I have always found the US State Department one of the duller institutions and I cannot help but think they are behind the latest desperate salvo to keep alive the career of Mahmoud Abbas, despite the PA leader’s electoral humiliation. The State Department Mind in its withering conventionality thinks because something has been done the same way (badly) for decades it must be right. But wouldn’t it be better for the Palestinians to have to face the reality of their choice - Hamas? The State Department approach amounts to the continued infantilization of the Palestinian people. We have seen the results. But perhaps the State Department and the Palestinians are both incapable of change.

Posse Incitatus has a very different view of the Iranian nuclear standoff. I’m not buying it, but it’s worth reading.

This blog has been silent most of today because I was flying to NY where I am appearing on a panel tomorrow afternoon at a conference held by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) [Is that part of the NSA?-ed. I don't know... sounds like it... but this guy is also on the panel. Is he a spy? I think he once knew Valerie Plame.]

UPDATE: One of the big Google honchos is the lunchtime speaker. That should be interesting, under present circumstances.

I always knew the AP was filled with some potententially great comedy writers, but they didn’t really “put me on the floor” until tonight’s article on the jockeying around about aid payments to the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority:

Europe is the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, which had a $1.96 billion budget last year. About one-third of aid goes to salaries and the rest to rehabilitate Palestinians’ war-shattered infrastructure.

Badda-bing, badda-boom!

[What did you expect them to say - to the Swiss bank accounts of the leadership?-ed. It's called recycling.]

From Drudge (blinking light), permanent members of the Security Council have agreed that Iran should be referred to that body.

UPDATE: Here’s the AP coverage:

The United States and other permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council agreed Monday that Iran should be hauled before that powerful body over its disputed nuclear program.

China and Russia, longtime allies and trading partners of Iran, signed on to a statement that calls on the U.N. nuclear watchdog to transfer the Iran dossier to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions or take other harsh action.

Foreign ministers from those nations, plus the United States, Britain and France, also said the Security Council should wait until March to take up the Iran case, after a formal report on Tehran’s activities from the watchdog agency.

If the wait until March meant bringing in Russia and China, perhaps it’s worth it. This will indeed be interesting, even if pointless.

No one beats a screenwriter for hating everybody else’s movies (including most of his own), so I am known among my friends as a terrible film curmudgeon, bemoaning the great days of Fellini, Bunuel, et al. What a bore. So I’m pleased any time I can recommend a new one and I did quite enjoy Nanny McPhee, which Sheryl and I saw with Madeleine Saturday night of its opening weekend at Hollywood’s Arclight Cinema. Of course, I am a huge Emma Thompson fan, as an actress and as a writer. Her script for Sense and Sensibility was one of the best Austen adaptation’s ever. I also understand she had her hand in the new version of Pride and Prejudice. Here she has written herself a role filled with wart-filled amusement as the Nanny-from-Hell come to reform a family of deliciously unruly kids. At first you almost cannot look at her, then her blemishes (and snaggletooth) gradually disappear as the children do reform and it’s the same beautiful Emma. Corny, but effective.

McPhee has some other terrific performances, stacked as it is with a who’s who of the British stage - Colin Furth, Derek Jacobi, a scenery-chewing Angela Lansbury. And speaking of scenery, that’s probably the best part of this film - Michael Powell’s colorfully playful Victorian sets which resemble William Morris on acid. Costumes are in a similar vein as you can see here from the photo of Celia Imrie who portrays the potential Wife-from-Hell for hapless Colin Firth. You will not be surprised to learn that it never happens.

Don’t take this as an unqualified rave. I am at the point in my life that I realize that your pleasure in a movie (or anything else) is vastly related to your mood, place and the company you are with. Who knows if I would like La Strada if I saw it now? I might get bored. (Nights of Cabiria, which I have seen recently, however, did not bore me. It still made me cry forty years after I had first seen it.)

I’m sure it’s just an accident, but something about the medical profession appears to attract fascist ideologues - first Mengele, now Zawahiri. The sinister Zawa is back with the following news (via AP):

“U.S. warplanes have launched a raid … on a village near Peshawar just after the Eid al-Adha (feast) in which 18 Muslim men, women and children were killed in their (U.S.) fight against jihad which they call terrorism,” he said, referring to the January air strike in Pakistan.

“They said this was intended to kill myself and four of my brothers but now the whole world has discovered the U.S. lies and their failure and brutality,” Zawahri added.

Of course the ‘brothers’ have not been produced, but no matter. Perhaps they are alive. The “good doctor” continues:

“I will meet my fate (death) as set by God the Almighty but if my time did not come you (U.S. President George W.) Bush or all the powers on earth … cannot bring it one second closer.”

That’s interesting. Why doesn’t he just come out of hiding then? “God the Almighty” will protect him.

The European Union gave Hamas more time to renounce terror and accept Israel’s right to exist. A Dutch leader put it in a time frame. From Bloomberg:

“We still have three or four weeks to make up our minds,” Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said. “Once people are in power, maybe they change their position.”

Shall we hold Mr. Bot to this? This blog has put it on its calendar. On the first of March, which gives Bot a little wiggle room, we will examine what has happened and see what he has said and what the EU has done.

Germany’s FM was less specific, at least according to the Bloomberg report:

“The key lies in the Palestinian territories,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. “There, a decision needs to be taken on whether to take the political path. That means renouncing violence, putting down arms and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.”

How many weeks or years is Herr Steinmeier offering? We don’t know. Bot explained things this way:

“Europe always has said that it will not do business with a regime that intends to eliminate another country and that favors terrorist attacks.”

Oh, really? I haven’t seen the well-known opinions of Mr. Ahmadinejad slowing down this European company’s business activities in Islamofascist Iran, not for a second. [You didn't read carefully. Bot said "Europe has always said". Not what it would do.-ed. Touché]

UPDATE: No comment so far from the Europeans on the following Hamas demand for the Israelis to change their flag.

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar has told CCN’s Wolf Blitzer that his party would offer Israel a “hudna,” if it pulled back to its 1967 borders. This term meaning “truce” or “armistice” as well as “calm” or “quiet”, coming from a verbal root meaning “calm”, according to Wikipedia, has become well known to anyone following post-9/11 events. We also know that its first example of was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 628 between the Muslims and the Quraish, a Meccan tribe. Again via Wikipedia:

Two years later, in 630, a skirmish between the Bedouin and the Quraysh occurred; Muhammad considered this to constitute a breach of the treaty. Muhammad and his followers, 10,000 strong, marched upon Mecca and demanded the surrender of the city, which capitulated.

No more hudnas, please. How about plain old mutal state-to-state recognition.

Reading on Gateway Pundit of the rise of Cindy Sheehanism in the Democratic Party and the simultaneous Bill-bashing by large portions of that party, I started again to dream the impossible dream - suppose they gave a “system” and nobody came?

Meaning: imagine a situation in the next presidential cycle where the Republicans nominate someone too conservative for the American public on social issues and the Democrats someone too … whatever … can’t really use the world liberal here … isolationist? … on foreign affairs. The conventional wisdom is that the people will compromise and accept one of the “big tents.” How tediously boring, how indeed “conventional,” and how, fundamentally, undemocratic. In our system, as it is currently constructed, the majority more often than not gets screwed.

I know many people hate change, fear it in their souls, but to use a modern cliché, we may be reaching a tipping point. Our major parties are based on threads of allegiances that go back decades and are increasingly thin and often self-destructive to the parties themselves, certainly to evolving thought and changing conditions. Yes, websites, blogs, etc. serve to whip up the bases of those parties (and keep things ever the same), but they also serve to inform swing voters who think for themselves and control the final outcomes, especially to the extent those centrist voters are able to find candidates who reasonably represent them. Our system has often militated against that, but here’s another suppose: the Repubs and the Dems nominate candidates from those extreme bases and Rudolph Giuliani runs as a third party candidate. Would he win? I not only think Rudy would but, depending on how extreme the other candidates are, I think he would win big. It would revolutionize a moribund system.

We need a rebellion from the center.