I’m shocked, shocked to find out there’s terrorist plotting going on here…

The ceasefire to which Israel and major Palestinian factions agreed yesterday will be used by Palestinian groups to smuggle weapons into Gaza, reinforce and train “fighter units,” and produce rockets for a future confrontation with the Jewish state, the leaders of the four most significant Palestinian terror groups in Gaza told WND in a series of exclusive interviews.

“The ceasefire offers a period of calm for our fighters to recover and prepare for our final goal of evacuating Palestine,” said Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a Hamas-allied terror organization in the Gaza Strip responsible for many of the recent rocket attacks against Israeli communities.

“We will keep fighting (Israel), but for the moment we will postpone certain parts of the military struggle,” Abu Abir said.

It’s too bad the useful idiots at the UN and across the appeasement West keep insisting Israel postpone their efforts to defeat these terrorists.

Palestinians took about an hour to break the creasefire they announced with Israel. I suspect this is a new record.

An hour is probably longer than Palestinians have held to an previous ceasefire.

The Danish cartoon fallout continues.

A court in Yemen has sentenced a newspaper editor to a year in jail for reprinting Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The court also ordered the independent weekly newspaper which carried the cartoons to be closed for six months.

These are the people Europe is counting on, if it is to have any hope of survival, to adopt Western Liberal values.

Or so the media calls it. But it’s really about “environmentalists” working to get more power away from you and into the hands of government.

The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming.

A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.

David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, says a legal clarification of the EPA’s authority could determine whether the current administration must regulate carbon dioxide emissions and whether a future one will be able to demand such limits.

Once again radical leftists are proving that they don’t really believe in the American system. This whole freedom thing is nice, sure, but when our socialist agenda is at stake, to hell with the Constitution.

Last time I checked, it’s the legislature (and in part the executive) that determines what “must” be regulated, not the courts.

The Compendium is pretty much on break for the holidays. We’ll be back with lots of reports on terrorist misbehavings, media misreporting and democrat moonbattery on Monday.

…unless they aren’t potential voters.

MEDELLIN, Colombia — At the CI Jeans factory, where 3,900 people make their livings turning bolts of denim into trousers bound for the United States, the American market — land of the customer — appears to be slipping away.

. . .Yesterday, the Bush administration signed the proposed deal, but leading Democrats promptly attacked it, underscoring growing doubts in Washington that Congress will approve the pact. Here in Colombia and next door in Peru, which awaits congressional approval for its own trade treaty, anxiety runs high.

. . .Addressing fears that too many jobs are being sacrificed at home, the new Democratic leadership wants to slow the worldwide effort, which the United States has led since 1947, to lower import tariffs that hinder trade.

The fortunes of Colombia and Peru — home to more than 72 million people — may hang in the balance. So, too, might the nature of American engagement with Latin America, regional experts say. The rejection of trade pacts with these countries would humiliate their leaders at a time when they stand as bulwarks against the anti-American populism pressed by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez.

We can’t tarrif away the competition.

The resurgence of American populism, particularly that of trade protectionism, is disturbing. What’s worse, it’s manifesting itself on both sides of the political spectrum. At the heart of the matter is whether we believe trade and economic cooperation is good, or whether we believe that it’s somehow dirty or harmful. Those on the left, who are inclined toward socialism or otherwise antagonistic towards free markets, are going to be natural adversaries to free trade, and often trot out globalization as their all-purpose boogeyman.

Many on the right are now turning towards protectionism as well. Upset over our open borders, many are being swayed by the Buchananite protectionists, who atleast offer serious border control. But we can’t hide from the global economy. We can’t tarrif away the competition. Nor should we want to.

The left demands we spend billions on foreign aid to third world countries - which accomplishes nothing but the perpetuation of dependence - yet they work tirelessly to prevent that which could actually help both them and us, free trade.

Not convinced? Milton Friedman made the case for free trade better than I can. Spreading capitalism also has the very nice side effect of promoting peace. On a side note, I suspect that if you tried telling a leftist that globalization will contribute to world peace his head would simply explode.

FOX Television, CBS, NBC File Arguments in First Amendment Case Against FCC

The government is violating the First Amendment by embarking on a “radical reinterpretation and expansion” of its power to punish broadcasters for indecent speech, a federal court was told Wednesday by FOX Television Stations Inc.

FOX, CBS Broadcasting Inc., NBC Universal Inc. and NBC Telemundo License Co. are suing the Federal Communications Commission, challenging the way the agency metes out punishment for airing shows that contain profanity. FOX filed formal arguments in a federal appeals court in New York. Later in the day, CBS and NBC also filed briefs.

The New York case is proceeding at the same time as a separate CBS challenge in a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, where the network is protesting an FCC fine over the partial disrobing of pop star Janet Jackson during a Super Bowl halftime show.

In contrast to the Jackson case, FOX is challenging what it calls an unprecedented campaign by federal regulators to punish broadcasters for airing “unintentional and isolated expletives” during broadcasts.

“The result is the end of truly live television and a gross expansion of the FCC’s intrusion into the creative and editorial process,” FOX argued in its court filing.

The FCC offers a prime example of unnecessary government regulation. They shouldn’t be handing out [b]any[/b] punishments for profanity. There are ample ways for consumers to express a desire for profanity free television, if that is what they desire, without the interference of government. Free markets tend to work best when they are free, believe it or not.

Not America’s, but Lebanon’s.

Downtown Beirut’s ordinarily packed streets were largely empty except for security forces as the nation began three days of mourning following the assassination of a prominent anti-Syrian figure.

Independence Day celebrations were canceled as people huddled around televisions to watch the live broadcast Wednesday of dignitaries paying last respects to Pierre Gemayel, a Christian politician whose assassination threatened to push the country’s political crisis into wider violence.

Cancelling an Independence Day holidy is rather fitting, since Syria is working hard to cancel Lebanon’s independence.

As Syria and their client Hizballah continue their march on a coup in Lebanon, the assassination of Lebanese Cabinet Member and Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel was not the only development yesterday.

Another anti-Syrian Lebanese Cabinet member, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Michel Pharaon, was the target of a second assassination attempt yesterday. Though the attempt failed, it represents an undeniable pattern of a renewed bid to eliminate anti-Syrian members from positions of Lebanese power. Minister Pharaon?s offices released a statement saying ?The office of the state minister for parliamentary affairs, Michel Pharaon, in the Ashrafieh neighborhood was the target of gunshots today from gunmen in a white Suzuki car.? The gunmen riddled the offices with gunfire and sped off. Pharaon is a Greek-Catholic Christian MP in the cabinet.

Syria is apparently not at all concerned about any potential consequences regarding their moves in Lebanon. It’s not hard to imagine how they got that impression, what with the UN’s failure to even pretend to care about enforcing the recent ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Clearly they’ve concluded that the UN is not serious about its efforts in the region. And given the general view in the middle east on the recent American elections, they aren’t much concerned about the U.S. doing anything either.

No, this is not a joke.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his recent trips abroad have accelarated what he describes as the world’s “Ahmadinejadisation”. The Iranian leader made the remarks in a meeting with state radio and television journalists in Teheran, the daily Entekhab reported. “Many of the world’s countries are waiting for our signal to follow our example of good governance,” Ahmadinejad said in a recent speech, apparently also a reference to “Ahmadinejadisation”.

. . .The Iranian president has repeatedly described himself as the “saviour of the world” and the “spokesman of the disenfranchised”. At a dinner gathering to mark the breaking of the day-time fast during the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he told those with him that he has a direct linel of communication with God, or Allah.

The former Mayor of Tehran, who earned the nickname ‘Streetsweeping Mayor’ after he appeared at dawn armed with a broom to clean up a street in one of the capital’s districts, seems increasingly certain that he is on a divine mission to, in his own words, save the world from “Western decadence” and bring it back “on the path of True Faith.”

This guy is a nutjob the likes of which has not risen to power since. . .well, I don’t know when. The point is, he’s crazy. Not fox crazy, but moonbat Islamist, wanna-be-savoir-who-has-nukes crazy.

Unfortunately, he’s 100% wrong.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, tonight blamed “economic powerlessness” for causing the frustration that feeds terrorism.

He called on world leaders to become like monks and run their countries according to the sixth century Rule of St Benedict if they wanted to wipe out poverty, alienation, terrorism and social deprivation.

Dr Williams, delivering a lecture in Rome, said “insensitively enforced globalisation” was crippling new societies.

He said the intense economic pressure to open up struggling markets was creating fertile ground for destructive behaviour.

How are so many people still looking in all the wrong places to define the causes of terrorism? There is no link between poverty and terrorism, or a lack of education and terorism. In fact, Palestinean support for terrorist attacks against Israeli’s is higher among professionals then it is the unemployed. It’s time for the one-size-fits-all globalization boogeyman to be put to rest.