Morning News Roundup (15 August)

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says a new Middle East has emerged as a result of what he called Hezbollah's victory over Israel in southern Lebanon. He said the vision of the region the US aspired to had become an illusion.
  [...]
  He praised the "the glorious battle" he said had been waged by Hezbollah, and said peace in the Middle East was not possible with the Bush administration in power in Washington. "This is an administration that adopts the principle of pre-emptive war that is absolutely contradictory to the principle of peace," he said. "Consequently, we don't expect peace soon or in the foreseeable future." [BBC]
  
  
• President Bush asserted yesterday that Hezbollah was defeated in its month-long conflict with Israel, casting the fighting that killed hundreds of Lebanese and Israeli civilians as part of a wider struggle "between freedom and terrorism."
  [...]
  Bush's comments came at the close of an Israeli military campaign aimed at ending Hezbollah attacks and crippling the radical Shiite militia. The campaign did not go as well as the United States and Israel had expected. Despite a devastating air assault and an intense ground campaign, Israel's military was unable to gain full control of the border area in southern Lebanon against elusive and well-fortified Hezbollah fighters. Also, some observers believe the conflict burnished the popularity of Hezbollah in Lebanon, even as it resulted in hundreds of civilian causalities and massive destruction of infrastructure across Lebanon. [WaPo]

Climate Crisis

• More than half of the world's major forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century, it was claimed yesterday. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.
  
  Extreme floods, forest fires and droughts will also become more common over the next 200 years as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, according to Marko Scholze of Bristol University. Dr Scholze took 52 simulations of the world's climate over the next century, based on 16 different climate models, grouping the results according to varying amounts of global warming they predicted by 2100: less than 2C on average, 2C-3C and more than 3C. He then used the simulations to work out how the world's plants would be affected over the next few hundred years.
  [...]
  Dr Scholze said the effects of a 2C category were inevitable. This is the temperature rise that will happen, on average, even if the world immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases. This scenario predicts that Europe, Asia, Canada, central America and Amazonia could lose up to 30% of its forests.
  
  A rise of 2C-3C will mean less fresh water available in parts of west Africa, central America, southern Europe and the eastern US, raising the probability of drought in these areas. In contrast, the tropical parts of Africa and South America will be at greater risk of flooding as trees are lost. Dr Scholze says a global temperature rise of more than 3C will mean even less fresh water. Loss of forest in Amazonia and Europe, Asia, Canada and central America could reach 60%. [Guardian]
  
  
• Stirling Energy and Southern California Edison have announced they plan to construct a 4,500-acre solar generating station in Southern California. When completed, the proposed power station would be the world's largest solar facility, capable of producing more electricity than all other U.S. solar projects combined. They promise a cost of electricity of 0.06$/kWh.
  
  The dish collectors are unique because they make no use of photovoltaics, instead they use mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a Stirling engine. This heats hydrogen gas inside the engine which expands. [Treehugger]

Domestic Potpourri

• Airline terror plot: Evidence, officials assert, points to an al Qaeda link. More news of the money trail back to Pakistan. Richard Posner is in the WaPo calling for a U.S. MI5. [Foreign Policy's Passport]
  
  
• As discontent with the Republican Party threatens to dampen the turnout of conservative voters in November, evangelical leaders are launching a massive registration drive that could help counter the malaise and mobilize new religious voters in battleground states.
  
  The program, coordinated by the Colorado-based group Focus on the Family and its influential founder, James C. Dobson, would use a variety of methods — including information inserted in church publications and booths placed outside worship services — to recruit millions of new voters in 2006 and beyond.
  [...]
  The new voter registration program puts a special focus this year on eight states with key Senate, House and state-level races. Turning out core voters is central to the GOP strategy to retain control of Congress, especially as the party struggles with negative public sentiment over the war in Iraq and other administration policies.
  [...]
  The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the evangelical voter registration drive a "blatant effort by Dobson to build a partisan political machine based in churches. He has made it abundantly clear that electing Republicans is an integral part of his agenda, and he doesn't mind risking the tax exemption of churches in the process," Lynn said. "Dobson wants to be a major political boss, and this is his way to get there." [LATimes]
  
  
• 726: The number of service members discharged last year under the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, up 11 percent from the year before. The Fort Leonard Wood, MO, base discharged 60 people, the highest number in the nation. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• By insinuating that the sizeable majority of American voters who oppose the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy, Vice President Cheney on Wednesday may have crossed the line that separates legitimate political discourse from hysteria.
  
  Cheney's comments came in a highly unusual conference call with reporters, part of an extensively orchestrated and largely successful Republican effort to spin the obviously anti-Bush message of Ned Lamont's victory over presidential enabler Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary. [Dan Froomkin in the WaPo]

Misc.

• Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) apologized Monday for what his opponent's campaign said were demeaning and insensitive comments the senator made to a 20-year-old volunteer of Indian descent.
  
  At a campaign rally in southwest Virginia on Friday, Allen repeatedly called a volunteer for Democrat James Webb "macaca." During the speech in Breaks, near the Kentucky border, Allen began by saying that he was "going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas" and then pointed at S.R. Sidarth in the crowd.
  
  "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great," Allen said, as his supporters began to laugh. After saying that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen said, "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Allen then began talking about the "war on terror."
  
  Depending on how it is spelled, the word macaca could mean either a monkey that inhabits the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs.
  [...]
  Asked what macaca means, Allen said: "I don't know what it means." He said the word sounds similar to "mohawk," a term that his campaign staff had nicknamed Sidarth because of his haircut. Sidarth said his hairstyle is a mullet -- tight on top, long in the back. [WaPo]
  
  
  
  Image via Atrios, who adds:
  

  I was thinking that the assumption that George Felix Allen had been invoking a species of monkey was a bit of a stretch and that he was probably just speaking gibberish for "furrin name." But it is actually an established racial/slur, specifically directed at North Africans. If you search the nastier corners of the internet you'll find it's in surprisingly common usage.

And finally... our man Ward-o wonders which political party is really full of the moonbat crazy extremists in his latest Sutton Impact cartoon at the Village Voice...