The Independent Republic of Tiggerstan’s borders have been shrinking. I figured that out, but I didn’t realize how much. He’s lost four pounds.

Before

I brought him to the vet today because he’s been losing weight and acting strangely for some time now. They took blood, and it took a while, and then they scared me into thinking he was dehydrated, but that was because the assistant had him scruffed, upside down, and was pulling his skin tight so he couldn’t slash the vet while he drew blood. (I was very impressed with the vet’s assistant. I’ve never seen Tig more controlled in a vet’s office. Although part of that might be weakness from whatever is ailing him. However, once he was finished and went into the cage, he tried to turn around and hiss and scratch us, so he’s not dead yet.)

After

The bloodwork should be back tomorrow or Saturday. I’m going to try to feed Tig a ton between now and then, and then some. Time to break out the canned cat food again. I have some Fancy Feast tuna in the pantry from when Gracie was ill. Tig just got about half a can. And he’s looking for more.

Good.

Wow. I knew he was losing weight. I had no idea he lost that much. Stupid long fur. I should have trusted my instinct, which said he felt lighter and lighter and lighter. When Gracie started feeling heavier than Tig, I realized it was time to talk to the vet. Now I feel like a horrible pet owner because I didn’t do anything until he’d already lost four pounds.

I hate that my parents installed those damned guilt complexes into me. I’ve been keeping an eye on him for months. First I thought he might be diabetic, so I watched his water intake, convinced myself he was, then realized I was being paranoid, and that he was drinking normally. Then I noticed he was losing weight, but thought that due to the upheaval of the last few months (especially the lead-up to my bat mitzvah, the housecleaning and rearranging, and my frequent overnight trips to Northern VA these days), that he was just upset because he’s a cat, and cats like routine. Now that I’ve finally confirmed his weight loss, I feel like I should have taken him to the vet weeks ago. Even though when Sarah confirmed to me that he’d lost weight, we didn’t know how much, and Tig was still pretty much asymptomatic except for the weight loss. No vomiting, nothing weird in the litterbox, and just odd behavior from time to time. But overall, a happy kitty.

Stupid guilt complex. The only way I won’t blame myself is if there’s nothing wrong with him. But between his long fur, his being overweight to begin with, and the fact that he was still running around as usual outside, jumping on the bathroom sink for a drink, and doing his usual Tig things, it was hard to tell how much weight he’d lost. And last night, he finally started sleeping in the bed again once I removed the extra pillow. (See, that’s the weird behavior I’m talking about. He’s gotten very strange over certain things in certain places in certain rooms.) So I had a purring Tig next to me most of the night. Which is why I didn’t think there was anything really wrong with him.

I’ll stop now. Tig is sleeping off his vet trip and tuna. Three feet away from me, as usual.

Update Friday 12:30 p.m.: It’s kidney failure. There are medications and diet changes I can make, and the vet says Tig could go for another few years. But he could also be gone in two weeks.

Well, this sucks.

This is interesting.

The British natural gas company BG Group Plc pulled out of negotiations on the controversial plans to drill for natural gas in the Gaza Marine field, a British Gas spokesman told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

According to the plan, BG was meant to drill for natural gas 36 kilometers off of the Gaza coast, in an area that was designated as PA territory following the Oslo Accords. The gas was meant to then flow four km underwater in a pipeline 850 meters below the surface to an Ashkelon refinery. The field, which BG purchased in 2000 and to which Hamas now claims rightful ownership, contains 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas worth an estimated $4 billion.

This is very interesting. A British company gave up a gas field worth billions? Why? Was it terrorism? The Hamas takeover of Gaza? Pressure from Israel to stifle the Hamas government economically?

Any way you look at it, this one makes you go “Hmmm.”

via memeorandum

According to an Argentinian prosecutor Iran was involved in the attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina.

Dr. Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who has secured Interpol backing for the arrests of several leaders in Teheran, including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, for ordering the July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community offices in Buenos Aires, also urged the international community to pressure Iran into giving up the wanted men for trial.Nisman said the AMIA blast, in which 85 people were killed, and the bombing of the Israeli Embassy two years earlier, in which 29 people were killed, had been “ordered, planned and financed” by Iran’s top leadership. Teheran, he said, was incensed that Argentina, under former president Carlos Menem, had suspended and ultimately stopped what had been close cooperation with the Iranian nuclear program, including the training of nuclear technicians and the transfer of nuclear technology. At first Teheran tried to cajole Argentina into reconsidering, he said. Then it issued threats. And finally, it employed terrorism.

Nisman, on a brief working visit to Israel, said he had received a telephoned death threat at his home and been warned off the case by Iran but would not desist.

The Corner.Andy McCarthy notes that the recently released NIE was influenced by statements made by one of the players in the Argentinain case.

In compiling the recently released National Intelligence Estimate which claims with “high” confidence that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the Intelligence Community was, according to the Washington Post, very influenced by former Iranian President (and continuing Iranian player) Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Hot Air reasonably wonders if this shows that someone should have considered that Rafsanjani was lying.

The phrase “Are you kidding me?” comes quickly to mind. Surely it occurred to some of these deep thinkers of ours that the Iranian officials could be lying. Surely? Head over to the Corner to see why Rafsanjani’s word isn’t the first or last that we ought to trust on Iran’s benign intentions.

But if the attacks in Argentina during the 90’s were hostile, Iran’s current efforts in Latin America are more friendly. Gordon Chang writes in Contentions

Tehran has worked hard to strengthen contacts in the region—and it has accomplished much while Washington has neglected the countries south of its border. The world is full of threats, and Washington is paradoxically ignoring the ones closest to the American homeland. Says Riordan Roett of Johns Hopkins, “Since there has been no coherent United States policy toward Latin America, there’s a window of opportunity for the Iranians to come fill the vacuum.”Tehran has missed no opportunities to do so. In addition to building relations with Ortega’s Sandinistas, Iran has nurtured ties with new leftist governments in Bolivia and Ecuador. And of course there is the combination of Iran and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, what Tehran calls the “axis of unity.” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also reaching out to moderate Latin American governments, most notably Brazil’s. “Iran is trying to create a geopolitical balance with the United States,” according to Bill Samii of the Center for Naval Analyses in Virginia.

Chang suggests that the United States fight the growing Iranian influence.

If the Bush administration is going to abandon Latin America to Iran and that country’s terrorist allies, then it will have to tie the region to America in some fashion. At this moment, the fastest way to do so is to erect a network of free trade deals. Yet these agreements are controversial in Washington. Although President Bush signed the FTA with Peru on Friday, similar ones with Colombia and Panama are languishing in Congress. There are many problems with Washington’s free trade agreements with less developed economies, but Ortega’s meetings with junior Iranians like Zarghami suggest that this might be the time to consider dropping technical quibbles and to start looking at the bigger picture.

Allowing Iranian influence to grow in the Western hemisphere presents a threat to the United States. Will the government act to forestall this threat or allow it to grow unchecked.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The AP spins the death of two more Palestinian terrorists as anti-Israel as possible.

Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Gunmen

Note that in a headline dealing with dead terrorists, the active voice is always used, and Israel or the IDF are always blamed. Remember that when Palestinian terrorists kill Israeli civilians with “crude, homemade rockets,” the headline often states that the rockets killed the Israelis. Palestinians are almost never held responsible.

Israeli troops killed at least two Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a day after rejecting an unofficial truce offer from the besieged Hamas rulers of the coastal territory.

Two anti-Israel cracks in one sentence. First, Israel rejects the “unofficial truce offer,” making Israel look like the intransigent side that wants war, not peace. Then we get the word “beseiged,” which is using the language of Hamas propaganda against Israel, making it look like Gaza is under siege by Israel, which it patently is not. And this is the first paragraph in the story’s lede. Way to go, AP, this one takes a prize.

Now for the rest of the lede. Remember, only the first three to five paragraphs make it into the World News section of your local paper. Paragraphs two and three are relatively normal. But check out paragraph five, the one that will end many articles in many local papers:

A military force operating in central Gaza shot two approaching gunmen, the army said. Two militant groups, the Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad, each announced that one of their men had been killed.

Israeli infantry and armored troops were in the area conducting a routine operation against militants who fire rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel, try to infiltrate into Israel, and plant bombs aimed at troops, the military said.

Palestinian militants launched a rocket into Israel Thursday morning, hitting several dozen yards away from a school in the town of Sderot, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. There were no casualties, Rosenfeld said, but several students were treated for shock.

Israel vowed to retaliate with further military operations.

Note how the defense of her people from terrorists is labeled “retaliation.” No, that’s what the terrorists do when Israel takes some of them out. They “retaliate” by blowing up civilians. And here is the quote that was labeled a “vow to retaliate”:

Israel will continue with its efforts to stop these rocket attacks and prevent the same type of tragedy that nearly occurred today,” said David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

That is neither a vow nor a statement of retaliation. Terrorists nearly murdrered children in school. The IDF is responding.

Gaza militants fire rockets and mortar shells daily into southern Israel; the projectiles have killed 12 people in six years.

As always, downplaying the effect of having potentially deadly rockets fired into your towns on a near-daily basis. Over 2000 rockets have been fired by terrorists in 2007. That’s the number the AP published only once. It didn’t make it into the boilerplate, nor does the fact that hundreds have been wounded and homes have been destroyed. When the AP finally gets around to calling a terrorist a terrorist, it isn’t until the very end of the article:

Responding to Haniyeh’s offer, a spokesman for Olmert said Israel would not deal with Hamas unless it accepts three international conditions: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting past peace accords. Hamas has always refused to do that.

Haim Ramon, Israel’s deputy premier, said Thursday that Haniyeh’s overture was proof that Israel’s strategy of blockading Gaza and battling militants there is working.

“All of these … comments, and the messages coming in all kinds of strange ways, all of these things are a kind of smoke screen that just shows that Israel’s recent policy toward Palestinian terror is bearing fruit,” Ramon told Army Radio.

If Palestinians stopped firing rockets into Israel, Israel would have no reason to attack, Ramon said.

Once again, the AP is the terrorists’ best friend.

In season 4 of 24 there’s an excellent exchange between a politician and one of his former aides. I’m going to leave out the character names so this won’t serve as a spoiler to anyone who still plans to see the series.

Aide: … I know you believe my actions during your term in office amounted to a personal and political betrayal.
Pol: It’s not something I believe. It’s a fact. Get to your point.

The aide was trying to weasel out of his responsibility toward his former boss. The boss wouldn’t let him get away with it.

Which brings me to one of my pet peeves about reporting from the Middle East. In Israelis Cool To an Offer From Hamas On a Truce Isabel Kershner writes the tired line:

Hamas, which was at the vanguard of a suicide bombing campaign in Israel in recent years, calls in its charter for Israel’s destruction. Israel, like the United States and the European Union, classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization and refuses to deal with it.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, not because anyone classifies it as such, but because of how it operates. So to paraphrase the character from “24″ - it’s not a classification, it’s a fact.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Michael Sabbah, the Palestinian anti-Israel Catholic priest tells Israel that there should be no Jewish state. Because it’s discrimination.

”If there’s a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against,” Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah told reporters at the annual press conference he holds in Jerusalem before Christmas. In his address, which he read in Arabic and English, Sabbah said Israel should abandon its Jewish character in favor of a ”political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews.”

Sabbah denounced Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state by the Palestinians and said “God made this land for all three of us, so a suitable state is one who can adapt itself to the vocation of this land.

Okay, if you’re gonna quote God, I’m going to have to point out that when Israel was created, there were no Christians, and no Muslims. That would mean God meant Israel for, gee, who’s left? Oh, that’s right—Jews. In fact, if Sabbah was in the least bit honest, once again, since he’s quoting God, he’d take a look at his Bible and find the parts of it that direct the Jews to Israel and grant Israel to the Jews (in perpetuity). It’s in his version of the Bible, too, not just ours.

Now, if we want to take God out of the equation (and I don’t, as I’m not an atheist, but some of you are, so let’s go do that), you can simply point out the lie that Israel discriminates against people by religion. It is the Muslims in the Middle East who are doing that, and have done it for about 14 centuries now. Shall we mention Hebron? Joseph’s Tomb? The desecration of the graves of Joshua and Caleb this very week?

Or take a look at how many Jews could visit the Temple Mount from 1948 until June of 1967. Zero would be the accurate number. In fact, Jews can’t worship on the Temple Mount now, even though Muslims can. So the only religion being discriminated against in Israel would be—Judaism. Fancy that.

Just in case that wasn’t enough, Sabbah also manages (as usual) to blame Israel for the entire Palestinian problem.

”This land cannot be exclusive for anyone,” he said, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had unleashed “forces of evil” across the Middle East and that it was Israel’s obligation, as to end the warring. “The one who will decide is Israel. If Israel decides for peace, there will be peace… Until now, there has been no peace, simply because there has been no willingness to make it.”

Sure. Because it’s the Israelis who are lobbing rockets at themselves, not Palestinian terrorists.

You know, I think the state of Israel should nationalize all the land that’s claimed by the Catholic church and give Sabbah something to really complain about.

Down Payment on Mideast Peace

The political and territorial challenges facing Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators are formidable and familiar. The economic obstacles to the creation of a viable Palestinian state are also formidable, but easier to make a dent in — if all the donors who claim to care about the Palestinians and peace live up to their promises.On paper, this week’s international pledging conference was a huge success. Led by the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia, donors committed to contribute $7.4 billion over the next three years. That is almost $2 billion more than the Palestinian Authority had sought, though probably less than it really needs.

The conference owes at least some of its success to Tony Blair, who is coordinating international efforts to support Palestinian development. It was also helped by the Bush administration’s overdue attention to peacemaking since the Annapolis conference and by the serious economic recovery plan presented by the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, an economist.

Fund the Palestinians? Bad Idea

Lavishing funds on Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to achieve peace has been a mainstay of Western, including Israeli, policy since Hamas seized Gaza in June. But this open spigot has counterproductive results and urgently must be stopped.

Down Payment on Mideast Peace

Life has been growing steadily grimmer in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 and Israel’s crushing military counterattacks and economic blockades. Things got even tougher after the West suspended most of its support following Hamas’s 2006 election victory. Those aid spigots have now been reopened, at least to the West Bank where Palestinian Authority moderates, under President Mahmoud Abbas, are in charge. It is crucial that the people of Gaza also receive support. But that support should not flow through Gaza’s Hamas government.

Fund the Palestinians? Bad Idea

Some background: Paul Morro of the Congressional Research Service reports that, in 2006, the European Union and its member states gave US$815 million to the Palestinian Authority, while the United States sent it $468 million. When other donors are included, the total receipts come to about $1.5 billion.The windfall keeps growing. President George W. Bush requested a $410 million supplement in October, beyond a $77 million donation earlier in the year. The State Department justifies this lordly sum on the grounds that it “supports a critical and immediate need to support a new Palestinian Authority (PA) government that both the U.S. and Israel view as a true ally for peace.” At a recent hearing, Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, endorsed the supplemental donation.

Not content with spending taxpayer money, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched a “U.S.-Palestinian Public Private Partnership” on Dec. 3, involving financial heavyweights such as Sandy Weill and Lester Crown, to fund, as Rice put it, “projects that reach young Palestinians directly, that prepare them for responsibilities of citizenship and leadership can have an enormous, positive impact.”

One report suggests the European Union has funneled nearly $2.5 billion to the Palestinians this year.

Down Payment on Mideast Peace

Much of the money pledged on Monday will be needed just to keep Mr. Abbas’s government solvent. What the Palestinian economy really needs is private investment to reanimate commerce and revive trade with the world. That can only happen once Israel agrees to remove the barricades that seal off West Bank communities from each other and feels secure enough to ease the passage of goods through border crossing points.

Fund the Palestinians? Bad Idea

In brief, each $1.25 million or so of budgetary support aid translates into a death within the year. As Stotsky notes, “These statistics do not mean that foreign aid causes violence; but they do raise questions about the effectiveness of using foreign donations to promote moderation and combat terrorism.”The Palestinian record fits a broader pattern, as noted by Jean-Paul Azam and Alexandra Delacroix in a 2005 article, “Aid and the Delegated Fight Against Terrorism.” They found “a pretty robust empirical result showing that the supply of terrorist activity by any country is positively correlated with the amount of foreign aid received by that country” – i.e., the more foreign aid, the more terrorism.

If these studies run exactly counter to the conventional supposition that poverty, unemployment, repression, “occupation,” and malaise drive Palestinians to lethal violence, they do confirm my long-standing argument about Palestinian exhilaration being the problem. The better funded Palestinians are, the stronger they become, and the more inspired to take up arms.

Down Payment on Mideast Peace

To make a real difference, the billions pledged in Paris will need to be matched by diplomatic progress.

Fund the Palestinians? Bad Idea

A topsy-turvy understanding of war economics has prevailed in Israel since the Oslo negotiations began in 1993. Rather than deprive their Palestinian enemies of resources, Israelis have been following Shimon Peres’s mystical musings, and especially his 1993 tome, The New Middle East, to empower them economically. As I wrote in 2001, this “is tantamount to sending the enemy resources while fighting is still under way – not a hugely bright idea.”Rather than further funding Palestinian bellicosity, Western states, starting with Israel, should cut off all funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.