrays.

Death Blow to Defeatists

From Pete Hegseth at Nation Review Online.

For months the only argument the antiwar crowd could cling to was: “The surge has not brought about the national-level political progress it was intended to induce.” Ergo: We lose, bring ‘em home. While this argument requires a “willing suspension of disbelief” in light of recent improvements in Iraq, it was “technically” true.

No more.

The Iraqi parliament, flaws and all, came together — Sunni, Shia, and Kurd — to craft a law that relaxes restrictions on the right of former-members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to fill government posts. The law will reinstate thousands of Baathists in government jobs from which they had been dismissed shortly after the war.

In short, less than five years after the fall of a genocidal Sunni dictator — who killed thousands of Shiites and Kurds — a democratically elected Shia government granted de-facto “amnesty” to former Baathist co-conspirators. Kind of makes our domestic illegal-immigration “amnesty” debate look silly, doesn’t it?

Full article here.

(Video) Defending Freedom of Speech in Canada

Ezra Levant recently appeared before a hearing of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. The commission was investigating a complaint about Levant's earlier publication of the Danish Mohammad cartoons.

These three videos, which total about 10 minutes, combine to form an excellent defense of freedom of speech against political correctness.

(Video) Surge Plus One: Doura

This is a recent video from Doura, Iraq. There are no explosions or gunfights. Mostly, it is just children playing.

I sure hope the Democrats will take over the White House and put and end to it!

A First! Snow Falls in Baghdad

I am sure Al Gore will be quick to explain how Global Warming also makes it snow more.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8U3RFHO0

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

"I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no," said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad.

Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming

You don't say?

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/910

Denpasar, Bali - As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.

Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.
...

(Video) Robin Williams in Kuwait

Interesting event at a recent USO performance.

I guess Mr. Williams is one celebrity I can still respect.

Michael Yon's Book

Milblogger Michael Yon is putting together a collection of his 2007 dispatches into a book. Proceeds from the book will help fund his continued reporting from Iraq.

http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/moment-of-truth-in-iraq.htm

Readers genuinely interested in a fuller more comprehensive picture of the so-called “surge” unfolding, and continuing to unfold, might be interested to know that I have arranged to publish a book based on my 2007 dispatches, with much of the missing details and behind-the-scenes information added and including material I will be writing about critical events in early 2008 that will give deeper credence to the title of the new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq.
...

But just because our military has averted a disaster does not mean an automatic or easy path to a successful outcome. That’s why I titled the book Moment of Truth in Iraq and why I believe that some events that will determine to a large extent the final outcome will occur early in 2008. Now more than ever, when every American is asking what course our country should take in Iraq, it is absolutely vital that we have a voice in the field.