Chris At Home

Because I am too lazy to post each article separately. (If you read this, Rusty, it is just a joke...I have the hardest working man in show business.)

Update: US offers long-range nuclear weapons in exchange for Iran's promise to soon stop enrichment.

U.S. officials were encouraged when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not immediately reject the offer, but demanded face-to-face talks with U.S. President George Bush, and also required that Mr. Bush appear at the negotiations wearing pink fuzzy slippers.

• The Times reminds Britain that terrorism is the enemy, not the US.
  

  The strength of disdain is a measure of Europe’s weakness. Smugness is one of Europe’s great contemporary exports. We may all think that we know America, its music, its culture, its self-confident exceptionalism. We tend to forget that Americans fight only with extreme reluctance. We overlook their penchant for agonised self-criticism; everything bad we know about the US, we know because Americans inexhaustibly rehearse their society’s shortcomings. There has never been greater transparency, whether than on the battlefield or the boondocks, and there has never been more open debate about the country’s virtues and vices — the internet has transformed the quantity and, at times, the quality of the conversation.

• The NY Post predicts Iran will not yield in the nuke conflict. As I point out occasionally, Iran has too much to gain from access to nukes: becoming a regional superpower, safety from attacks, the freedom to export terror as they wish. Incentives sound grand, but don't balance the scales from the Iranian perspective.
• Among the incentives are American nuclear power technology. Allah says it doesn't matter, if we don't provide it, other countries will. Spencer calls it appeasement and invokes the name of Neville Chamberlain. (THIS one is not satire.)
• Islamic historian Bernard Lewis compares the current situation to 1938, says "Get tough." Read it all, it is very interesting and covers a lot of ground.
  

  If Chamberlain had taken a tougher line, the probability is that the German military command would have removed Hitler and World War II could have been avoided. But they didn't. We encouraged him. We gave him Czechoslovakia and he then took Poland. And what I'm afraid of is that they seem to be doing the same thing now, as moving from retreat to retreat on each of the points as it arises. I hope I'm wrong.

• More smuggled Iranian weapons found in Iraq, this time in Basra.
• Ahmadinejad aide is a nice man and encourages me to believe Iran doesn't really want to destroy Israel:
  

  But among the Jews there have always been those who killed God’s prophets and who opposed justice and righteousness. Throughout history, this religious group has inflicted the most damage on the human race, while some of its groups engaged in plotting against other nations and ethnic groups to cause cruelty, malice and wickedness.”

  
  Jews are filthy, spread diseases, and conspired to fabricate the Holocaust.
• Iran seems to like forced prostitution.
• I'd like a cite for this claim: "No matter what anyone says publicly, facts on the ground indicate Iran already has at least four operational nuclear warheads inside missile cones and ready to go." He does believe in a version of the Babe Theory of Political Movements. So does the US!
• Hamas and Fatah continue fighting over Abbas' proposed referendum. They even shot up a TV station, claiming bias in the programming. (This solutions is not recommended for Republicans angry at CNN.)
• Hans Blix blames US and neo-colonialist attitudes for terrorism.
• Anti-semitic attacks by a weird Black group in France. They are like the Black Muslims only even stranger.