#1
nice - they admit stealing "tens of thousands of dollars worth of text books" and they're whining why they aren't released on bond like the white guy US Citizen that they admit bought the books, but didn't know they were stolen?. STFU - testify, then deport these assholes to whatever African shithole they came from
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/03/2007 17:28 Comments ||
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The EU's new treaty is the same as the rejected constitution - only the format has been changed to avoid referendums, says Valery Giscard d'Estaing, architect of the constitution.
And he's precisely the weasel who would know ...
In an open letter published in Le Monde and a few other European newspapers over the weekend, the former French president seeks to clarify the difference between former draft constitution - which was shelved after French and Dutch voters rejected the text in 2005 - and the new Lisbon Treaty which EU leaders agreed earlier this month.
"Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties," Mr Giscard d'Estaing said.
The former chairman of the European Convention - the body of over a hundred politicians that drafted the 2004 EU constitution suggests the new more complicated layout was only to avoid putting the treaty to a referendum. "Above all, it is to avoid having referendum thanks to the fact that the articles are spread out and constitutional vocabulary has been removed," he says.
Mr Giscard argues that the Lisbon treaty represents a way for the EU institutions to take the lead after the "interference" of the members of parliament and politicians who were in the European Convention. "They are therefore imposing a return to the language that they master and to the procedures they favour, and in doing so alienate the citizens further," he said.
Mr Giscard's word are likely to fuel the calls for referendums in the UK and Denmark where the governments are arguing that there is no need for a public poll on the Lisbon Treaty because it is sufficiently different from the EU constitution.
#2
Val's also a little bent that Sarkozy will get the credit for putting together the final version that will be signed with the appropos pomp and circumstance in Lisbon, whereupon Their Excellencies will pose for pictures, get in aeroplanes and fly back to Bruxelles to bask in the glow of a job well done.
#4
From everything I read, it seems extremely unlikely there will be a referendum in the UK and the Danes will be told to vote again until they get it right. We are being foolish in not stepping in to break this up. EUnity is a chimera hardly worth losing Britain over. What is going on is truly tragic.
#5
It's sad to see this sort of thing. You'd think it obvious that you can't make a nation without some cultural bonds, and the nations of Europe are still, CosmopolitanismTM to the contrary, different cultures.
There are obvious advantages (and some disadvantages) to economic cooperation and even partial economic unification, but until you can explain to a Spainiard why he should sacrifice his traditional farming priorities for those of Greece you shouldn't try to stretch the unification too far.
But to try to make a political union is really stretching things. I understand the appeal: an end of intra-European wars, becoming the 362.9 kg gorilla, and for places like Greece, a guarantee that the Colonels won't come back. But for people to be willing to sacrifice and even die for each other there has to be some bond: family, tribal, religious, even ideological. I don't see it there. Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see it.
Forcing unification like this is just going to get under people's skin, and could lose the economic cooperation they profit from so well. If they were willing to wait a few decades new generations could build more trust and more of a common culture. Assuming there are new generations, of course.
A less amibitious and more patient approach might have worked, but I worry that all the benefits of cooperation are being pissed away in dreams of a Euro-nation.
Posted by: James ||
11/03/2007 9:54 Comments ||
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#6
We are being foolish in not stepping in to break this up
A measure that would amend the General Mining Law of 1872 to establish environmental protections and eliminate land patenting passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.
Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo, voted with the 244-166 majority and hailed the legislation for its environmental protections and reclamation requirements on hard-rock mining.
"I have heard from constituents in Crested Butte, the Summitville area, and throughout Colorado who want to protect our precious water resources," said Salazar, whose 3rd Congressional District includes most of the Western Slope. "After 135 years, I am glad the House has finally decided to act."
President Bush, however, has said he will veto the measure if it reaches his desk.
Sporting associations including Sportsmen United for Sensible Mining, the National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, welcomed the vote...
#1
The 1872 mining law is perhaps the single most important legislation in US history in making the US the most powerful nation in the world.
The one and only 100% correlation in economics in world history is that the more a nation or group of aligned nations mines, the more prosperous it is. If it mines less, it is in decline. If it stops mining, it is on the road to ruin.
Mines are by far the critical factor to keeping America powerful in the future. Everything else is up for debate, but if America and American companies stop mining, we are in deep trouble.
If people are unhappy about a mine in their area, it is better for our nation that they be removed from the area, rather than being permitted to inhibit the mining in any way. Nothing they can do is more important than mining.
#2
My only knowledge of damage is the Leviathan Mine south of Carson City. Surely legitimate enviro issue scan be addressed without killing mining?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/03/2007 18:44 Comments ||
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#3
hah. I knew there must be some very important mining legislation coming down the pike. I knew because every time there was a mine accident in the last year, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CBC, ABC, CBS, etc carried the event live 24/7, with "breaking news alerts" every 5 minutes until the event was way past the natural news cycle. While it is indeed news if someone gets stuck in a mine, its not as big of news as they were so desperately tring to make it - so I knew that the media was just primping the public for upcoming legislation that would make it harder for mines to operate.
That is very strongly stated. I don't necessarily disagree, but I would like to understand better why you are so adamant. Do you have links or books you could refer us to?
#5
I should've said " my only personal knowledge"... as a kid we used to fly fish the Carson River below...the cleanup efforts/costs are immense
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/03/2007 19:16 Comments ||
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#6
Trout Unlimited ceased to be about trout a long time ago.
I stopped being a member a while back. It has become a hen party where a bunch of people who participate in a fussy little hobby conspire to cause huge economic damage to rural areas just so they can pursue their fussy little hobby.
*Disclaimer: I participate in that fussy little hobby, too (fly fishing), but I'm not so addicted that I would deny some community an economic boon.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/03/2007 19:27 Comments ||
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#7
Environmentalists who want to protect our precious water resourcesbodily fluids
#8
In the early 1990s I was prospecting around Leadville, Colorado with a team of investors. We locating old tailing dumps with well over the gram per ton payback content. Some sites indicated up to a quarter ounce per ton.
We offered to relocate all saplings uphill of the stream course to help rehabilitate the excavations afterwards. Not only that, but our extraction work would have IMPROVED THE ENVIRONMENT due to how we would remove mercury-contaminated waste ore for subsequent urea leaching. Our group would have created dozens of jobs and funneled over a million dollars into the local economy.
We were turned down by the BLM due to concerns over a local trout run, despite there being a fish farm a few kilometers away from our intended work site.
Ya Know? That's very perceptive, and; an excellent catch. I noticed the media "mine safety" over-play also, but didn't quite connect the dots as well as you did. The God-less bastard anarchists just keep chipping away... FUC* Them, lpg
#10
Oh for goodness sake. Plant a bunch of cottonwood trees and native iris just downstream. They absorb pollutants, then can be harvested and removed... and they're native.
subhed: Serious success in Iraq is not being recognised as it should be Times Of London Op-Ed
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/03/2007 13:36 ||
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#1
Good news is bad news for the Democrats, Hollywood and the media. It would be funny as hell if Iraq is no longer an election issue come next November.
#2
I wouldn't think its funny. Those who've back stabbed and ran amok undermining the mission and encouraging the enemy need to be highlighted, spotlighted, and exposed to open and public rebuke. And the election is the stage it should be run on. I want a down to dirt, ugly, recriminating campaign that no one will ever forget what happens to those who play two bit politics for a 'couple more Senate seats' that cost the lives of hundreds of our men and women cause the enemy thinks that killing just a few more would chase us out of Iraq and the fight based upon sound bites out of the MSM.
#3
Agreed, P2K. This never happened after the Cold War and it needed to. This time we'll win and get a parade. Let's do the lessons learned session this time.
A federal panel wants a Saudi school inside the Beltway shut for promoting hate, something we've urged for years. But remarkably, this madrassa still has powerful backers. The Washington Post rebuked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for singling out the academy in a report criticizing Saudi Arabia for promoting religious intolerance in schools it runs around the world.
As we've reported in these pages, the Alexandria, Va.-based Islamic Saudi Academy is a breeding ground for terrorists, including the al-Qaida operative convicted last year of trying to assassinate President Bush. The commission has asked the State Department to close the school pending a thorough review of its curriculum and texts. State has broad discretion over the school because, as an arm of the Saudi government, it's subject to the Foreign Missions Act.
The Post editorialists called the move "irresponsible." First, they tried to compare the madrassa to parochial schools. "Many such schools teach what outsiders might consider intolerance: that homosexuality is a sin, for example, or that only those who believe in Jesus Christ are destined for heaven," they said. Then they argued that there's no proof the Saudi academy has cross the lines of intolerance into "advocating violence."
"The commission presented no evidence, or even a credible suggestion, that this is occurring at the Saudi academy," the Post editorial board opined. "Thus it was the commission that crossed the lines." But evidence has been presented in the very pages of the Post. If only the paper's higher-ups would read the copy of their news reporters.
Take the Feb. 25, 2002, Post story headlined, "Where Two Worlds Collide; Muslim Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views." It noted that numerous textbooks used by the Islamic Saudi Academy promote "hatred of non-Muslims and Shiite Muslims."
"The 11th-grade textbook, for example, says one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him,' " the article said. It goes on to quote several students of the school who say they are taught in Islamic studies that "it is better to shun and even to dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslims." One teen, who recited by memory parts of the Quran, told the Post he's taught by academy teachers that it's OK for Muslims to hurt or steal from such "kaffirs."
This was the steady diet of hate that the Saudi academy fed Ahmed Abu Ali, the would-be al-Qaida assassin. Lest anyone think he was a misfit loner, Ali graduated valedictorian and was voted by his class "Most Likely to Be a Martyr," which in this jihadist school is like being voted Most Popular.
Why is this militant madrassa still operating just across the Potomac from the White House and Capitol? Because Fairfax County is still leasing it an old high school building, and the Democrat county supervisor in charge of the lease doesn't see any problem with the school. The supervisor recently took a tour of the campus and "was reassured by what he saw in the English materials," the Post editorial said. What about the Arabic texts? He doesn't read Arabic. But the Saudi Embassy, which controls the school, assures him they're clean.
The nonprofit Freedom House recently translated a sample of those cleaned-up official Saudi texts and found they're still indoctrinating students to wage jihad against the infidel to "spread the faith." Here's what an eighth-grade Saudi text teaches with the intolerant parts removed: "The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."
In short, nothing has really changed in Saudi texts or schools nor in Washington, which is still blindly tolerating intolerance.
#2
No one would permit the construction of a Nazi Großehalle in the US. Why do we put up with this insanity. The beliefs of Muslims and those who followed the hate cult of Volksgemeinschaft are essentially synonymous in my view.
Pakistan is not a country. It is a failed British fantasy about the fabrication of a nation-state. It has other failed and failing peers in the Middle East, all fabricated during the 20th century. It is time to seriously review all of these structures and redraw the borderlines.
Pakistan was a phrase coined for an idealistic confederation of five Muslim provinces within the old British-controlled India (Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province or Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan). However, these are tribal lands with distinct traditions and have very little in common. These provinces were all knocked together, on presumption of a common religion, and a dominion was fabricated within the Commonwealth with self-governance authority akin to independence after World War II. It was all part of the post-war fire sale of territorial control of Britain. The ill-conceived plan even set up a separate territory of East Bengal as East Pakistan, a subcontinent away, with the rough-and-ready argument of common religious beliefs and a majority Muslim population. East Pakistan eventually became independent and renamed itself Bangladesh.
Pakistans short 60-year history is full of coups and raw, violent tribal rivalry, peppered by jailing or executing the previous rulers. Most recently, we saw a stark and bold example of such rivalry: a returning Pakistani politician, a former prime minister, was deported from his own country.
There is no commonly accepted language among these tribes and thus the official language of Pakistan is English.
For as long as I remember, Irans eastern border with Pakistan has always been a hub of instability, smuggling and violent crime. Pakistan is the main transit route for opium and heroin from Afghanistan, where more than 90% of the worlds opium supply is produced. In turn, that cash flow encourages money laundering, armed banditry, murder, violence and corruption. Therefore, several conflicting layers of official structure naturally form, each operating as lawless gangs or states within a state. Drug-infested territories have a poor record of development. Power and corruption leads to uneven, Byzantine relations between groups and to opaque alliances. Meanwhile, the masses remain in poverty: according to the World Bank, thats about a third of all Pakistanis.
In this kind of political greenhouse of a country, no new politicians or doctrines surface. I wonder why news about Pakistani politics seems to be a game of musical chairs, with familiar names and faces periodically recycled.
There are other issues to ponder, namely a nuclear arsenal, missiles, a brisk small-arms export business (about $250 million a year) and the schizophrenic dual-tracked friendship with the U.S., al-Qaeda and Wahhabi extremists. Pakistans aimless Kashmir policies are perfect examples of circular political indecision. U.N. peacekeepers have remained stationed in Kashmir for more than three decades.
Pakistan is a relic set up as a counterweight to India -- and its tendency to tilt towards the Eastern Block. I think it is high time to revisit the old composite structure of five provinces combined into one artificial country. A redrawing of borders might serve useful and to cut through the farce. Let each province mature and declare independence. Some will eventually join their long-time tribal allies, leaving two or three independent lands and a more transparent political agenda.
Dr. Ali Ettefagh serves as a director of Highmore Global Corporation, an investment company in emerging markets of Eastern Europe, CIS, and the Middle East
Posted by: john frum ||
11/03/2007 00:00 ||
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#3
Iraq Pakistan is not a country. It is a failed British fantasy
Thank you Sir Winston, this Calitzdorp port is superb, but the draw on these cigars is simply impossible. Lads, don't bother snuffing. Please just put them here in the cinders bucket. I'll take them right out with the rubbish.
#4
There is no commonly accepted language among these tribes and thus the official language of Pakistan is English.
The "Land of the Pure" speaks an infidel tongue. Priceless. Old Patriot has it right. Carve up this piece of Islamic crap into pieces so small that not even a neurosurgeon could stitch it all back together again.
If anyone has a link to Part II, please post it here.
#5
I could be wrong but I don't think the Brits build Pakistan. They built the Raj and then bugged out and let the pieces fall wherever they may. Pakistan and the quarrelous Kashmir question where the result.
And what is this why not dissolve Pakistan, too? question. What other nations have we dissolved? I'm not saying erasing Euro-fantasy borders is a bad idea, but so far we've not done so. In fact we've tried extra hard to keep fantasy borders intact.
The sight of Ms Benazir Bhutto offering namaz before the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one to treasure. The invocation to the prince of darkness may possibly have included the memorable words of the Prince of Light: "Father forgive them for they not what they do."
Two devastating bomb blasts in Karachi ruined the Anglo-American media script for a Roman Triumph, even as they blew away 140 innocents, members of a welcoming throng glued to the black magic of the Bhutto name. The ensuing mayhem was a serial descent into a purgatory of blood, gore and fire.
Multitudes of Pakistan's landless poor, having heard Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's beguiling promise of 'roti, kapda aur makan', asked only for bread and were given stones. The Bhuttos, father and daughter, have never done better. They were no more than straws in the ill wind of Pakistani politics. Zulfiqar dreamed he was the people's deity, Napoleon reborn; he was, alas, a bazaar parody of Mussolini. Their ends were not dissimilar, each was a victim of the vengeance meted out in their pomp to adversaries and turncoats alike. Mob power -- unpredictable in mood and direction - was the brew for tyranny and unconstitutional governance based on the lowest common denominators of public life.
Pakistan was a criminal enterprise from birth and criminal it has remained ever since. Its devotion to jihad, its perception of war as a divinely regulated sport fit only for the truest breed of men has been elevated from the evilly ridiculous to the spiritually sublime. Hatred of the infidel beginning with the despised Hindu and Jew has spread like a cancer to the Christian West.
The designated 'Land of the Pure' is now the noxious hub of Islamist terror, the spectre that stalks the earth and threatens unbelieving communities with extinction. A massive tome of some 500 pages entitled Deception: Pakistan, The United States and Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark relates a dark and forbidding story of Washington's complicity in Islamabad's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Certain countries, India most notably, have for long been paying the wages of an original sin committed by a succession of US Administrations with the connivance of close European allies; now, Americans, Europeans, and the Bush Administration are sharing the heavy cost.
Wearying Pecksniffian sermons on moral rectitude and much else besides have taken their toll of public trust. There is increasing distrust about speech that is mere Orwellian double talk. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".
But there are honest, straight talking exceptions. The former US official Richard Barlow, about whom Levy and Scott-Clark write so eloquently, is surely one. Today, say the authors, "he idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campus site in Montana -- itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)."
Mr Barlow's Time of Trouble began with the Reagan Administration, which preferred to turn an infamous blind eye to the clandestine activities of Pakistani rogue scientist AQ Khan, whose web of illicit commerce in nuclear weapon technology was becoming visible to the naked eye. Mr Barlow well appreciated the seriousness of the situation but ran into a wall of cynicism in the higher echelons of Government. Pakistan was a valued US ally and Mr Barlow's persistent efforts to force his superiors to act set off a veritable fire storm of denunciation. He was accused of being a Soviet spy, of suffering from mental and psychological disorders that rendered him unfit for purpose.
Officials and Generals bore false witness to Mr Barlow's charges at Congressional hearings. Mr Dick Cheney, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, 'Scooter' Libby and Mr Richard Perle (a pearl one would hesitate to cast before the vilest swine) and others of the neocon good and great were determined, come what may, to befriend any regime in Islamabad, however criminal its credentials. Routine certificates of Pakistani good conduct on nuclear weapon acquisition were issued, as required by US law, until 1991. America was in a state of cross-party denial.
The US and China were driven by "parallel strategic interests", pronounced Mr Harold Brown, US Defence Secretary in the 1970s, so when a Pakistani nuclear weapon of Chinese design was tested on Chinese soil in 1984 (full 14 years before India's own Pokhran II venture) it passed muster.
The thumbscrew pressure on Mr Barlow mounted; his notes and memoranda were subsequently neutered in an ongoing effort to discredit him. His marriage broke up under the strain. He is now seeking a £10 million indemnity in legal proceedings.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Cut from the same political cloth, Ms Bhutto will neither be Pakistan's vaunted social emancipator, nor its economic redeemer any more than was her father. Both swung like monkeys on ropes of opportunism, wheeling and dealing at every turn, whether it be with jihadis, the ISI or the military. Such Faustian pacts, as history has repeatedly shown, promise salvation but deliver damnation. The Bhutto-Musharraf concordat may not survive the recent revelation of the lady's involvement with a bogus Gulf company that fronted for Saddam Hussein in the oil-for-food scam.
But there remains the enduring consolation of holy writ. Brig SK Malik's The Quranic Concept of War states: "As a perfect divine document , the Holy Quran has given a comprehensive treatment to its concept of war." The Brigadier, peace be upon him, went on to apply Quaranic principles to the modern military strategy. His boss, the late Gen Zia, in his foreword referred admiringly to the way "the book brings out... the Quranic philosophy on the application of military force within the context of the totality that is JIHAD (Zia's emphasis). The professional soldier in a Muslim state, CANNOT (Zia's emphasis) become 'professional' if in all his activities he does not take on the colour of Allah." Peace in our time will clearly be a long time coming.
Praise be to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Mrs Indira Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee , et al. But for them, we would be looking askance across the border and saying, "There for the grace of god go I."
Posted by: john frum ||
11/03/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Maybe its because of the White Russians, but I swear to Christ this post make absolutely no sense at all. I can't figure out what the hell its even about. One paragraph its Reagan didn't want to know about Khan, then next its about Bhutto being no better than her father, then its well, like really bad fucking poetry.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/03/2007 0:20 Comments ||
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#2
I thought it was teh bier. But yeah, a lot lost in the translation I expect.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
11/03/2007 2:54 Comments ||
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#3
Pakistan---another huge success of anglo-american nation building.
#1
Excellent, excellent, excellent Seafarious. One must wonder (or be fearful) what we can ultimately achieve with these people. Enjoyed the photo of the ruins at Ctesiphon, a site I visited years ago.
#2
#4 might meet with the approval of some (on both sides): "In 1258, Hulagu besieged Baghdad, then sacked most of it, slaughtering as many as 800,000 of the inhabitants. He killed the scholars, erecting a pyramid of their skulls, and executed the caliph, al-Musta'sim, the 37th and final Abbisid ruler of a line that had lasted 500 years. Iraq was reduced to tribal culture, never to regain world prominence."
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.
The EU's new treaty is the same as the rejected constitution - only the format has been changed to avoid referendums, says Valery Giscard d'Estaing, architect of the constitution.
A federal panel wants a Saudi school inside the Beltway shut for promoting hate, something we've urged for years. But remarkably, this madrassa still has powerful backers. The Washington Post rebuked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for singling out the academy in a report criticizing Saudi Arabia for promoting religious intolerance in schools it runs around the world.
