#1
LOL @ Blowhard feels the need to present his credentials before entering the fray - even if they are irrelevant to the discussion. For example, in a movie forum conflict he might attempt to settle the matter by saying, "As a Ph. D. candidate in particle physics I believe I can say with some authority that the 'Beavis and Butthead' movie represents the emergence of a new cultural paradigm." Huh?
Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were "drenched" in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.
#1
It was long ago pointed out that the difference between German and British antisemitism was only that the British intellectual class disdained it, and then only to a great extent because the continental intellectual class didn't.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders may be many things, but he is not the right-wing populist he is accused of being. What the debate over his film "Fitna" reveals most clearly is the West's cowardice towards Islam.
There's a key for every lock, just as there's a perfectly fitting label for everyone who refuses to fit in. At the moment, the term "right-wing populist" is hot. Everyone and his brother is calling Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders by that name at the moment, but hardly any commentators or reporters have taken the time to explain what a "right-wing populist" actually is. And what distinguishes it from other political standpoints like, for instance, "left-wing populists."
Geert Wilders may be many things -- he is self-confident to the point of vanity and stubborn to the point of sacrificing himself. But he's not a right-wing populist.
For one thing, he's a radical liberal. For another, what he's doing at the moment is extremely unpopular. Six years ago, Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered by an animal rights fanatic, was also called a "right-wing populist." He was indeed very popular -- not because he was "right-wing" but because he insisted on drawing attention to things that the traditional elites of Dutch society had steadfastly ignored.
The label "right-wing populist" resonates negatively today the same way that "communist" did in the '50s and '60s, "fascist" did in the '70s and '80s and "climate change denier" does today. It saves the speaker from having to engage with the actual content of the argument and makes the bearer of the term solely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions.
If fanatical Muslims do in fact go ballistic over Wilder's film "Fitna", it's not because they have a flawed relationship to freedom of speech and religion, but because they've been insulted and provoked by Wilders -- or so the reasoning goes.
So it comes as no surprise that TV presenter Tom Buhrow opened the Friday late-evening news on the German TV channel ARD with a report on the "anti-Islamic video of the right-wing populist" Geert Wilders -- as though there were a central authority in the otherwise censor-free Federal Republic of Germany that is responsible for prescribing the vocabulary of Euro-Islamic affairs. It was followed by a report on the relaxed response of Dutch Muslims, who were shown sitting in their cafes peacefully drinking coffee while Wilders raised havoc outside.
According to Buhrow's narration: "The knives are already being sharpened -- but only for the doner kebabs." But he forgot to mention that, by that point, "Fitna" had already been pulled off the video portal LiveLeak, where it had been first published (more...). The British provider had received death threats that it took as seriously as they were intended -- a not entirely irrelevant bit of information that the ARD anchorman opted to omit, so as not to confuse his viewers with too many details.
According to this interpretation of events, Wilders has only himself to blame for the fact that he has to be under 24-hour police protection and sleep in a different location every night. If he'd taken on the federation of Dutch floriculturists, say, his private life would be fully intact.
Posted by: mrp ||
04/01/2008 07:14 ||
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[11129 views]
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#1
After watching the film, I can't believe that is what all the fuss is about - direct quotes and well documented film footage - excellently produced if I might add. I read somewhere that one imam said it could also have been a mujadeen film (with the same images and text)..I don't think so because fitna didn't have crappy music in the background, crappy film quality, crappy transition effects, and no little kids turning into lions and crap.
#2
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril. - Sun Tzu, Art of War
HOLLYWOOD FOXNews.com readers may remember the film "Team America: World Police," a puppeteer's parody about the American government, its foreign policy and its home-grown critics in Hollywood. One of the puppets lampoons Oscar-winner Sean Penn, who, in the film, laments the invasion of Iraq by harking back to the time it "was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate." Penn was so angry about the film's message that he wrote the film's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, a blistering public letter signing off with a scatological reference. I thought perhaps Penns temper had mellowed since then and was eager to speak with him on Oscar night at Elton Johns party.
I assumed Penn was probably ignorant about the human rights record in Venezuela in that he broke off relations with the San Francisco Chronicle in mid-January calling them a "lamebrain paper" over their use of the word "dictator" to describe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Penn was in Caracas late last year where he went to do research for an essay he says he is writing about Chavez. On David Letterman's show Penn gushed about Chavez as a "fascinating guy" who had done "incredible things" for Venezuela's poor. Letterman remarked that Chavez had shut down a television station, RCTV something that should trouble a self-styled journalist. Penn looked at the camera and misled the audience, stating that for years RCTV "had been encouraging the assassination of Chavez every day." But there was not a single instance of such behavior by RCTV. It's as if the Sean Penn puppet in "Team America" came to life as a propagandist.
Ironically, it was President Chavez who has repeatedly threatened even with death those in the media who disagree with his policies. Reporters covering government functions must wear bullet-proof vests and dozens in the media have been assaulted and beaten for disagreeing with the official party line.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Penn isn't alone in displaying ignorance or deception while defending the Venezuelan president. He joins an all-star cast of Chavez admirers including actors Danny Glover and Kevin Spacey, musician Harry Belafonte, supermodel Naomi Campbell, director Oliver Stone, activist Cindy Sheehan, and Princeton University Professor Cornel West.
Who do you think funds their crappy movies that no one wants to watch? Now that Castro is dead, they have to bend over for Hugo.
The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.
I remember disembarking at the Sarajevo airport in the summer of 1992 after an agonizing flight on a U.N. relief plane that had had to "corkscrew" its downward approach in order to avoid Serbian flak and ground fire. As I hunched over to scuttle the distance to the terminal, a mortar shell fell as close to me as I ever want any mortar shell to fall. The vicious noise it made is with me still. And so is the shock I felt at seeing a civilized and multicultural European city bombarded round the clock by an ethno-religious militia under the command of fascistic barbarians. I didn't like the Clinton candidacy even then, but I have to report that many Bosnians were enthused by Bill Clinton's pledge, during that ghastly summer, to abandon the hypocritical and sordid neutrality of the George H.W. Bush/James Baker regime and to come to the defense of the victims of ethnic cleansing.
I am recalling these two things for a reason. First, and even though I admit that I did once later misidentify a building in Sarajevo from a set of photographs, I can tell you for an absolute certainty that it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States.
#2
It is a surprise about the Watergate firing. It is also a surprise that an inveterate liar (HRC) found and married another inveterate liar (WJC). "Likes" attract?
#3
...Anybody who wants to vote for Hilary needs to really consider this carefully - she wanted to 86 Nixon's CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO COUNSEL because she didn't like him. Imagine what else she'd do if she was the one in the Oval Office.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/01/2008 16:33 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The anger of the left at Nixon outing Alger Hiss manifested itself in a lot of ways. I suspect this is just one of them.
It's too bad Nixon gave these jackals the opportunity to get their long-sought vengeance. You'd think he would know better.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/01/2008 19:47 Comments ||
Top||
#1
"There will come a juncture within the next months when the Obama Sunshine Show will have to face the wretched realities of running the gargantuan U.S. government and the staggering responsibilities and challenges it faces at home and abroad and at that time we will know if Barack Hussein Obama is Americas Redeemer of Manifest Destiny, or if hes just another hyper-ambitious adoration-junkie looking for immortality. Uplifting oratory will have to take a backseat to nail-hard reason, ruthless calculation, administrative ingenuity and well-thought-through resolution. At which time the more prosaic assets and attractions of the aged, irascible and heroic Senator McCain might come into bold relief for many in the American electorate. America is certainly ready for a black President. What it might not be ready to embrace is Barack Obama as President."
#2
"if Barack Hussein Obama is Americas Redeemer of Manifest Destiny, or if hes just another hyper-ambitious adoration-junkie looking for immortality"
I'll take what's behind Door #2.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/01/2008 18:15 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Sorry, I forgot to add that this sounds to me like the reasoning that a lot of leftists will use in rejecting B.O. in November. This way they will not have to think of themselves as racist or non- intellectual.
When he found himself staring at the barrel of his bodyguards assault rifle, Nasir Ahmad Bhat realised the time had come to give up the fight. Since late last year, the Hizbul-Mujahideens supreme commander in Jammu and Kashmir has been living in a safehouse outside Srinagar, under the secret protection of the State government.
On the eve of the next Assembly elections, the Jammu and Kashmir government hopes to use Bhat better known as Ghazi Misbahuddin, the alias traditionally used by the Hizbs senior-most field commander to demonstrate its willingness to talk to terrorists who decide to abjure violence. The Hizb supreme commander, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, has refused to meet this condition but others in the organisation seem increasingly willing to take whatever deals are on offer. Much of the Hizbs Pakistan-based leadership feels the same way about the elections as a chicken must do about the butchers blade as it caresses its neck.
For the first time since 1995, the Hizb and other Islamist terror groups wont be players in influencing the outcome of the electoral process. In 1996, when Jammu and Kashmir took its first steps towards the restoration of democracy, 61 political workers were killed in terror strikes. Another 57 died in 1997. In 2001, the year before the fateful elections that brought the Congress-Peoples Democratic Party alliance to power, 76 political workers were killed. One hundred party workers were butchered in 2002. Politicians were forced to cut deals with Islamist terror groups, making clear just where the real power lay. Indeed, the killing of National Conference workers was a major reason for the partys defeat in 2002, and led it to soften its stand on terrorism thereafter.
Earlier this year, the United Jihad Council announced that it would not use force to obstruct the democratic process. Few politicians take that promise on face value. Like past elections, the path to democracy will more likely than not be punctuated by assassinations and bombings. But unlike in 2002, terrorist groups just do not have the muscle to impose their will on the democratic process.
Dar isnt the only senior Hizb commander to have given up the fight in recent months. Unnoticed, over a dozen mid-ranking commanders at its camps in Pakistan have returned to India since January. Last year, for example, operative Bilal Ahmed Mir volunteered to leave Muzaffarabad and take command of a cell in Baramulla. Mirs Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate handlers gave him a legitimate Pakistani passport, AH0992231, stamped with a Nepal visa issued in Islamabad. On March 3, Mir flew from Karachi to Kathmandu on Pakistan International Airways flight 268 and promptly handed himself over to Indian intelligence agents.
Most experts believe the flow home from Hizb camps would have been even higher if India had not come down hard on cross-Line of Control surrenders, after intelligence reports warned that some rehabilitated terrorists had reactivated their connections with jihadist groups. All the major political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, though, are lobbying for a proper and secure rehabilitation policy to be put in place and one most likely will be, once a new government takes office.
Even as things stand, the Hizb is desperately short on both leadership and cadre. Kulgam-born Riyaz Ahmad Bhat was scheduled to replace Nasir Ahmed Dar but he flatly refused to run the risk. His parents, family sources said, have travelled to Pakistan to secure their sons marriage and thus ensure that he stays on at a Hizb ul-Mujahideen camp rather than risking death at home. Muzaffar Ahmed Dar, a long-standing Hizb operative from Magam with an undistinguished record of service in the organisation, was obliged to take charge in his stead. He has little, however, to take charge of.
Across the north Kashmir zone, the Hizb has just three commanders of significance: Mohammad Shafi Shah, a Papchan-Bandipora resident who uses the code-name Dawood; his old friend from the adjoining village of Chuntimulla, Ali Mohammad Lone; and Tanvir Ahmad from Baramullas Bagh-e-Islam neighbourhood. Together, the three are believed to have less than three dozen men under their command.
In its one-time south Kashmir strongholds, the decimation of the Hizb has been even more marked. Only two commanders of consequence have survived the thoroughgoing destruction of the organisation by the Jammu and Kashmir police Pervez Ahmad Dar, who uses the code-name Pervez Musharraf, and Panzgam resident Raees Dar, known to his associates as Kachroo or brown hair. Hunted by the police, both men have abandoned their traditional areas of operation and neither is expected to survive long.
Since the arrest of Tajamul Islam, the Karachi-bred son of one of Hizb chief Mohammad Yusuf Shahs most trusted aides, the central division has had no leadership at all. Last month, in a desperate attempt to demonstrate its continuing presence, the Hizb carried out a bombing in Srinagars Jehangir Chowk. Cadre and resources for the operation had to be mobilised by Tanvir Ahmeds north Kashmir cell leading to a series of errors which led to its rapid unravelling by investigators.
Indeed, the ease with which attempted Hizb terror operations have been stopped suggests a high degree of penetration by the police and the Intelligence Bureau another sign of the demoralisation in its ranks. At least one ranking commander, south Kashmir-based Javed Seepan Sheikh, is rumoured to be a police asset. This has led to mistrust and factionalism within the Hizbs already fractured ranks.
Does this mean the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir is finally dead? Not just yet: Pakistans covert services, and the Islamist terror groups they helped create, arent quite ready to give up the fight. Addressing a March 1 Lashkar-e-Taiba gathering in Muzaffarabad by telephone, its Lahore-based amir Hafiz Mohammad Saeed announced that restrictions placed on his operations in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir would soon be lifted. While the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir had suffered because of the fallout of the United States war in Afghanistan, he said, things were changing. Saeed also announced that the Lashkar would soon be setting up a new magazine devoted to the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.
On ground, there are signs that the Lashkar war-machine is stirring. Last month, it began installing a new state-of-the-art wireless communications equipment at its control station in Kel, just across the LoC from the critical infiltration routes across the Lolab mountains. A training centre just outside of Balakote, in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmirs Muzaffarabad district, has been revived under the command of one of the Lashkars top irregular warfare instructors, Wagah-resident Sagir Ahmed. And, since January, a former Pakistan army officer known to his subordinates as Captain Salim has been training cadre for combat in Jammu and Kashmir at a new camp in Lala Moosa near Gujranwala.
Perhaps most important of all, the ISI has resumed direct funding of the Hizb, which was shut off under international pressure in 2006. Married cadre at the Hizbs camps in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir are now receiving Rs.10,000 a month, up from Rs.5,200; single men Rs.8,000 against the Rs.4,200 on offer before the ISI funding was cut off.
Jihadist organisations in Jammu and Kashmir have demonstrated that they can put up fight in the one area where they are still present in some strength the dense forests above Baramulla, where the major infiltration routes across the LoC converge. Bucking the dramatic State-wide fall in violence, Baramulla saw an escalation last year with 22 Indian soldiers and policemen giving their lives in combat against 16 in 2006, while 103 terrorists were killed, up from 95. Should high levels of infiltration take place this spring and summer, jihadist groups could well try to replicate this model elsewhere.
Whether that outcome is realised will depend on two factors: the competence of Indias pre-election counter-terrorism operations and the extent to which Pakistan is willing to go to revive the dying jihad. It is the second of these that could prove most important. While politicians such as Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan Peoples Party chief, have laid out a brave agenda for peacemaking with India, the power to shape the strategic policy lies not with them but with the Pakistan army.
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani represents the Pakistan armys institutional consensus a consensus that includes among its pillars the belief that sub-conventional warfare is an integral component of national security. In recent weeks, the restraints imposed on anti-India jihadist groups such as the Lashkar and the Jaish-e-Mohammad have loosened, in an evident effort to restore the Pakistan armys ties to the Islamists who have so spectacularly turned on it in recent months. With its forces heavily committed to the West, though, it is unclear just how far Pakistans military establishment can risk precipitating a potentially war-inducing crisis with India. What is clear, though, is this: the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir is hanging above the abyss by its fingernails. Unless someone throws it a rope, the chances of its surviving the 2008 elections are low.
This article starring:
ALI MOHAMAD LONE
Hizbul-Mujahideen
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
BILAL AHMED MIR
Hizbul-Mujahideen
CAPTAIN SALIM
Lashkar-e-Taiba
GHAZI MISBAHUDIN
Hizbul-Mujahideen
HAFIZ MOHAMAD SAID
Lashkar-e-Taiba
JAVED SIPAN SHEIKH
Hizbul-Mujahideen
MOHAMAD SHAFI SHAH
Hizbul-Mujahideen
MOHAMAD YUSUF SHAH
Hizbul-Mujahideen
MUZAFAR AHMED DAR
Hizbul-Mujahideen
NASIR AHMED BHAT
Hizbul-Mujahideen
NASIR AHMED DAR
Hizbul-Mujahideen
PERVEZ AHMED DAR
Hizbul-Mujahideen
RAIS DAR
Hizbul-Mujahideen
RIYAZ AHMED BHAT
Hizbul-Mujahideen
TAJAMUL ISLAM
Hizbul-Mujahideen
TANVIR AHMED
Hizbul-Mujahideen
Posted by: john frum ||
04/01/2008 06:50 ||
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[11126 views]
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More than one American has tried to make the United Nations live up to its original ideals -- Pat Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Bolton. We'd add to that distinguished list the name of Mark Wallace, an ambassador to the U.S. mission at Turtle Bay who resigned yesterday having tried for two years to make the U.N. a more transparent place.
Mr. Wallace's biggest contribution was exposing the fraud and corruption in U.N. Development Program operations in North Korea. In the wake of his investigation, the then-new Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, was shocked enough to order an external audit of all U.N. programs. It didn't take long for Mr. Ban to backtrack on the extent of his original order, but his subsequent probe of the UNDP in North Korea confirmed Mr. Wallace's findings, as did a Congressional investigation.
Along the way, Mr. Wallace faced hostility from bureaucrats who don't think the country that provides nearly a quarter of the U.N. budget should demand more accountability. The UNDP's shoddy oversight of its North Korea operations is rightly seen as a wake-up call for better governance throughout the U.N. system. Mr. Wallace has lobbied for making internal audits, now secret, available to all member states. He also wants the U.N. to make more information, especially on budgets, available to the general public. And he has pushed for a more effective Ethics Office and protection of whistleblowers.
His record is also a lesson to those American officials who think their obligation is merely to get along at these international institutions. Mr. Wallace was unpopular with certain high State Department officials, who didn't want to risk their engagement with Pyongyang over corruption. He's the one who had it right
An article by Rachel M. McCleary, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, published in Policy Review magazine
.... Now [after a discussion of how four economic-development factors -- education, value of time, life expectancy and urbanization -- are affected by a country's religion] lets look at how religion influences the four primary indicators of economic development.
Education. Religious beliefs .... motivate people to work hard and cultivate virtuous behavior.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
04/01/2008 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
there are so many obvious problems with this study that it could only have come from an Ivy League School.
For example, people who are less productive at work have more time to participate in religious activities. Yet here they are implying that participation is what causes the decrease in productivity without any real explanation of how they came to that conclusion. Additionally, people who are drug addicted or otherwise down on their luck are often encouraged to participate in church programs - which allows them to become more productive than they would have been otherwies. Yet it is just as likely that they were included in "people who spend more time in church activities and thus less productive".
I think what is happening is that many people are looking around and seeing that those who belong to Christian or Jewish faiths experience many positive benefits and the Harvard crowd couldn't bear to admit what they found.
#3
"Religions who are embedded in failed or successful states act differently". But somletimes these religions are a primary factor for the region being a failed state in the first place.
I don't think it is a mere hazrd that there is no developed Muslim or animist country, that all the developed ones are either Christian, Jewish or from Confucianist/Buddhist Asia (except for Japan the later emerged recently).
Also for centuries Protestant regions were more developed than Catholic regions. But in Germany we have the Souabia/Bavaria anomaly these are the
two richest regions in Germany and they happen to be Catholic. I think however that the explanation is religio/political: while Protestant values are better tuned to economic progress than Catholic ones the later provide a better resistance against
the different variants of socialism (Suaboia and Bavaria re the two most right wing Lander in Germany) while in Protestant regions, the school system is hard at work molding kids minds with socialist/graen and similar ideologies harmful to economic development and "purifying" them of the qualities, energy and taste for becoming successful entrepreneurs.
#4
the Hoover Inst is a right leaning org; the JFK school a moderate lefty org
amazingly, she doesn't bother to expound on the problem of 'no interest' in Islam. Any serious analysis should have looked long and hard at this... in fact many serious studies do look at this (much of Pakistan's problems are the result of a turn toward Islamic socialism under Benezir's father and one especially awful part of this marriage of two awful ideologies was restrictions on interest)
#5
interesting comments, so I think it is great that they opened the discussion, however I still think the premise of the study is flawed. They do not make the case that increased time spent practicing religion reduces productivity. It would be the same as saying that increased activity in charity work shows decreased productivity in a society. Many who have ample money particpate in volunteer positions. They don't need to go to work so if they didn't volunteer in feeding the homeless, they might be sitting by the pool. It's just a bogus argument to imply that those participating in any volunteer activity would other wise be working in a paying job. Additionally, work done by churches and volunteer activities DOES contribute to society by raising up the downtrodden through feeding the hungry and helping to house the homeless or to take care of the drug addicted. Those who spend time studying scripture might otherwise be at the library reading any other subject of interest.
Religious attendance versus economic production follows the classic Laffer curve: very low and very high attendance would mostly lead to low economic production, while peak economic production probably lies at some moderate level of attendance. Given the record of the Torah in being uncannily right on a whole raft of things, I would hazard a guess that one rest day out of seven is close to the attendance/production "laffer" peak, with a confidence factor of 80%
There are several philosophical problems with this study: the marxian assumption of man as being a solely economic animal is heavily leaned upon: "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." I am sure the reliance on polls and other people's studies and opinions is a serious drawback.
There are other implicit assumptions about God and religion that, differing from reality, will give "undesirable results" to some people. I won't comment other than to say that God isn't responsible for correcting incorrect assumptions that people hold that reasonably interpreted evidence should cause them to otherwise abandon.
The media appear to be unanimous: by getting his butt kicked, surrendering control of Basra, and being mocked as an Iranian catspaw Sadr has ... succeeded.
Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Malikis political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign
and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.
Yes, how strange that he would talk to the enemy when negotiating that enemy's surrender. Bizarre, yet. Perhaps even unique in the annals of war. . . .
I haven't seen the media swoon this hard over a militant anti-American in decades. Is Sadr the new Che? If we see Sadr T-shirts from the Code Pink store at CafePress, we'll know he's arrived.
The reasons behind Sadr's call for a cessation in fighting remain unknown, but reports indicate the Mahdi Army was having a difficult time sustaining its operations and has taken heavy casualties. "Whatever gains [the Mahdi Army] has made in the field [in Basrah], they were running short of ammunition, food, and water," an anonymous US military officer serving in South told The Long War Journal. "In short [the Mahdi Army] had no ability to sustain the effort"
... 571 Mahdi Army fighters have been killed, 881 have been wounded, 490 have been captured, and 30 have surrendered over the course of seven days of fighting.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/01/2008 06:08 ||
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[11129 views]
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#1
The staff of Newsweek will shrink dramatically, after 111 staffers on its news and business sides accepted a buyout last week.
MSM suffers from a serious case of Paleo Cause->Effect Denial Disease. I blame their long association and collaboration for the spread. Fortunately, their bedrock of senior citizens is literally dying out.
THE COLLECTED TALES OF AMERICAN ATROCITIES, WHICH LEFTISTS RELY UPON THE WAY OTHERS SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES FOR SOLACE, is getting shorter. Like allegations of torture at Guantanamo, Koran desecration, and detainee murders in Afghanistan, the Haditha massacre is increasingly being exposed as a fairy tale. Unfortunately, this canard was invented and popularized, not by terrorist propagandists to discredit an enemy army, but by American politicians to demonize U.S. soldiers and drain their own nation's will to fight an ongoing war a war which we are winning and which the same politicians voted to authorize.
Last Friday, the government dismissed all charges against the third of four defendants accused of perpetrating the aforementioned atrocities in Haditha. All charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 26, were dismissed with prejudice, meaning Tatum cannot be tried again for the incident, although by the time the trial commenced, the Haditha massacre had already shrunken considerably.
Tatum and three others stood accused, not of murdering innocent civilians in cold blood as Congressman John Murtha characterized it, but of failing to properly identify every target before opening fire. In reality, terrorists had fired on the squad from inside the house, and the room where innocent people had been killed was smoke-filled; moreover, according to multiple witnesses, everyone heard an AK-47 racking that is, getting ready to fire upon them. A positive identification would have been both impossible and suicidal. The investigating officers report further observed, according to the prosecution's case, Tatum would have been absolved of throwing a grenade into the room without positively identifying everyone inside, but not firing his rifle. The government ultimately found his actions had not violated the rules of engagement.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Murtha needs to be charged with slander, defaming the accused. If he is found guilty and has all his worldly goods taken away, then he needs to be tried for treason and sedition. Then, if found guilty, shot.
#2
Murtha must be seething. He so wanted to hang these Marines out to dry--or just hang them. Murtha should be ashamed of himself. He should resign. Pic makes Murtha look like "rage boy."
#3
Didn't a couple of them sue him for slander? How's that going?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/01/2008 18:03 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Murtha should be ashamed of himself.
The only concept of shame he and his party understand is to impose it on others to extort power. They are oblivious to the concept in application to their own words and actions.
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.
HOLLYWOOD FOXNews.com readers may remember the film "Team America: World Police," a puppeteer's parody about the American government, its foreign policy and its home-grown critics in Hollywood. One of the puppets lampoons Oscar-winner Sean Penn, who, in the film, laments the invasion of Iraq by harking back to the time it "was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate." Penn was so angry about the film's message that he wrote the film's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, a blistering public letter signing off with a scatological reference. I thought perhaps Penns temper had mellowed since then and was eager to speak with him on Oscar night at Elton Johns party.
The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.
THE COLLECTED TALES OF AMERICAN ATROCITIES, WHICH LEFTISTS RELY UPON THE WAY OTHERS SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES FOR SOLACE, is getting shorter. Like allegations of torture at Guantanamo, Koran desecration, and detainee murders in Afghanistan, the Haditha massacre is increasingly being exposed as a fairy tale. Unfortunately, this canard was invented and popularized, not by terrorist propagandists to discredit an enemy army, but by American politicians to demonize U.S. soldiers and drain their own nation's will to fight an ongoing war a war which we are winning and which the same politicians voted to authorize.
