Fausta's Blog

My latest article, Hugo and Mahmoud, Best Friends Forever! is up at Real Clear World. Check out the part about Venezuela going nuclear.

Syria capita household consumption: $970.07.

One pair of Christian Louboutin platform pumps: $$695.00.

Bragging on Facebook about being the stylish wife of the guy in charge of one of the most repressive regimes in the world: Priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy. For the rest, there is the enslavement of your countrymen.

Soccer Dad names it: The axis of misunderstood thugs, the perfect compliment to weenie diplomacy.

Speaking of thugs, Mystery Surrounds Alleged Hezbollah Links to Drug Arrests in Curacao

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Michael Yon asks a question on The road to hell, part II
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Scrappleface merges two headlines into one story: GOP Offers ‘Michael Jackson’ Cap & Trade Alternative.

Via Maria, Inflicting economic pain

According to recent Heritage economic analyses, the costs of the proposed global warming bill will kick in when it takes effect in 2012. By 2035, a family of four’s energy costs will increase dramatically.

· 90 percent — increase in electricity costs

· 58 percent — increase in gasoline costs

· 55 percent — increase in natural gas costs

Lieberman points out that these are only “low-ball estimates” and that the burden of these increased costs will disproportionately affect the poor.

The Climate Change Climate Change
The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

Darleen wants to know, Cap-and-trade bores you? because insanity rules.

Net Right Nation’s feed has the latest posts on cap and tax.

Michelle Malkin has the cap-and-tax picture:

Not one red cent!

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“The check is in the mail” used to be one of “the three big lies” joke. Now the joke’s on us: Obama’s Top Three Health Care Campaign Lies

• Lie Number 1: I Won’t Tax Your Health Benefits
• Lie Number 2: I Won’t Force You to Buy Health Insurance
• Lie Number 3: If You Aren’t Rich, I Won’t Raise Your Taxes

Unless, of course, you’re belong to the Dems’ favorite protected minority – a union.

Some thoughts on The pattern of the Obama approach to policy. “He’s behaving as though he’s the leader of a small, neutral nation instead of Leader of the Free World”.

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Why July 4th tea parties shouldn’t be group therapy.

The Way it Was: Is Rockefeller Obsolete? No, but the way taxes and the economy are headed, Rockefeller would be leaving the country.

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The Real UN Resolution 242, by Sammy Benoit, who finds Arab Democracy Advocates Upset With Obama
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First the topless exhibitionist, now the full monty ex-mayor. Stay off the sauce, guys.
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The Anchoress explains the difference between an idol and an icon.

No Sheeples posts about Lex Barker. One of Barker’s ex-wives, Tita Cervera, later married Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza and convinced him to leave a large part of his sizeable art collection to Spain. The collection is now at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which is part of El Prado.

Keep an eye on The Way We Get By, and go see it when it’s playing by you:

My latest article, More Weenie Diplomacy: Now with Venezuela and Syria is up at Real Clear World.

I will also talk about this in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern.

UPDATE
Welcome, American Power readers. Please visit often.

AFP has the story in English, Iran using Venezuela ties to duck UN sanctions, which I post in its entirety:

ROME (AFP) — Iran is using its warm relations with Venezuela to dodge UN sanctions and use Venezuelan aircraft to ship missile parts to Syria, an Italian newspaper reported Sunday.

Citing US and other Western intelligence agencies, La Stampa said Iran is using aircraft from Venezuelan airline Conviasa to transport computers and engine components to Syria for use in missiles.

The material comes from Iranian industrial group Shahid Bagheri, listed in the annex of UN Security Council Resolution 1737, adopted in December 2006, for involvement in Iran’s ballistic missile programme.

The resolution instructed all nations to “prevent the supply, sale or transfer” of all material or technology that could be used for Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme and the development of weapons to carry nuclear warheads.

Syria is a close ally of Iran in the Middle East, with the two nations having signed a military cooperation pact in June 2006.

In return for providing aircraft, Iran has made available to Caracas members of its Revolution Guards and the elite Al-Quds unit to train and reinforce the Venezuelan police and secret services, La Stampa reported.

Iran denies Western and Israeli suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons, asserting that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only. It nevertheless defies a UN demand to halt uranium enrichment.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez — who share deep hostility towards the United States and the outgoing Bush administration — have signed several agreements on economic cooperation.

Chavez has also voiced support for Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles have a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,280 miles), capable of hitting Israel as well as US military bases in the Middle East.

San Juan, Puerto Rico is 552 miles from Caracas. One of those Iranian missiles, when they work, can strike American soil.

Noticias24 has the complete Italian report from La Stampa.

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Betsy links to Jennifer Rubin’s post,

An advisor, Daniel Kurtzer, to Barack Obama says that Obama didn’t realize what he was saying to AIPAC when he used the term “undivided” in reference to Jerusalem. According to Kurtzer, Obama had “a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones.” Kurtzer says that only after the speech did Obama realize it was a “code word” to use the phrase, “but it does not indicate any kind of naivete about foreign affairs.”

As Rubin says,

Once again, this suggests that there is too little adult supervision of a candidate unaccustomed to speaking on the world stage about issues in which there are lots of code words, indeed in which every word (e.g. “preconditons,” “immediate withdrawal”) has meaning to Americans’ foes and friends.”

Bashar Assad Understands What Obama The ‘Never Mind’ Candidate Doesn’t

Syria’s Assad says wants results from Israel talks:”This is not like drinking tea,” Assad, in India on a four-day visit, said when asked if he would meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Paris.

“The meeting between me and the Israeli prime minister will be meaningless without the technocrats laying the foundation, without reaching the final stage.”

And as the campaign develops, Poohbama rolls right along. Drew has a photo of Obama’s foreign policy team.

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A couple of years ago Gateway Pundit posted Jimmy Carter Parades the World’s 10 Worst Dictators, a who’s who in Jimmy’s work: Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, Kim Jung Il of North Korea and Omar al-Bashar of Sudan all hold places of honor at Jimmy’s table.

Let’s also not forget Jimmy’s fondness for Yasser

and Hugo

Therefore it was only a matter of time before this was announced: Report: Jimmy Carter to Meet With Hamas Leader in Syria

Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world.

The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that Carter was planning a trip to Syria for mid-April, during which he would meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, on April 18.
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Meshal, who lives in Syria to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government, leads Hamas from his seat in Damascus, where he is a guest of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Well, while Jimmy’s in the vicinity, he might as well drop by Bashar’s, who Nancy remembers so fondly:

Because, after all, few things spread the virtues of democracy like kissing up to murderous thugs.

UPDATE
A golden moment via Macsmind,

Via Judith,

UPDATE, Thursday 10 April
Who pays for Carter?
Jimmy Carter and Unconscious Hate

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I was just talking to Baron Bodissey and remembered an excellent post of his, The Little Wicked Wicket Gate where he discusses Orthodox Secularism. His message is as relevant today as it was then.

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Cindy Sheehan goes to NYC.
Again.
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Wiretap Debacle: How politics has gutted the terrorist surveillance program.

Accommodation as an Islamist Political Instrument

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NonParty Politics doesn’t like what he saw in the Daily Show…
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Michael Totten interviewed Barry Rubin a couple of weeks ago. Rubin’s the author of The Truth About Syria. Here’s the Amazon link:

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In a lighter mode, there is kaffir, and then there’s kaffir.

Via Jihad Watch, Islamic militants, security forces battle in Lebanon. The AP calls them Islamic militants, the NYT calls them Islamists, and people are dying:

Eight civilians were killed by shelling today, according to Reuters, adding to the 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants killed in the fierce fighting on Sunday.

Witnesses said that militants belonging to Fatah al-Islam fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns today at army posts on the camp perimeter, according to Reuters.

The continuing violence is one of the most significant challenges to the Lebanese army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.
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Many of the complex crosscurrents of Lebanon’s politics have been visible in the crisis. The camp in Tripoli has been off limits to the Lebanese army under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries. On Sunday, Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.

Syria, which Lebanon accuses of backing Fatah al-Islam, closed several border crossings in the area. And the fighting broke out as the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution to try suspects tied to the February 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria has been accused in previous investigations of ordering the killing, but vigorously denies any connection.
…
Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for security authorities in Lebanon and much of the region. Intelligence officials say that the group counts between 150 and 200 fighters in its ranks and that it subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.

The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.

Christians are targeted

I haven’t figured out why the BBC’s using scare quotes, Lebanon clashes ‘kill civilians’ but the death toll is significantly higher than the AP report shows. Update: The WaPo states that 50 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting Sunday

Here are some Facts and figures on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

Gateway Pundit posts that

One of the men killed in Sunday’s fighting, Saddam El-Hajdib, was a suspect in a failed German train bombing a sign that Nahr al-Bared refugee camp had become a refuge for militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon.

A spokesman for the Lebanese government was interviewed by the BBCA newscast and blamed Syria for the bombing. Certainly the Lebanese media’s clear about it: Lebanon media see Syria behind violence.

Michael Totten links to Why Syria, why now?

The Lebanese citizen says, “justice is a principle above all. Security on the other hand has its own logic; you kill this guy, you spare that guy…”

Yeah, but you don’t understand, as Assad’s court scribe Patrick Seale put it, “Syria cannot tolerate a hostile government in Lebanon”! So it must kill all politicians that it doesn’t like! But hey, “it doesn’t mean the end!”

Will Nancy don her scarf again and go ask her buddy to stop?

Via Pajamas Media, From Beirut to the Beltway, explains that even if the Lebanese army wins this one, the battle will not be over and that,

In other words, Hizbullah is siding against the Lebanese government and army by not even acknowledging Fatah al-Islam, or its sponsor, and blaming it on a US-Israeli conspiracy.

I’m sure Nancy can’t wait to sink her teeth on that, too.

Meanwhile, you wouldn’t know that Israel is under attack by reading the headlines.

Update Captain Ed asks,

And where is the UN in all of this? It’s their refugee camp which has fostered these groups and allowed them to operate openly. Shouldn’t the UN be disarming people in refugee camps? Or have they abandoned that mandate, as they have abandoned others?

Update 2: Welcome, EU Referendum readers. Please visit often, and if you have a chance, listen to my Blog Talk Radio podcasts, including my most recent ones on on Tony Blair, and on Israel

Syrian WMD Sites – The Basic List:

First, and most importantly, is that the phosphate deposits in Syria are a multi-part threat. Phosphates, of course, are used in agriculture for fertilizer and in the steel and glass-making businesses, along with standard chemical industry. Phosphate is one of the basic building blocks of life and a necessary element for life to continue. As such it also serves as the dual basis for the chemical and biological weapons development going on in Syria. The prime mover in this is that Syria has not signed on to the Chemical Weapon’s Convention and feels free to develop such weapons. On the biological weapons side, things are a bit more nebulous: even though a treaty signatory, Syria has been putting together a multi-use pharmaceutical industry which would also serve as the basis for a bioweapons industry.
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On the chemical weapons side, however, there is no doubt of Syrian manufacture of same, especially VX nerve gas and Sarin. These are both dependent upon the phosphate industry and the steep ramping up of that industry does not bode well for those trying to limit Syrian manufacture of chemical weapons.

This is a must-read.

If you can’t believe this will affect you because it’s clear across the world, bear in mind that Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said during a visit to Damascus in August that he and Syria

will “build a new world” free of US domination, vowing eventually to “dig the grave of US imperialism.”

and that Iran Air launches weekly flights to Venezuela through Syria.

More on Syria and WMDs from A Jacksonian,
Syrian WMD facilities: Palymra and Homs
Fun with GIS and INTEL Analysis
Your own All Source Exploitation organization