In François Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim (1962), the lives of two Bohemian male friends, one French, one Austrian (played by Henri Serre and Oskar Werner), in pre-WWI Paris are changed forever by their making the acquaintance of the fascinating and mercurial Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). Catherine is a kind of Anima, a force of Nature, a far stronger and more interesting personality than either of the pair, and she easily dominates one after another in turn, until Jim attempts to rebel. Catherine then responds by luring Jim into an automobile, and driving (with him in the car) straight off a bridge.

The democrat party is a lot like Jules and Jim: ineffectual and harmless in itself, but fundamentally allied to, and (in a way) in love with an activist radical left, which it cannot do without, cannot possibly control, and which (like Catherine) is not very nice underneath it all, and (like Catherine) dangerously mad.

Much of the democrat base is made up of people (like Catherine), who carry around a personal bottle of vitriol (“for lying eyes”), who are capable of turning mercilessly upon those closest to themselves (even those whom they have very recently supported for Vice President).

And (like Catherine), too, the democrat base’s madness has every likelihood of always, and inevitably, ending in (electoral) suicide.

One pictures Hillary Clinton walking out of the cemetery after installing the ashes of Joe Lieberman’s democrat party career in the niche, marching off sadly (like Jules). But, in this case, though Catherine may have committed suicide, she cannot herself die, and will get to commit suicide again and again.

Last month (7/19), we reported on Human Rights Watch’s protest over the use of ball bearings as shrapnel in Hezbollah’s rocket warheads.

Lenny Maschkowski, an ordinary Israeli, took a number of photographs in the vicinity of Haifa, and sent these images to Bert de Briun, a friend of his wife who blogs at Dutchblog Israel.

Mr. Maschkowski’s photos demonstrate very eloquently just how physically destructive are the attacks being conducted by Hezbollah upon Israeli civilians.

Different parts of the United States use different generic terms for soft drinks.

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Thane Rosenbaum, in the Wall Street Journal, begins coming to his senses.

Many Jews are in my position — the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protestors — instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes.

However, the world as we know it today — post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity — is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself — with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.

This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.

If the Palestinians didn’t want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society — the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.

The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.

Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness — bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.

Bernard Lewis in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal points out that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent references to “final answers” on August 22 may have a rather sinister significance.

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time–Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as “by the end of August,” but Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement was more precise.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to “the farthest mosque,” usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

Brave insurgent defending burning Lebanon against Israeli warplanes.

But, oops! he’s really posing in front of burning garbage at the local dump.

Thomas S., an Allahpundit reader catches US News falling for a faked photo.

Michelle Malkin covers this one, and another new one which appears to incorporate an underwear model as victim.

And be sure not to miss Michelle’s latest video on the Reuters photos: Picture Kill. It offers another excellent Malkin-special summary.

Charles Johnson, the publisher of Little Green Footballs, is unquestionably one of the most important figures on the right side of the Blogosphere. He is famous for debunking Dan Rather‘s forged National Guard letter during the 2004 presidential campaign, humiliating CBS News and ultimately causing Rather to step down.

Unlike such equivalently prominent blogging personalities as Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin, one does not frequently seen Charles Johnson appearing on television, and few readers even know what the great man looks like.

Yesterday, Johnson reluctantly published a link to an appearance of his on CNN, discussing the faked Reuters photographs.

In a related inside look at the Chinese strategic viewpoint, Confidential Reporter posted on Sunday:

China Confidential has learned that Beijing remains confident that Hezbollah will prevail–politically, if not militarily–in the current conflict, strengthening Iran’s regional influence and prestige. People’s Liberation Army analysts contend that Hezbollah cannot be truly defeated and disarmed without World War II-style flattening of the 20 or more Lebanese villages in which Hezbollah hides and houses its Iranian-supplied missiles. An aerial bombardment of this magnitude would almost certainly result in massive civilian casualties–which increasingly isolated Israel can’t afford.

Therefore, PLA strategists are said to argue, Israel is restrained by sensitivity to world opinion from militarily crushing its enemy.

The analysis conforms with PLA theories of “unrestricted warfare,” including terrorism, information war, and “lawfare,” which in principle make it possible for smaller, technologically disadvantaged forces to fight–and defeat–great powers.

There is obviously a great deal of validity to the Chinese analysis.

Liu Yazhou

Confidential Reporter quotes a most intriguing recent (described as unpublished) essay by one of China’s leading military theorists, Liu Yazhou, a Lieutenant General and Deputy Political Commissar in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, and son-in-law of the late Chinese president Li Xiannian.

Liu Yazhou is a very interesting thinker, who has previously been a novelist, and a visiting professor at Stanford. He is renowned for producing frequently provocative essays violating numerous conventional restrictions on discussion of politics and policy. He is clearly a rising star in the Communist Party leadership, and a very influential strategist. He is reported to be affiliated with Jiang Zemin‘s Shanghai clique.

Confidential Reporter quotes Liu as contending

that the West is engaged in a losing civilizational clash with rising, radical Islam, with which China must forge a strategic alliance via deepening ties to Iran. Like other PLA theoreticians, he extols the potential of “unrestricted warfare”–use of a variety of methods to isolate, weaken and ultimately defeat the enemy–and “winning without fighting” whenever possible, i.e. making maximum use of deception and diplomacy in the face of a technologically superior enemy, such as the “US hegemon.”..

His clinical analysis of the US position with respect to radical Islam, however, is quite clear, according to our sources. Ironically, Liu’s essay is supposedly in tune with the views of some US conservative critics of the Bush administration. His main point, reportedly, is that the US faltered following the 9/11 attacks when it failed to identify radical Islam, or Islamism, as its enemy and instead launched a “war on terror,” sending a confused–and confusing–message to the American people. Sources say Liu argues that the reluctance to name Islamism as an enemy reflects (a) US unwillingness to completely break with decades of secretly supporting rightwing Islamic fundamentalism as a counterweight against secular radicals in the Middle East, and (b) US “weakness,” by which he seems to mean an essentially idealistic and, in his opinion, ultimately self-defeating faith in its own democratic and humanitarian ideals, which prevent the US from taking truly drastic military action when necessary.

Darth Vader goes on a date, and is moved to the Night Shift.

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Episode one

I knew he was a commie, of course. But not until I read Martin Peretz, in the Wall Street Journal, did I realise that he is an hereditary commie of impeccable red-diaper origins: old money, with Exeter, Harvard, and Stalin as family traditions.

Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue “peace candidates,” and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can. It’s really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, still sends a chill of “having arrived” up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him.

Jed Babbin contemplates the left wing of the democrat party’s impending excommunicaion of Joe Lieberman with glee, noting the concommitant assurance of that party’s permanent minority status.

the Michael Moore-Pinch Sulzberger-Cindy Sheehan Dems are about to purge poor ol’ Joe Lieberman from their party in Tuesday’s primary because he supports the war in Iraq. There’s no other issue among the Dems, as Chris Matthews rehearsed yesterday. Dan Rathercadaver — resurrected by Matthews to make his Sunday show the greatest black comedy since Dr. Strangelove — agreed solemnly. There’s no greater crime for a Dem than to voice any opinion other than the one the Washington Post wrote in an editorial on July 16, wringing its hands and blaming W for all the world’s ills: “But in the press of cascading crises, it is crucial that the administration not lose focus on the two wars it started and has yet to win.” (Italics added, superfluously.)

According to the Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, Ned Lamont leads Lieberman by 54-41 percent. If Lieberman loses, we should be very grateful. If the anti-Bush media and the Democrats who follow its orders succeed in purging Lieberman, if they succeed in this danse macabre, the Dems will be headed off a cliff and not back to the White House in 2008.

A Lieberman loss will do two things. First, it will prevent the Dems from recovering from their leftward flat spin, and take them into the ground. Hard. Further claims to moderation or credibility on national defense will be laughable to anyone not sharing Bush Derangement Syndrome…

Second, a Lieberman loss will give uncontested control of the Democratic Party to its most left-leaning media bosses. Never forget, dear friends, that there are two political parties in America: the Republicans and the mainstream media. The Dems are so bereft of ideas, so unable to think seriously on any topic, they take their lead on everything from what the New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, ABC and NBC tell them. The AP-Hillary exercise in news manufacturing is only the overture to a symphony that will be playing from now until November, and again in 2008. And the Dems will follow in lockstep. After the New York Times editorial page endorsed Lamont, what else could the Dems do but choose him? They’ll scurry to follow orders, just as Vichy John Kerry flew home from Davos to filibuster Alito when the NYT ordered the Dems to do so…

The effect of a Lieberman purge should reverberate throughout America. A political party that cannot tolerate dissent, that cannot accept as legitimate any position that doesn’t hew to the leftmost fringe, cannot last unless its opponents fail to take advantage of its fundamental weakness. If the kiss on the cheek Lieberman got from the president proves to be the coup fatal, it could be one that produces a veto-proof Republican Senate.