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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Nasrallah reelected Hezbollah chief for sixth term
Today's Headlines
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Page 4: Opinion
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Page 6: Politix
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Afghanistan
Taliban debating whether to end Afghan war: expert
Posted by: tipper || 11/21/2009 15:45 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is the 'pay the Taliban to say there is no more AQ' exit strategy I mentioned the other day. Main problem is that Pakistan makes too much money from the war to want to stop it.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/21/2009 18:56 Comments || Top||

#2  But the Taliban wants to win and 0 wants to get out. If they stand down, he'll back out in a hurry and they can take over. Then they can aim for Islamabad.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 11/21/2009 19:26 Comments || Top||


Kevlar Coffins?
Posted by: tipper || 11/21/2009 00:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Not.

The vehicle has proven vulnerable to explosive formed fragment (EFP) warheads

Seems to me the underside of the Stryker is at an angle, but how about some kind of additional underside slat armor at a 45-degree angle with rough edges that would disperse the copper EFP over a wider area? Might have to be coated with ceramic or something to withstand the heat.
Posted by: gorb || 11/21/2009 1:02 Comments || Top||

#2  I have some ideas about that, but I don't really want to talk about them now.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 11/21/2009 10:55 Comments || Top||

#3  The story mentions vulnerability to IEDs weighing 1500 - 2000 pounds. The real question is "how are the taliban able to build and emplace a 2000 lb bomb on a road without getting whacked?"
Posted by: Frozen Al || 11/21/2009 11:19 Comments || Top||

#4  An M-1 _TANK_ is vulnerable to IED's of that size.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 11/21/2009 12:23 Comments || Top||


Economy
The Day the Dollar Died (fiction)
Posted by: tipper || 11/21/2009 00:15 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The financial market scenario is plausible, but credit cards will only be affected if issued by a foreign bank and the domestic consequences initially will be limited. Runs on grocery stores is silly.

My 2c worth is we will see a Sterling collapse first. They are far closer to debt insolvency than the USA. Their external debt is nearly 4 times that of the USA.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/21/2009 5:48 Comments || Top||

#2  why are runs on grocery stores silly? If the dollar collapses, I'll be first in line down at the local WalMart stocking up on food while I can still afford it. I'll exchange the food with you later for something else I won't be able to afford on down the line. Heck, maybe I'll visit WalMart tomorrow.

It is getting more and more clear that we are in the middle of a global economic collapse. Printing money won't solve it. Money is nothing more than an IOU for services or products. If there are no services or products behind it, money is as worthless as grains of sand.

I'd love to be wrong, but I think that everything makes sense when you view the Obama administration through this lens. Stimulus Health care (the States and the Unions are broke and can't afford to pay and need to shift the burden to the Fed govt) are just transfusions to hemmorrhaging patients who are first in line because they are close friends of the people in power.

The money is gone folks. It was pissed away on false future promises and underfunded pensions plans. The party, funded on credit cards without the capital to back it up, is over. I'd suggest buying some supplies and getting down on your knees and praying.
Posted by: Jumbo Slinerong5015 || 11/21/2009 7:22 Comments || Top||

#3  Don't worry to much Peak Oilz gonna kill you anyway.
Posted by: Perry Stanford White || 11/21/2009 7:24 Comments || Top||

#4  why are runs on grocery stores silly?

The US produces a surplus of food using fertilizer produced from US natural gas, packaged mostly with US sourced materials. Diesel for the farm equipment, trucks and trains are really the only import in the chain. And if things go titzup, diesel will get refinery priority well before the gas for your car.
Posted by: ed || 11/21/2009 8:50 Comments || Top||

#5  The money is gone folks. It was pissed away on false future promises and underfunded pensions plans oil imports, auto imports and Chinese manufactures.
Posted by: ed || 11/21/2009 9:00 Comments || Top||

#6  It's why Chaina is totally more screwed than the US, and the U.K. although we are screwed too.

All our savings have been wasted bailing out the upper rent-seeker class.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 11/21/2009 9:11 Comments || Top||

#7  Hyperinflation would cause runs on grocery stores, but if that happened that would be months to years after a dollar collapse.

In general, people's reaction to a financial crisis is not to spend money.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/21/2009 9:12 Comments || Top||

#8  The most likely items to sell out are consumer electronics because they will get a lot more expensive.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/21/2009 9:19 Comments || Top||

#9  We all gonna die, get used to it. Enjoy what passes for life while you can. Hopefully 1 person in a thousand will live past the die-off and vote Democrat.
Posted by: Perry Stanford White || 11/21/2009 11:52 Comments || Top||

#10  Jim Rogers' advice: forget that MBA; get a degree in agriculture. Invest in farmland.

Rising demand from Asia + scarce farmland = potentially huge returns on agricultural investments.
Posted by: lex || 11/21/2009 11:57 Comments || Top||

#11  Rising demand from Asia + scarce farmland = potentially huge returns on agricultural investments.

Which is why I think food will become expensive here.
Posted by: Jumbo Slinerong5015 || 11/21/2009 15:46 Comments || Top||

#12  if things go titzup, diesel will get refinery priority well before the gas for your car

Ed, I've lived in American South-West: people there cannot survive without their cars---too spread out.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/21/2009 15:52 Comments || Top||

#13  why I think food will become expensive here

Agreed. Probably evolve a two-tiered food system: a low-end system for the masses based on heavily processed sh*t-foods from HFCS, soy, transfats, and an astronomically expensive system with real food. Invest in land that produces the latter.
Posted by: lex || 11/21/2009 20:51 Comments || Top||

#14  Runs on grocery stores is silly.

Not really. Nestle just lost their entire processed pumpkin crop in Illinois. 85% of the total U.S. crop.

Rain didn't mix with their humungous monoculture machines. They're plowing under the whole 5,000 acres.

Get your holiday pie fixins while you can!
Posted by: KBK || 11/21/2009 22:56 Comments || Top||


Europe
Hitler was no idiot, says secret report
Of course not. An idiot could not have achieved what he'd done.
Posted by: tipper || 11/21/2009 00:09 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Politix
Steyn: The SuperBower
Posted by: Frank G || 11/21/2009 17:37 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Is it the only template in the White House speechwriters’ computer? "Few would have foreseen at the Elamite sack of Ur/Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow/the [beating with a wet noodle] of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand/the passage of the Dubrovnik Airport Parking Lot Expansion Bill that one day I would be standing before you talking about how few would have foreseen that one day I would be standing before you."

Some years ago, when Ellen DeGeneres came out as a [non-heterosexual] and ensuing episodes of her sitcom grew somewhat overly preoccupied with the subject, Elton John remarked: "Okay, we know you’re gay. Now try being funny." I wonder if Sir Elton might be prevailed upon to try a similar pitch at the next all-star White House gala: Okay, we know you’re black. Now try being president. But a few days later Obama dropped in on U.S. troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea for the latest episode of The Barack Obama Show (With Full Supporting Chorus). "You guys make a pretty good photo op," he told them.
Posted by: KBK || 11/21/2009 20:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Sometimes you really have to work at this posting business.
Posted by: KBK || 11/21/2009 20:34 Comments || Top||

#3  meh....
Posted by: Frank G || 11/21/2009 21:23 Comments || Top||


The Day Global Warming Stood Still
As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.

It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria.

The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put off the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill, the Senate's version of Waxman-Markey, until the spring thaw has led Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the leading Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, to declare victory over Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and the triumph of observable fact over junk science.

"I proudly declare 2009 as the 'Year of the Skeptic,' the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard," Inhofe said to Boxer in a Senate speech. "Until this year, any scientist, reporter or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked."

Inhofe added: "Today I have been vindicated."

The Ada (Oklahoma) Evening News quotes Inhofe: "So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, 'Yes. We're going to pass a global warming bill,' I will be able to stand up and say, 'No, it's over. Get a life. You lost. I won,'" Inhofe said.

Now we have the German publication Der Spiegel, which is rapidly becoming the house organ for climate hysteria, weighing in again with the sad news that the earth does not have a fever so we really don't have to throw out the baby with the rising bath water.

In an article titled, "Climatologists Baffled By Global Warming Time-Out," author Gerald Traufetter leads off with the observation: "Climatologists are baffled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years." They better figure it out, Der Spiegel warns, because "billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations."

We are told in sad tones that "not much is happening with global warming at the moment" and that "it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year." But how can it be that the earth isn't following all those computer models? Is the earth goddess Gaia herself a climate change "denier"?
Posted by: Fred || 11/21/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh my God, now we're in for Global Cooling!
Posted by: gorb || 11/21/2009 1:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Oma gloma sertoma


/me makes warming start again.
Posted by: Perry Stanford White || 11/21/2009 7:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Global Cooling Tax in 7, 6, 5, 4......
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/21/2009 7:35 Comments || Top||

#4  I thought they had decided on "Climate Change" to keep the gravy train rolling.
Posted by: Jumbo Slinerong5015 || 11/21/2009 7:39 Comments || Top||

#5  The CRU has steadfastly refused to plublish the data behind their 'hookey stick' curve. If you hide your data and techniques from other scientists, then you aint no scientist. You're just another snake oil peddler. It has amazed me that anyone could get away with that crap for decades. Yet they have. Publish the data or shut up. A hillbilly from Tennessee started making this stuff up over twenty years ago and he's still doing it. Recently he said the earth's center was millions of degree hot instead of the actual 5000 degrees. He wasn't hooted off the stage for making such a stupid, ignorant statement. He and many others need to be called to account for their ignorant, stupid lies. We are surely heading for a global warming, sometime. Just as we are surely heading for a global cooling. But one thing I'm sure of is that these idiots don't have a clue as to when or why.
Posted by: Oregon Doodle || 11/21/2009 9:43 Comments || Top||

#6  Please refrain from bad mouthing hillbillies. Algore is a product of DC.
Posted by: BrerRabbit || 11/21/2009 11:26 Comments || Top||

#7  Recently he said the earth's center was millions of degree hot instead of the actual 5000 degrees.

The earths core must be cooling at a drastic rate! More proof of climate change. We're all gonna die!

/AlGore
Posted by: Mike N. || 11/21/2009 11:33 Comments || Top||

#8  It's all a product of uranium fission and hydrogen fusion. It is an atomic conspiracy, with a CO2 frosting.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 11/21/2009 11:48 Comments || Top||

#9  The Al-Gore doesn't give a f***. He's pocketed his slush $$$$ and is laughing at all of us.

Check this out: $529m loan awarded by DOE to Gore's electric sports car startup. Which is in Finland. Which does not even have a prototype. Or a design.

Corruption on a scale not seen since Teapot Dome. Why is this man not in prison?
Posted by: lex || 11/21/2009 12:07 Comments || Top||

#10  P2k: LOL. The watermelons will just use this as another excuse to tax and control the masses. This way, they have us coming and going, which is just the way they want it.
Posted by: eltoroverde || 11/21/2009 12:09 Comments || Top||

#11  Wow. Just wow. Al Gore heckled by a mob....in Portland, Ore.?

"AlGore's a Liar!"
Posted by: Frank G || 11/21/2009 12:16 Comments || Top||

#12  The CRU has steadfastly refused to plublish the data behind their 'hookey hokey stick' curve.

Fixed your spelling error for you, OD. ;-)
Posted by: gorb || 11/21/2009 21:41 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Politically correct counter-terrorism or civilizational suicide. You decide.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/21/2009 15:56 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Politically correct counter-terrorism is civilizational suicide
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/21/2009 16:38 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
India gets wary of Obama
Posted by: tipper || 11/21/2009 15:07 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And aren't we all?
Posted by: Uneaper Scourge of the Leprechauns4763 || 11/21/2009 15:17 Comments || Top||

#2  Just now?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/21/2009 15:47 Comments || Top||

#3  I was weary of him November 1st, 2008.
Posted by: DarthVader || 11/21/2009 15:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Re#1: ROFLMAO - YOU HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD.
Posted by: borgboy || 11/21/2009 17:14 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Michael Totten: A Third Lebanon War Could Be Much Worse than the Second

If Israel's nuclear power plant comes under fire, if Tel Aviv skyscrapers explode from missile attacks, if Hezbollah manages to turn all of Israel into a kill zone where there is no place to run, Israelis will panic like they haven't since the 1973 Yom Kippur War when it briefly appeared the Egyptian army might overrun the whole country. I wouldn't want to be anywhere in Lebanon while Israelis are actively fending off that kind of assault. No country can afford to be restrained while fighting for its survival.

Just ask yourself how you would have felt during the Cold War if Ronald Reagan or Mikhail Gorbachev said "SO BE IT" to nuclear war. I would have wanted to hide in my basement or go off-planet entirely. And I have a hard time imagining an American or Russian crowd roaring with applause and pumping its fists in the air in response to that sort of thing. That's just not how Americans or Russians thought about a nuclear holocaust. Israelis don't think about nuclear war that way either, nor do Hezbollah's opponents in Lebanon. The same is almost certainly true of the millions of Iranian citizens who brave beatings, arrest, and worse to yell "death to the dictator" in the streets of Tehran.
Posted by: Thrarong Angomons4118 || 11/21/2009 14:01 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under:

#1  For Lebanese.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/21/2009 15:48 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
55[untagged]
3al-Qaeda
3Commies
3TTP
2Palestinian Authority
2Taliban
2al-Qaeda in Pakistan
1Govt of Iran
1Hezbollah
1IRGC

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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2009-11-21
  Nasrallah reelected Hezbollah chief for sixth term
Fri 2009-11-20
  Eight bad boyz dronezapped in N.Wazoo
Thu 2009-11-19
  Pak Talibs say they're in tactical retreat
Wed 2009-11-18
  Mullah Fazlullah escapes to Afghanistan, vows dire revenge™
Tue 2009-11-17
  Pirates seize NKor tanker crew
Mon 2009-11-16
  Yemen, Saudi pound Houthi positions, nab sorcerer
Sun 2009-11-15
  Syrian carrying $880,000, Hezbollah secret decoder ring nabbed
Sat 2009-11-14
  Russia kills 20 militants in Chechnya
Fri 2009-11-13
  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Be Sent to New York for Trial
Thu 2009-11-12
  Hasan Charged With 13 Counts of Premeditated Murder
Wed 2009-11-11
  John Allen Muhammad executed
Tue 2009-11-10
  North and South Korean navies 'exchange fire'
Mon 2009-11-09
  Police recover 60,000 kgs of explosives, 6 held
Sun 2009-11-08
  Abbas threatens to dismantle PA, declare peace process failed
Sat 2009-11-07
  Saudi armored force crosses into Yemen to fight Houthis


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