In case you get bored with this edition of the Weekend Web, you might check out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new column over at Newsweek. In the tradition of 60 Minutes and Columbia University, Newsweek has provided the Iranian madman with yet another major media platform from which to spew his vile propaganda. America, of course, is to be blamed for the civilian deaths in Iraq—not Sadaam’s regime or the Iranian proxy war against Americans in Iraq. In relying on stats that must have come from Michael Moore’s blog, Mahmoud says 700,000 civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. That amounts to about 400 violent civilian deaths per day.

Working behind the scenes, in conjunction with the Great Satan, of course, are those nasty Jews Ahmadinejad has vowed to obliterate. “The U.S. government has succumbed to the demands of the Zionists and the Zionist regime. This is a lethal ailment that afflicts U.S. administrations,” Mahmoud writes. “The American people do not like to see their leaders fall captive to the Zionist network. Surely the American people would prefer U.S.-inspired policies to those perpetrated by the Zionists. … The U.S. government will bear the heavy responsibility for the Zionist regime’s massacre of Palestinian women and children in their homes and territory.”

Newsweek apologists will adamantly defend the magazine’s decision to free up space for the little Hitler in the name of “free speech.” But the dirty little secret is that if it were any other homophobic, misogynistic, Holocaust-denying racist, there is simply no way Newsweek would print such venomous lies. But as long as he heads up a terrorist state that opposes President Bush’s policies, he’s rewarded with “special guest commentary” status at Newsweek.

And if you think the leftist media are alone in their engagement with terrorists, think again. Today’s New York Times writes,

Seven years of President Bush’s don’t-talk-to-evil policy are over, even under the helm of the administration that crafted it.Now administration officials are openly making nice with Syria, holding round after round of talks with Iran over the fate of Iraq, and making preliminary plans for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to visit Libya.And President Bush himself has gotten in on the act—writing a personal (“cordial,” the White House says) letter to the secretive and enigmatic North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il that held out the possibility of normalizing diplomatic relations.

Sleepwalking Into a Nightmare

Some noteworthy excerpts from a speech Newt Gingrich gave last month at a Jewish National Fund meeting:

What truly bothers me is the shallowness and the sophistry of the Western governments, starting with our own. When a person says to you, “I don’t recognize that you exist,” you don’t start a negotiation. …We need first of all to recognize this is a real war. Our enemies are peaceful when they’re weak, are ruthless when they’re strong, demand mercy when they’re losing, show no mercy when they’re winning. They understand exactly what this is, and anybody who reads Sun Tzu will understand exactly what we’re living through. This is a total war. One side is going to win. One side is going to lose. You’ll be able to tell who won and who lost by who’s still standing. Most of Islam is not in this war, but most of Islam isn’t going to stop this war. They’re just going to sit to one side and tell you how sorry they are that this happened. We had better design grand strategies that are radically bigger and radically tougher and radically more honest than anything currently going on, and that includes winning the argument in Europe, and it includes winning the argument in the rest of the world. …We had better take this seriously because we are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust. Three nuclear weapons is a second Holocaust. Our enemies would like to get those weapons as soon as they can, and they promise to use them as soon as they can.

The Pacifists’ “Nightmare” Scenario

In a world of wmd proliferation and growing explosive hatreds, many nations continue to pretend as though the greatest threat to human survival is greenhouse gasses. “A sense of urgency was palpable in Bali,” the Economist reported yesterday regarding a massive conference on climate change in Indonesia. Some 190 countries struck a deal, called the “Bali roadmap,” which will work toward producing an international convention to fight this ethereal problem. The Economist revealed that emissions reduction “will be at the heart of the deal,” probably requiring developed nations to slash emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2020.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, many participants at the Bali conference took advantage of their opportunity to bash America (emphasis mine):

In a hushed conference hall, as envoys from 186 nations looked on, the world’s lone superpower took a tongue-lashing from its most powerless, nation after poor nation assailing the U.S. “no” on the document at hand. Then the delegate from Papua New Guinea leaned into his microphone.”We seek your leadership,” Kevin Conrad told the Americans. “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”The UN climate conference exploded with applause, the U.S. delegation backed down, and the way was cleared Saturday for adoption of the “Bali Roadmap,” after a dramatic half-hour that set the stage for a grinding two years of climate talks to come. …America’s isolation was complete. No one spoke in support. And [Undersecretary of State Paula J.] Dobriansky capitulated, withdrawing the U.S. objection, to general applause. …Hans Verolme, World Wildlife Fund climate campaigner, offered [this] interpretation. “We have learned a historical lesson: If you expose to the world the dealings of the United States, they will ultimately back down,” he said.

Lisbon and Britain’s Unbroken Tradition

“From this old continent, a new Europe is born,” declared European Commission president José Manuel Barroso on Thursday, after 27 EU states had gathered and signed the Lisbon Treaty. But as significant as last week’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty was, the hardest work for full European unity is yet to be done. Now each of the 27 national parliaments must ratify the Lisbon Treaty. This won’t be difficult for many of the member nations, particularly those on the mainland, most of which are planning to ratify the treaty unceremoniously in parliament rather than create the opportunity for hoopla by putting it before their people in a referendum.

There is one EU nation, however, that could potentially destabilize the entire ratification process. The New York Sun reports:

This time the only country that just might derail the Lisbon Treaty is also the only one that has an unbroken tradition of common law, parliamentary sovereignty, and national independence—namely, Britain, where the Lisbon Treaty, like almost everything else that emerges from the smokeless rooms of Brussels, is unpopular. Most opinion polls indicate that if the government were to hold a referendum on the treaty, it would lose. …This issue is already hot and divisive in Britain, and it will only grow more so as European countries ratify the treaty and Brussels steps up pressure on London to follow suit.

This issue could very soon reach its climax, at which time the Brits, as theTrumpet.com has consistently said for years, will largely sever their ties with Europe. Read more about our prediction here.

Britain’s Handover of Basra

The spin put on Britain’s capitulation and pull-out from Basra is that the region is now safely controlled by local security forces. This, however, is not true, as explained in the London Times (emphasis mine):

There have been 48 women killed in six months for “un-Islamic behavior.” The murders in the teeming southern port of Basra have highlighted the weakness of the security forces and the strength of Islamic militias as Britain prepares to hand over control to Iraqi officials today.In another case, two teenagers saw a woman beaten to death by five or six men from the Mahdi Army, Basra’s most powerful militia. One picked up a rock and crushed her skull. The teenagers were told that their home and family would be destroyed if they betrayed the killers. …During four days of reporting independently in Basra—the first Western journalist to do so for a British newspaper in almost two years—I met a Baghdad official who had come to investigate the port. He was abducted, tortured and freed only after a “gift” was promised to the kidnappers.

Basra is predominately Shiite and home to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, as well as a large chunk of the nation’s oil reserves.

Rudd Doffs His Cloak

In November Australians gave the government of John Howard the boot, and elected the more liberal Kevin Rudd as prime minister. One big reason for Rudd’s success, John Heard explains, is that he donned the cloak of social conservatism and won Howard voters to his side by convincing them of his loyalty to traditional values pertaining to the family institution.

Barely a month has passed since the Rudd government took over, and the cloak of social conservatism has been shed, campaign promises have been betrayed and Mr. Rudd and his minions have emerged as the champions of a destructive, anti-family, liberal agenda.

Heard writes, “… Kevin Rudd’s new Attorney-General Robert McClelland has joined with John Stanhope’s left-wing act government to pave the way for Australia’s first civil union scheme.” Heard concludes, “One of Rudd’s first acts as the PM for working families, then, will be to betray working families on the family. By supporting gay marriage by another name, he will be treating mainstream beliefs with contempt for the sake of the radical fringe.”

Illegitimate Children “Shockingly High”

In today’s Telegraph, Jenny McCartney responds to the UK’s consideration of allowing pharmacists to distribute the contraceptive pill. Government officials are considering the move because “Britain’s shockingly high teenage pregnancy rate is the talk of Europe.” McCartney writes,

It would obviously be better if schoolchildren were to delay having sex in the first place, although health professionals have pretty much given up on saying so, partly for fear that they will be seen as reactionary moralists. …School lessons should cover in detail such topics as what it really means to be a father, or a mother, or to catch a disease, or have an abortion. It should explain the potential to incur an unwelcome weight of responsibility and a wealth of sadness. Until then, British teenagers will carry on lunging for the shiny dream of sex and experiencing the nightmare, and it won’t really matter who hands young girls the magic Pill they will one day forget to take.

Another story in today’s Telegraph highlights the trend among marrieds to go without children. “[T]he stigma of being deemed selfish if one chooses to be childless has lessened considerably, simply because it is becoming increasingly common.”

Bribing Illegal Aliens to Leave

As if foreigners need further incentive to enter Britain illegally, the UK government has provided them with a win-win situation: If they’re successful in seeking asylum, they get to stay; if they’re unsuccessful, they get a cash handout.

Failed asylum seekers are reported to have been given a bumper payout of £36 million to help them to set up businesses back in their own countries.Over 23,000 migrants have received up to £4,000 each under the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Program since it was set up eight years ago, claims the Sunday Telegraph. … [T]he payouts were condemned by shadow home secretary David Davis, who said the scheme amounted to “bribery” to leave Britain.

In American immigration news, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report, only 52 percent of Hispanic naturalized citizens speak English well or pretty well. The same study says 28 percent of Latino immigrants speak only Spanish on the job. These statistics show that many of the legal immigrants are not assimilating into American culture.

On the other side of the border, on Thursday, the Mexican government released a report in which it says a proposed U.S. border fence would be a threat to the environment. Such a fence, the report says, would endanger hundreds of plant species and animals.

The obvious point to be made, of course, is that the lack of a fence endangers America.

Olmert: Stop Criticizing the NIE

In their harshest criticism yet of America’s National Intelligence Estimate about Iran shelving its nuclear weapons program, “Israel’s public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.”

In response to his security minister’s diatribe, Prime Minister Olmert asked ministers to stop giving statements on “such a sensitive and complex issue” because “such statements do not contribute to the campaign [against Iran] or to our relations with the White House.”

At Last! Major Diplomatic Breakthrough for Israel!

Miracles do happen! Israel’s UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, called it a “very historic day for Israel” and “a signal of Israel’s exceptional contribution to the world.” An Israeli government website called it “a great diplomatic achievement for Israel.”

What was the cause for celebration?

Israel managed—for the first time in its nearly 60 years as a member of the United Nations—to pass a resolution through the General Assembly’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) that didn’t relate to the Holocaust or the Arab-Jew conflict. Ordinarily Israel is subject to automatic rejection at the hands of the gaggle of Arab and other anti-Israel nations. But somehow the enemies of the Jewish state found it in their hearts to pass this courageous resolution, which “calls on developed countries to make their knowledge and know-how in the field of agricultural technology more accessible to the developing world.”

Perhaps there is hope for peace in the Middle East after all.

Elsewhere on the Web

“If desperate times require desperate actions,” writes the Washington Times, “then the actions being taken by the Federal Reserve and other central banks leave no doubt that their policy-makers believe times are desperate.”

At the Daily Telegraph, a chief rabbi warns about Britain’s lost identity “because of over-zealous political correctness and a failure to deal with immigration.”

In “The New Parent Trap,” U.S.News and World Report says, “High housing prices, the rising cost of higher education, and the relative affluence of the older generation are among the factors” that are prompting young adults well into their 20s and 30s—even married couples—to live at home with their parents.

Beijing is celebrating its latest success in space, which it says will pave the way for a Chinese lunar landing. Thus, the Asian space race heats up.

Should Hillary Clinton become the next president of the United States, Douglas W. Kmiec writes, her husband could be back in Washington as senator, “ambassador to the world,” or Supreme Court Justice William Jefferson Clinton.

Victor Davis Hanson posted this worthwhile musing on the worthlessness of the cia.

And Finally …

The reason pregnant women don’t tip over while walking is because evolution has “produced a stronger and more flexible lower spine for women,” according to researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas.

If only we could get evolution to strengthen the spine of some of our leading men.