NO CIVIL WAR: IRAQ DISAPPOINTS THE NEW YORK TIMES ONCE AGAIN
The Associated Press reported Monday (2/27) that Sunni Arabs in Iraq are prepared to end their boycott of talks to form a national unity government, thus disappointing yet again those journalists who've been telling us for two years civil war is imminent.
It seemed last Wednesday (2/22) as if the pessimists might finally be right after terrorists destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. Shia militias attacked more than a dozen Sunni mosques in retaliation. An unprecedented three day curfew was imposed in Baghdad in order to curb sectarian violence in which more than 100 people were killed.
To the grave disappointment of the New York Times, both Sunni and Shia religious leaders have called for calm. "We have much more evidence of a strong national unity movement in Iraq," says Iraqi Web logger Haider Ajina of the weekend demonstrations. "This attack was supposed to plunge Iraq into sectarian mayhem and senseless massive killing. This did not happen."
These peaceful demonstrations for peace drew little attention from a news media that is eager to report on a civil war, even if it isn't happening.
ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING WON WORLD WAR II
As a former intelligence officer who spent 23 years at the CIA, I am an intelligence history buff. So it is that the current media frenzy over "illegal NSA telephone taps" has an interesting precedent.
The New York Times and the Democrat Party are waging a campaign against Bush Administration electronic surveillance (misnamed "taps," by the way) of Al Qaeda communications with its contacts here in America. Their goal is for the Democrats to gain control of Congress this November, and impeach President Bush for the "crime" of "domestic spying."
Let's ask the New York Times editors if they would have President Roosevelt impeached for crimes that resulted in America's winning World War II?
HOME ENTERTAINMENT – THE PC WAY
It looks like we won't have to put up with DVDs much longer.
More and more people are bypassing them and directly copying or downloading movies, TV shows, and computer games directly to their computers - in contravention of the will of the movie and music producers and, in many cases, of the law.
Folks are figuring out how, with free or low cost software, their PC can be more than a computer - it's a media center. It plays music, movies, TV shows, and can do all sorts of other wonderful things - like pick up local radio stations and terrestrial high definition TV broadcasts.
Let's get you started in turning your PC into a home entertainment center.
CHRISTIANS FIGHTING BACK
Finally, finally, finally, at last. Christians are fighting back against rioting rampaging Moslem violence and oppression.
In Egypt back in the 7th century AD, most all Egyptians were Christians. Then Arabs swarmed out of the eastern deserts like human locusts to conquer Egypt and impose Islam. The native Egyptians were not Arab, and a few of them held on to Christianity in the face of enormous intolerance for centuries. These are the Copts.
Copts often have to hold their church services in secret, given all the government restrictions on building a church (there are no such restrictions on building a mosque). So when Moslems found out that an "unlicensed" building was being used as a Coptic Church in Odayssat, a village near Luxor on the Nile, a mob of them rioted, set fires, and tried to burn the building down.
The Moslems expected the Copts to just passively take it as always. But this time, January 18, 2006, the Copts fought back.TO THE POINT WASHINGTON CONFERENCE
It is my great pleasure to announce our First Annual To The Point Members' Conference, to be held in Washington DC from April 21-23.
I'll be your host and master of ceremonies. It's a marvelous opportunity for folks in our To The Point family to get to know each other.
Friday evening, April 21, we'll assemble at the Doubletree Inn in Pentagon City overlooking the Potomac River for a reception and dinner in the revolving restaurant with an extraordinary view of Washington. Yep, I'll give a speech.
Saturday morning, April 22, is devoted to panels and speeches by our To The Point writers - with lots of Q&A. You'll meet Dr. Joel Wade, Neal Asbury, Jack Kelly, Michael Ledeen, Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, Enders Wimbush of the Hudson Institute, and Alex Alexiev, one of the world's grandmasters of geopolitics.
Your mind will be stretched wide and crammed full of insights about what's really going on in the world.
A JURISPRUDENCE OF PREVENTION
Next week a vastly important book will be published: Preemption, A Knife That Cuts Both Ways by Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz: the hyper-liberal Harvard Law School professor.
Yet it is only for the lack of his legal scholarship that there is nary a sentence in the book that I - a very conservative editor of The Washington Times and former press secretary to Newt Gingrich - couldn't have written.
The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass inoculation, prior restraint of dangerous speech, targeted extrajudicial executions of terrorists and preemptive military action, including full-scale preventive war.
PROGRAMMERS GET THEIR OWN SEARCH ENGINE
Developers can use Google and other search engines to find source code, but it's not easy.
A Silicon Valley startup claims to have come up with a better alternative -- a search engine for source code and code-related information. The tool, known as Krugle, is designed to deliver easy access to source code and other highly relevant technical information in a single, convenient, clean, easy-to-use interface, according to the company. Krugle works by crawling, parsing, and indexing code found in open source repositories and code that exists in archives, mailing lists, blogs, and Web pages.IS IT SMART TO ATTACK ALL MOSLEMS?
What do the arrests of three suspected Moslem terrorists in Ohio have to do with the purchase by an Arab company of the firm that manages facilities at six U.S. seaports?
Nothing...and everything.
The Justice Department indicted Tuesday Mohammad Zaki Amawi, 26, of Toledo; Marwan Othman al-Hindi, 42, of Toledo, and Wassim Mazloum, 24, of Cleveland, on charges of plotting to kill U.S. military personnel.
So what does this have to do with the purchase by Dubai Ports World of the British firm that manages commercial operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans?DISRAELI IN DUBAI
The 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) once commented on accusations that a political opponent of his was lying regarding an important issue before Parliament: "It is worse than a lie - it is a blunder."
We can be sure that the Earl of Beaconsfield (the peerage awarded to Disraeli by Queen Victoria) would make the same observation today over the travails of George Bush and the port scandal.
There is no secret deal here. CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that vets these things, ran it through 12 agencies including Defense, Treasury, State, Homeland Security, and the White House National Security Council. Their approval was unanimous. Had just one objected, it would have been put on a 45-day investigative hold.
Bush was blindsided on this out of sheer naiveté. He still can't accept as real the bottomless mendacity of Democrats. For Barbara Boxer and Chuck Schumer to foment in protest over a deal with America's closest Arab ally, when they have gone far more ballistic at any suggestion that Arabs be profiled at US airports - well, I guess it's standard liberal chutzpah.
Outdoing Bush in naiveté are Republicans in Congress being led with rings in their noses by Boxer and Schumer into an orgy of Bush-bashing. It would be nice if they all took a deep breath, switched on their brains, and began thinking of how to take advantage of this fiasco.THE GREATEST ONE WEEK ADVENTURE IN THE WORLD
This is K2, the second highest mountain in the world at 28,741 feet (8762 meters), and harder to climb than Everest. It isn't in the Himalayas, but an even remoter mountain range in Central Asia called the Karakorum.
In the center of the Karakorum range is a confluence of massive glaciers, a legendary uninhabited spot known to mountaineers as Concordia. Legendary because it is by consensus of professional mountaineers and adventurers to be the single most spectacularly scenic place on planet Earth.
At Concordia there are 41 peaks over 21,000 feet within a radius of nine miles. The highest mountains in the world are called "eight-thousanders," higher than 8,000 meters or 26,250 feet. There are 14 such giants, all in either the Himalayas or the Karakorum. At Concordia you can see four all at once. It is unique on earth.
It takes ten days of trekking from the last outpost of civilization - called Skardu - to reach Concordia. Then ten days back. But this July, I am going to take a dozen adventurers to Concordia in a single day - by helicopter.
And that's not all.