Did the Mossad help free the Columbian hostages?
Vanguardia’s Tel Aviv correspondent said the Mossad operation consisted of two agents unknown to each other separately infiltrating FARC.
The pair managed to penetrate the Marxist guerrilla group so effectively that they ultimately controlled what FARC did or didn’t know, the Catalan newspaper said.
All the more reason, of course, for the left to hate the “Zionists.”
Obama’s three hundred foreign policy advisors apparently weren’t enough. His new choice of location for his German sermon from the mount, to win over valuable electoral votes of the German people, seems to have backfired as badly as the attempt to emulate Kennedy and Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate:
Andreas Schockenhoff, deputy leader of the conservative bloc in Parliament, said Sunday that the choice of the Victory Column, also known as the Golden Angel, was an “unhappy symbol” since it represented so much of Germany’s militaristic past.
Rainer Brüderle, deputy leader of the opposition Free Democrats, said Obama’s advisers had little idea of the historical significance of the Victory Column. “It was the symbol of German superiority over Denmark, Austria and France,” Brüderle told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
The monument was built in 1864 to commemorate Prussia’s victory over Denmark. When it was inaugurated, Prussia had defeated Austria during the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
The column has been originally located near the Reichstag, now the Bundestag, or German Parliament, which is close to the Brandenburg Gate. But Adolf Hitler relocated it about two kilometers, or one mile, toward the western part of the city to the Grosser Stern, or Great Star.
Too bad Leni Riefenstahl isn’t around any more to film the event for him. Then later, he could reenact his grandfather’s liberation of Auschwitz.
Maybe if he gets a couple hundred more advisors, he can find one with a clue. I’ve never seen anyone have so much trouble getting good help. It must be tough being a messiah.
I do have to say, though, that watching this kind of thing for four years would be entertaining. I just wish that he wouldn’t be in charge of anything important during the show.
Some thoughts from a German on Obama’s grandiosity:
…apart from questions of sensitivity and protocol, the proposal was also politically short-sighted. A German government cannot and will not intervene in foreign power struggles. It is simply a matter of political common sense for democratic countries to refrain from getting involved in the elections of other countries. This is a matter of respect, but also of calculated self-interest. Since you never know who will win, it is more advisable to stay neutral. As consequence, the German government cannot show preference to Obama: whatever Obama is permitted, McCain must also be permitted. Even before becoming American President, Obama has thus managed to embarrass one of his most important allies. Hardly an intelligent move. But he evidently does not think in terms of the long-term categories of real politics, but rather in terms of the short-term effects of political spectacle.
Yup. It’s very hard to take him seriously.
He’s not a “lighworker.” He’s a lightweight.
…why can’t we kick the fossil fuel habit? Well, we can, but not the way we put a man on the moon, and certainly not within a decade. On the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first landing, I explain.
[Afternoon update]
It’s interesting to note that the original landing was on a Sunday as well. I don’t know how many of the anniversaries have fallen on a Sunday, but I would guess five or so. It’s not too late to plan to commemorate the event with a ceremony at dinner tonight, with friends and family. Also, a collection of remembrances here. If you’re old enough to remember it yourself, you might want to add one.
Maybe. These were clearly unsustainable prices–the only question was how long it would take them to drop. And what do you know? The market works:
Gas may be getting just a bit cheaper, but major changes in how Americans live and drive are already in motion.
Car buyers have been fleeing to more fuel-efficient models. U.S. sales of pickups and sport utility vehicles are down nearly 18 percent this year through June, while sales of small cars are up more than 10 percent.
While slashing production of more-profitable trucks and SUVs, automakers have been scurrying to build their most fuel-efficient models faster.
Toyota Motor Corp., which hasn’t been able to keep up with demand for its 46-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, said last week it will start producing the Prius in the U.S. and suspend truck and SUV production to meet changing consumer demands.
Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. also have announced plans to increase small car production, and GM has said 18 of the 19 vehicles it is launching between now and 2010 are cars or crossovers.
And what do you know, they didn’t do it because their intellectual superiors in Congress passed a law making them. They did it because gas was four bucks a gallon. Maybe people aren’t the stupid sheep that technocrats think they are.
Chris Bowers: on why “progressives” should support space programs. There’s a lot of typical mythology in the comments section about NASA and the military, and spin-off. We would have had PCs without Apollo, honest. We needed microchips for the missiles, which was at least as big a driver.
The heretic Lord Monckton has a request today of the president of the American Physical Society:
The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website
of Physics and Society:“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?
It will be interesting to see the response.
…on the high seas. Though he doesn’t discuss it explicitly, Chris Borgen makes another case for why we need to get off the planet.
Ron Bailey reports.
Well, OK, it’s just a conference on the subject. Which isn’t as interesting, but a lot less scary.
[Saturday morning update]
We have met the enemy, and he is us:
“All of the biggest risks, the existential risks are seen to be anthropogenic, that is, they originate from human beings.”
All the more reason to get some eggs into baskets other than this one. Also, the rise (again) of the neo-Malthusians. It’s hard to keep them down for long, even though so far, they’ve predicted about five out of the last zero world overpopulation crises.
Charles Krauthammer, on Senator Obama’s overinflated self regard:
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 — who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap — called “a Europe whole and free”?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It’s as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work I a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone.
I suspect that the American people are going to get pretty tired of this as it goes on for another three months, and not be looking forward to four years of it.