Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said on Friday...
"The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper," an official with state conglomerate Cimex said on state-run Radio Rebelde.
A five-month wait for toilet paper? I think that falls under what Obama would call "the fierce urgency of now."
"Bud, the toilets today aren't worthy of the name. They come in designer colors, they're too low, and when you flush them they make this little weak, almost apologetic sound.
Not the Ferguson. It only comes in white and when you flush it -- BA WOOSH! -- That's a man's flush, Bud. A Ferguson says, 'I'm a toilet: sit down and give me your best shot.'"
#5
I bought one of those, at the time I had a well, and wanted to conserve, when it wouldn't empty the bowl I opened the tank to look, all they had done was to mount a Gallon and a half plastic cylinder over the lush drain, a minuite's knife work and it flushed fine.
(Never was short of water, I drilled the well 20 feet deeper than the ground water level)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/09/2009 19:52 Comments ||
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#6
I have Caroma Australian toilets. They have two buttons. Little flush for #1, full 1.6 gallon flush for #2. They do not jam as their passageways are large. Bought the first one when my younger son was launching sea monsters.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
08/09/2009 20:36 Comments ||
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#7
I wonder how much water is required to keep a septic system line clear? I suspect more than the "federal" toilet provides.
Loyal reader Mizzou Mafia spent a couple weeks in the country of Albania in June, and I asked him to sent in some real-time intelligence. Here are some his photos, along with his observations. Great pics that show us that Americans are welcome in Albania and that it's a beautiful country. Apologies for the size, it's a Rantburg limitation.
Many thanks, Mizzou!
Top left -- Here are some apartment complexes in downtown Tirana. All the old communist era buildings have been given funky facelifts as part of a "beautification" project by the mayor, who is the top draw on the socialist party ticket.
Top right -- Time for wedding pictures in Skoder, which is a town in the north near the Montenegrin border. The castle in Skoder dates all the way back to the Illyrian period.
Middle left -- Democratic Party supports outside their Tirana headquarters. Note the American flag in the back with the flag of the party. Being an American in Albania is as close to being a rock star as I'll ever be. You meet one person, and 10 of his friends will join you for a meal just to get to talk to you.
Middle right -- The Albanian and American flags fly side by side. Is this some kind of joint Albanian-U.S. venture? No, just a normal gas station.
Bottom left -- The American flag helps as a mark of quality for a lot of businesses.
I don't know if it's still so, but in 1994 it was the same in Poland, where american was used as an adjective denoting perfection in a particular class of objects, eg. an american sofa was well-made, attractive and exceedingly comfortable.
This café has no connection to the U.S., other than the flag and the mystique it creates for Albanians. It has no connection to Boston, other than the owner likes the city.
Bottom right -- One of the most interesting aspects of Albania is the 50-year legacy of the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, a man so twisted that he broke with Stalin because he wasn't enough of a pure communist. Hoxha was paranoid about foreign invasion, and had 10s of thousands of these pillboxes built all around the country. Every male Albanian knew which one they were supposed to report to in time of war. These suckers were built to take tank shells, so they'll still be around hundreds of years from now. They're difficult to destroy, so Albanians paint them funky colors, put wood hats of them, etc.
The pics:
Gorgeous! Thank you, Mizzou Mafia!
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/09/2009 00:50 ||
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#1
I can't believe no one's commented yet. I found this a very interesting report! I only wish I could click the pictures to see bigger images with more detail.
Glenn Harlan "Instapundit" Reynolds, Washington Examiner
...The truth is that for my adult lifetime, "protest" has been a kind of Kabuki engaged in by organized groups on the Left with help from the press -- as in the recent bus tour of AIG executives that was organized and paid for by an ACORN affiliate and in which the protesters were heavily outnumbered by the media, who nonetheless generally treated it as an "authentic" expression of populist discontent. Things like that tour led President Obama to warn bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks, one of a number of thuggish statements he's made along these lines.
Funny how fast the worm -- or maybe it's the pitchfork -- has turned. Now that we're seeing genuine expressions of populist discontent, not put together by establishment packagers on behalf of an Officially Sanctioned Aggrieved Group, we're suddenly hearing complaints of "mob rule" and demands for civility. Civility is fine, but those who demand it should show it. The Obama administration -- and its corps of willing supporters in the press and the punditry -- has set the tone, and they are now in a poor position to complain.
Whether they like it or not -- and the evidence increasingly tends toward "not" -- President Obama and his handlers need to accept that this is a free country, one where expressions of popular discontent take place outside the electoral process, and always have. (Remember Martin Luther King?) What historians like Gordon Wood and Pauline Maier call "out-of-doors political activity" is an old American tradition, and in the past things have been far more "boisterous" than they are today.
Rather than demonizing today's protesters, perhaps they might want to reflect on how flimflams and thuggishness have managed to squander Obama's political capital in a few short months, and ponder what they might do to regain the trust of the millions of Americans who are no longer inclined to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt.
Posted by: Mike ||
08/09/2009 08:39 ||
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#1
"Whether they like it or not -- and the evidence increasingly tends toward "not" -- President Obama and his handlers need to accept that this is a free country..." The overwhelming arrogance and hubris of Obama and his handlers makes ANY ideas, policies, etc. except his totally unacceptable.
#1
she's a Joooo-hating Lefty Loon. B*tch shouldn't be allowed in the country
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/09/2009 9:14 Comments ||
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#2
Yep, and Obama's awarding her a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I guess he WAS paying attention during his twenty years in Jeremiah Wright's "church".
#4
Having disgraced and beclowned itself - and continuing to do so daily - why shouldn't the US give a high honor to a loathsome, fascism-loving, anti-semitic UN toad? Seems perfect.
Yesterday, the evil Zionist top mouthpieces media outlets, CNN, BBC, and FoxNews, etc. gloated justifiably that Pakistan's most crazed wanted Taliban leader, Baitullah Pretty Boy Mahsud, has been zapped killed by a US Hellfire missile. It suppose know that could be used an excuse to prove that Pretty Boy Baitullah Mahsud was not a CIA, MOSSAD and RAW asset, as claimed by Mahsud's former lover close but not that close aide, Haji Turkistan Betani on Pakistan TV Geo News another Zionist outlet. Haji also claimed deliriously that Pretty Boy Baitullah Mahsud got Morticia Benazir Bhutto assassinated for his American, Israeli and Indian lovers masters.
Qari Zainuddin, an Afghan Taliban thug boy commander, rejected Baitullah Mahsud as a crazed killer Mujahid based on later's pretty boy looks un-Islamic activities and said in the telephone interview from a Reuters safehouse that Afghan Taliban has pledged obedience nothing to do with Baitullah Mahsud and his crazed followers. Qari also made up out of whole cloth claimed that Pretty Boy Baitullah Mahsud had wads of cash delivered by close contacts with Juice Israeli and Hindoooz Indian officials -- and that he was sleeping with misguiding Muslim youth who are so easily swayed after all to target Pakistani camp followers civilians and weapons depots mosques as part of his collaboration with fight against the so-called Pakistan ineffectual government.
The full color pictures of some hard boyz terrorists turned into meat killed by Pakistan Army as cover for the ISI in Swat prove that they were infidels non-Muslim terrorists hired by the evil Juice US, Britain and Hindooz India to distablize not that it would be hard and eventually break-up the Land of the Pure Pakistan -- the only Muslim so-called nation with primitive nuclear weapons. The charred bodies of these dead dead dead terrorist show that they're really really dead uncircumcised. Their partial facial features prove that they could be Kashmir Muslim separatists Nepalese Gurkhas from Indian or British Armed forces -- or Uzbek Muslim terrorists recruited by al-Qaeda members of pro-US Northern Alliance Army Mafia trained and armed by the Special Forces US and Juice Israel.
After the ineffectual Pakistan Army confirmed that the arms it delivered to captured from terrorists in Swat and FATA -- are nothing but the best American made -- the evil Dick Cheney Washington was quick to gloat cover its smart dirty game against both anti-Israel Pakistanis -- by saying that some of its arms given to our favorite warlord Karzai puppet government in Kabul have been sold on the black market reached in the hands of "Pakistani Taliban" fighing Islamabad. How convenient, yewbetcha eh!
Washington has a long history of getting rid of its foreign collaborators, once they served American interests and a smart policy that is -- Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), King Reza Shah (Iran), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Ahmad Chalabi (occupied Iraq), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Gen. Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Anwar Sadaat (Egypt), Yasser Arafat (occupied Palestine), Afghan Mujahideen, Taliban (Afghanistan), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan), Gen. Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan), Zulifqar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan) -- to name a few and don't forget the banana republic caudillos.
The kooky diatribe words of wisdom from Pakistan's first of many losing military leader, Field Marshal in his own mind Ayub Khan: "The United States is unable to give assistance to whacked out military leaders people in the developing countries on the basis of mutual respect since we don't ever get any in return. Americans don't know how to be friends with thugs and not masters".
Posted by: john frum ||
08/09/2009 12:55 ||
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#1
now that there is some fine gibberish
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/09/2009 13:13 Comments ||
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#2
Probably makes perfect sense to Pakistanis
Posted by: john frum ||
08/09/2009 14:39 Comments ||
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#3
Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), King Reza Shah (Iran), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Ahmad Chalabi (occupied Iraq), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Gen. Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Anwar Sadaat (Egypt), Yasser Arafat (occupied Palestine), Afghan Mujahideen, Taliban (Afghanistan), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan), Gen. Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan), Zulifqar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan) -- to name a few
Guess who has forgotten to take his meds recently, after being warned what would happen, by his psychiatrist, if he did.
(via Debka)
A large Lebanese army force which raided the Lebanese Internet network center on Mt. Barukh east of the Lebanese town of Jezzine Saturday, Aug. 8 was dismayed to discover the exchange center which carries all of Lebanon's Internet links using equipment made in Israel. An intelligence sweep found the servers were routed to an exchange center in Haifa.
The soldiers impounded piles of equipment and rounded up several detainees at the mountain center and several Lebanese Internet companies.
Upon learning of the discovery, Hizballah demanded an immediate and thorough investigation of how all of Israeli intelligence acquired free access to all Lebanese internet communications like an open book.
In recent months, Lebanon has seen one suspected Israeli spy network after another exposed across the country. Wednesday, Aug. 5, DEBKAfile first disclosed that the spy rings were not busted by Lebanese intelligence but by agents of the Russian Federal Security Service - FSB working undercover in Lebanon since early this year at the invitation of the Lebanese Shiite Hizballlah.
Russian agents may also have led the Lebanese army to their discovery of the Israeli data center on Mt. Barukh.
Because the Middle East is catching up to and connecting with the rest of the world. And no matter how much peace Osama bin Laden's No. 2 tries to offer Barack Obama, there is no stopping globalization's power over extremism.
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
On Monday, the latest video surfaced from Osama bin Laden's longtime deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, featuring his usual sermon on the state of the radical Islamic struggle against the United States. The gist: Al Qaeda is winning hands-down, natch. Trouble is, it's not.
The message wouldn't have attracted any more media attention than his thirty-or-so similar videos from the past three-and-a-half years except, of course, for his affirmation that a truce with President Obama is still on the table: If America is willing to "concede" radical Islam's "victory" throughout the greater Middle East by withdrawing all of its troops, then Al Qaeda will stop targeting Americans.
Some offer.
And in making it, al-Zawahiri accuses Obama, upon whom he conferred the title of "house negro" soon after his election win, of being nothing more than "the new face of the same old crimes" namely, "a relationship with [Islamic lands] based on suppression." But that's just putting a familiar face on Al Qaeda's deeper fears: America certainly does its best to suppress radical Islam, but that's not what scares al-Zawahiri and bin Laden having to integrate with the rest of the world does. Career opportunities and a better life, after all, means fewer young people driven to extremism.
And that's exactly what's happening: Radical Islam has overplayed its hand again, creating popular resentment escalating to political backlash. We're the ones winning this struggle across the board, and not only should Obama ignore the offer of a truce as we press forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan (it would only allow Asia to step in for the oil money) he should make explicitly clear to Al Qaeda that we'll never acquiesce to their desire for civilizational apartheid between the West and the Arab world, even as isolationists and defeatists on our side would just as soon erect a fence around the whole Islamic world to let them fight it out amongst themselves. Why? Because the penetrating embrace of globalization is doing the truly profound damage to Al Qaeda, and we are globalization's bodyguard. The flow of proliferating networks that offer ideas and conversations and products and expressions of individualistic ambition especially with regard to women offer radical Islamic groups no hope of gaining permanent political control.
As if al-Zawahiri's smoke-blowing video as close to an admission of strategic failure as we're likely to get out of Al Qaeda for the foreseeable future wasn't enough, poll after poll confirms the trend: Al Qaeda's appeal along with violent extremism in general is waning across the Islamic world while America's has been significantly improved by Barack Obama's election and subsequent efforts at civilizational dialogue (which clearly has Al Qaeda's leadership worried, as evidenced by the amount of time al-Zawahiri spent in this last video attempting to diminish it). As Thomas Friedman pointed out recently, radical Islam's only successes as of late have involved stoking sectarian and ethnic feuds hardly the calling card of a successful international ideological movement.
The Middle East currently suffers from a destabilizing youth bulge around people between the ages of 15 and 30. In two decades time, the region's demographic center of gravity will have shifted upward commensurately, meaning the Middle East will hit "middle age." What do we know from this shift in other parts of the world? That criminal behavior wanes, meaning bin Laden and Al Qaeda do not have time on their side.
That's not to diminish the economic challenge, because as that youth bulge ages out into its natural earning years, roughly 100 million new jobs will need to be created in the greater Middle East by 2030. If those jobs aren't there, then we're looking at a double whammy: all those unemployed thirty- and fortysomethings plus their disappointed kids, who will form another, smaller (but not inconsequential) youth bulge in the 2020s.
In America's persistent struggle against violent extremism triggered by globalization's advance, there will always be the temptation to return to history's sidelines, much like we did after World War I. But our now decades-long success in creating and defending and expanding an international liberal trade order (now known as globalization) has created this larger, unpalatable reality: The United States is no longer in control of this process and thus cannot "turn off" its resulting challenges.
Globalization is not some elite conspiracy hatched in Manhattan or Davos; it's now largely fueled by the ravenous demand for a decent lifestyle by an emerging and huge global middle class located overwhelmingly beyond our shores. That world-spanning force demands the Islamic world's progressive integration into globalization's vast universe.
And when it comes to that fundamental reformatting process, resistance be it radical Islam's or isolationist America's is futile.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/09/2009 00:09 ||
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#1
It is true.
And to end Saddam told the worlds moslems that no, you may not have global conquest.
#2
Unfortunately, globalization isn't always a win-win situation. While a better lifestyle and "middle class" accessories beckon for the middle east, India, and China, the prospects for many in the United States and Europe look bleak. My parents and grandparents enjoyed more opportunities and a better lifestyle than I'm likely to ever achieve. And in places like Africa or South America, for most folks things don't exactly look rosy in the near future either.
But at least Coca-cola and Pepsi can expand their markets into Vanuatu and Tonga - YAY!
I'm more in favor of a Star-Trek style "prime directive". Just because you have warp drive doesn't mean you're obligated to share it with every alien race you encounter. A better plan is to just observe and don't meddle. Let the barbarians be barbaric to each other, and eventually find their own way forward when they're good and ready. And if they become a threat, just nuke 'em from orbit.
#3
Gosh this guy is insufferably trite, glib, and wrong. AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded. The fundamentals were always tipped against AQ - and this "movement" is not just a simple by-product of globalization, but a result of several cultural and religious trends that have produced extremism and violence many many times before in completely different eras.
And globalization is not fueled by newish middle classes somewhere - it is simple market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures. The middle class demands elsewhere are just the result of these larger and more efficient markets creating more purchasing power in "new" places. Effect, not cause.
I was about to lump this lightweight with Friedman when I noticed that he quotes the great writer. Sheesh. And it gets worse - the bumbling and pointless marketing by the catastrophe of an empty suit president has in fact increased the appeal of the US! AQ was not devastated by defeat, an enemy on relentless offense, and its consequent inability to score any "wins". No. It was a few embarrassing speeches, which had no impact on the target audience, that somehow has weakened this international criminal group.
The cretinization of the public square in the US, esp. as concerns political-military affairs and foreign policy, continues to amaze. Every time this Barnett guy puts pen to paper or opens his mouth, he makes a fool of himself. What passes for conventional wisdom in the Beltway would earn humiliating and derisive deconstruction in a decent undergraduate course.
Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that Barnett could actually be paid by the Pentagon for his insights. It's astonishing, depressing, sickening, ridiculous - but not surprising. He'd be just the sort of shallow doofus to appeal to the "no military solutions to military problems" set.
#4
AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded.
Add in humiliated in the 'Battle of Iraq' which they declared to be key and abjectly failed. Big horse and all that social behavior in their culture. What's more is that AQ was just one of many such organizations which was focused upon the removal of tyrannical regimes throughout the Muslim world. They not only took down a number of those organizations with them as we cut them all off from the financial system, creating animosity from other quarters, it gave George Bush and others the ability to show right in the heart of their region the ability to institute an alternative to removal of tyrants, thus taking away their ownership of 'change and hope' with the Caliphate alternative. They're no longer 'the way'.
I follow Dr. Barnett's writing semi-closely. In his defense, his articles (especially the esquire ones) are focused on medium and long term grand strategy. His article here should be seen as such.
He has argued that not only must AlQ and it's imitators must be defeated ("squished, hunted, defeated, defunded") but that the US must have special dispensation for doing so (describing the US as not the world's policeman, but as globalization's 'Dirty Harry.')
I also think he would approve strongly of your description of globalization ("market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures.") His point is that AlQ wants to put an end to these dynamics in favor of its fever-dream of a caliphate holding the world hostage via energy while it destroys Israel. But time (not just the US) is against them.
#8
Don't worry. Now that Bambi's in charge, they can always make a comeback.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
08/09/2009 13:35 Comments ||
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#9
Free Radical - uh, ok, whatever.
My dismissal of Barnett's stuff stands - he's a lightweight who can't go two sentences without uttering something ridiculous. As just one jaw-dropping example see his hallucinogenic claim above that Bambi's bizarre outreach effort has borne fruit of any consequence (based on the astonishingly naive and ignorant assumption that the umma or the Arab world likes us or doesn't like us depending on the thinnest of atmospherics, not on action and reality). Where was Barnett when Bush couldn't be found outside a mosque in the first several months after 9/11, or when the WH wasn't the site of some outreach meeting - often as not including some slimy terror-symp outfits that the staff didn't vet properly?
Sorry, Barnett's the poster child for the sub-mediocrity that reigns in the Beltway. As I said, the cretinization of the public square. He's hardly the worst case, but he's in the middle of the pack.
#10
I don't really care about how tough he is on Al Qaeda if he's not paying attention to the third world (and more frequently, second and first world) elites playing "Let's You And Him Fight While I Stand Here And Watch You Bleeding and Tut-Tut About Your Cruelty."
#11
Right or wrong, the gentleman is willing to be published in a liberal magazine claiming that we're winning and Al Qaeda is losing... even if he waited until George W. Bush would not be given credit for the win.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
