Where’s Gracie? Why no pictures of her lately?

Because she’s a lump. Lumps are not very photogenic. Witness a typical Gracie pose these days:

Now take a look at a comparable picture, with Tig3 acting like a lump.

Gracie? Boring. Tig3? Not boring. There’s simply no comparison between the two these days.

I have tried to get Gracie outside, or doing something other than sleep. But I’ve had no luck. She’s starting to feel her age, I guess. She’s eleven. And now Tig’s not around to bug her, so she gets to do what she wants. Until Tig3 is let out into the general population, which will not be until after this weekend. I’m going to clean up and try to kitten proof the apartment (shyeah, like he won’t find a zillion things that I miss), and then Sarah’s coming over to help me put mesh netting over the half of my stairway that’s open. It’s a six-foot drop at its highest, and I worry Tig will fall through. He’s too little and inexperienced with stairs. If he falls into a net, no harm done.

Besides, how can I resist taking pictures like this?

The little ham.

That first picture above, on the computer backpack? I think that’s what the mature Tig is going to look like. I’ve been admiring an orange Main Coon in a coworker’s calendar. He looks very lion-like, with a regal face and jaw. If that’s what Tig3 turns out to be, I will be very happy, indeed. Okay, even if it isn’t, I’ll be happy. Tig3 has been here a week and brought much joy. I guess things just aren’t right without a Tig in my life. Come June, I will have had a Tig of one sort or another in my life for twenty-five years.

Things are right again. Yep. All’s right in my world.

Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.

A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

The supposed letter apparently explicitly confirms Israel’s version. But U.S. officials deny it.

Here’s the key:

In a companion letter to “reconfirm” U.S.-Israeli understandings, Weissglas wrote Rice that restrictions on the growth of settlements would be made “within the agreed principles of settlement activities,” which would include “a better definition of the construction line of settlements” on the West Bank. A joint U.S.-Israeli team would “jointly define the construction line of each of the settlements.”Weissglas said that the letter built upon a prior understanding between then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, which would allow Israel to build up settlements within existing construction lines. But Powell denied that. “I never agreed to it,” he said in an e-mail.

Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time against accepting the Weissglas letter. “I thought it was a really bad idea,” he said. “It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check.” In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed up with the plan to define construction lines. “Washington lost interest in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do,” he said.

One of two motives exist for each side lying. Either American officials scared of the political damage are denying giving Israel the authority or PM Olmert feels a need to assure its public that it’s getting diplomatic support as he comes under scrutiny for promising the complete Golan to Syria.

The rest of the article consists of American officials explaining why accepting Israeli building even around Jerusalem is damaging to the peace process.

I disagree with the American view on this. Mahmoud Abbas has shown with recent statements that he is still committed to terror. That, not Israel building homes near Jerusalem is the biggest obstacle to peace.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The good news: Members of the Security Council walked out on Libya when the Libyan ambassador compared Gaza to a concentration camp, and accused the Israelis of genocide. The bad news: Well, Libya’s still on the UNSC.

It’s a most peculiar form of genocide that Israel is accused of. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza keeps increasing. I guess it must be some special form of Muslim genocide, where the word means “increasing the population” not “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”. Although that is exactly what the Muslim world has done to its Jewish population, and could frankly also be applied to what the Palestinians are doing to their Christians, but Christians are a religious group, not a cultural group, so I guess it can’t apply.

France on Wednesday led a walkout of western envoys from a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East after Libya compared the situation in the besieged Gaza Strip to Nazi “concentration camps,” diplomats said.

One diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said France’s UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert took off his earpiece and walked out, followed by his Western colleagues, after his Libyan counterpart Giadalla Ettalhi made the remarks.

[... ]The incident occurred as the 15-member council was trying to agree on a compromise statement that would have highlighted the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza while also contributing positively to efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

South Africa’s UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the council chairman this month, told reporters that members “could not agree” on the statement.

Meaning, of course, that the non-Western members are trying to slam Israel and when told to make a more balanced statement, refuse. But here’s the big laff-riot line:

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari told reporters: “Unfortunately those who complain of being victims of genocide (during World War II) are repeating the same kind of genocide against the Palestinians.”

I have one word for you, you lying hypocrite: Hama.

The assault began on February 2 with extensive shelling of the town of 350 000 inhabitants. Before the attack, the Syrian government called for the city’s surrender and warned that anyone remaining in the city would be considered as a rebel. Robert Fisk in his book Pity the Nation described how civilians were fleeing Hama while tanks and troops were moving towards the city’s outskirts to start the siege. He cites reports of mass death and shortages of food and water from fleeing civilians and from soldiers .[3]

According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old streets of the city from the air to facilitate the introduction of military forces and tanks through the narrow streets, where homes were crushed by tanks during the first four days of fighting. They also claim that the Syrian military pumped poison gas into buildings where insurgents were said to be hiding.

The army was mobilized, and Hafez again sent Rifaat’s special forces and Mukhabarat agents to the city. After encountering fierce resistance, Rifaat’s forces ringed the city with artillery and shelled it for three weeks. Afterward, military and internal security personnel were dispatched to comb through the rubble for surviving Brothers and their sympathizers.[4] Then followed several weeks of torture and mass executions of suspected rebel sympathizers, killing many thousands, known as the Hama Massacre. Journalist Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, estimated fatalities as high as 10,000.[5] The New York Times estimated the death toll as up to 20,000.[2] According to Thomas Friedman[6] Rifaat later boasted of killing 38,000 people. The Syrian Human Rights Committee estimates 30,000 to 40,000 were killed. Most of the old city was completely destroyed, including its palaces, mosques, ancient ruins and the famous Azzem Palace mansion.

[....] Hama, which had some small tourist attractions like open parks and water wheels, turned into a poor city. After the massacre many of Hama’s inhabitants moved away, and in their place came people from nearby villages.

And then there is the case of Syria’s Jews, which numbered 30,000 in 1948, but now is less than 100. (They’re mostly in Israel now.)

The Arab and Muslim world are experts at ethnic cleansing and genocide. Just look at what they’ve done to the Jews. Can you say, “Projection”?

I knew you could.

Jimmy Carter on Secretary Rice (via memeorandum):

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip. . . .”President Carter has the greatest respect for … Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true,” a statement issued by the Carter center in Atlanta said on Wednesday.

“No one in the State Department or any other department of the U.S. government ever asked him (Carter) to refrain from his recent visit to the Middle East or even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas,” it said.

Meryl on Carter’s truthfulness:

But then, Carter is an expert at finessing the language when he wants to get around taking responsibility for his actions. Like justifying suicide bombing in his anti-Israel screed. Of course, he apologized for making people think that he justifies suicide bombings. But then you have to wonder, since he’s constantly using the language of the terrorists (”40 dead Palestinians for every Israeli” is straight out of the Hamas playbook). It’s getting hard to tell the difference these days.

Unsurprisingly, Firedoglake disagrees.

But take the NYT report Carter Says Hamas and Syria Are Open to Peace:

Jimmy Carter said here on Monday that in talks in Damascus, Syria, over the last several days, he obtained a significant concession from the militant group Hamas regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace and found Syrian leaders eager for a full peace treaty with Israel.Mr. Carter said he extracted a promise from Hamas to respect the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip negotiated by Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian Authority if it were ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people.

Then he seems to backtrack:

In a subsequent interview, Mr. Carter struck a more cautious note, saying, “I’m not claiming it’s a breakthrough.” He added, “I don’t have any control over whether or not Hamas does what they tell me.”

Hardly a display of confidence. But then the reporter gets Carter:

But Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader with whom Mr. Carter met in Damascus, gave a televised news conference late Monday in which he seemed to contradict Mr. Carter’s statements. “Hamas accepts the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and with full and real sovereignty and full application of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return, but Hamas will not recognize the state of Israel,” Mr. Meshal said.

The Washington Post finds another hole in Carter’s assurances:

The talks resulted in a written agreement. An English version that Carter released reads in part: “If President Abbas succeeds in negotiating a final status agreement with Israel, Hamas will accept the decision made by the Palestinian people and their will in a referendum monitored by international observers . . . even if Hamas is opposed to the agreement.”The terms, however, give the group substantial room to later back out. Hamas officials, for instance, have said that any referendum must include Palestinians living in exile worldwide — something that could make the vote logistically impossible.

These contradictions show that Carter is capable of hearing only what he wants to hear. I suspect that was the operating principle in the case of the State Department warning.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.