Even as Russia and Putin's KGB buddies in South Ossetia are going through the fiction of recognizing "South Ossetian independence", they're already admitting that Russia really plans to annex the territory.

Officials in South Ossetia said Friday that Russia intends eventually to absorb the breakaway Georgian province. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region's leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed South Ossetia's future earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.Russia will absorb South Ossetia "in several years" or earlier, a position that was "firmly stated by both leaders," Gassiyev said.

Worked great for the Sudetenland.

If you're wondering who Kokoity is, he was a former Komsomol leader who moved to Moscow, became a "businessman", joined in the Putin gang and then was dispatched back to "lead" South Ossetia, a fictional government that's nothing more than a front for a Moscow annexation of Georgia.

By no coincidence at all, Abkhazia, another fictional country that's nothing more than another Russian front for annexing a chunk of Georgia, is "led" by Sergei Bagapsh, another Komsomol\Secretary of the regional Communist Party thug who has carried out ethnic cleansing in Russia's name.

The end game is to carve up Georgia and Russia's other neighbors, piece by piece, using the ethnic minorities that Russia itself forcibly imported and deported into sovereign countries to demand "independence" followed by Russian annexation.

Russia is actually pretty good at creating fictional countries for this purpose. The most famous fictional country created in Moscow, is known as Palestine, a project initiated after the defeat of Russia's Arab allies in the Six Day War. So far Palestine has been Russia's biggest success.

Here's an interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of Romania's Communist era intelligence agency. There's more to read here than I can even begin to quote, but the bottom line is the real nature of the war we're facing and the common enemy.

FP: Tell us about the PLO and its connection to the Soviet regime.

Pacepa: The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations...

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow. The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman. (During the Six-Day War he escaped from Jerusalem disguised as a woman, thereafter becoming such a symbol within the bloc intelligence community that one of its later influence operations—aimed at making the West consider Arafat a moderate—was given the codename “Shuqairy.”)

This new PLO was headed by a Soviet-style Executive Committee made up of 15 members who, like their comrades in Moscow, also headed departments. As in Moscow—and Bucharest—the chairman of the Executive Committee became the general commander of the armed forces as well. The new PLO also had a General Assembly, which was the Soviet-inspired name given to all East European parliaments after World War II.

Based on another “socialist division of labor,” the Romanian espionage service (DIE) was responsible for providing the PLO with logistical support. Except for the arms, which were supplied by the KGB and the East German Stasi, everything else came from Bucharest. Even the PLO uniforms and the PLO stationery were manufactured in Romania free of charge, as a “comradely help.” During those years, two Romanian cargo planes filled with goodies for the PLO landed in Beirut every week, and were unloaded by Arafat’s men.

FP: You have discussed your personal knowledge of how Arafat was created and cultivated by the KGB and how the Soviets actually designed him to be the future leader of the PLO. Illuminate this picture for us please.

Pacepa: “Tovarishch Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar,” was built into a Palestinian leader by the KGB in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War. In that war Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union’s most important allies in the Arab world of that time, Egypt and Syria, and the Kremlin thought that Arafat could help repair the Soviet prestige. Arafat had begun his political career as leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah, whose fedayeen were being secretly trained in the Soviet Union. In 1969, the KGB managed to catapult him up as chairman of the PLO executive committee. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was also a Soviet puppet, publicly proposed the appointment.

Soon after that, the KGB tasked Arafat to declare war on American “imperial-Zionism” during the first summit of the Black International, an organization that was also financed by the KGB. Arafat claimed to have coined the word “imperial-Zionism,” but in fact Moscow had invented this battle cry many years earlier, combining the traditionally Russian anti-Semitism with the new Marxist anti-Americanism.


FP: Why has the American and Israeli leadership been deceived so long about Arafat’s criminal and terrorist activities?

Pacepa: Because Arafat is a master of deceit—and I unfortunately contributed to that. In March 1978, for instance, I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest to involve him in a long-planned Soviet/Romanian disinformation plot. Its goal was to get the United States to establish diplomatic relations with him, by having him pretend to transform the terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile that was willing to renounce terrorism. Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev believed that newly elected US president Jimmy Carter would swallow the bait. Therefore, he told the Romanian dictator that conditions were ripe for introducing Arafat into the White House. Moscow gave Ceausescu the job because by 1978 my boss had become Washington’s most favored tyrant. “The only thing people in the West care about is our leaders,” the KGB chairman said, when he enrolled me in the effort of making Arafat popular in Washington. “The more they come to love them, the better they will like us.”

“But we are a revolution,” Arafat exploded, after Ceausescu explained what the Kremlin wanted from him. “We were born as a revolution, and we should remain an unfettered revolution.” Arafat expostulated that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state. That statehood was only something for a future generation. That all governments, even Communist ones, were limited by laws and international agreements, and he was not willing to put any laws or other obstacles in the way of the Palestinian struggle to eradicate the state of Israel.

My former boss was able to persuade Arafat into tricking President Carter only by resorting to dialectical materialism, for both were fanatical Stalinists who knew their Marxism by heart. Ceausescu sympathetically agreed that “a war of terror is your only realistic weapon,” but he also told his guest that, if he would transform the PLO into a government-in-exile and would pretend to break with terrorism, the West would shower him with money and glory. “But you have to keep on pretending, over and over,” my boss emphasized.

In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he convinced President Jimmy Carter that he could persuade Arafat to transform his PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile, if the United States would establish official relations with him. Thereupon, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader” who had “taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.”


FP: Tell us a bit about what you think about the state of the KGB in Russia today. Some say it is experiencing a resurrection. Is this true?

Pacepa: It certainly is. In the last dozen years, Russia has been transformed for the better in unprecedented ways. Nevertheless, that country has a long way to go until it will tear down the legacy of Soviet Communism. As of June 2003, some 6,000 former KGB officers were reportedly holding important positions in Russia’s central and regional governments. Three months later, nearly half of the top governmental positions were also held by former KGB. It is like putting the old, supposedly defeated Gestapo in charge of rebuilding Germany.

Since the fall of Communism the Russians have been faced with an indigenous form of capitalism run by old Communist bureaucrats, speculators and ruthless mafiosi that has widened social inequities and created a decline in industrial production. Therefore, after a period of upheaval, the Russians have gradually—and perhaps thankfully—slipped back into their historical form of government, the traditional Russian samoderzhaviye (autocracy) traceable to the 14th century’s Ivan the Terrible, in which a feudal lord ruled the country with the help of his personal political police. Good or bad, the historically Russian political police may appear to most people in that country as their only defense against the rapacity of the new capitalists at home and the greediness of grasping foreign neighbors.

Russia will never return to Communism—too many Russians perished at the hands of that heresy. But it seems that Russia will not truly turn westward either, at least not under this generation. If history—including that of the last 14 years—is any guide, the Russians, who are now enjoying their regained nationalism, will struggle to rebuild a kind of an Old Russian Empire by inspiring themselves from old Russian traditions and by using old Russian ways and means.

The KGB capitalism slash mafia that he describes eventually mutated into the Putin regime, fusing Russian nationalism with fascism and an alliance with organized crime-- all rooted in the old KGB.

Meanwhile Russia has been using and is using the same tactics in Israel and Georgia, creating phony national liberation movements, arming and backing them, demanding sympathy from the West and moving in for the kill. The old boss is back, but in truth he never really left.

Russia's goal is to conquer what it can and destroy any Western allied governments and other countries that are in its way. Georgia and the rest of the former USSR and Warsaw Pact nations are meant for conquest. Israel is one of those countries that's in Russia's way and as an American ally represents a form of local American influence in the Middle East. Russia means to destroy it.

Russia is behind the rise of a newly aggressive Iran bent on nuclear capabilities and Russia is providing Iran with those capabilities, pushing a weakened Syria, already set to be home to a Russian naval base, into becoming an Iranian puppet, even as both are used to arm and equip Hizbullah and then Hamas for a war of attrition against Israel.

Meanwhile Russia works to compromise Israel from within, using the same old string of Russian businessmen such as Gaydamak to buy domestic political influence, while using the emigre Russian population as an electoral threat to any Israeli politician who defies Russia.

Under Kadima, the KGB has had its way, receiving the Russian compound, forcing Israel to stop selling arms to Georgia and achieving open travel back and forth between the two countries. Even while Israel continues fighting the war that Russia crafted to begin with.

For anyone who thinks that Israel could never be where Georgia is now, let's take a look back at 1967, and a war of annihilation funded, armed and planned in Moscow.

New evidence reveals that during the 1967 Six-Day War the Soviet Union set in motion military operations to assist Egypt and especially Syria, first in seeking to overcome Israel and then in response to Israel’s pre-emptive attack. These potential steps included a naval landing, airborne reinforcement and air support for ground operations.

As early as May 11, Soviet Arabic-language interpreters stationed in Egypt were summoned to the Soviet Embassy in Cairo. One of them later recounted to journalist Aleksandr Khaldeev that they were told war between Egypt and Israel was inevitable. Later they were taken to Alexandria and informed they would be posted to the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, now cruising off the Israeli shore. “One of the interpreters...said he knew for sure that we would be attached to a landing force that would be landing in Haifa or slightly northward.” The interpreters were to handle liaison with Israel’s Arab population, “who were longing for us.”

This backs up an eyewitness account received recently from a participant in the putative landing. Yuri N. Khripunkov was in June 1967 a young gunnery lieutenant on board a new BPK (large anti-submarine ship), then the fastest, most advanced model in the Soviet Navy. It was part of a large reinforcement force for the Mediterranean flotilla which arrived from the Black Sea base of Sevastopol in early May (42), shortly after Brezhnev demanded the withdrawal of the Sixth Fleet. At least one more detachment--including four destroyers, two “hydrographic vessels” (a cover name for intelligence ships) and even one “icebreaker”--went through the Turkish straits on May 31

The Israeli concern was well-based in fact. Khripunkov relates how on June 5 his captain ordered him to raise and command a 30-man detachment of “volunteers” for a landing on the Israeli coast. Similar parties were being assembled on all the 30-odd Soviet surface vessels in the Mediterranean, for a total of some 1000 men. The assignment for Khripunkov's platoon was to penetrate Haifa port.

Khripunkov was told that in addition to the improvised landing parties “there was also one BDK [large amphibious ship] with about 40 tanks and maybe a battalion of infantry.”

A retired Soviet air force lieutenant general, Yuri V. Nastenko, confirmed recently that bomber and fighter/reconnaissance units, the latter comprising MiG-21s under his command, were put on full operational alert on the evening of June 5, and he was convinced this was in preparation for “real combat.” The armed aircraft were flown the next day to an airbase “on the border”–presumably with Turkey--and the crews were scrambled several times over the following three days. “The command was working on the assumption that we would land at Syrian bases, and thus would have to overfly a neutral country such as Turkey.

Immediately after the crisis... One military goal was achieved: Soviet naval bases were established in Syria and enhanced. In Egypt, where Amer was ousted and committed suicide, the Soviets retained a high military profile.

Khripunkov was promoted and made gunnery officer of a three-ship Soviet flotilla stationed at Port Said, the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, now the Egyptian-Israeli front line. “We had the Israelis ahead and the Egyptians astern. Every morning at a quarter to four o'clock I would go on the bridge and have the crew load our guns and train them on the Israeli trenches.”

There, Khripunkov says, he “witnessed the Israeli navy's tragedy”--apparently alluding to the sinking of the destroyer Eilat off the Sinai coast October 21 by missiles fired from Port Said. These have hitherto been attributed to Egyptian missile boats of Soviet make, assisted by Soviet advisors; Khripunkov, hints that Soviet involvement was more important and says the Egyptian navy was incapable of sinking the ship. But he declined to elaborate on this incident.

But according to a high-ranking officer directly involved, even the nuclear option against Israel was still not ruled out in defense of an Arab ally. Captain First Class (and later vice-admiral) N.A. Shishkov, then commanding a submarine armed with P-6 (SS-12) nuclear missiles, has disclosed that in the spring of 1968 he was “personally ordered by Soviet Navy commander S. Gorshkov to stand by for firing eight missiles at the Israeli coast if Americans and Israelis began a landing in Syria.”

For anyone who still doesn't get it, Israel is nothing more than a better armed and self-sufficient Georgia, a country whose very existence Russia has been hammering away at for several decades now.

But Russian plans don't end in Eastern Europe or the Middle East. Russia's first priority is an energy monopoly, followed by dramatic expansion and the creation of a new Russian empire. And America, England and the rest of the West are in its way.

In 1933 Germany was no threat to the rest of Western Europe. In 1940 it was a virtually unstoppable monster gobbling up Europe and Russia and parts of the Middle East.

In 1921 Russia was weak, chaotic and could barely muster a functioning army. By 1948 Russia ruled a major portion of the world and only American tanks and atom bombs prevented the Red Army from seizing everything up to England and beyond.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Anti-war liberals have it as an article of faith that the way to resolve our terrorist problem is to address their grievances. But the idea that you can make a violent attacker go away by addressing his grievances has a spotty record at best.

It was theorized that you could make crime go away by addressing social and racism problems. Social and racial problems were addressed and crime only increased. It decreased only when a "Tough on Crime" approach came into vogue again. In a decade New York City went from dangerous to one of the safest cities in America under a Mayor who disdained the social problems answer and instead got tough on crime. And even more shockingly this sea change was accompanied by a general increase in prosperity for everyone.

Even earlier than that it had been theorized that we could make Hitler go away by addressing the grievances of the German people. The grievances were addressed and Hitler got the Ruhr valley and Czechoslovakia, but it turned out that what he wanted was everything he could get. Not an unusual attitude for a conqueror, but one that so many liberals seem to have so much difficulty processing.

At the heart of the liberal fallacy is the wrongheaded belief that violence is an unnatural event produced by grievances or some sort of inadequacy. Where most religions understood that violence is inherent in man, we continue to be burdened by the domestic and foreign policy "insights" of people who think that violence is an aberration rather than the norm. And on that basis, they naturally assume that our peaceloving attackers will give up the fight once we give them what they want. After all, they couldn't possibly really want to kill us, could they?

That's the question few liberals want to ask and even fewer would seriously care to answer. But it is the fundamental question of our time. After all if you're going to shout, "Don't Shoot, We Surrender", you had better have some confidence that the fellow on the other end will lower his rifle when you walk out of that trench with your arms held high, instead of pulling the trigger.

Yet the experiences of everyone from the Carter Administration to the Israeli Peace movement suggest that when dealing with Islam, you should expect the pulled trigger. After all we aren't dealing with pained secular humanists who regret having to fight. We're dealing with people who like fighting and like killing. They aren't interested in a McDonalds franchise, except when they move to Detroit, and even then the money will still be going right back home to Lebanon, Yemen or Gaza.

Life isn't very fair to people who like to believe in the best of other people. You could almost sympathize with anti-war liberals if that alone was their fatal flaw, but instead they seem willing and even eager to believe the worst of America or whatever their home country happens to be. It's when the villainy of the enemy is told that you find them growing incredulous.

Tell them that American soldiers stopped a bus full of women and children, cut off their ears and buried them in a pit and without hesitation they'll demand war crimes trials and denounce the Bush Administration and the brutalizing culture of the military. Give them five minutes and they'll have both a documentary and fictional movie in the works.

But tell them that Muslim terrorists did the same thing and they'll demand evidence. And when they get it, they'll deny, nitpick and finally juggle excuses for the terrorists that will all turn out to blame the whole thing on us. "Oh but they were provoked", "Who are we to judge?", "This is only happening because our foreign policy in the Middle East is provoking blowback", "And when American bombers kill tens of thousands of people from high in the air, is that any better?"

You probably know the drill better than I do.

The very same people who believe the best of our enemies, believe the worst of us. Truly, we have met the enemy and the enemy is ourselves, or rather the enemy lives in San Francisco, bikes to work, works at Google, owns an iPhone and contributes to MoveOn.org. And he knows that if we just addressed the enemy's grievances, everything would be swell. Just don't tell him about the grievances of his fellow Americans. That's something he really doesn't want to hear.

Naturally in response to Sarah Palin's role as the VP for McCain, the Democrats are already reciting the party line about McCain putting someone with "no experience a heartbeat away from the Presidency."

It's laughable from a party that has actually put someone with no experience as their Presidential candidate. It's also bizarre since Sarah Palin has served as Governor since 2006, Barack Obama has served in the Senate since 2005. Is the Obama campaign really claiming that Obama's extra year in the Senate makes him qualified to be President but makes Sarah Palin unqualified to be Vice President?

It actually gets worse because when you consider that Obama has spent a lot of time playing hooky from the Senate and spent most of that "extra" year on the campaign trail, his extra year vanishes entirely.

On top of that Sarah Palin spent those 2 years in an executive position making a stunning series of reforms. Obama spent those 3 years doing what exactly? There isn't any serious comparison here.

Finally, because the Obama campaign's snide elitists learned nothing from Pennsylvania, there are a whole lot of digs about Palin coming from a small town of only 9000 people. Considering that their campaign is going to have to spend a whole lot of time soliciting support from people in small towns whom they just dismissed. At least this time Obama managed to leave out the whole thing about Palin clinging to guns and religion.

But naturally the same media that hailed Biden as a great leader, are busy smearing Palin as a beauty queen contestant, commenting on her looks, making insuations about her personal life and all that great stuff they were doing that nearly helped Hillary Clinton make a comeback last time around. Because after all sexism worked so well for the Obama campaign last time around.

While the media will do its ugly best for Barry Hussein, the VP round goes to McCain. Both Obama and McCain have selected VP's from small states. Obama picked a VP who overshadows him with an ugly history of running his mouth and who has ties to Iran and to Obama's own corruption scandals. And no matter how much the media will refuse to discuss it, it will come out. McCain meanwhile picked a VP who won't overshadow him, but who will help him and who has a great deal of credibility on energy issues, letting the McCain team nail down another leg of the stool.

That's not how the media is spining it, as far as they're concerned, Biden is a wise foreign policy expert and Palin is some inexperienced beauty queen. But on the final leg of the campaign, when Joe Biden is saying embarassing things on national television that not even Jake Tapper will be able to cover up for him, while Sarah Palin is campaigning in those same small towns with 9000 people, the trump card will be made clear.

Meanwhile the other shoe is dropping as Russia's facade of supporting "South Ossetian independence" collapses as even they have admitted that Russia actually intends to annex them.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the region's leader, Eduard Kokoity, discussed South Ossetia's future earlier this week in Moscow, South Ossetian parliamentary speaker Znaur Gassiyev said.
Russia will absorb South Ossetia "in several years" or earlier, a position that was "firmly stated by both leaders," Gassiyev said.

Can anyone say Sudetenland?

Elder of Ziyon remembers Gliad's 22nd birthday

Debbie Schlussel on Sarah Palin

At IsraPundit, Bill Levinson follows up again on the hatred for Israel at Obama's church.

At Doc's Talk, questioning Biden's foreign policy experience

Madgeburger Joe comments on Palin and the Democrats

It is unlikely that the ideologues and spin masters of the Democratic Party will concede that her appointment is a step forward for women. The Democrats only count a woman or an African American as "empowered" when they embrace the beliefs of the Democratic Party. To use Marxist jargon, they believe that political conservatives who are Black or female have "internalised the values of the oppressors. " Their patronising approach lends them an eerie resemblance to the"revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat" of which Gus Hall and Vladimir Lenin would certainly be proud.

The Democrats want the American political spectrum to be an ideological ghetto, in which ethnicity and colour determine where one may politically reside. To this end, they have distorted and falsified American history, robbing it of its many fascinating complexities such as the Republican judges who dismantled the Jim Crow laws and Nixon's creative attacks on poverty in America.

Lemon lime Moon tackles the one good man question

Neocon Express passes on the story of the man whose family was nearly murdered by Obama's "friend"

Meryl Yourish covers the Venezuela Hizbullah connection in Don't Call it Anti-semitism

See, not “Israeli” businesspeople. Jewish businesspeople. Like, say, my relatives the bookstore owners who decide to visit their relatives in Buenos Aires.
And if the kidnapping does occur, will the world make a peep? No, there will only be shrugs, unless Israel refuses to ransom the kidnap victims from the terrorists that are now part of the legitimate government of Lebanon.
South American Jews are in the crosshairs. And all roads lead back to Tehran, and the Jew-haters there.

The first blood in the Presidential election of 2008 has been drawn and it was drawn by McCain. Baffled political reporters are still trying to understand why McCain is suddenly winning and why Obama is falling behind. They don't understand what happened because there's a shortage of experienced political reporters left anymore.

Most of the media has been taken in by the shiny and glitzy Obama campaign that progressed like a product release with carefully selected design themes, viral marketing, concerts, celebrity appearances and carefully controlled media relations. The media were taken in by it, in large part because the political press today is short on real reporters and long on media reporters who rarely leave a studio, work hard on their makeup and have very little understanding of what it takes to actually win an election. They relate to Obama so well, because their image is based as much on shiny corporate branding as he is.

The media has become increasingly clueless about elections because the media has become increasingly out of touch with the real world outside their own bubble. To them image is reality and they can never understand why the candidate that they relate to most doesn't win.

The problem is that real politics has very little to do with the kind of hollow style over substance displays that characterize the Obama campaign. The media has confused advertising with winning, when advertising is simply one tool to achieve a larger objective, victory at the polls. For Obama, the medium has become the message. "Vote for Obama because he has style and image" is how the message goes now as the Obama image machine devours its own tail.

The McCain campaign has matched its tactics to Obama's weakness, image over substance, hammering away at his ego, lack of experience and substance, rolling out one ad after another at high velocity. The supposedly technocratic Obama campaign's response by contrast has been painfully slow and clumsy. It's a flaw that the Obama campaign telegraphed against Hillary Clinton as it adapted slowly and clumsily to fight her.

The Obama campaign has prided itself on being huge, on producing massive events, on rolling out Obama across America. Where the media saw that as a strength, the McCain campaign saw a weakness, a bloated style driven campaign wrapped up in its own self-glorification.

Where Obama's campaign was a triumph in marketing, McCain's campaign was a guerrilla war. Obama's people excel at branding and packaging, that's a corporate skill and corporations are notoriously slow and unwieldy when it comes to adapting their brand to a changing marketplace and reacting to attacks. McCain's people excel at war.

In the way of war, mobility is more important than visibility. McCain gets that while Obama's people still insist on treating a Presidential election like a rock concert. That's the difference between seasoned political operatives and marketers. The McCain campaign has flexibility and rapid response. The Obama campaign has grandeur and glitz.

Obama's people can package and sell a product, but have no adaptability when the fight gets tough. McCain is fighting a war and adapts to the battlefield.

Obama's people have a shiny product whose success they treat as inevitable and can't reach a decision because the buck doesn't stop with any one man. Obama isn't in control, he lacks the experience and leadership and too many powerful people are standing behind him in the wings pulling the strings. This resulted in the disastrous pick of Biden for VP, a man Obama himself is clearly not comfortable with.

The McCain campaign knows it has a very tough battle to fight but it does have a chain of command ending with one man. He has the experience and leadership to control his campaign, something Obama does not. That means that the campaign can reach decisions quickly, something the Obama campaign can't do.

The McCain campaign doesn't entirely get the internet, but it gets the principle behind it, of flexibility and adaptability, which Obama the supposedly 21st century candidate does not. To the Obama campaign the internet is just another way of outsourcing his campaign and calling it a grass roots effort, which only further decentralizes an already chaotically decentralized campaign.

In the campaign John McCain can do the one thing that Obama can't, lead. While Obama runs a corporate marketing campaign, McCain is running a hard nosed old line political campaign and so far he's winning. And despite the last few weeks the Obama campaign still doesn't get it. The orgy of the DNC convention, the frenetic media coverage, the greek forum, the celebrities and the glamor are mostly wasted effort and only gives McCain more raw meat to bite into.

As a marketing campaign Obama's people still haven't learned their lesson, that branding doesn't win elections. Not only has their candidate peaked too early, but his campaign needs to change dramatically in order to cope with McCain's guerrilla warfare.

McCain's people have demonstrated that they can hit hard and fast and move on, but it takes more to win an election than it does to win a war. Selling McCain to the public though is not difficult because unlike Obama he has the credentials and the image already and that's why he's gone negative.

The McCain campaign doesn't need to sell him as much as they need to unsell Obama. Obama's people have invested a lot of money into creating an inflated image of the man. But it takes much less effort to destroy an image than it does to build one up. A corporation can spend a 100 million on advertising only to have their image destroyed for a few dollars. Obama is experiencing that right now and like the corporations, his campaign has no real clue how to react.

The irony is that Obama's branding is a corporate product, a beautiful piece of advertising pulled off spectacularly, rolled out across magazines, TV shows, ads and gone viral. The supposed anti-corporate candidate is as unreal as a Mountain Dew commercial or a new flavor of Crest whitening toothpaste.

Obama's people have demonstrated that they can sell a completely unqualified and unsuitable candidate over a qualified and suitable candidate purely through advertising and marketing in the Democratic primaries. But now they have to do it again to the entire nation with the element of surprise gone, with a candidate a lot of people are already tired of hearing about and against an opposing campaign that understands how to win elections, while they understand only how to promote a product.

This should be good.

Part of the pretense of outlets such as the BBC is to pretend that their hatred for Israel has nothing to do with a hatred for Jews. But sometimes the mask slips, particularly in foreign language Arabic and Russian articles when the Beeb thinks it isn't being watched.

Israel's 60th anniversary naturally drew a witches sabbath of hateful articles from the BBC in every language, but one piece genuinely let the mask slip.

In a BBC Russian language article purporting to be about Orthodox Christians in Israel from Ksenia Svetlova, a left wing Arabist reporter closely supportive of Islamic terrorists, published for Israel's 60th anniversary, Ksenia Svetlova gave extensive space to Israel Shamir.

The word anti-semite gets thrown around a lot, so the best way to measure just how vile and repulsive "Israel Shamir" is that he's considered beyond the pale even by some of the most extreme figures who hate Israel and have very little use for Jews.

Sue Blackwell who heads up efforts to boycott Israel in the UK writes the following about Israel Shamir,

"His web pages are a veritable gold mine of anti-Semitic calumnies. You would have to plumb the depths of the worst neo-Nazi publications to find a defence of the Easter Blood Libel accusation (that Jews slaughtered non-Jewish children to make the Passover bread at Easter)".

Holocaust denier David Irving accused Israel Shamir of trying to sell him fraudulent Nazi papers. He has been expelled from Arab Anti-Israel groups such as Al Awda and blacklisted by figures such as Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish.

Ronald Rance, one of the more prominent British Anti-Israel figures wrote the following about Israel Shamir that Shamir is an impostor who claims to have worked for the BBC in the past, uses many names, defends the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a real narrative, claims that Jews run the world and has close ties to Neo Nazis and is currently a player in far right Russian anti-semitic groups.

These folks have condemned Israel Shamir not because they love Jews, but because they recognize that blatant anti-semitism of this kind will damage their own credibility. Something the BBC apparently thought would pass unnoticed in a Russian language edition.

With all this in mind here's how the BBC article by Kseniva Svetlanova, itself laced with a large number of fraudulent claims unrelated to Israel Shamir, described him.

The well-known translator and publicist Israel Shamir - one of the few who is not afraid to speak openly about their faith. In the past, political dissident, he arrived in Israel as a Zionist convinced, served in the elite parachute-landing troops, took part in the war in 1973.

Shamir, known in Israel for its radical views on Israeli policy, Zionism and its relationship with the Arab world, believes that the state is trying to deliberately reduced the number of Christians living there.

"Relations between Judaism and Christianity have been and remain problematic and complex - writes Shamir. - Many analysts believe that modern Judaism in general has emerged as a response to Christianity, and its raison d'etre - a fight with Christianity.

Not only does the article treat Israel Shamir's phony biography as real, it serves as a very blatant whitewashing of a man who has claimed that Jews drink Christian blood, that a Jewish conspiracy rules the world, described Jews as a "malignant virus" and wrote articles talking about another Jewish final solution and has ties to Neo-Nazis as "controversial" or "radical", and after this legitimization sinks to a new low by repeating Shamir's claims that Judaism is not a real religion and that it exists only to fight Christianity.

In doing so the BBC article goes beyond attacking Israel and to participating in an outright bigoted attack on Jews. And uses a man that even most on the far left and far right consider to be beyond the pale to do so.

More troubling still is that Ksenia Svetlova, the author of the BBC piece is widely published in mainstream outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, despite her Arabist background and her sympathies toward terrorists. While her mainstream media carry the appropriate disclaimers and attempt to show a more mainstream tone, her former work for the Arabic Media Internet Network shows another face and even her mainstream articles appear routinely on the websites of Norman Finkelstein and ISM and in Russian routinely conducts sympathetic interviews with Islamic terrorists.

What is significant about all this is the extent to which the BBC's attempt at separating their Anti-Zionism from Anti-Semitism is a mask, a mask they wear for Western audiences and that they feel freer to remove for Arabic and Russian audiences when they think no one is watching. Ksenia Svetlova's article promoting Israel Shamir and the idea that Judaism is not a religion anymore than Israel is a state is closer to the real ugly heart of the BBC and one of the ways they chose to commemorate Israel's 60th anniversary.

If the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn't exist, arguably the Environmentalist' Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.

Case in point Barack Obama who calls for everyone to rotate their tires, drive less and use less energy-- even while unveiling a massive spending program that would choke even the 2004 GOP elephant. In other words make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out your money to fund Barack's own domestic civilian corps. Cut back on toilet paper so Obama can blow hundreds of billions on pet projects that the country can't possibly afford.

But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities.

Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore's sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. But then again the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you're smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split the vigorish.

With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.

If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.

Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn't to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.

And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama's campaign isn't being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.

And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat's milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn't affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.

It isn't that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they're forced to accept.

Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it's much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.

The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarrassing SUV inside.

Israel 2018 or 5778, what will the future of Israel look like 10 years from now? With the continuing rise of Islamist terrorism followed by pressure on Israel to continue appeasing the terrorists, it's a difficult five futures that we look toward Israel 2018.

1. Annihilation - Whether through nuclear devastation or being overrun by its enemies, Israel has ceased to exist. It has happened before in Jewish history and without vigilance it can happen again. Whatever survivors remain are in exile, the land itself is in the hands of Israel's enemies and is a disaster area in line with the worst of Afghanistan and has been annexed to one of the neighboring Arab countries.

2. Things Go On - Most countries don't come to a spectacular end, they simply continue going the way they have with things steadily getting worse and worse. In this scenario by 2018, Israel has failed to arrest its current course over the last 10 years. Its territory has shrunk, the Arab and Islamic terrorist groups operating on its soil have grown more vigorous and Israel looks more like Yugoslavia than a functioning state. Political corruption and international pressure continues to keep the Israeli government too corrupt and weak to do anything to preserve the state.

3. Medinat Yehuda - Settlers in Yehuda and the Shormon succeed in carving out a border West Bank state after they are abandoned by the government. Israel once again consists of two mutually unfriendly countries living side by side. Israel is characterized by a strong Secular-Haredi split, technocracy and political corruption. Medinat Yehuda is characterized by a Spartan dedication to the force of arms, a devotion to the agricultural values of the farmer and the rancher and a strong Religious Zionist component. Like its biblical namesake, Medinat Yehuda may be smaller but more likely to outlive Israel.

4. Japan - Innovative technological solutions allow Israel to carve out a secure state maintaining its borders and independence from Western patrons. Like Japan, Israel becomes a home not only for technological solutions, as it already is, but an active and vital exporter of technology as Israeli industrialists harness their national talent to build a powerful technocracy. Innovative solutions are used to maintain security and export technology around the world.

5. Yehu or Hizkiyahu - A leader rises capable of resisting the corruption of the system and reviving the national imperative to settle and protect the land of Israel. Gifted with leadership abilities and a certain amount of charisma, he successfully battles the dominant Labor agenda and corrupt politicians and media to clean up the country at least to some extent. He wages an aggressive war against terror, reclaiming the West Bank and Gaza, and destroying Hizbollah while dealing with the Iranian threat. He is not perfect but he is what we need in a dire hour and he manages to summon Israelis to use their talents to overcome most obstacles. The aftermath isn't perfect, but Israel has a new lease on life now.

Israel 2018, innovation or disaster, exile or triumph. Different scenarios are possible and the difference is in our hands. We can't predict what the future will bring, we can only work to make sure that it will be the best of all possible futures.

Obama's long lost brother recently turned up in Africa living on less than a dollar a day. But he may have only been testing Obama's new economic plan for America because by the time Obama is through with America we might not even have a dollar a day to live on.

As the Messiah With No Middle Name finds himself floundering in the polls, something has got to give. For months Obama harnessed the belief of gullible twenty somethings sure that if they just waited around long enough he would break out a guitar and jam with them.

Months later with no guitar in sight, FISA voted on and passed, campaign financing promises trashed and faith lagging, Obama brought out the big guns. He began with an extended viral campaign promising anyone who volunteered to work on his campaign and shine his shoes a chance to be the first to learn who his VP was. Or something like that.

At least he managed to forego the star search, he did however rely on a Kennedy headed search committee that naturally picked the one Northeastern Senator more liberal and more prone to saying stupid things than Ted Kennedy, without having the Kennedy name to his credit. Joe Biden.

On the plus side of the equation, Joe Biden can probably insure that the populous state of Delaware will still come out for Obama. On the minus side of the equation is Joe Biden who is a human gaffe machine prone to saying the most awful things imaginable under the guise that he's promoting racial healing or frank discussion or a new brand of ginger ale.

But it's hard to imagine the Obama campaign coming up with a more anti-climatic answer to the VP question, than by choosing a mostly obscure, mostly crazy liberal Northeastern Senator that virtually no one has heard of.

As the followup to a viral campaign to re-engage the public with the Obama campaign, Biden is a dull wet thump in a crowded room. After having denied that Biden was the VP, then finally announcing him as the VP, the media tried to make the best of a bad situation by playing up Biden's foreign policy experience, thereby suggesting that Biden would be a second Dick Cheney. The problem was that too much of Biden's foreign policy experience involved aiding Jihadists in Bosnia and voting for the War in Iraq, something that half of Obama's campaign cred has been built on opposing.

One interpretation is that Biden is there to launch the dirty attacks on McCain that Obama doesn't want to dirty himself with. This is plausible considering that Obama's dirty campaigns have been fought by lawyers, people who worked for his campaign who put videos on YouTube that supposedly had nothing to do with him and now his VP pick. But considering that Biden turned a simple question about what law school he went to into an extended rant about how high his IQ is, setting him loose as an attack dog is a plan that's right up there with sending a pyromaniac to light a torch.
I'm sure that Biden will serve as an attack dog, I'm also sure that he'll do most of the damage to his own side, delivering verbal broadsides that roll like grenades back into Obama's tent. Clearly the Obama campaign was worried about a possible advantage they had over McCain in not having a candidate who might say something horrendously awful under the guise of a joke, and chose to fill that gap with Joe Biden closing the Gaffe Gap for good.

A good Vice President is supposed to be like an elf, mostly out of sight and helping to wrap the presents. Obama has picked himself the craziest loudmouthed elf he could find in all of elf land or Delaware. One theory is that Joe Biden is on board to distract people from Obama. Another theory is that Joe Biden is on board to distract delegates from the moment when Obama takes off his human suit and begins scarfing up DNC conventiongoers like french fries.

The only positive thing about Joe Biden from a Democrat's point of view is that he represents a clear sign of confidence. It's as if Obama is so certain he'll win that he straps on the 50 lb millstone of Joe Biden on his back just to prove that nothing is going to slow him down.

Common electoral sense said that Obama needed a more conservative VP and one from a Southern or battleground state. As he so often does Obama threw common sense out the window and instead announced Joe Biden as the future President of the United States, suggesting that he either plans to retire early or that his mind has already retired.

But common sense suggested that the Democratic party needed someone better than a Senator who had only been in office for 2 years, had written about his drug use and had a history of lying his ass off. Instead they chose Obama anyway and Joe Biden simply piles one mistake on another. Because when you've made one historic mistake, choosing the craziest man in Congress since Trafficant's imprisonment almost looks minor by comparison.

Pat Buchanan continues to exemplify a race to the very bottom, allying with a racist cult to seize power at the Reform Party, heading up a Magazine funded by a racist and convicted drug smuggler and now penning a column accusing John McCain's adviser of treason and by extension McCain himself of treason for supporting Georgia. The column is titled "None Dare Call it Treason".

This is beneath contempt from Pat Buchanan who as I've demonstrated earlier has spent years agitating on behalf of Russia and arguing that Putin should be able to invade any country he likes.

Georgia is not an enemy of the United States. Putin's Russia is. If anyone is a traitor it's Pat Buchanan.

For the man who takes the side of Nazi Germany over England and America, the side of Saddam over America, the side of Russia over America to open up his vile yap and accuse McCain's campaign of treason is beyond despicable.

McCain served in Vietnam. Pat Buchanan dodged the draft by claiming to have Arthritis at the tender age of 22. This hasn't stopped Buchanan from ranting year after year about spilling blood and the cost of war, as if he had any experience on the battlefield. But accusing the campaign of a genuine patriot and POW who actually served his country of treason and double loyalties, while Paddy couldn't go because his feet hurt, is a new low even for the Hitler loving Buchanan.

The man who called Adolf Hitler a "Soldier's Soldier" and penned the following sentence in an article entitled Get Out of Putin's Face...

But if we wish to befriend Russia—and America has no more vital interest —we must try to see the world as Putin sees it.

...does not get to call anyone else a traitor. He simply does not. If he had any shred of decency beneath that facade of arrogant smugness, he would keep his mouth shut, yet the worst traitors are those who go around accusing everyone else of treason.

Benedict Arnold justified himself by calling George Washington a traitor for not negotiating with the British and coming to a reasonable compromise with the British before the "mighty and unstoppable" British army destroyed the American cause.

Lindbergh went around calling everyone who wanted to stop Hitler a traitor and accusing them of dual loyalties, even as he himself kept a second family in Germany.

Pat Buchanan has profited from their example. A draft dodger accusing a veteran of the Hanoi Hilton of treason is beyond and beneath contempt.

While John McCain was serving in Vietnam, Pat Buchanan had successfully dodged the draft and was living the easy college life.

When the Gulf War came around, Pat Buchanan accused Jews of sending off others to die while not serving. Jews have always served with distinction in the United States Armed Forces, Pat Buchanan never has.

Now Buchanan is ranting that McCain is controlled via his adviser by Georgia and is bent on sending off "our sons" to die for Georgia. Who exactly is our sons? Pat Buchanan has no children and will never have any children, as can be guessed from his "arthritis", Reiter's syndrome which is linked to a specific type of behavior that often involves hand signals under bathroom stalls.

John McCain's son meanwhile is serving in Iraq. It would be McCain's son at risk in any war, not Buchanan's.

Pat Buchanan's despicable rhetoric is typical of the sort of coward who refuses to serve his country but hurls dirt on those who do. Pat Buchanan has reinvented himself as an anti-war activist and in doing so passes up no chance to smear America in the service of America's enemies, like Vladimir Putin.

When it comes to Russia, Pat Buchanan shows his yellow belly, whining...

What does McCain think we would accomplish – other than a new parading of our moral superiority – by so public an insult to Putin and Russia as a Bush boycott of the St. Petersburg summit? Do we not have enough trouble in this world, do we not have enough people hating us and Bush that we have to get into Putin's face and antagonize the largest nation on earth and a co-equal nuclear power?

When it comes to bashing America though, Pat Buchanan, like every anti-war scoundrel finds his courage

What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?

Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi people, and U.S. support of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he and his mujahideen were declaring war on us.

But of course when Pat Buchanan advances Osama Bin Laden's argument or calls him an ally, that isn't "treason". But McCain supporting Georgia's right to exist is.

Nor is it treason when Buchanan calls Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "pardon" of the British sailors he kidnapped "magnanimous"

The Easter pardon by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the 15 British sailors and Marines, seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in waters off the Iraqi coast two weeks ago, ends the crisis. And as the beaming smile of President Ahmadinejad while he graciously accepted apologies from the sailors and Marines testifies, there is no doubt as to who won the showdown.

What was that line about treason again? Buchanan exemplifies it time and time again, celebrating America's enemies and denouncing America and yet having the unbelievable gall to pen an article accusing the McCain campaign of treason. Par for the course for a draft dodger turned hawk turned anti-war activist and going from the men's room stalls to a "family values" campaign or a man who assaulted a police officer lecturing on law and order.

The problem is not that Pat Buchanan is contemptible. He has done and said enough things to hang himself metaphorically a dozen times over. The problem is that he continues to be featured at such conservative outlets as Town Hall and Human Events and on FOX News and in the media which insists on treating a man currently hawking a book arguing against WW2 as some sort of credible voice in the media, when he belongs and is right up there with David Irving and Hutton Gibson.

Pat Buchanan is treason manifest, not simply treason to country, but treason to any and every ideal and idea whose bandwagon he clambered on the back off, only to leap off again when his self-interest kicked in. His own background in the media gives him a free pass from the media which practices the Long White Line of Silence when it comes to offenses and misdemeanors of his own. And too many conservatives are willing to do the same. No matter how many lines Buchanan crosses there will always be a warm spot reserved for him.

Obama is preparing to name his VP candidate and really drawing out the suspense. Will it be Joe Biden? Will it be this adorable fluffy but enraged Penguin? Will it be Larry Sinclair? There's just no way to know or care.

Most pundits say that John Edwards' love child is probably out of the running, but to be certain you will need to go to an absolutely secret page on Obama's campaign site, sign over your first born child and spent 2 years working in the Recycling Mines as part of the Obama Youth Brigade, and then in gratitude for your service, Obama will send you a text message letting you know 60 seconds before anyone else who his VP pick will be.

Hope it's worth it.

Meanwhile the media is reporting that Russia has pulled out of Georgia, which they have, since by pulling out what they really mean is that they're digging trenches, positioning missiles and keeping an army inside Georgia, not to mention planting minefields.

In Israel meanwhile the race to succeed Olmert as Israel's Biggest Traitor is heating up between Livni, Barak, Mofaz and Nasrallah.

Nasrallah's bid to be Israel's next prime minister was quite unexpected, but was greeted positively by the international community when he promised to withdraw from the West Bank, Jerusalem and all the rest of Israel too.

While some Israelis were initially concerned by the thought of having an archterrorist as Israel's Prime Minister, pundits have pointed out that Nasrallah showed more concern for Israel's security than Shimon Peres and after a brief appearance at a Russian WW2 Veterans rally, a blessing from Imam Ovadya Yosef YS'V and a promise to dismantle the Ministry of Religious Affairs and replace it with a committee staffed jointly by Shinui and UTJ, Nasrallah seems on track to be Kadima's next leader.

When asked to comment Olmert attempted to reply, only to be shot by several blanks by a right wing extremist, walked into his limo and was pronounced dead twice at the hospital, leaving behind only a bloodstained sheet of music entitled, "Shir LeSham".

Now in slightly more serious news from the blogsphere

Israel Matzav covers reaction to Jimmy Carter appearance at the DNC convention, and I agree, Carter, Sharpton, Jackson represent the far truer face of the rotting cesspool that the Democratic party has become. Let them speak. Let them show the party's true face to the world.

The hand that shook Khaled Meshal's should not be allowed to rise in support of Senator Obama's candidacy for president.

Except of course that should Obama win we can reliably expect his hand to be shaking Khaled Meshal's hand too.

At Woman Honor Thyself a swift kick to the glutemus maximus of the anti-war left over Georgia.

Atlas Shrugs follows the latest developments in the leadup to the big showdown in Denver

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. According to Berg, he filed the suit--just days before the DNC is to hold its nominating convention in Denver--for the health of the Democratic Party.

"I filed this action at this time," Berg stated, "to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.".

Berg cited a number of unanswered questions regarding the Illinois senator's background, and in today's lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a naturalized U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls "dual loyalties" due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

This will probably go nowhere, but it once again serves notice that Soros' Golden Boy shouldn't expect a smooth ride to the convention or anywhere else.

Road Sassy asks if Obama can't even be his own brother's keeper, what can he hope to do for America? Would you trust someone who abandons his own flesh and blood to live on a dollar a day, to be our great "humanitarian"?

I live like a recluse, no one knows I exist. I live on less than a dollar a month. If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.”

And that's Obama's brother? Imagine what we're in for.

At Shirat Devorah, she brings together "Russia" and "Rasha"

Lemon Lime Moon writers on the immaturity of the 2008 election

It doesn't seem like either candidate knows how to run an adult campaign anymore. Obama throws concerts at his rallies and uses viral marketing to build suspense over his Vice Presidential pick. McCain makes campaign commercials featuring Paris Hilton.

In the Election for Kids it's no wonder that the biggest slam against McCain is that he's old and Obama's selling point is his youthfulness and slogans that could just as easily be used to sell a new flavor of Pepsi as a presidential candidate.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. The New Generation. The Pepsi Generation. Every marketing campaign focuses on new products, new flavors, new generations overthrowing the ways of the old. Pepsi defined itself by being "fresh" unlike Coke, appealing to a new generation.

"And Moscow girls make me sing and shout. That Georgia's always on my mind" - Back in the USSR

For anyone who's missed the days of the Cold War, the good news is that aside from a brief respite during the Yeltsin era, they're back with a vengeance. Russian weapons are headed around the world again, Russian armies are threatening former Soviet Republics and dissidents are finding out the hard way that the bad days are back.

But it's about more than just tactics, dictatorships don't begin with bullets, they begin with a mindset and it's clear that the mindset is deeply ingrained in the Russian authorities, sometimes in ways that many Western observers are not equipped to recognize.

Domestic Russian propaganda has deployed claims that Saakashvili is mentally ill with Russian psychiatrists quoted as saying that Saakashvili is deranged, schizophrenic and in need of treatment, including in some sources even forcible hospitalization.

While to Western ears such rhetoric seems too much like a childish insult, it means something far more ominous in Slavic regions... especially when you take stock of the source of some of these claims, Prof Farid Safuanov from Serbsky Institute of Social and Forensic Psychiatry.

The Serbsky Institute doesn't mean much to most people, except to careful students of the Cold War. Based on the premise that mental illness is a social rather than biological disorder, the Serbsky Institute was used to imprison and torture numerous political dissidents under the guise that they were "mentally ill."

A special category of Schizophrenia had been developed that was defined not by any hallucinations, but by a social disconnect manifesting itself as dislike for Russia and its government. This category was used to imprison and torture high profile dissidents including Vysotsky, Bukovsky and General Grigorenko, who lobbied on behalf of the Crimean Tatars.

To understand just what this concept of mental illness means I'll just quote the following paragraphs...

Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko was determined as insane in the Serbsky Institute because he "was unshakably convinced of the rightness of his actions" and twisted by "reformist ideas."

The official Soviet psychiatric science also came up with the definition of "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia", a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace on other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Serbsky Institute professors.

Which of course naturally defines people who believe in reform, resist reeducation and fight for truth and justice as mentally ill or outright insane. They could then be extensively drugged, electroshocked and otherwise tortured. When General Grigorenko was imprisoned at the Serbsky Institute, he had daily visits asking him not how his "health" was, but how his "views" were.

While you might think that those old days are gone, they're not. The psychiatric imprisonment of dissidents continues today. Cases such as this are far from unusual today...

Vladimir Chugunov, editor of the independent weekly Chugunka and recipient of the 2002 Sakharov Prize for freedom of expression, has been held in psychiatric detention since 21 January 2007. More than two and a half months later he remains detained in isolation. English PEN is deeply concerned for the wellbeing of Chugunov, believed to be held in violation of his right to freedom of expression, and joins calls for his release.

Under the Putin regime they're part and parcel of the old KGB tactics

On July 5, Arap appeared at Dr. Marina Rekish’s office to pick up a medical certificate needed to renew her driver’s license. Russian driver’s license renewals require annual certificates from a doctor and a psychiatrist stating that the applicant is physically and mentally capable of driving.

Last year, Rekish issued Arap the certificate without hesitation, says Elena Vasilyeva, head of the Murmansk branch of Kasparov’s pro-democratic movement called Other Russia. This time, however, Rekish had a question as Arap sat in her office. “She asked, ‘Are you the author of that article?’” Vasilyeva said, relating what Arap told her.

When Arap replied “Yes,” Rekish asked her to wait outside. Moments later police dressed in camouflage arrived and hauled Arap away, holding her arms crossed behind her back as they walked her to an ambulance.

And these days the Serbsky Institute has been put to some very ugly uses indeed, from exempting Russian soldiers involved in massacres by reason of insanity to persecuting Pentecostals and Mormons.

Tartu, November 16 – Moscow’s Serbsky Institute, notorious in Soviet times for its criminal use of psychiatry and drugs against dissidents, is now playing an important role in the Russian government’s efforts to combat the spread of religious sects.

The main address to the meeting, which was hosted by the local health department and the St. John Society of Orthodox Doctors, was given by the Serbsky Institute’s Professor Fedor Kondratyev. His comments, summed up by the paper, deserve attention because of the light they shed on how Moscow may approach what it clearly sees as the sectarian challenge.

Kondratyev said that the influx of sectarian activists into Russia from abroad increased dramatically in the 1990s, but he argued that the purposes of this influx had not changed: „This is one of the most effective measures of the struggle of the West against the powerful Russian state."

Stenyaev said that in Tula oblast the sectarian threat now includes hundreds if not thousands of people in four communities of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 12 communities of Pentecostals, and a variety of smaller religious groups, ranging from Mormons to the Roma to representatives of Oriental religions. Perhaps significantly, he did not mention the Wahhabis or any other Muslim groups.

Fedor Viktorovich Kondratiev, was not so long ago accused of persecuting political prisoners. The professor, however, denied these charges: "I can firmly maintain that the opinions spread in those year that psychiatric terror existed in our country and that there was a punitive psychiatry are the fabrication of those people who now are defending the totalitarian sects. This is slander which was used for antisoviet purposes and now is used for anti-Russian goals."

Back in the USSR. And it feels so good, doesn't it?

The Serbsky Institute which once tortured people for Anti-soviet activity will now torture them for Anti-Russian activity. There will be a cell available for the Mormon right next to the cell for Saakashvili and all the other enemies of the Motherland. There are after all no shortage of mentally ill people out there who still believe in truth and freedom. Because in Russia you have to be crazy to oppose the government and believe in the truth.

To Westerner observers the call for psychiatric intervention may seem silly, but to those who know Russian history and understand the Russian present, it is an ominous call every bit as important both symbolically and literally as the Russian tanks rolling across the Georgian border and the Russian troops occupying Georgian towns and cities.

All the more so because it was a reality long before then. Germany's fall into darkness didn't begin when it invaded Poland or Czechoslovakia. It began with the imprisonment and execution of Hitler's opposition. The Serbsky Institute is one of the more ominous symbols of the USSR, a symbol of political repression that is very much alive today.

I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.

After Russian bombings that killed thousands of civilians and after Russian tanks trod their way across sovereign Georgian territory, most of the usual suspects who had wailed about the American violation of "Iraq's Sovereignty" and Israeli bombings in Lebanon had little to say on the subject, when they weren't actively taking Russia's side.

But that's only to be expected. These self-proclaimed guardians of international morality aren't out to save lives or protect peoples, if they did they might elevate Darfur somewhere above the bottom of a long list headed by Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon.

Like the rest of us they've picked a side, and if the greatest trick of the devil was to convince the world that he doesn't exist, the greatest trick of these freelance humanitarians is to convince the world that they haven't picked a side, despite the blatantly obvious fact that they have.

Such people of course resist awkward labels such as "Anti-American" or "Anti-Israel" let alone "Pro-Terrorist." As far as they would have you believe their hearts bleed for all the peoples of the world, so long as the peoples in question are pointing the business end of an AK-47 at Americans or American allies.

It's sad to say, but it used to be that these sort of people had standards. And by standards I mean that they reserved their support for any mass murderer or terrorist group with socialist and progressive credentials, or at least official backing by the USSR. Today all it takes is a few dead Americans, Europeans or Israelis and the humanitarians will line up on their side.

The obvious observation is that it isn't justice or even suffering that attracts the Birkenstock crowd, but death. The death of the sort of people they'd like to kill themselves if only training to blow up US bases didn't interfere with finishing their masters thesis on the sociology of the subcultures surrounding the Grateful Dead.

If their parents cared deeply about the fate of Africa, they care about the "Conflict Regions" and the successors to Che and the PLO. It isn't about rescue, but about resistance to some nebulous American occupation of the world and admiration for anyone who shoots an American soldier.

As the official Humanitarian to the Terrorists, former President Jimmy Carter ably embodies the hypocrisies and compromises of the breed, dallying with the worst of the terrorists while threatening anyone willing to stand in their way and using whatever media attention he can garner to promote fraudulent peacekeeping efforts that serve the aims of terrorists and totalitarian regimes.

In this skewed morality, North Korea and Saddam's Iraq are preferable to Japan and Israel, and Venezuela easily trumps Columbia, Pakistan would be just swell if they put the ISI back in charge of the task of blowing up Americans and beating women. But it isn't morality or social justice that they're after, but killing daddy, who happens to compromise major chunks of the Northern part of the globe.

Cloaking their love for atrocities in humanitarianism gives them the freedom to go anywhere and aid any terrorists and posture as injured lovers of humanity whenever they get into legal trouble. Gaining the best of both worlds, the thrill of mingling with killers and the whitewashed moral facade of secular humanitarian saints, they get to play Mother Theresa and Che in one, before updating the playlist on their iPhone and heading home for a job at daddy's law firm, specializing of course in environmental law in between the occasional Obama Meetups.

And their greatest trick is convincing the world that they haven't picked a side. Yeah right.

It's a simple but vital question. Between friendly or non-hostile nations, a treaty is a mutually beneficial compact creating advantages for both sides. Between hostile nations or entities, a treaty is simply a line in the sand.

You draw the line in the sand to make a point. This line you shall not cross. Drawing the line unilaterally means you will use force to prevent that line from being crossed. Drawing the line through a treaty means the same exact. The only difference is that the line has been drawn by mutual agreement.

That is the reality of negotiating with an enemy. It's a dangerous reality that the media and the upbeat tendency of First World nations to view every negotiation as the triumph of peace over war, and benevolence over man's innately savage nature. Such a feast of wishful thinking tends to blur or even blot out the reality of the situation, that the treaty is nothing more than a line in the sand.

This sort of blurry thinking resulted in celebrations when Chamberlain returned from Munich promising, "Peace in our Time." The line in the sand had been drawn but the Allies had shown no ability to back it up with force. The resulting disaster is known as World War 2.

The ancient truism states, "If You Would Have Peace Prepare for War." As contradictory a premise as this seems to those for whom peace requires credibility in seeking peace, credibility in war is as equally important in drawing that line in the sand. Genuinely seeking peace is important to drawing the line, genuinely being prepared for war insures that the line means something more than wishful thinking.

The problem with multilateral lines in the sand is that when the celebrations are done and the pens have been brought out and ink put to paper, it is those preparations for war that make the treaty more than just mere paper and inkblots.

Because when dealing with a genuinely aggressive enemy, sooner or later he will put his toe across that line and if you do nothing, he will put a foot and then an army and then overrun it and you, as a courtly gentleman named Neville Chamberlain to his regret, who then had to resign in favor of a portly bully named Winston Churchill to try and put things right again.

The worst mistake you can make when you've negotiated an agreement is to ignore that toe and then that foot. That is how nations are lost, empires shattered and bodies piled in burning heaps rising to the sky.

It is the mistake that Israel made with the PLO, granting their enemies legitimacy, drawing lines in the sand that were stepped over time and time again, and each time redrawn further and deeper inside Israeli territory.

It is the mistake that Sarkozy made with Russia. It is the mistake that the United States made with Saddam. It is the mistake that civilized nations keep making over and over again when dealing with uncivilized nations.

When civilized nations sign treaties, they take the principles of negotiations and international agreements with such seriousness that they confuse paper and ink with binding force, and are unable to grasp that they are negotiating with an enemy that views them as nothing more than paper and ink distractions to completing his goals.

When uncivilized nations sign treaties, the treaties are simply a means to an end. The degree to which they comply with the treaty is wholly and utterly dependent on their evaluation of the force the other side will bring against them if they violate it.

That was the gap between Hitler and Chamberlain or Stalin and the West. Both sides made agreements, but only one side took them seriously. For an uncivilized nation to take that line in the sand seriously, he must also take seriously the threat of force behind it.

To civilized nations a treaty or agreement is a step toward peace. To uncivilized nations it is an invitation to subterfuge and surprise attack. When the pendulum of force swings their way, they will test and prod the treaty and if finding weakness, will seize the advantage and attack. When the pendulum of force swings away from them, they will practice subterfuge and undermine their opponents in more circuitous ways.

Either way it is not the treaty that counts, but the force behind it. A treaty is a statement of intent by both sides, both spoken and unspoken. It is the unspoken intent that matters more than the spoken.

If I cross this line that we have drawn together in the sand, what will you do now? If I set a foot across it, if I bring an army through it, if I snipe at you past it? What will you do? Will you strike? Will you defend yourself? Or will you offer to negotiation our differences and draw another line in the sand, deeper behind your own lines? If you do then I will know your weakness for what it is and destroy you.