Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."
Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY Â… coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."
OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?
In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an endÂ…leading into the next ice age."
You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.
In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines.
#2
In the late 50s into the the ealy 70s every fatality in a school fire was given maximum media coverage, so a push to fireproof every school was started unfortunately they used asbestos and we spent the next 20 years removing it.
What are our job prospects? The problem in the job market going forward is not so much layoffs in the private sector, which are abating, but a lack of hiring. The federal stimulus program is offset by the estimate that there will be a 2009 budget shortfall for states, cities, counties, and school districts in the range of an astonishing $250 billion. Since virtually all states and cities have to run balanced budgets, the result will be reduced services, layoffs, and tax hikes. As Harold Meyerson points out in the Washington Post, this will reduce net government spending to boost the economy to approximately 1 percent of gross domestic product, thus diminishing the effectiveness of the government's efforts to combat the recession. And
There is a major credit crunch constraining consumer spending and squeezing small businesses. There is virtually a total freeze in credit for small businesses. This is particularly ominous because small start-ups provide most of the economy's new jobs. If these businesses can't keep credit lines open, those jobs simply disappear.
there is a major credit crunch constraining consumer spending and squeezing small businesses. There is virtually a total freeze in credit for small businesses. This is particularly ominous because small start-ups provide most of the economy's new jobs. If these businesses can't keep credit lines open, those jobs simply disappear. All this is reflected in cutbacks in the number of credit cards, credit lines, and loans from small banks. Meanwhile, the number of personal credit cards for consumers is down by 150 million, and personal credit lines have been reduced by $500 billion, from $1.3 trillion to $800 billion. This trend is expected to continue. Consumer spending is off 12 percent per shopping trip. Consumers are simply not buying expensive goods; they hunt for bargains. This in turn is punishing for many small businesses with small margins.
Medium-size businesses are constrained by the risk-analysis lending of the financial world, which prefers to lend to large businesses that are deemed more creditworthy. But while these big businesses have access to financing, they are holding back in hiring because of anxiety over the Obama administration's policies on such matters as increased healthcare costs, higher taxes, more corporate regulations, and disaffecting labor policies.
The result is a new business attitude and a business model that focus less on revenue growth and more on that part of the businesses that executives know they can control: their costs. This means cutting personnel (and also advertising) to improve operating margins and reflects their lack of confidence in the growth of the economy.
The consequence is that the U.S. economy, which was for decades the greatest job creation machine in the world, is taking longer and longer to replace the jobs lost in the recession.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it took as little as one year from the end of a recession to add back the lost jobs. After an eight-month downturn that ended in March of 1991, jobs came back in 23 months. After the downturn from the dot-com bust in 2001, it took 38 months. This time, it could take five years or more to recover all of the 8 million-plus jobs lost since the "Great Recession" began.
Employment will continue to fall into 2010, and perhaps through it. If the jobless rate peaks at around 11 percent, we will be lucky to begin a proper jobs recovery before the end of 2010.
What accounts for the growing lag times? Fundamentally, it is that households and businesses are stepping back from spending levels that were artificially pumped up by debt. American consumers realize they had been on a binge. The ratio of consumer debt to the nation's GDP rose to 97 percent in the first quarter of this year, up from 45 percent in 1975. Every dollar that scared consumers save is one less for consumption and output.
Then there are all those young people just entering the labor market. To keep the jobless rate from rising, the United States needs to add a net 150,000 jobs a month. No one expects we will generate anywhere near that growth.
Furthermore, in the past decade, globalization and deregulation have forced companies to focus far more on productivity and on controlling costs. This means they seek to produce far more with the workers they have. Simultaneously, factory automation is wiping out assembly-line work, and information technology is making many white- and pink-collar jobs extraneous. Finally, companies are moving operations abroad to take advantage of cheaper labor in places like China and India. American workers are working harder, given their concern over job losses that have averaged 135,000 a month for the past three months. That's better than the 740,000 jobs lost in January, but it is still relatively high at this point in a recession.
We must face the hard fact that many of the lost jobs are gone forever. In this cycle, 56 percent of the currently unemployed have permanently lost their jobs, according to Ned Davis Research. These people have lost their jobs because plants have closed, work has moved overseas, or companies have gone out of business. This compares with an earlier peak in 1982 and 1991 of 43 percent.
#3
The jobs are gone period. Production now will go to wherever the costs are cheapest and as long as government makes business pay for everything. This covers anything. Data entry of all sorts, labor will be flex time to use you when needed. Government is at least 30 years behind the times. Government will be the only ones offering full time work with all the perks like 20 year employment. The high income earners are going bankrupt at a very high rate now and the middle class is disappearing. So what is left are allot of low income consumers purchasing the cheapest of everything. 70% of GNP gone, already people can only purchase cheapest concrete coffins or cremation because of money problems. One thought though the state will not leave you laying around to stink up the place should you take that route. Frugal MC Doogle
#4
The lowest cost place to produce a product is right next to where it will be sold. The US is now a higher cost place to manufacture because of stuff like the stimulous package. It raises the cost of manufacture but is 100% wasteful. FDR's stimulous didn't work any better.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/06/2009 22:27 Comments ||
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Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was being faithful to his creed when he declared, “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.” Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a fascist Sunni imam with a huge following among those who subscribe to the Muslim Brotherhood’s antediluvian worldview, was more to the point when he thundered at an event organised by London’s then Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, “The West may have the atom bomb, we have the human bomb.” Sheikh Qaradawi, who is of Egyptian origin, frequently exhorts Muslims not to rest till they have “conquered Christian Rome” and believes “throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler”. Islamic schools in Britain funded by Saudi Arabia use textbooks describing Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs”. Theo Van Gogh, who along with writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali produced Submission, a film on the plight of Muslim women under sharia’h, was shot dead by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, in Amsterdam. Rallies by radical Islamists, which were once rare, are now a common feature in European capitals with banners and placards denouncing democracy as the ‘problem’ and Islam as the ‘solution’.
Such crude though accurate assertions of Islamism, coupled with the relentless jihad being waged overtly — exemplified by the London Underground bombings and the riots in Parisian suburbs — and covertly as exposed by Channel 4’s stunning investigation in its Dispatches programme titled ‘Undercover Mosque’, have now begun to raise hackles in Europe. The first signs of an incipient backlash came in the form of French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding a ban on the burqa (the sharia’h-imposed hijab is already banned at public schools in France). Any doubts that may have lingered about Europe’s patience with Islam’s rage boys running thin have been removed by last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland where people have voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets which are no longer seen to be representing faith. For 57.5 per cent of Swiss citizens, the minaret, an obligatory adjunct to a mosque which is used by the muezzin to call the faithful to prayers five times a day, is now a “political symbol against integration”. They view each new minaret as marking the transmogrification of Christian Europe into Islamic Eurabia. The Islamic minaret, according to Swiss People’s Party legislator Ulrich Schluer, has come to represent the “effort to establish sharia’h on European soil”. Hence the counter-effort to ban their construction.
Last Sunday’s referendum and the massive vote against Islamic minarets is by no means an unexpected development, as is being pretended by Islamists and those who find it fashionable to defend Islamism or are scared of taking a stand lest they be accused of Islamophobia. Resentment against assertive political Islam has been building up in Switzerland for almost a decade, triggered by refugees from Yugoslavia’s many civil wars seeking to irreversibly change the Swiss way of life to suit their twisted notions of Islam’s supremacy. For the past many years the Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, both avowedly right-of-centre organisations, have been trying to initiate an amendment to Article 72 of Switzerland’s Constitution to include the sentence, “The building of minarets is prohibited.” After doing the cantonal rounds, both the parties set up a joint Egerkinger Committee in 2007 to take their campaign to the federal level. The November 29 referendum is the outcome of that campaign.
The resultant vote — 57.5 per cent endorsing the proposed amendment to the Constitution with 42.5 opposing it — provides some interesting insights. For instance, the Swiss Government and Parliament, which are opposed to the amendment, clearly suffer from a disconnect with the Swiss masses. The voting pattern also shows that the spurious ‘cosmopolitan spirit’ of Zurich, Geneva and Basel, where people voted against the ban by a narrow margin, is not shared by most Swiss. The initiative has got 19.5 of the 23 cantonal votes — Basel city Canton, with half-a-vote and the largest Muslim population in Switzerland, barely defeated the initiative with 51.61 per cent people voting against it. This only goes to show that the Left-liberal intelligentsia may dominate television studio debates, as is often seen in our country, but it neither influences public opinion nor persuades those whose perception of the reality is not cluttered by bogus ‘tolerance’ of the intolerant.
Daniel Pipes, who is among the few scholars of Islam not scared to be labelled an ‘Islamophobe’, is of the view that the Swiss vote “represents a turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of Swiss who voted on Sunday explicitly expressed anti-Islamic sentiments potentially legitimates such sentiments across Europe and opens the way for others to follow suit”. As always, Pipes is prescient. An opinion poll conducted by the French Institute for Public Opinion after the Swiss referendum shows 46 per cent of French citizens are in favour of banning the construction of minarets, 40 per cent support the idea, while 14 per cent are indecisive. “That it was the usually quiet, low profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring, neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their vote’s impact,” says Pipes. The post-referendum opinion poll in France shows that one in two French citizens would not only like to see minarets banned, but along with them mosques, too.
Yet, it may be too early to suggest that the tide of Islamism will now have to contend with the fury of a backlash. Governments and organisations that find merit in toeing the line of least resistance have reacted harshly to the Swiss vote; rather than try and understand why more and more people are beginning to loathe, if not hate, Islamism, a case is being made all over again for the need to be tolerant with those whose sole desire is to subjugate the world to Islam. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, who is yet to utter a word about the suppression of freedom and denial of dignity in Islamic countries or the shocking violation of human rights by jihadis, has been scathing in her response, describing the Swiss vote as “a discriminatory, deeply divisive and thoroughly unfortunate step”. The Organisation of Islamic Conference has warned that the vote will “serve to spread hatred and intolerance towards Muslims”. The OIC’s complaint would carry credibility if it were to demand tolerance towards non-Muslims in its member-countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and denounce Islam’s preachers of hate.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/06/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
oddly enough minarets were not a feature of Islam
until the Omayyad dynasty copied this feature from church architecture; at the time a number of imams pointed to Muhammad's criticism of ostentatious buildings but they were put to death, bought off or put in prison and the minarets went up
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/06/2009 0:35 Comments ||
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#2
Sooner or later, a man gets tired of trying to control a mad dog with a rolled newspaper.
#3
ION TOPIX > DAILY TIMES.PK > [LIBYA'S Ldr Moamer Qaddafi]: SWISS "MAFIA" INVITES AL QAEDA HITS/STRIKES AGZ EUROPE WITH MINARET BAN ["The Kolonel" = Uncle Moamar belabels Swiss Govt = the "Mafia of the World"]??? BAN proves Swizterland hates Muslims-Islam ergo Radical Islamists-Jihadists may call for JIHAD AGZ SWITZERLAND, EUROPE [recruits for same]???
Perhaps it was inevitable. A man who voted "present" 130 times in the Illinois Legislature couldn't possibly morph into a savvy and decisive leader of the free world in such a short time.
Yet even the pessimists among us are alarmed by the cloud of uncertainty and confusion hanging over the White House. Less than a year on the job, President Obama seems to have run out of both charm and ideas.
The biggest issues facing a president are the economy and national security. They are the whole ballgame. Everything else is detail.
It is now frighteningly obvious Obama doesn't have a clear, understandable strategy on either.
It's one thing to lack confidence in a president's plan. It's quite another when he doesn't have a plan.
He began his hokey job summit by conceding many viewed it as a gimmick, then promptly confirmed those suspicions by saying it was time to put aside partisanship. This from the guy who gives blank checks and high praise to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the most partisan congressional leaders in recent memory.
Obama also said he was open to new ideas, then shot down a corporate executive who complained too many big-government initiatives were creating uncertainty and leading employers to hold off hiring.
The president said it was a "legitimate concern," then plunged ahead by rote to defend health care, carbon taxes and massive education spending -- the very things the exec said were the problem.
Why bother telling him anything? He doesn't listen to what he doesn't want to hear.
He certainly didn't listen to the advisers who warned him his Afghanistan speech would come off as a muddle. It was clear to some in his endless war council that sending 30,000 more troops to fight a war he called vital, then slapping an 18-month limit was by definition a contradiction.
Predictably, liberals blasted the escalation, under which Obama has tripled the American troop presence from about 35,000 to over 100,000. Conservatives blasted the deadline as dangerous to those troops and their mission.
As a fuming Sen. John McCain memorably declared, "You can't have it both ways."
Apparently, you can if you are Barack Obama. At least you think you can.
He is probably taking comfort in a common political conceit. To wit, that bipartisan criticism proves the policy is the sound middle between extremes.
Not this time. This time, the middle path reflects a transparent effort at political compromise that has nothing to do with sound policy. After three months of deliberation, he punted on the central question.
Either the war is vital, or it's not. It can't be vital until an arbitrary deadline.
Two days of hearings on Capitol Hill didn't clarify the issue. Top aides alternately called the deadline flexible and important, leaving the muddle in place.
If Obama has any sense of the dimensions of the doubts he faces, he's keeping it well hidden. He's going to Copenhagen to push for global emissions rules, even as the science consensus he touts was arrived at by cooking the books and squelching dissent.
If he actually succeeded getting the rules in place at home, they would add another burden to job creation and economic growth. Still he plunges forward, unmolested by inconvenient facts.
Take the $787 billion stimulus bill, the economic equivalent of an empty suit. Just in time for the jobs summit, Vice President Joe Biden suddenly declared it saved or created up to 1.6 million jobs. That was a cool million jobs more than claimed before.
On Tuesday night, President Obama addressed the world and announced his decision regarding the conflict in Afghanistan. The New York Times, preempting his remarks, declared that his speech here “may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency.” Soon soldiers will be deployed overseas in pursuance of his new strategy, and the debate has begun throughout the media and political arenas as to whether this decision was the right one.
The President chose the United States Military Academy at West Point as his backdrop carefully and deliberately. As one of AmericaÂ’s great bastions of military power and a crucible for teaching leadership, the cadets and those who work to teach them are among the most affected by his words. Unfortunately, the PresidentÂ’s decision to place his podium at West Point and the reaction of the Corps of Cadets to his speech has been criticized by the media almost as much as the new strategy itself.
Many members of the media condemned the audience for its lack of enthusiasm or emotion in response to what was said, though it is unclear what alternative reaction was expected. To applaud or to boo at the announcements made last night would have both been equally inappropriate for the Corps of Cadets. In fact, the stoic reaction by all ought to leave the world confident in the Corps’ and the military’s ability to be apolitical and execute the policies of the President and Congress with fervor and duty. In an interview posted on Politico, Arron Conley, the President of the Class of 2010, said, “My role is not to advocate policy but to execute it.” No words more accurately describe the mission of the officers in the US Army and those whom they lead.
In the most polemical of criticisms, TV pundit Chris Matthews stated that in coming to West Point, the President made an “interesting” decision speaking at the “the enemy camp.” He said that the crowd exhibited “if not resentment, skepticism” and that it lacked “warmth.” Later acknowledging the potential ramifications of such a controversial statement, he attempted to assuage critics by stating that “maybe earlier tonight I used the wrong phrase, ‘enemy camp,’ but the fact of the matter is that he went up there to a place that’s obviously ‘military.’”
This is perhaps the most vapid response one could muster, especially in an attempt to retract such a scathing statement. The President came to West Point because he desired to address those whom his decision would affect the most. From my experience, West Point cadets are one of the most polite audiences in America. A letter published at National Review Online says it best:
Whether out of professionalism (the vast majority of cadets) or fear of punishment (the rest of them), the Corps of Cadets would never be disrespectful to the Commander-in-Chief. In fact, West Point may be the only place in America where President Obama can simultaneously trash George W. Bush and announce an increase in troop levels in Afghanistan and not be booed from the right or the left.
Indeed, the President came to West Point because of the non-partisan nature of the institution, which truly exemplifies the beauty and finesse of the civil-military relationship. The Corps was reminded to be reserved, restrained, and respectful, as any military audience ought to be.
“Presidents often use the Oval Office or a joint session of Congress for major announcements, but some speeches call for more creative scene-setting. Often, presidential stagecraft is subliminally used to answer critics,” wrote the New York Times in the aftermath of the speech. Past Presidents from Eisenhower to Bush have understood this distinction and chose military instead of political forums to give an address. By coming to West Point, both implicitly in choosing this location and explicitly in his remarks, the President demonstrated his respect for the profession of arms and the sacrifice required of all who serve.
Cadets are trained in acceptance of orders, and the Commander-in-Chief was effectively issuing an order to all who were present. No cadet will be spared from the effects of President Obama’s remarks — his message has been received and internalized by all who were present in Eisenhower Hall. I am humbled by the President’s decision to announce his new strategy at my school and completely reject the notion of any who suggest that West Point is in any way “the enemy camp.” The enemy camps are in Helmand province, where soldiers are currently engaged in the President’s mission.
As a member of the Class of 2010, I am preparing to graduate and utilize the skills and lessons that West Point has taught me to join those deployed and contribute to the Afghanistan conflict. I am confident that my classmates all feel similarly, and it will be an honor to serve beside them.
Ben Salvito is a cadet at West Point and is majoring in International Law. He will graduate in May 2010 as an aviator.
What are the global warming grunts going to do now that the Apostles of the Holy Church of Climatology have been busted for cooking the "truth" (I believe the exact word they used was "tricking" us) so that we the sheeple would step-n-fetch to their Chicken Little crap?
What will chunky Al Gore do seeing that he has officially slammed into a veritable inconvenient truth? I hear that Gore hasn't been this gauche since he was busted in 2001 by Warren Christopher while lip-synching to "Dancin' With Myself" in the Lincoln Bedroom wearing only Tipper's pantyhose, Madonna's snow cone bra, and Janet Reno's glasses.
This just in! NewsBusters reports that Al Gore has just cancelled his $1,200 per person December 16th Climate Change blah blah blah speech in Copenhagen. Come on, Al, don't quit now. It's just about to get good. And there will always be plenty of Euro-tools who'll continue to buy your trumped-up, utterly specious green hash gobbledygook. Cowboy up, sister.
You and I both know that Judas Priest Albert Gore, facts be damned, will never recant but will instead retreat in a recalcitrant manner deeper into Hollywood weirdness where the global warming Kool Aid runs like Tiger Woods did from his angry wife with a 3 iron. Trust me.
As John Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show this week, oh the irony that the Internet Al invented has debunked his global warming bunkum. Christmas came early this year for me! Yes it did. Pay attention, kiddies: You're viewing history in the making. Yep, little children, the Climavangelists' attempt to hoodwink our planet will make your history books. Correction: that would be the homeschoolers' history books. But I digress.
Back to the modus operandi of the tree humpers. Here's what the greenies will do now even though they know they've been had: They'll try to kill the news, and if that doesn't work they'll attempt to kill the messenger as they plug their ears, stomp their feet, and keep believing their goofy gospel of green. They have no other recourse as they have worked too hard for this to be true.
In addition, for the power brokers of this hot earth heresy there is just way, way too much money to lose and control to be forfeited for them to concede that their leaders have been lying SOBs.
Nor should you expect the lower level hairy-legged earth girl to bail out of her tree, cease to drop acid, stop wearing hemp and assimilate into reality anytime soon just because she got fish slapped with truth. These green gals will, one and all, Jim Jones this thing to the bitter end and maintain their global warming course right through the coming ice age. Hail hot mother earth!
Yep, since the revealing of the egregious climate con job discovered in the email exchanges with "scientists" at the University of East Anglia and the subsequent resignations of a couple of their glory boys, Climavangelism and Climavangelists have fallen on tough times. Kinda like ACORN has. Maybe, like ACORN, the Climate Change/Global Warming reality stylists could change their name. Yeah, that's it! I hear ACORN is going to fly under the new moniker "Societal Assistance Through Action Now," or "SATAN" for short.
As you can tell, I truly don't give a rat's backside what Al Gore and his warm earth whores do in light of being lied to, but I do care what normal, non-brainwashed droogies do in lieu of this academic Ponzi scheme. I say a little rebellion is in order seeing how these clowns have sought to control our lives and milk our wallets in one of the greatest scientific scams in the last few centuries.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 11:30 ||
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Don't fret. Many religions thrive with a little persecution. Really gets the fervor up. The Church of the Immaculate Global Warming might just come out of this OK.
#1
I was just thinking about this. But I had fingered the Chinese, it serves their purposes. The tranzis are going to try to use Copenhagen to enslave the whole world.
#5
I just don't see the Russians or Chinese doing this when they could sit back and watch the West hobble itself if they just laid low. Heck either could commit to any change they wanted, cook the books or just ignore their promises later. The west would still dutifully try to do what they promised and screw their economies.
I think this was an internal leak. Someone knew it was bunk, knew the bunk was being used to justify things that would destroy economies but still couldn't do so publicly for fear of eco-peer pressure.
#6
I think you can probably rule out any of the climatologists. You would think that the millions of dollars invloved in the grants would in Darwinian fashion attract a high enough caliber crank to fiddle data in Minitab with a high enough quailty result to prevent forensic hobbiests from blowing their scam apart.
Ward Churchill would have a better chance at hacking a server than a cosmetolegist climatologist.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/06/2009 22:05 Comments ||
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#7
No hack. The whistleblower got frustrated when his leak to the BBC went unanswered. Lacking his supposed journo shield, he uploaded it on an obscure Russian server via Tor, and dropped the url on several of the rejectionist blogs.
The file was very carefully assembled by someone who knew exactly what he wanted. I'm thinking it might even have been a secret backup of a bunch of files that were deleted pending FOI.
#1
I can simplify what has happened to science to the fact that they have lost their moral compass. So much so, that many scientists even cringe and shrink from the very idea of morality, thinking of it as little more than an oppressive bond on scientific advancement.
Worse, some now actively seek to violate any moral or ethical boundary on principle. This leads almost exclusively to dehumanization in any form they can imagine. Dr. Mengele becomes the role model.
In graphic and real terms, it debases science, because it is not scientific. Instead it relies on whim and prejudice for its ends. A superb example was that scientific meeting in Texas, in which a scientist proposed that the death of the majority of mankind, by whatever means, would be a good thing.
Based on the arbitrary belief that mankind is overpopulated, flavored with any number of base prejudices against other races and peoples, looking at humans as no more valuable than an unwanted fungal culture in a Petri dish.
Most of all, an arrogant belief that they are "above the fray", "homo superior" above the mere mortals they so despise, by virtue of an academic degree.
Not ironically, in person, it was discovered that the vast majority of them question whether they deserved their degree in the first place, feeling unqualified for it and their eventual employment.
So feelings of inferiority translated to feelings of superiority, and stripped of any morality. What a screwed up world view.
[Asharq al-Aswat] In just one week, representatives of Hamas met with the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut, whilst in Damascus on Thursday the deputy chief of the Hamas politburo Musa Abu Marzook met with the Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
In Lebanon, the reason given for Hezbollah's meeting with Hamas, according to a Hezbollah statement, was to study Palestinian-Lebanese relations and "the importance for the coming stages to witness the resumption of Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue in the spirit of the joint interest to build the best relations that meet the common interests of both peoples."
For his part, Abu Marzook told our newspaper that his meeting with Jalili was "normal and within the context of meetings of [Hamas] movement officials with the Iranian delegations that visit Damascus." He refused to discuss whether this meeting took place at the request of the Iranian official or Hamas, saying "regardless [of this]...the meeting took place." Abu Marzook added sarcastically that "the meeting was political not nuclear."
The natural question here is why are these actions and meetings taking place now between Iran and its supporters, whether Hezbollah or Hamas. However before we ask this question we must look at an important point; Iran and its supporters are continuing to marginalize the state on account of these parties [Hamas and Hezbollah]. On one hand, we see Hezbollah discussing relations or Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue at the same time that there is still a lot of debate about Hezbollah's role and its arms within Lebanon itself. So how can Hezbollah, or its leader Hassan Nasrallah, speak on behalf of Lebanon? Where are the [Lebanese] President and Prime Minister? On the other hand, why is there also persistence to further marginalize the Palestinian Authority? The same applies to the meeting in Damascus between Jalili and Abu Marzook, which confirms that Iran and its supporters are continuing to marginalize the role of Arab states and governments.
From here we can come back to the main question; why are these actions between Iran and its supporters in the region -- Hamas and Hezbollah -- taking place now?
The obvious answer is that Iran is purposefully uniting the ranks of its supporters in the region in preparation for the coming days, especially since the negotiations between the West and Iran over the Iranian nuclear file is beset with difficulties, and it has become clear that Iran has been shocked by some of the positions taken by international parties such as Russia and China. Iran, therefore, wants to reorganize and unify the ranks of the fronts that it hopes to use in the coming days, and these are Iran's Lebanese and Gazan fronts. This is why we are seeing these actions [now].
However with the incident of the [explosion] of the Iranian pilgrims' bus in Damascus, and despite the Syrian denials that this was not a terrorist attack, it is important that we ask whether there is a party that is moving to strike the Iranian efforts to unify the ranks of its supporters in the region, whether [these supporters] are Hamas or Hezbollah, especially as we still do not know who the buses were carrying in the first place.
What I want to say is that the actions of Iran and its supporters in our region suggests that we are approaching impending crises in this very region of crises and at the hands of the same perpetrators, namely Hamas and Hezbollah, and the same guide, namely Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
But, but, but, I thought that it's all about the oppression of Palestinians by the illegal Zionist entity?
Probably because we non-Muslims are better at not getting killed -- witness all the plots broken up by arrests here after having been watched and listened to for months or even more than a year.
#1
Discounted in the end for lack of neutrality, but a good article. I wonder what the Muzzy on Mussy stat would be? This does not take into account things like Iraq invading Kuwait or the war in Yemen, the Sudan, and other muzzy on Muzzy wars. It would be interesting to see the last 100 year comparison between Muzzy on Muzzy wars and Christians on Christians.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/06/2009 11:41 Comments ||
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#2
I'm surprised it's that low. IIRC, it was more like 20:1 in Iraq.
Of course, it all depends on how you define "infidel".
Posted by: Fozen Al ||
12/06/2009 13:18 Comments ||
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#3
it all depends on how you define "infidel". Actually, it all depends on how Muslims define "infidel".
When the violence really surged 5X in Iraq, it was Shiites doing most of it. Only then did the Sunni tribes realize they were going to be cleansed (at best) or genocided by the Shiites that they sided w/ us to kill/throw out the jihadis.
Posted by: ed ||
12/06/2009 14:13 Comments ||
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I don't know what the big deal about tattoos is. When somebody walks in with a tattoo and an attitude connected to that tattoo, then that may be one thing, but usually it's not the case. Until someone does some pure science on this, I wouldn't worry about it.
One week after the Air Force adopted a strict prohibition of tattoos on the "saluting arm," the new policy has been scrapped.
A spokeswoman for the Air Force Recruiting Service in San Antonio, Christa D'Andrea, said the regulation that took effect Nov. 25 has been dropped and the entire tattoo policy will be reviewed.
"It's an effort to standardize the policy for all members of the Air Force," D'Andrea said.
As many as 17,000 recruits who joined under the delayed entry program were potentially affected by the ban on right-arm body art. The Air Force said it did not want tattoos to be seen when an airman salutes. The updated policy also prohibited tattoos on either hand.
This week some recruits were told they had been disqualified under the new rule even though their tattoos had been approved under previous, more lenient guidelines.
The tattoo ban was first reported Monday by News10 and generated national attention and controversy.
D'Andrea acknowledged media coverage played a role in the decision to reconsider the tattoo crackdown. "It was unfortunate there were recruits caught in the middle," she said.
Enlistees who were not able to begin basic training this week at Lackland Air Force base because of the new tattoo policy would be rescheduled for future dates, D'Andrea said.
#1
...The USAF has been...well...slightly schizo about its tattoo policies for years now. USAF Recruiters are and have been forbidden to have any visible tattoos (as its a special duty assignment, they can enforce the heck outta that one). And since the mid-90s they've been bouncing back and forth between none or some. My guess is that somebody at HQ USAF saw a tat they didn't like and pulled a few strings to get AFMPC (the folks that make said regs) to push it out. The Chief of Staff, General Schwartz, probably never even saw the damned thing until it started causing problems.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/06/2009 17:27 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Some time ago, the Military decided that there were plenty of reasons that tatoos were not a good thing.
Firstly, the health issue. Losing soldiers to disease due to un-cleaned inking needles.
Secondly, some were scrawling their body with unit numbers or slogans which in turn made it dangerous during capture. This also goes with the fact that their loved ones may be identified by the ink.
Then there is the fact that gang members were entering the military with their gang tatoos could be idenitified that way by opposing gangs and internal strife would ensue.
Lastly, the command thought of it an unprofessional or low life thing to do. I believe the furor started in the 70's in order to reform the way the military was looked at.
I knew a troop once that tatooed his social security number and numerically precise bar-code on many parts of his body so they could tell who just got blown up by an IED.
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