Because I doubt this non-sequitur is an accurate translation of a flyer distributed to Gazans by the Israeli army:

“For your own safety, read this statement carefully and act accordingly,” the leaflet says in Arabic.

“Know that the terrorists have made you hostages and human shields and safeguard your interests,” it continues.

I notice some of the more militantly pro-Israeli blogs are using this situation (yesterday’s problem with Islamic Jihad,etc.) as yet another opportunity to ridicule the incompentence or worse of Mahmoud Abbas. They have a point, of course, and we all know Abbas’ dubious background, but history works in strange ways (call it the Nixon in China syndrome), so I don’t think it makes sense to marginalize Abbas until he entirely marginalizes himsef. He’s not there yet, making attemps to deal with the militants. I wouldn’t want to be himat this moment, would you?

MEANWHILE: The election process in Gaza seems not yet to have ““:Dozens of masked Palestinian gunmen took over election offices in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, exchanging fire with Palestinian police and demanding spaces on a list for Jan. 25 parliamentary elections.

The clashes came as the two main factions of the ruling Fatah Party ‚Äî the so-called “young” and “old” guards ‚Äî announced an end to an internal rift that threatened to bolster the electoral prospects of Hamas militants. Young guard members announced that Fatah will submit a single, unified list for the elections.

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Those non-stop bloodthirsty thrill seekers at IJ have nixed Mohammed Abbas’ plea to stop firing rockets at Israel, according to the AP.

Islamic Jihad on Tuesday rejected a call from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to halt rocket attacks on Israeli towns, dealing a new blow to the Palestinian leader and prompting a new round of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas traveled to Gaza on Tuesday for talks with the terror groups, in part to halt growing violence along Israel’s border with Gaza. Israel has put heavy pressure on Abbas to stop terrorists from firing rockets.

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How many more are there? I don’t we will ever know, even remotely. The people who dig such things don’t tend to promote their presence, just as those who bury WMDs are not likely to tell us where they are (Syria? Lebanon?). All such revelations are happy/unhappy acidents. As for the WMD part of the equation, can anyone paying the slightest attention to revelations about Syrian government say these thugs had nothing to do with the disappearance of weapons from Iraq?

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Fausta emailed this morning to ask if I knew Cuban mystery writer José Latour who wrote his way to freedom, according to the WSJ. The answer is almost. I knew several Cuban mystery writers whom I met when I was helping form an organization called the International Association of Crime Writers in the eighties. We used to guess which of them were members of Cuban intelligence – probably they all were to one degree or another; it was the only way to be allowed to international conferences – but they clearly weren’t happy members of Cuban intelligence. Every single one of them, even the ones publicly spouting the most Stalinist rhetoric, left Cuba, sooner or later, as I recall. One of them just disappeared one day in Madrid, to resurface years later as a European. Several are now living in Spain, a happier place with, alas, more crowded beaches. I became less active in the organization about the time Jos´ joined, hence I never met him. I was told he was a fascinating man and a fine writer.

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I have been running around gorgeous Bainbridge Island all day with Sheryl and Madeleine, looking at cedars and Douglas fir instead of various people’s blather on the internet, but now I am back on the ferry again, cruising into Seattle, and instead of looking at that city’s glorious skyline, currently illuminated, addict that I am I fired up the iBook G4 and dialed into my good friend Glenn via the ferry’s WiFi. I found myself blasted back into the past, to Scarsdale High School, which I attended back in the days the sputnik was launched, because I saw the subject of discussion was my high school debating team mate Robert Kuttner. Yes, Bob Kuttner and I represented Scardale High against all debating comers in those days. I remember we did okay too. We were both pure liberals then, young guys very confident of ourselves… more or less anyway. We went our separate ways. Bob went into political science but I veered off into the artier realms of Hollywood. For awhile, I outstripped Bob in my leftism, but times have changed. Now he’s a tried and true member of the liberal church, bashing Bush with the best of them. Obviously he hasn’t changed much at all in forty years. I wonder what he thinks about what has happened to me.

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As I near Bainbrdige… have just read Martin Lindeskog’s excellent tsunami overview on Pajamas. I was in the air between Burbank and Seatac when it was posted. Definitely worth a look.

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I know some people (not me particularly) are suspicious of ubiquitous free WiFi, but here I am blogging from the Washington State ferry which has just taken off from Seattle, headed for Bainbridge Island. The view is magnificent and I am about to dig into a salmon burger. Happy holidays!

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Anne Gearan, AP diplomatic writer, has a piece on Rice’s rising stock:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.

Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.

I’m not sure Americans have lost as much confidence in the Irag Waras Gearan says, but it is startling to see someone from the AP saying anything postive at all about a member of the administration.

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Same time/same station… for once. To all the wonderful readers of this blog – a great day and year. Blogging will be low today for obvious reasons, but also because I’m on duty at PJMedia. (Do I get extra credit from my colleagues? Yes!)

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The NYT is continuing to report (mostly anonymously, of course) on the Bush Administration’s nefarious use of the National Security Agency. This time they say:

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

Well, maybe. But haven’t we always known this? Back in 1998, when someone else was in the White House as I recall, there was a lot of talk about an already-existing NSA program called Echelon, scanning just about all telecommunications worldwide. In what sense is what the NYT is reporting today actually different from the Echelon program that has been in force for all that time and maybe longer? I’m no expert in this area, but unless I missed something the word “Echelon,” a program that has been around for some time, does not appear in any of the NYT’s reports. Why not? A great deal more about Echelon is here. [Hasn't that stuff been on the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) site for years?-ed. No comment.]

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