Boker tov, Boulder!

Deal for Shalit?

JPost

"A deal to secure the release of Gilad Shalit is almost closed," said Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh at Monday's PA cabinet meeting.

Cairo Radio reported that a Hamas delegation from Syria was due to arrive in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials about a possible prisoner swap in exchange for the release of Shalit....

PA spokesman Ghazi Hamed said that Israel was being "stubborn" but that the general framework of a prisoner swap deal had been agreed upon

"Israel has agreed in principle to a prisoner exchange but we need more time to discuss the names of the Palestinians that would be freed," said Hamed.

Ready or not

Huffington Post on Bill Clinton's 60th birthday:

So what if Bill Clinton tied New York traffic in knots just over a month ago with the Clinton Global Initiative Conference? And who really cares that his real birthday was more than two months ago?

Ready or not, he's back.

This weekend, the former President will be dining and drinking to 60 years with some of world's deepest-pocketed donors at a series of glamorous events around Manhattan, beginning Friday evening and ending with a cocktail party on Gramercy Park in the wee hours Sunday night.

Contrast with this story at the Daily Mail (UK): Americans snub invitation to pay $500,000 for Clinton birthday party

I know, it's not really news, and who cares? but I'm trying to avoid dreading the upcoming election and also this nervous-making piece from DEBKA:

US-Led Military Thrust Focuses Heavily on Broad Naval Deployment

Hundreds of US and allied war ships foregathered in the strategic seas of the Middle East and India in the last days of October 2006 for two primary missions: To prepare for a US-led military strike against Iran which has stepped up its uranium enrichment program with a second centrifuge project - undeterred by the prospect of UN sanctions; and measures to fend off palpable al Qaeda threats to oil targets.

DEBKAfile’s military sources provide details of the massive deployments:

1. A large-scale US-Indian sea exercise called Malabar 06 is in progress off the Indian coast of Goa, ending Nov. 5. The American vessels taking part are the USS Boxer carrier, the USS Bunker Hill guided missile battle cruiser, the guided missile destroyer USS Howard and the USS Benfold , as well as the Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine Providence and the Canadian guided missile frigate HMCS Ottawa .

Indian maritime might is displayed with its warships like INS Beas , INS Mysore , INS Shakti , INS Ganga , tanking ship INS Gharial , submarine INS Shankush and Coast Guard ship CGS Samar

Malabar also involves the landing of large number of soldiers ashore, ahead of the Indian acquisition of the massive amphibious USS Trenton transport dock which can carry six helicopters and about a 1000 soldiers.

Our Tehran sources report that last Thursday, Oct. 26, Iranian officials were seriously rattled by a rumor that an Iranian spy plane had located the USS Boxer heading for the Persian Gulf. It prompted fears of an imminent American military assault to lift Republican prospects in the coming US midterm elections of Nov. 7. In any case, the Iranians suspect that at the end of the joint US-Indian exercise in the Arabian Sea, Boxer will veer west and head into the Persian Gulf. There would then be four US air carriers with task forces parked opposite Iranian shores, including the USS Enterprise Strike Group, the USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, which are already in place.

According to the intelligence reaching Iran, the Boxer and its escorts carry 850 Marines who have just spent months in special training for operations on offshore oil rigs and platforms.

2. American, Italy, France, Britain, Australia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are taking part in an exercise practicing the interception of ships carrying nuclear materials or components for use in advanced weapons. The exercise opposite Bahrain is the first to be held in the Persian Gulf under the three-year old proliferation security initiative. It applications could be translated equally into the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, or Iran....

Thanks? to The Husband for sending me this. Yes, we email each other even though we live in the same house.

Quote of the Day

"The power of terrorists is in shaping public opinion through the media."

--Dr. Rusty Shackleford at MyPetJawa

While there, also see this Charlie Brown video.

42% of American Muslims are Democrats

... 17% are Republicans, and 28% have no party affiliation.

Watch MSNBC's Tucker Carlson interview CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper in this YouTube video at LGF.

NB: 54% of Jews polled by the AJC consider themselves Democrats, up from 48% since the last mid-term election in 2002.

Paristinian Intifada: #s of torched cars no longer disclosed

NoPasaran

French private and State is openly admitting that their coverage of the riots is covering up the true extent of the urban guerilla activity that is now happening across France on a daily basis.

As last year, primetime news is no longer providing figures on the number of cars being torched each evening. News producers are directed to keep the number of items on urban guerilla violence to a minimum and to always balance them with reports about positive social programs aimed at surburban youth....

In this earlier post, we learn that "A bus torching in Marseille with intent to kill, 46 arrests nationwide along with 2 policemen hurt and 200 automobiles torched, street battles with police in Gigny, and a bus torched in Trappes" is considered a "relatively calm" day.

And it's not just France. See this head-in-the-sand report from Amsterdam:

THE HAGUE, 24/10/06 - A bus with passengers in Amsterdam was attacked by a home-made chemical explosive on Friday evening. The incident received only limited media attention. Police do not believe terrorism is involved....

Remember Theo van Gogh, shot dead in the streets of Amsterdam two years ago this week.

ho-hum: another abduction in Jew-Free Gaza

GAZA CITY (AFP)

Gunmen in the Gaza Strip kidnapped a Spanish aid worker, the latest in a string of foreigner abductions in the increasingly lawless Palestinian territory.

Roberto Vila, 34, was snatched by four armed men from a car near the town of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and bundled into a yellow Skoda, witnesses and security officials said.

The gunmen released Vila's French female colleague and two Palestinian assistants who were also in the car, they said. Police said they questioned the women and launched a search for the perpetrators.

Vila worked for the media department of the Spanish aid group Cooperation Assembly for Peace, which said in a statement that it was "confident" that he would be released soon.

Brad Pitt having a bad week

BANG-Showbiz reports that Pitt and Angelina Jolie fear a personal al-Qaeda attack in India, where they are filming a movie about Daneil Pearl, while another entertainment site says Pitt was shocked (shocked, I tell you) when accosted in Amsterdam by "some guys" who threatened to kill him because he is an American.

Tough week, and it's only just begun.

Condi has a blind spot for the poorpalestinians

When we had a bloggers' conference call with Mark Steyn, he talked about how we have to stop fetishizing the Palestinians, and I've been waiting for an opportunity to use the phrase. It didn't take long.

Rick Richman quotes the great Cal Thomas, asking Condoleezza Rice this most obvious question:

"... what evidence do you have out there that if they had an independent state that they would lay down their arms and not complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out?"

to which Condi replies,

Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace...

Perfectly ready to live side by side? According to Rick's information, she's off by more than 23 percentage points. Whoops.

Read the whole post at Jewish Current Issues to see in what direction she errs, and let me know if this isn't a perfectly good instance of someone fetishizing the poorpalestinians, who "just want to live in peace."

MEANWHILE, a 20-year-old Israeli Arab female - and several others - have been arrested for plotting to blow up a restaurant in Raanana, east of Netanya.

Also MEANWHILE, Israeli Arab members of the Knesset protest "Fascism" in the government, in the person of Uncle Avigdor:

A police officer watches as Israeli Arab members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, aides and supporters demonstrate against comments made by Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, during a protest outside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, Monday Oct. 30, 2006. The Israeli Cabinet voted overwhelmingly Monday to bring into the government Lieberman's hawkish party that opposes ceding territory to the Palestinians and wants to redraw Israel's borders to exclude many Israeli Arabs. The vote, which still needs parliamentary approval, gives Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition a commanding majority in parliament but the inclusion of the hardline party likely puts an end to Olmert's election campaign promise to pull out of much of the West Bank. The sign, left, reads in Hebrew:'Fascism is in the government'. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Noah Feldman gets over 8,000 words in the New York Times

Let's skip to the chase. Our lantsman (presumably named Noach after our ancestor in the Torah portion just read) concludes his lengthy essay - Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age - with these words of understanding:

.... Islam contains a rich and multivocal set of traditions and ideas, susceptible to being used for good or ill, for restraint or destruction. This interpretive flexibility — equally characteristic of the other great world religions — does not rob Islam of its distinctiveness. An Islamic bomb would not be just the same as the nationalist bomb of a majority-Muslim state, nor would it be the same as a Christian bomb or a Jewish one. But its role in history will depend, ultimately, on the meaning Muslims give it, and the uses to which they put their faith and their capabilities. In confronting the possibility of the Islamic bomb, we — Muslims and non-Muslims alike — need to remember that Islam exists both as an ideal system of morals and values and as a force that motivates actual people living today, with all the frailties and imperfections that make us human.

Rocket fire? What rocket fire? cont'd cont'd

Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket at Israel Sunday that landed at a sheep farm, injuring some of the sheep. Two other rockets landed near the hothouses of a western Negev community. (Ynet News)

A Kassam rocket fired Monday by Palestinians in northern Gaza landed south of Ashkelon near a sensitive strategic facility, causing slight damage. (Ynet News)