Hi there, !
Today Wed 07/12/2006 Tue 07/11/2006 Mon 07/10/2006 Sun 07/09/2006 Sat 07/08/2006 Fri 07/07/2006 Thu 07/06/2006 Archives
Rantburg
531698 articles and 1855977 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 68 articles and 407 comments as of 14:03.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT    Local News       
Hamas gov't calls for halt to fighting
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
2 00:00 Nimble Spemble [] 
3 00:00 Floluting Greretch3583 [] 
1 00:00 JosephMendiola [] 
4 00:00 Tony (UK) [] 
5 00:00 Frank G [] 
8 00:00 at [] 
2 00:00 JosephMendiola [1] 
4 00:00 anonymous2u [] 
18 00:00 Thrineth Omineter2945 [1] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
1 00:00 Sock Puppet of Doom [1]
13 00:00 JosephMendiola [1]
15 00:00 Cyber Sarge []
135 00:00 Swamp Blondie [1]
5 00:00 xbalanke []
3 00:00 Nimble Spemble []
6 00:00 Mike Kozlowski []
0 []
0 []
0 []
4 00:00 Verlaine in Iraq []
0 []
2 00:00 Glenmore []
0 []
2 00:00 Alaska Paul []
7 00:00 Gleresh Whomort8073 []
2 00:00 john [1]
0 []
1 00:00 Fordesque []
0 []
11 00:00 new []
12 00:00 anymouse [2]
2 00:00 WhiteCollarRedneck []
0 []
2 00:00 newc []
Page 2: WoT Background
0 []
0 []
5 00:00 Sherry [1]
9 00:00 Jackal []
6 00:00 Quana [1]
0 []
9 00:00 Frank G []
2 00:00 Nimble Spemble []
0 []
3 00:00 Frank G []
0 [1]
6 00:00 GORT []
0 []
5 00:00 Theresh Thrinenter5301 []
1 00:00 Gleresh Whomort8073 [1]
0 []
9 00:00 Alaska Paul []
2 00:00 trailing wife []
3 00:00 bigjim-ky []
5 00:00 eLarson []
Page 3: Non-WoT
19 00:00 Monsieur Moonbat [2]
7 00:00 Frank G [1]
6 00:00 Mike []
15 00:00 john []
10 00:00 Captain America []
2 00:00 Besoeker []
0 []
0 []
2 00:00 bigjim-ky []
1 00:00 Penguin []
1 00:00 bigjim-ky []
Page 5: Russia-Former Soviet Union
3 00:00 red river []
2 00:00 bigjim-ky []
4 00:00 Penguin []
Britain
The Foreign Office ought to be serving Britain, not radical Islam
Nick Cohen, The Observer

On Tuesday, three days before the anniversary of the 7/7 atrocities, the Prime Minister spoke simply and well to the Commons: 'If we want to defeat extremism, we have got to defeat its ideas and we have got to address the completely false sense of grievance against the West.'

As we are fighting a battle of ideas between democracy and totalitarian religion as much as a military campaign, this was an obvious truth, albeit one that could do with greater repetition.

'I am probably not the person to go into the Muslim community,' he continued with realistic modesty. 'It's better that we mobilise the Islamic community itself to do this.' And again, his belief that the majority of Britain's Muslims don't want Islamist terror was no more than a statement of the obvious. A poll in the Times last week included the alarming finding that one in 10 British Muslims regarded the murderers of 7 July as 'martyrs', but also reported that 56 per cent said the government has not done enough to combat extremism, compared with 49 per cent of the general population.

The prudent as well as the principled position is to prefer those who don't support 'martyrs' to those who do; to show solidarity with those who support democratic values rather than those who don't. How hard a choice is that for a British government?

An easy enough decision for Tony Blair to make, it turns out, but a surprisingly difficult one for his unmanageable Foreign Office. This week will generate a lot of publicity for the longest and most revealing series of leaks from a government department I've seen in my career. For months, Martin Bright, the political editor of the New Statesman, has been receiving confidential Foreign Office documents almost daily with his morning post.

On Friday at 7.30pm, Channel 4 will screen a documentary by Bright, Who Speaks for Muslims, which shows how the Foreign Office views the Islamist far right as potential allies.

To accompany the programme, the Policy Exchange think-tank will publish 'When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries: the British State's Flirtation with Radical Islamism', a pamphlet stuffed with enough state secrets to induce coronary arrests in previously healthy MI5 officers.

They describe the FO's attempts to woo the Arab Muslim Brotherhood, whose closest allies in Britain are the Muslim Association of Britain, and its south Asian counterpart, Jamaat-e-Islami, whose supporters are at the top of the Muslim Council of Britain. The mandarins reason that these groups are not part of al-Qaeda, which is true; that they are growing in power, which is regrettably true as well; and that they are composed of reasonable men with whom Britain can do business, which is palpable nonsense.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an imperialist movement that wants to establish a Muslim empire in which laws will come from an early medieval holy book rather than the parliaments elected by mortal men and women. It is sexist because its clerics justify the beating and circumcision of women. It is homophobic because it justifies the execution of homosexuals. And it is psychopathic because it justifies the murders of apostates, any Jew in Israel and any British or American soldier in Iraq.

Angus McKee, of the FO's Middle East and North Africa desk, thinks this gruesome record should be rewarded with large amounts of British taxpayers' money.'Given that Islamist groups are often less corrupt than the generality of the societies in which they operate,' he wrote, 'consideration might be given to channelling aid resources through them, so long as sufficient transparency is achievable.'

And since January 2006, the FO has been engaging with the Muslim Brotherhood abroad while providing free passes for its clerics at home.

Mockbul Ali, its Islamic issues adviser, whom Labour ministers treat with excessive deference, recommends that the brotherhood's favourite theologian, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, should be admitted to Britain, despite his sympathy for the judicial murder of homosexuals and free-thinkers. When Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, an MP in Bangladesh who preaches violent hatred against the West and Hindus, wanted to come to talk to British Muslims, Ali described him as a 'mainstream' figure.

He isn't, he's a fantastically controversial figure among British Bengalis. Bright interviews Bengali leaders who regard him as a malign extremist and cannot understand why the Foreign Office wants him to preach Islamist radicalism to their children.

Nor can a few clear voices in Whitehall. Sir Derek Plumbly, the British ambassador to Egypt and the only diplomat to emerge with credit from the affair, noted that there is no reason to expect that the Muslim Brotherhood will moderate its views because Britain appeases it. His masters confused 'engaging with the Islamic world' with 'engaging with Islamism', and ignored the policies of the Islamist far right as they did it.

In doing so, they abandoned all the Muslims in Britain and the Islamic world who believe in the very values of 'democracy, freedom of expression, respect for human rights' Her Majesty's government is meant to uphold.
Posted by: john || 07/09/2006 16:24 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The British foreign office has long preferred Arabs and Muslims. The royals from all the little kingdoms and satrapys went to the same public schools after all, and they share a similar horror of the unwashed masses. Not to mention the Lawrence of Arabia effect.
Posted by: trailing wife || 07/09/2006 20:58 Comments || Top||

#2  We've got the same problem. They're all bought and paid for.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 07/09/2006 21:11 Comments || Top||


No offence, imam, but we must call it Islamic terror
Posted by: ryuge || 07/09/2006 08:56 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If an iman will not, cannot condem terrorism then he (no female "bishops" in islam) is a terror sympathizer. muslims seem incapable, or unable to condem assault, rape, and murder among other muslims.
Posted by: anymouse || 07/09/2006 10:39 Comments || Top||

#2  That's OK. They make up for it by amping up any perceived insult to Islam or crime commited against a beliver.
Posted by: grb || 07/09/2006 11:35 Comments || Top||

#3  It might take one more good one for the Brits to go balls out and squash those roaches.

Too bad.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 07/09/2006 12:50 Comments || Top||

#4  It'll take more than one attack I'm afraid bigjim, maybe 3 more. Then, God knows what will happen.
Posted by: Tony (UK) || 07/09/2006 16:04 Comments || Top||


Malkovich on Fisk and Galloway
This paragraph, from an interview article about John Malkovich, brought a smile to my face:

It was typical, for instance, that he has never explained his hatred of Robert Fisk, the Independent's Middle East correspondent. At the Cambridge Union in 2002, Malkovich was asked whom he would like to fight to the death. He said George Galloway and Fisk, adding: 'I'd rather just shoot them.' It was a throwaway remark but Fisk blew it up into a major story with an article entitled 'Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?' The trouble was that nobody answered the question, so I asked it now: why did he want to kill Fisk? 'I hate somebody who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern expert who thinks Jesus was born in Jerusalem. I hate what I consider his vile anti-semitism.' Anything else? His sanctimoniousness perhaps? 'You're doing well so far! I'm a [Christopher] Hitchens fan myself. But no one has thinner skins than journalists, in my experience, and I come from a family of them [his mother owns the Benton Evening News in Illinois, his brother edits it]. They can dish it out but they can't take it. But the reason I don't like the topic, why I don't really say anything about a whiner like Fisk, is it gives them more oxygen.'
Posted by: ryuge || 07/09/2006 03:36 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well done, that man!
Posted by: Flaigum Whelet4630 || 07/09/2006 4:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Malkovich! Malkovich, malkovich Malkovich!
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 07/09/2006 4:17 Comments || Top||

#3  he has never explained his hatred of Robert Fisk

The self-evident requires explanation?
Posted by: Kirk || 07/09/2006 5:30 Comments || Top||

#4  I liked him as an actor. Now I know why.
Posted by: phil_b || 07/09/2006 5:43 Comments || Top||

#5  As far as George's concerned you can join the queue, Mr Malkovich.
Posted by: Howard UK || 07/09/2006 5:56 Comments || Top||

#6  Take Fisk types back to their roots, and you will find some incident of infantile stubbornness that spawned anti-semiticism. It is so central to their character, that they couldn't shake it if they wanted to. Fisk, Galloway, Juan Cole, John Esposito, Yvonne Riddley, ad nauseum, hate Jews at their core. Everything else they do, only reinforces that dogma.
Posted by: Anginens Threreng8133 || 07/09/2006 6:53 Comments || Top||

#7  Being John Malkovich...

is apparently an awesome thing to be, considering he works in Hollywierd.
Posted by: Oldspook || 07/09/2006 17:27 Comments || Top||

#8  "There is no Keyser Soze!"


Posted by: at || 07/09/2006 20:28 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Kim's Choice--and Bush's
What price will the North Korean dictator pay?
by William Kristol

"There's a choice for [Kim Jong Il] to make. He can verifiably get rid of his weapons programs and stop testing rockets, and there's a way forward for him to help his people. I believe it's best to make that choice clear to him with more than one voice, and that's why we have the six-party talks. And now that he has defied China and Japan and South Korea and Russia and the United States--all of us said 'don't fire that rocket.' He not only fired one, he fired seven. Now that he made that defiance, it's best for all of us to go to the U.N. Security Council and say loud and clear, 'Here are some red lines.' And that's what we're in the process of doing."
--President Bush, at a press conference in Chicago, July 7, 2006

There's a choice for him to make? Hasn't Dear Leader made his choice? All of us said don't fire that rocket. He fired seven rockets. As President Bush put it, "he made that defiance."

Having made it, what price will the North Korean dictator pay? Well, five of the six parties to the six-party talks are going to go the Security Council to set forth some new "red lines." (They'll be more like pink lines, thanks to the Russians and Chinese playing their usual role at the U.N.) And when Dear Leader again chooses defiance-what then? Some new mauve lines?

The red lines, pink lines, and mauve lines of U.S. foreign policy seem increasingly to be written in erasable ink. What was "unacceptable" to President Bush a week ago (a North Korean missile launch) has been accepted. In retrospect, according to a draft Security Council resolution, the missile launch turns out merely to have been "regrettable." Our assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Christopher Hill, visited China at the end of last week, where he was rebuffed by Beijing on sanctions for Pyongyang. He settled for an agreement that we should all return to the six-party talks.

China, it bears emphasizing, has refused to use its leverage to change Pyongyang's behavior (North Korea continues to function only because China provides most of its energy). Yet President Bush praised China last Friday as "a good partner to have at the table with us." Japan, with a ringside seat for the missile launches, looks on in horror, seemingly alone in actually being provoked by the North Korean "provocation."

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, at the center of our global war against jihadist terrorists, Iran, perhaps the prime state sponsor of terror, is sitting pretty. The pursuit of nuclear weapons by the clerical regime in Iran has also been deemed "unacceptable" by the president. Yet, as the Iranian regime has resumed uranium enrichment, threatened to obliterate other nations, and scorned offers to negotiate, it has been rewarded with gestures by us that certainly seem to be concessions. Now, watching North Korea, the mullahs must be feeling even less intimidated. And despite Syrian and Iranian complicity in killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq--detailed by our generals--neither has paid a price.

The one "red line" the president seems to be holding to is that we will not cut and run in Iraq. But even there, there seems to be no interest in rethinking a counter-insurgency strategy (or nonstrategy) that is not working. Indeed, the president took pains at his press conference Friday to reiterate that he would not insist on changes: "General Casey will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there. . . . I told him this, I said, 'You decide, General.'" So we have a Rumsfeld-Casey decision to plan for a not-too-embarrassing withdrawal from Iraq, rather than a Bush decision to insist on a strategy for victory in Iraq.

But hey, we're in sync with the EU-3 and the U.N.-192. And our secretary of state--really, the whole State Department--is more popular abroad than ever. Too bad the cost has been so high: a decline in the president's credibility around the world and sinking support for his foreign policy at home.

A few weeks ago, Michael Rubin lamented in this magazine that Bush's second term foreign policy had taken a Clintonian turn. But to be Clintonian in a post-9/11 world is to invite even more danger than Clinton's policies did in the 1990s. The real choice isn't Kim Jong Il's. It's President Bush's.
Posted by: ryuge || 07/09/2006 02:49 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Bear in mind that unlike North Korea, Moud and Radical Iran and are not de facto controlled by Russia-China. Few iff anyone in the USDOD will believe that Kimmie unilater fired these seven missles, against the Sea of Japan = Japan, or agz Hawaii, unless Beijing approved of it first. However, Dubya-Rummy have gotta know that the NK missle threats to Japan-Region may ironically also be the Norkies only bargaining/poker chip this WOT to break free from Beijing, or in the alt to proactively minimize it and put Pyongyang on the LT road to overt sovereignty and independence from Beijing. Dubya > the IRAN = NORTH KOREA SWORD also points against China and Russia-SCO. Slowly but surely, the Commies, Socialists, Anarchists and Radicals, etc are being made to reveal their latent hypocrisies and deceptions.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 07/09/2006 23:50 Comments || Top||

#2  The Truth is out there - it will be found, and will be made known to the world whether the world likes it or not.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 07/09/2006 23:52 Comments || Top||


This time, Crazy Kim has upset the wrong country:
Of the two great fences of the Cold War - the one running through Germany and the one running across Korea - only one now remains. In 1989 Germany was reunified: overnight, the possibility of a lethal war fought over the heart of Europe simply vanished. Yet the division of Korea, between a prosperous South and a pauperised North, remains. So does the danger of war, epitomised by crazy Kim's missiles. Why?

The answer lies in the different paths taken in 1989 by the two great Communist empires, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. There was no counterweight to the collapse of Communism in central and eastern Europe; it was unequivocal. But at the eastern end of Eurasia, the economic ascent of a still-Communist China has more than compensated for the Soviet implosion. And that, more than anything else, explains the present North Korean stalemate.

For it is China, not the United States, that has the power to decide the fate of North Korea. It is China that has consistently propped up the regime's basket-case economy. It is China that has hitherto resisted calls from the United States and Japan for tougher action when Pyongyang has broken its word.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 07/09/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  China's reluctance to restrain N. Korea has always puzzled me. Sure they enjoy keeping S. Korea, Japan, and, especially, the U.S. off balance. And they can claim, even if somewhat implausibly, that they're doing their best to calm the situation.

But they have to know that at some point Japan will have no choice but to become a nuclear power itself, and China's cynical game will come to an unsatisfying end. If Taiwan and S. Korea do so as well, China's failed gamesmanship presents them with a strategic nightmare: surrounded by nuclear-armed regional powers (I include India here) friendly to the U.S. Unless they believe they can play the Putin card, I fail to see how the reward justifies the risk.

The Chinese aren't stupid. Are they miscalculating or have they already lost control over the Norks?
Posted by: Kirk || 07/09/2006 5:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Kirk, I think you are giving the Chinese too much foresight. They assume the International Community(TM) will prevent Japan and possibly SKor and Taiwan going nuclear. If Japan decides it needs to go nuclear, the USA won't stand in the way and the UN will be it's usual impotent self.
Posted by: phil_b || 07/09/2006 5:52 Comments || Top||

#3  Japan of all nations deserves the right to self defense. But only that, self defense. Most people forget or just don't know how xenophobic and classist the Japanese people and society are.

I am hoping they don't feel the need to have their own nuclear deterent, ever.
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 07/09/2006 7:37 Comments || Top||

#4  The Chinese need rogue proxy states to keep other powers off balance.

Their proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to Pakistan and North Korea (who then proliferated them to each other and to other countries) serves their purpose.

They have miscalculated. The transfer of nukes to Pakistan was supposed to contain India and then to lead to a "South Asia Nuclear Free Zone" - mutual disarmament by both India and Pakistan.

Even though both the US and Russia desired it at the time, India said no to this. The Agni-3 test launched today brings Beijing and Shanghai under the gun.

The transfer of missiles to North Korea may also backfire, leading to Japanese rearmament.
Posted by: john || 07/09/2006 7:50 Comments || Top||

#5  I'd not be too disturbed by a nuclear Japan. A balance is needed to the Norks and better Japan than South Korea. Also, when the Koreas re-unite, only a matter of time, it will become even more necessary for Japan to be a balance. Japanese population is not growing and I can't see the Japanese wanting to resurrect the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere when they've already got a satisfactory substitute. The one thing I would worry about is a rebirth of bushido.

There is an alternative, but I don't want to take the thread OT.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 07/09/2006 8:01 Comments || Top||

#6  Recalling that smaller Japan was able to field an Army that occupied basically the most prosperous portion of the mainland, doing anything to get these guys excited again has been a big bloody mistake. The Americans may have no stomach for a confrontation on the mainland, but the Japanese are another subject all together, and gathering an ever more effective regional Star Wars system to offset the Chinese nuke threat.
Posted by: Gleresh Whomort8073 || 07/09/2006 8:45 Comments || Top||

#7  Didn't I read somewhere that Japan, if it wanted to, could become a nuclear power in about 6 months? And I would think that they have the industral base and nuclear power plants and experience to produce a number of weapons very quickly. Far outstripping North Korea (and perhaps gaining on China herself).
Posted by: CrazyFool || 07/09/2006 10:14 Comments || Top||

#8  Post-war Japan has a strong pacifist streak. But I suspect it's rather shallow. Pushing the Japanese too far would be a serious mistake.

The Japanese self-defense force is limited by law to a small fraction of their GDP. However, given the size of the Japanese economy - they still spend $45 billion a year on their military. And their equipment is very modern.
Posted by: DMFD || 07/09/2006 10:40 Comments || Top||

#9  ...Supposedly - and IIRC this is in one of Jim Dunnigan's books - the Japanese may actually have several bombs, but they are disassembled and the parts basically scattered across the country. They DO have a stockpile of satellite boosters - which also double quite nicely as MRBMs.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 07/09/2006 10:47 Comments || Top||

#10  When Japan signed the NPT, it did so with the transfer of some very sensitive tech from the US and France.

What Japan demanded and got was "breakout capability". They have breeder reactors, and commercial scale Plutonium separation and Uranium enrichment plants.

Their plutonium stocks are huge. They have 43 tons of separted plutonium and another 110 tons unseparated in spent fuel.

By comparison, China may have 4 tons of plutonium .

With their scientific and technical base, Japan could design and build sophisticated thermonuclear weapons in a matter of months, if not weeks, after a decision to do so.
Their rocketry is also advanced, so the ICBMs would quickly follow.

Their Pu stockpile could make them the third largest nuclear power in a matter of years with thousand of warheads.

China could never hope to match them...
Posted by: john || 07/09/2006 11:04 Comments || Top||

#11  Kim's outlived his usefulness.
Posted by: Frank G || 07/09/2006 11:07 Comments || Top||

#12  Very interesting, John (#10). Not to be snarky -- I'm genuinely just curious -- what's your source for that info? Pretty sweet.
Posted by: ST || 07/09/2006 12:57 Comments || Top||

#13  It is all open source.

Check out the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" for estimates of Pu stockpiles. It is quite revealing.

Posted by: john || 07/09/2006 13:38 Comments || Top||

#14  The Rokkasho Plutonium separation plant opened a few months ago.
It will be able to separate 5 tons of plutonium per year.

From a 2002 Greenpeace report:

Tokyo, Japan - The statement made Saturday by senior Japanese politician Ichiro Ozawa that Japan could use its commercial plutonium stockpile for making nuclear weapons is further confirmation for Greenpeace of the threat posed by the country's massive plutonium program. The leader of the opposition party Jiyuto (Liberal Party) declared that for Japan, if the military threat posed by China continued to grow, "It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads - we have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads."

In fact, Japan has sufficient plutonium already for more than 7000 nuclear warheads. Currently, Japan has a stockpile of over 38,000 kilograms of plutonium

Posted by: john || 07/09/2006 13:48 Comments || Top||

#15  The problem is if Japan has to build nuke weapons what happens if they start pointing them at us.
Posted by: djohn66 || 07/09/2006 17:11 Comments || Top||

#16  #10 is correct.

People just do not realize what a dangerous situation China is allowing to fester.

They either need to step in and make the Kimregime fall in a direction they desire it to fall, or figure out that when it collapses of its own accord, they will be faced with either a nuclear exchange and a new hot war in Korea in their own back yard (and the concomittant US/Japanese response) -- or else a united NUCLEAR-ARMED Korea that doenst like much anyone in the region.

Either of those results will force greater US presence, and worse for the Chinese, they will force greater Japanese militarism and activity in the region, and will create a nuclear armed Japan.


The ONLY way out of this is for China to force Kim to give up the Nukes and missles, and give him the "Gentle Exile" option to save face after doing so, and allowing a junta to take over and negotiate renification of an eventually *demilitarized* united Korea.

If the Chinese woudl wake up, they'd see this is their only way out.

All the other direction lead to a nuclear armed and miltiarily recharged Japan, and a very war-ready or at-war Korea on their doorstep.


And to be brutally honest, form my time there, I beleive the Japanese to still be capable of some of the worst racism possible - and that it would only take small pushes in the right places to return them to the bushido + racial-superiority mindset that had them nearly destroy the pacific rim countries in the 20th century.

A militarily re-vitalized Japan, nuclear armed, is not in the best interests of the US either. Not in the long run.

Somone needs to tell the Chinese they need to move now, before we all get hurt.

Posted by: Oldspook || 07/09/2006 17:21 Comments || Top||

#17  #10 and #16 are dead-on. As long as the CPC/CCCC refuses to liberalize, the Commies, short of war, cannot realistically hope to par let alone surpass the US-Western democracies until approxi late towards the next century, and thats only assuming that something(s) happens which causes an irreversible decline in the US-West from the [minima = normal] "status quo". The choice for China is the same as for the Cold War USSR - IMPLOSION, vs. WAR, by any and all means. JAPAN = US-EUROS > want democratic profitable econ trade wid China, which they are not going to get unless Beijing liberalizes along Western models and allows more pervasive/intensive levels of private entrepeneurship. Commie micro-management isn't going to get China anywhere close to its desired ambitions or timelines of parity vv the USA, etal.- THE COMMIES KNOW THIS, ERGO COMMIE-MAOIST SUPPORT FOR RADICAL ISLAMIST AND OTHER REGIONAL-GLOBAL TERROR ORGS-NETWORKS. IOW, IFF THE WEST DOESN'T GIVE OR DO WHAT THE COMMIES WANT, THEIR RADICAL PROXIES WILL DESTABILIZE = KILL US, AND IFF THE PROXIES FAIL, ITS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR AFTER YEAR 2015-2020. Iff the Commies-Socies don't rule the world, no one will.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 07/09/2006 23:15 Comments || Top||

#18  17 comments and not one mention of the next trump card we play, and the one nation who has most recently engaged the PRC in armed conflict, and to a standstill, if not better. A nation which strategically needs us far more than we need them, a nation one easy step behind so many of its neighbors and so able to catch up even quicker than the growth of the PRC. The nation that, when added to Japan, Taiwan, SKor, and further out the Phillipines and Australia, essentially seals off the PRC from expansion into the Pacific - making the PRC another landlocked Eurasian power like Russia.

A nation known better as an adjective - quagmire.

Won't that complicate things?
Posted by: Thrineth Omineter2945 || 07/09/2006 23:55 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
When Federal Judges Need To Pack It In
(original opinion)

Lifetime appointment of federal judges needs to be mitigated, when those judges are no longer able to perform their jobs on the bench. A process is needed to retire those who are unwilling to accept that they are no longer capable.

The late Thurgood Marshall is a good example. While his intellectual faculties, never terrific, remained, his bladder and bowel incontinence in his last few years on the bench were offensive to everyone in the room and especially to those justices sitting adjacent to him.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is more to the point. Believed to be suffering from senile dementia, she should no way be permitted to wield national power, much less drive a car, or even be outside without assistance.

Traditionally, such judges were approached by a committee of their peers, and advised to retire gracefully. But today, there is an absence of grace. Federal judges with partisan sensibilities insist on being removed from office only by death.

Without reform, our country is in essence, held hostage to people who are physically incapable or mentally ill, but who insist on making life-or-death decisions about our collective lives.

This impairs an entire branch of government, and is untolerable now as it was when Woodrow Wilson remained President for many months, even though comatose from a stroke.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 07/09/2006 13:07 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Moose-
The problem here - and it's a doozy - is that although Justice Ginsburg may not be 100% (and for the record - I have never agreed with her opinions, but I have always had the highest respect for anyone on the USSC, and Alzheimer's/dementia is a horrible way for someone with that kind of mind to go. I have nothing but sympathy and prayers for her and her family.), the Donks will keep her there until she says/does something so outrageous that the matter can't be avoided. The idea of President Bush appointing a THIRD justice must fill them with horror beyond description.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 07/09/2006 15:17 Comments || Top||

#2  You guys must be too young to remember Justice Douglas' last days. She'll stay on the bench till she breaths her last. No embarassment is sufficient to offset the loss of power.

I suggest that as the President must report on the state of the Union to Congress, a justice be required tomake a televised report to the Senate annually on the State of the Judiciary. The Justice to appear would be the one who least recently appeared, including confirmation hearings.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 07/09/2006 15:35 Comments || Top||

#3  So what, Guliani will nominate her replacement, and the Donks will probably wish they had Bush back.
Posted by: Floluting Greretch3583 || 07/09/2006 19:21 Comments || Top||


Star Dem Muslim Candidate: Scofflaw On Parking Tickets
Keith Ellison is black. Keith Ellison is a black Muslim. Keith Ellison is a black Muslim scofflaw who doesn't pay his parking tickets and is sloppy with paperwork.

And another thing: I hear he is a Muslim.

Some folks seem very worried about the possibility Keith Ellison could become the first black Muslim scofflaw elected to Congress. Decent people are not supposed to thumb their noses at parking tickets until after they get to Congress.

By the way, Ellison is not the same kind of Muslim as Osama bin Laden, even though he and Osama share a shocking disregard for parking tickets. Ellison's problem is that he used to be associated with the Nation of Islam, an American religion led by a man named Louis Farrakhan, who would not know Ellison if he sat next to him on the No. 5 bus.

Somehow, Ellison finds himself condemned as a black American who was upset by the Rodney King verdict, spoke on behalf of accused criminals, and worked as an organizer for the Million Man March that called on black men to take responsibility for their families.

That kind of behavior has to be nipped in the bud...
Posted by: Anginens Threreng8133 || 07/09/2006 03:49 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Powerline has been following Keith Ellison in very detailed reporting. So who is Anginens Threreng8133 and why is he posting this uninformed propaganda on rantburg? Pretending that it's all just racism over a few parking tickets isn't going to wash with the jew-hating, terrorist supporting background of Keith Ellison. We're all infidels to Keith. Doesn't matter what color we are.
Posted by: 2b || 07/09/2006 22:34 Comments || Top||

#2  glad you commented - I was gonna ref Powerline... as usual, I'm too late :-)
Posted by: Frank G || 07/09/2006 22:37 Comments || Top||

#3  2b:
LGF posts verbatim, exemplary of the Moonbat mentality. Know the enemy. Keith Ellison can take a flying carpet to Mecca for all I care. As long as he doesn't make a return trip.

Frank:
You obviously know more than me about this Ellison wacko. Please post something.
Posted by: Anginens Threreng8133 || 07/09/2006 23:14 Comments || Top||

#4  Powerline is up to part 18 in their expose on teh real Keith Ellison - go to their site and search for Ellison. He's a Farrakhan supporter, racist and anti-police, and lying/covering up his background with the willing allies at the Star Trib. DFL? Hell, he's a communist ex-black panther supporter. Totally inappropriate for any position in government
Posted by: Frank G || 07/09/2006 23:40 Comments || Top||

#5  here's their latest
Posted by: Frank G || 07/09/2006 23:40 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
Rockets' Red Glare
By David Warren

With his gift for stating the obvious reasonably truthfully, President Bush told a press conference in Chicago Friday that the U.S. had a "reasonable chance" of shooting down the North Korean Taepongdong-2 launched on the 4th of July, had it not gone haywire just after launch. However, "Our anti-ballistic systems are modest. They are new."

If, as the Aegis trackers indicated by analysing its angle of ascent, the thing was headed to the vicinity of Hawaii, the Americans would certainly have tried to intercept it. The world's leftoids and gliberals could then gloat if they missed, and feign anger if they hit it, for it is a settled principle on that side of the political spectrum that anything the U.S. does to defend itself is warmongering. But sane people are beginning to realize why the U.S. is building anti-ballistic systems, and sane people in Canada should realize why we should be helping.

I have written before about the uselessness of diplomacy in dealing with such as Pyongyang, or Tehran, or Ramallah. Attempts to buy them off with aid and other assuagements only buys time -- for them. Cutting them off has little effect, either, for their own allies quickly fill the gap, as both Saudis and Iranians are now doing for intransigent, terrorist-ruled Palestine, and as China will do for North Korea. But at least it transfers pointless costs.

There is an idiotic notion about, that the North Koreans are isolating themselves by firing rockets. I fear even people in the White House half-believe it. It would be more accurate to say they create crises for a living. They earn their keep by "running interference" on behalf of China, and thus pinning down a great deal of force that is needed to counter the rapid Chinese military build-up, and in particular their thousand-missile threat to Taiwan.

The North Koreans earn hard currency from Iran, the partners and chief sponsors of their missile development programme. For their own safety, Iran and North Korea between them consciously play a game of "monkey in the middle", provoking crises in alternation to distract the U.S. administration back and forth between them.

To a lesser extent, Russia also finds both Iran and North Korea convenient pests for the West, which is why Russia, like China, will consistently employ its veto at the Security Council to prevent any Western action being sanctified there. Thus, taking the matter before the United Nations, as President Bush is promising to do, can achieve nothing more than make the reality of enemy alliances a little clearer, to those who have eyes to see.

In essentials, it is the same story with Hamas in Gaza, which now has longer range Qassam rockets, and has started firing them into the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. At the time of writing, they hadn't killed anyone yet, but sooner or later they will get "lucky". And with the Iranians now doing everything in their power to enhance the military capabilities of both Hamas, and Hezbollah, they should soon have bigger rockets that can reach Haifa and Tel Aviv, and cause real carnage.

What will happen will happen. My guess is that the Israelis will realize they have no choice but to resume their occupation of all three "launching pads" -- Gaza, West Bank, and southern Lebanon. For the near future, the fourth possible launch pad, Syria, can be dealt with as the Israelis did the other day. The IAF sent four F-16s to fly acrobatically low over President Bashir Assad's holiday palace in Latakia (while he was in it), at supersonic speed, using the sonic booms to remind the little rat of his mortality. Well, you could call that a form of diplomacy.

But no one has suggested occupying North Korea. In the absence of reliable, or even much unreliable intelligence, it couldn't be done without risking huge loss of life, mostly in South Korea but possibly also in Japan, as the dying regime flung everything it had at any reachable target. And, as in the Korean War, we would soon find ourselves staring at the Chinese fist beneath the North Korean puppet.

Moreover, even Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon is a holding action; for in the longer run Iran is the launching pad of much greater concern.

So what are we going to do? As far as I can see, we wait for Armageddon, while praying that the regimes in Iran and North Korea may suddenly collapse. I would advise my reader to pray hard.
Posted by: ryuge || 07/09/2006 10:37 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  EMPIRE = SOCIALISM-GOVERNMENTISM-ABSOLUTISM, etc as far as the DemoLeft is concerned. THe other side of the coin is the USA VOLUNTARILY = FORCIBLY giving up its freedoms, sovereignty, control of its own domestic governance, endowments and advantages, etc. to a coalition of world states where America's agenda is but one agenda amongst all others - either way, THE LEFTISM-SOCIALISM-COMMUNISM-TOTALITARIANISM that weirdly, mysteriously, but only PC coincidentally not same, WINS, BY DEFAULT OR BY FORCE. * COLUMBIA SHUTTLE DISASTER > CONSPIRACY THEORY? > COLUMBIA exploded on way home = AMERICA MAY WIN ALL THE BATTLES BUT [ULTIMATELY] LOSES BOTH THE WAR + HOMELAND/COUNTRY??? Yet another reason why the potemkinist RINO CINO Left is the RINO and CINO Left, why the Left are on or for any each and all sides, and no side.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 07/09/2006 23:30 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
There's a lot to be said for the American Way
By James Lileks

Outrage of the summer: The new "Superman" movie edited out "The American Way" from the Krypton immigrant's rally cry. The Daily Planet editor says Supe's now all about "Truth, Justice and all that stuff."

Makes perfect sense. Consider the foreign markets, where "The American Way" means Abu Ghraib and McDonald's. Don't remind them! They might burn the theater. (If that's their way.) Besides, it makes sense to have a newspaper editor treat the line with gruff dismissal, because hard-bitten editors don't get starry-eyed over patriotic hogwash. Except when discussing the people's right to know the GPS coordinates of Superman's fort.

As it turns out, however, the omission was intentional. "The American Way" sounds Krypto-fascist. The movie's authors are the usual moderns, serenely above rude jingo pride: "We were always hesitant to include the term 'American way' because the meaning of that today is somewhat uncertain," said co-writer Michael Dougherty. "I think when people say 'American way,' they're actually talking about what the 'American way' meant back in the '40s and '50s, which was something more noble and idealistic."

Ah. Well, in the '40s, the American Way included incinerating German cities, nuking Japan, installing occupying armies and imposing our form of government — all the while referring to the enemy with hurtful ethnic slurs. All this plus forced relocation. If these actions are deemed noble and idealistic now, it'll be a handy sentiment the next time the United States gears up for total war.

But the inconstant left doesn't believe any of this is permissible in the service of a noble goal. The right, after all, can't lead the war on terror because they don't "walk the walk" on human rights: Witness those POWs slaving away in the cane fields of Gitmo. Unless we lead by example, no one will choose the American Way. Never mind that the internment of the Japanese didn't keep the Germans — or the Japanese, for that matter — from following our example after World War II. (Note to the dense: That's not an endorsement of internment. Just a reminder of which party has more practice.)

It's also odd to see the '50s held in high esteem. The '60s will be ever bathed in the holy glow of boomer self-regard, a mystical era of great causes and cheap weed; the '70s have become the decade equivalent of a sitcom running in eternal repeats.

The 50s, however, have long stood for stifling conformity, the Mandatory Gray Flannel Suit Act, duck-and-cover nuclear paranoia, and of course the communist witch hunts, which, history recalls, turned up no communist witches. It all ended when Saint Elvis performed the miraculous Swiveling of the Hips, loosening mores that had been cinched tight since Ike banned premarital soul-kissing.

Do the '50s get to be cool again? And not Fonzie-cool, but cool in the sense that confidence, optimism, technological progress, increasingly sophisticated mass culture and the rise of the suburb are now seen as fascinating elements of a complex, hopeful era? Well, that's a start.

But of course that's not what the screenwriter meant. To right-thinking people, the "past" — that nebulous era when everyone wore hats and blacks couldn't vote and cars had fins — was a time where one could say "The American Way" without irony, because they were uninformed, and President Bush hadn't invaded Iraq yet. Nowadays you cannot tout "The American Way" without adding footnotes about slavery and the Philippines war and pre-FDA meat safety and women's suffrage and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Did you know they blocked the fire exits? Women jumped to their deaths. And you think we're something special?

Well, yes. Especially given the alternatives. Especially when considering the vast record of oppression, lawlessness and miserable inescapable poverty that has characterized most of human civilization up to, and including, noon today. When compared against some ideal country — say, a solar-powered pan-ethnic secular Switzerland with a socialist economy based on bartering hemp — the messy realities of America past and present come up short.

But this has always been an imperfect nation. Accepting our faults, correcting our wrongs and using the revolutionary founding concepts to improve ourselves further: That's the American way.

If you can't say it without choking, practice. If you can, please write the Superman sequel.
Posted by: ryuge || 07/09/2006 02:33 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Beautiful. A splendid vivisection of Hollywood idiocy - and moral cowardice - in Technicolor.
Posted by: Uleatch Cheanter5148 || 07/09/2006 6:50 Comments || Top||

#2  Simple test. Which country do most people want to immigrate [legal or illegal] to? Which countries do they want to emigrate from? From the numbers I’ve seen, ‘The American Way’ still has its appeal. Now not with those who need to blame life’s challenges upon someone else, not those with come variation of BDS, not those who whine because they lack the power to alter the world in an order they believe is better than the ‘consent of the governed’, and certainly not those who’d rather be in comfortable, but all too familiar chains rather than risk an uncertain future as America’s prior generations have done. When you get away from the fairy tale of ‘perfection’ as a standard, then it stands above all other mass societies in history in providing more opportunity, freedom, and enrichment not only for its own citizens but millions and millions more around the world. As long as they keep coming here in such large numbers, be assured, the American Way has value above the other real world alternatives in history.

Posted by: Gleresh Whomort8073 || 07/09/2006 8:53 Comments || Top||

#3  I'll go see it when they put "The American Way" back in it.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 07/09/2006 13:13 Comments || Top||

#4  Why can't they just leave?
Posted by: anonymous2u || 07/09/2006 13:59 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
68[untagged]

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

The Classics
The O Club
Rantburg Store
The Bloids
The Never-ending Story
Thugburg
Gulf War I
The Way We Were
Bio

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


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.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2006-07-09
  Hamas gov't calls for halt to fighting
Sat 2006-07-08
  Lebanese Arrested In Connection With New York Plot
Fri 2006-07-07
  Somali Islamists:death for Muslims skipping prayers
Thu 2006-07-06
  UN divided over missile response
Wed 2006-07-05
  Israel destroys Palestinian Interior Ministry building
Tue 2006-07-04
  NKors fire Taepodong fizzle
Mon 2006-07-03
  Paleoterrs issue ultimatum
Sun 2006-07-02
  Binny sez will take fight to America
Sat 2006-07-01
  66 killed in car bombing at Baghdad market
Fri 2006-06-30
  IAF strikes official Gaza buildings
Thu 2006-06-29
  IAF Buzzes Assad's House
Wed 2006-06-28
  Call for UN intervention as Paleoministers seized
Tue 2006-06-27
  Israeli tanks enter Gaza; Hamas signs "deal"
Mon 2006-06-26
  Ventura CA port closed due to terror threat
Sun 2006-06-25
  Somalia: Wanted terrorist named head of "parliament"

Better than the average link...



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.
44.220.251.57
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
WoT Operations (25)    WoT Background (20)    Non-WoT (11)    Local News (3)    (0)