Chavez has wrecked his armed forces, replacing trained officers with men selected primarily for their loyalty to Chavez. These commanders have been ordered to forget about traditional military thinking and adopt bizarre doctrines invented by Chavez. Even many of the officers promoted for their loyalty to Chavez, are having second thoughts about all this. To deal with this, Chavez is forming a large civilian militia, led by politicians loyal to him. Nicaragua and Cuba have pledged to provide Venezuela with military support if invaded by Colombia and the United States. This is what Chavez claims is going on, but he, Nicaragua and Cuba know it's all for show. The show goes on. Colombia and the U.S. deny they are planning to invade, and Chavez calls this part of a dastardly plot.
#3
Chavez is forming a large civilian militia, led by politicians loyal to him.
Now just name them the "Elite Republican Guard" for SCM consumption. I think the previous holders of that trademark can't be reached for comment or objection. Or you can call them 'cannon fodder' which history usually tags them with.
#9
Folks, do a little thinking. What is the last resort of scoundrels who are losing the respect of the people? It's a war against some neighbor that you can create justification for. The only problem with Hoogo is that he's picking on someone who actually has a capable armed force. I'd also expect many of the Latin American countries would be more willing to support Colombia's side in the struggle, rather than Chavez'. The notable exceptions would be Ecuador and Bolivia. I don't even think Lula would directly support, or even encourage, Venezuela in a war against Colombia. If Venezuela thinks it's having it rough now, consider what a couple of ARCLIGHT strikes down through their most populous cities would do to morale. They can't gut the economy-Chavez has already done that.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/29/2010 16:55 Comments ||
Top||
#10
He's hoping for a short and victorious war ...
(Doesn't always work out real well)
#12
Untrained civilians led by political hacks. Yeah, that usually turns out well...
Probably how the Red Guards got started, or any cult of personality revolutionary guard. It's also a way to control you population. Those that tow the dictator line get special privileges and positions. It also locks them to the government ideology. Be nice, play by my rules or lose our support, get censored, etc. It's the Syrian, I mean Chavez, way.
Missed? Perhaps, but this story of complacency by President Barack Obama's administration has certainly been under-reported thus far.
Fox network's judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano discovered a potential lapse in responsibility by the Obama White House. For the broadcast of his July 31 Fox Business Network show "FreedomWatch," Napolitano interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the so-called "whistleblower site" which released tens of thousands of classified files about the Afghanistan war.
During an interview with Shep Smith, Napolitano reported Assange revealed he offered the Obama White House the documents, but they were unresponsive.
Napolitano in interview:
"STUDIO B" HOST SHEPARD SMITH: You just interviewed Julian Assange. Now Julian Assange is the man who is the founder of WikiLeaks - released these, or on his site was released the 92,000 pages of documents that lead to all this discussion about our complete failures in Afghanistan and thoughts that we need to get out of Afghanistan. He told you something that I considered to be a blockbuster bit of news.
NAPOLITANO: And that is that WikiLeaks presented the documents - there were over 100,000 pages of them, to the White House.
SMITH: When?
NAPOLITANO: Weeks before they were released. He wouldn't give me an exact date.
Napolitano compared how the Bush administration handled these situations with specifically The New York Times and was able to prevent some things from being revealed.
"[E]ven in the Bush administration, when The New York Times wanted to reveal things, the Bush administration negotiated with the White House, delayed the release, talked the times out of releasing proper names," Napolitano explained.
But the Obama administration failed to live to up its predecessors' standards.
"And apparently, the Obama administration made no such effort and couldn't have cared less, or that's the impression that Mr. Assange gave," Napolitano said.
Again, folks: the Obama administration wanted these papers out. The papers harm our effort in Afghanistan. The progressive movement wants out of Afghanistan in the worst way. Now they have an opportunity.
Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad.
Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote.
Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the election.
Yet the department seems to be encouraging states to apply for waivers so they won't have to follow that law.
More than 17,000 Americans serving overseas were denied the vote in 2008 - but, presumably because military personnel are thought to lean conservative, the liberal Obama administration is in no hurry to correct the situation.
The Justice Department website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days.
The Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section - 2,314 words - to advising felons how to regain voting privileges.
As confirmed by The Washington Times last week, Justice Department official Rebecca Wertz told a Feb. 1 conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State that the new law's requirements are somehow open to interpretation.
On July 28, an attendee at that conference told The Washington Times that Ms. Wertz's message was "totally undermining" the law. The earlier reports actually underplayed the effect of Ms. Wertz's comments. "It was even more pronounced at the meeting," said the source. "She undermined [the law] right in front of everybody. When I heard what she was saying, I thought: 'You've got to be kidding!' ... It was a clear reversal of roles for Justice to no longer be enforcing the law."
After looking at the minutes of that conference, Mr. Cornyn responded forcefully. His office confirmed that he did place the hold on Mr. Cole because of the military voting issue. His July 26 letter to Mr. Holder does not actually mention his hold, but its tone was strong stuff.
"The statute does not create any discretion for the Executive Branch to decide whether or not to enforce its legal requirements," the senator wrote. Ms. Wertz's comments "fly in the face of the clear statutory language, undermine the provisions in question and jeopardize the voting rights of our men and women in uniform."
The senator laid out a series of four steps he wants Mr. Holder to take to ensure that states respect the 45-day deadline, including a demand that the Justice Department provide a state-by-state accounting of compliance efforts. The hold on Mr. Cole, reportedly a personal friend of Mr. Holder, is sure to grab the attorney general's attention.
from City Journal
In describing the battle for Jaffa, the Arab city adjoining Tel Aviv, Karsh uses British military archives to show that the Israelis again the article discusses a similar situation in Haifa
promised the Arabs that they could stay if they laid down their arms. But the mufti's orders again forbade it.
Several years ago, I briefly visited the largest refugee camp in the West Bank: Balata, inside the city of Nablus. Many of the camp's approximately 20,000 residents are the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the Arab citizens of Jaffa who fled their homes in early 1948
In Balata, history has come full circle... Now, the descendants of those citizens are locked up in places like Balata and prohibited from resettling in the Palestinian-administered West Bank--again.
For if Israel and the Palestinians ever managed to hammer out the draft of a peace treaty, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, would have to go to Balata and explain to its residents that their leaders have been lying to them for 60 years and that they are not going back to Jaffa.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/29/2010 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Excellent article, LG. If ever there were a people who should revolt against their leadership, it's the Paleos. You'd think they would get tired of being pawns, but hey, they're Paleos...
Despite providing the UN (and the public) with aerial photos of Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping force insists that they have seen no such weapons. But the UN also says that it is not its mission to search for Hezbollah weapons. That's the job of the Lebanese army, but the Lebanese avoid it. The army has caught a few trucks (apparently by accident) bringing in rockets, but generally looks the other way. Hezbollah has told the Lebanese government that there would be another civil war if the government interfered with the Hezbollah buildup in the south.
If the Iranians had this wonderful technological edge over the rest of the world, and they were about to produce a nuclear reactor that does fusion in a commercially viable fashion, bless them," said Ottolenghi. "But, the fact that nobody else has done it so far suggests that maybe the Iranians are up to just playful banter. However, if one looks at what the reality of a military program is, if you want to have thermonuclear weapons, you need to master the technology for fusion. And while fusion is not commercially viable for civilian purposes, fusion allows you to build infinitely more powerful nuclear weapons."
#1
Sorry to quibble, but thermonuclear weapons are still primarily fission bombs, using the energy (primarily in the form of x-rays) from the first stage fission reaction to trigger a second stage fission reaction. There is a small amount of fusion that occurs in the first stage, but that only serves to boost the first stage energy release.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
