San Antonio Express-News
A leopard doesn't change its spots. And Moammar Gadhafi, who has incredibly bought and connived his way back into the good graces of the international community, cannot change his brutal and unpredictable ways.
The latest display of his brutality and unpredictability was his release from death row of foreign health workers who had been tortured into confessions of intentionally spreading HIV at a Libyan pediatric hospital. There was good reason to suspect the dictator's clemency had been purchased. Now we know some of the terms of the deal.  
The French corporation Areva has signed a memorandum of understanding to build a nuclear reactor for Gadhafi. And the French government confirmed that the European aerospace company EADS, of which France is the largest public owner, has inked a major arms deal with Gadhafi for the purchase of anti-tank missiles and a radio communications system.
These are the most disturbing examples of Western governments and businesses rushing in to do business with a violent regime that is untrustworthy. It calls to mind the long train of diplomats and arms dealers who shook hands with Saddam Hussein, despite his deplorable human rights record and support for terrorism.
Express-News columnist ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
As the US, Jordan, the PA and others prepare for a high-level Middle East summit in November, a squeeze on Israel to agree to a Palestinian state just kilometers from Tel Aviv is feared.
PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has met in recent days with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and with Jordan's King Abdullah, reportedly discussing plans for the upcoming Middle East summit.  The summit is the brainchild of U.S. President George Bush, and is scheduled to be held three months from now.  Some Israelis fear that it will mark the climax of a heavy series of pressures upon Israel to agree formally to the formation of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. 
"With a quiet and densely-packed timetable," writes IDF Col. (res.) Moti Yogev, "the US Administration is cooking up, together with Prime Minister Olmert and Abu Mazen, very fateful plans for the State of Israel.  The US will apply very heavy pressure on Israel to agree to understandings that will form the basis of the declaration of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria within just two months."
Yogev explains that the Bush Administration is working under the pressure of the 2008 ...   more »

Israeli military sources say Syria is nearing the end of an accelerated deployment of a large rocket arsenal of Katyusha and Scud missiles that could damage entire blocks of buildings in Tel Aviv.
The Jerusalem Post reported that missile launchers in Syria could potentially unleash a barrage of missiles numbering in the hundreds within an hour.
Also, according to Israeli military officials, Syria accelerated training periods for its troops, who are known to be stationed along the length of its border with Israel.
However, the Post said, a military intelligence assessment said these forces remain in a defensive position, and that Syria did not attend to initiate an all-out war with Israel.
  Even so, Damascus does not believe Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's public statements of reassurance that Israel has no intention of attacking Syria, and is genuinely concerned about an Israeli preemptive attack, according to official Israeli assessments.
Original Source
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By Stan Goodenough
Right-wing Israeli politicians have reacted in shock and anger to the news that Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak will not order gas masks distributed to Israelis for fear of provoking the Syrians into a war.
The development was the top story on The Jerusalem Post website Monday.
According to the report, Barak made his decision despite accumulated Israeli intelligence warnings that Syrian president Bashar el-Assad has non-conventional-capable missiles that can hit any population center in the Jewish state.
Syria has long been known to have, along with biological weapons, weaponized VX Gas that can cause excruciating death.
The Post says that military assessments show Syria to be nearing the end of "an accelerated deployment of a large rocket arsenal of Katyusha and Scud missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and causing thousands of civilian casualties."
Nonetheless, Israelis are not to be protected against such attacks.
Likud Knesset member Yuval Steinitz, slammed Barak's decision.
"The decision not to hand out masks so as not to upset the Syrians reminds me of Moshe Dayan's unfortunate decision not to call up the reserves so as not to upset the Syrians and the Egyptians on the eve of ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Syrian dictator Bashar el-Assad does not believe Israeli officials when they say they do not want a war with their north-eastern neighbor.
This is the IDF's official assessment of Damascus' response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's repeated assertions that Israel does not want war.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post Monday, Olmert's attempts over the last few weeks "to calm Syrian jitters have not been overly successful," and Assad still believes Israel plans to attack.
Israeli military officials have warned that Syria is in a position to bombard Israeli cities with hundreds of missiles in an hour. The conventional warheads of some of these missiles are powerful enough to damage blocks of buildings.
The Post said officials have warned off the record that the Israel Air Force would have a problem thwarting such a bombardment. IDF ground forces would have to be moved deep into Syria in order to stop the rocket firing at its sources, they said.
Israel's surface-to-surface missile capability was not mentioned in the report.
There is wide-spread speculation among Middle East watchers that, in the event of conflict, Assad could bring his non-conventional weaponry into play against Israel, forcing Israel ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Likud Party members will vote Tuesday for the leader they want to take them into the next general elections, whenever those may be held.
Contending for the post is current Likud Chairman and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of the "Jewish Leadership" faction of the Likud, Moshe Feiglin, and the former head of the World Likud organization, Danny Danon.
Netanyahu - affectionately and/or derisively known as "Bibi" - is widely expected to score a comfortable win.
Danon, a new and relatively unknown entity, is expected to lose.
Uncertainty hangs in the air over how Feiglin will do. Unlike his opponents, he is a religious Jew who refers to God in his speeches and campaigning - something alien to almost every other Israeli politician.
Religious leaders have hitherto been considered unelectable to the highest office in Israel, and there is little evidence on the ground that this has changed.
Feiglin earned his reputation by orchestrating some of the most effective civil disobedience campaigns in Israel's history against the disastrous and immoral Oslo Accords. So angry did he make the Israeli left that they got him tried for treason.
He was found "guilty" of the lesser charge ...   more »

CARACAS (Reuters) - World oil prices are headed for $100 per barrel, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez predicted on Saturday, and said he will cut supplies to the United States if the U.S. government "attacks" the South American nation again.
"I've always said that oil prices are headed straight to $100 per barrel," he said during a televised speech. "We should prepare ourselves for those prices of one hundred dollars."
Chavez said high oil prices were the sign of a "global crisis" in energy caused by voracious consumption that has vastly reduced available oil reserves.
Chavez has accused the United States of plotting a bungled coup that ousted him for two days in 2002, though Washington denies the accusations, and has repeatedly made conditional threats to cut off oil sales to the United States that historically account for 12 to 15 percent of U.S. imports.
"No one should think that we're going to stop sending oil to the United States, no -- unless they attack us again," Chavez said during a speech to leaders of Caribbean nations meeting in Caracas for an energy summit.
"If they attack us again like they did in April of 2002 ... there will be no ...   more »

Woman takes on sheik in heated exchange on Riyadh state television
In an interview originally broadcast on Saudi television, a female newscaster in the Islamic kingdom charged young people are brainwashed under the country's strict educational system.
In an exchange with a cleric, Buthayna Nasser reacted to the Saudi Shura Council's discussion of whether a woman's face should be covered if she appears on television. The debate with Saudi Sheik Nasser Al-Huneini also was broadcast March 25 on television in Lebanon.
Video excerpts, courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute, can be viewed here
Addressing the sheik, Nasser said that from the beginning of elementary school through university, students are subject to rote memorization and "whoever dares to argue or to question anything is called upon to ask for Allah's forgiveness. He is told that this will get him into Hell."
(Story continues below)
"You, who frighten people with Hell, have brought them a hell upon earth," she told the cleric. "You have banned books of the various intellectual streams. You've prevented the mind from operating, thinking, comparing, and choosing, even though it is the same mind that the Creator gave people in order to choose between Paradise and ...   more »

AMMAN, 12 August 2007 - Jordan has formed a committee of 100 Muslim scholars to address through dialogue "critical issues" affecting Muslims around the world, a statement said yesterday.
The committee, called "Salam (peace) 100," aims to "enable peaceful debate and discussion, using the power of ideas as a means of calming conflict and finding a resolution to problems of the gravest importance." The statement said controversies such as the 2005 Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), have "exposed the lack of intellectual leadership" in the Muslim world.
This "must be addressed with the utmost urgency to prevent further rifts in human understanding. The committee proposes to conquer immediate and future fears and misapprehensions, which are so easily exploited by extremists of every kind."
The committee is headed by the uncle of King Abdallah II, Hassan bin Talal. It groups Muslim figures from around the world, including the director general of the Islamic Organization of Education, Science and Culture, Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, and former Yemeni Prime Ministers Abdul Karim Al-Eryani and Haider Abu Bakr Al-Attas. It pledged to promote "a rational and equitable understanding of hearts and minds." "We actively seek to address core disputes of international concern, to ...   more »

by Gerald A. Honigman
Shocking…
Yet another State Department Arabist takes Jews to task for wanting to survive the Foggy Folks' less than friendly--if not downright hostile--"peace" (of the grave) plans. We'll return to this later
First, imagine, for one moment, that the entire territory of the United States was reduced to the size of New Jersey.
Rather than being separated from any real or potential enemies by thousands of miles of oceans as it formerly was, this new, constricted America is still surrounded by the rest of the same territory that was the old America…but that land now consists of enemies dedicated to mini-America's destruction.
Next, picture that the animosity of the enemies America faces has nothing to do with its size --for America is now indeed tiny--but is based on their belief that Americans have no historical or political right whatsoever to the land. Our enemies, instead, claim all of the area--including America--as purely their own patrimony.
Next, picture that mini-America with 6 million Americans, surrounded by hundreds of millions of enemies who would like to have it for dinner, has a powerful, friendly nation across the sea from which it gets most of its support--militarily, financially, and ...   more »

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow
The war of words between Moscow and the west over missile defence intensified over the weekend as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, declared a new radar station near St Petersburg to be “the first step in a large-scale programme”.
Moscow has said it would bolster its air defence capability in response to US plans to site early-warning systems in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland to protect against attack from Iran or North Korea.
Washington insists the anti-missile system is to deal with “rogue” states, but Mr Putin has said the installations would risk turning Europe into “a powder keg” and has threatened to retarget Russian missiles on Europe if the US goes ahead with the plan, opening the most serious rift in Moscow’s relations with Washington since the cold war.
Mr Putin’s weekend comments are the latest in a series of statements that have heightened tension between Moscow and Washington, despite the Bush administration’s attempts to clear the air.
The US has stated it has no intention of counteracting Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, but Moscow sees the Polish and Czech plans as an unjustifiable incursion into a region formerly part of its sphere ...   more »