[Jihad Watch] We have seen the principle reinforced again and again: wherever Islamic law and Western law conflict, it is Western law that has to give way. And so here, despite claims from Islamic groups in the West that they have no interest in bringing Sharia to the West, we see a Muslim sheikh in Germany call for Muslims to demand the legalization of polygamy in the West. Cool photo. Looks as though he needs 4 wives just to shuttle victuals to fat arse.
#6
They should. It would be a two-fer for the rest of us. It would simultaneously expose "normal" Islam to the vast majority of Americans who have no idea except for the 'religion of peace' nonsense they have been fed. And it would expose the gay marriage lobby for the hypocrites and liars they are.
[WND] The executive director of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association says his sources inside the federal government warn that Washington's weekend retreat in a dispute over grazing land in Nevada was only a move to distract attention and diffuse tensions, because a raid on the family's ranch still is planned.
And there probably would be violence involved, said Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz.
"I don't think it would be possible" to launch a raid without violence, he told WND Monday. "I don't think the Bundys would lie down and be taken."
He cited the vow by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that the confrontation was far from over, despite the weekend's retreat by armed gunmen working for federal agencies.
Reid on Monday told KRNV-TV in Reno: "It's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over." But when POTUS and regime "violate" the law or make it up as they go, no problem.
#4
Well P2k, they were LDS cows, and Mitt Romney was LDS. Perhaps that was it. No wait, mad-hatter Harry Reid is LDS...? Different synagogue possibly? I'm so confused. Too much bull.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/15/2014 18:29 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Reid on Monday told KRNV-TV in Reno: "It's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over."
Look in the mirror, buddy........applies to you, too.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/15/2014 20:32 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Some of the things I've seen on the intertubes today suggest that those who stood with Mr. Bundy have not all returned home and are, er, "camping" around the Bundy spread.
h/T Gates of Vienna
I am back from RussiaÂ’s capital, where I presented a paper at a conference on World War I at MoscowÂ’s Lomonosov State University. Regarding Ukraine, the consensus of my numerous interlocutors of various persuasions and backgrounds is clear:
1. Russia will not invade. She will support demands for federalization in the east (Kharkov), southeast (the Donbas industrial area) and south (the Black Sea littoral), but there will be no boots on the ground and no annexation.
2. Russia will insist that UkraineÂ’s new constitution be based on federal principles, which will entail legal power of the yet-to-be constituted regions to enter into international commercial and security treaties with other countries and entities (e.g. the Donbas region with the Russian-led customs union that also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia).
3. To that end Moscow will support the emerging, self-proclaimed authorities in the southeast and elsewhere with money and logistics. There is no need to send any weapons, apparently, as the police and security personnel in the said regions appear to be pro-Russian anyway, and have willingly handed over their arsenals to the gold–and-black-clad activists.
4. Belated offers of “greater autonomy for the regions” coming from the putschist regime in Kiev are dismissed with scorn (“way too little, way too late”). The three regions to be constituted as fully self-governing entities – formally within Ukraine, of course – are Izmail-Odessa-Nikolaev-Kherson in the south, Donetsk-Lugansk in the southeast, and Kharkov in the northeast.
5. Russia will demand money for UkraineÂ’s unpaid natural gas bills and future deliveries from the European Union, in whatever form.
6. The “sanctions” are meaningless, and Germany in particular is not committed to them. There will be business as usual, whatever Obama or Kerry say.
7. Putin is widely perceived as the master strategist, even among the traditionally pro-Western Moscow “intelligentsia” which is dismayed at Washington’s inaptitude in playing the geopolitical game.
The overriding impression, formed on my previous visit three weeks ago, is that Moscow no longer perceives Washington and Brussels as credible partners. The key moment came on February 22, when the EU-brokered deal to ease Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power was swiftly turned into a regime-changing coup that fitted in neatly with Victoria Nuland’s preferred dramatis personae. Vladimir Putin felt he was being brazenly cheated. Having just persuaded Yanukovych to sign his de facto abdication – to agree to a major reduction in presidential powers and an early election – he was presented with what looked like yet another Western fait accompli. As of now he has a game plan that is non-negotiable. VVP thinks has a strong hand, and he will play it.
In April 1904, Scottish geographer Halford Mackinder gave a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. His paper, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” caused a sensation and marked the birth of geopolitics as an autonomous discipline. According to Mackinder, control over the Eurasian “World-Island” is the key to global hegemony. At its core is the “pivot area,” the Heartland, which extends from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic. “My concern is with the general physical control, rather than the causes of universal history,” Mackinder declared.
At the end of the Great War, profoundly concerned with what he saw as the need for an effective barrier of nations between Germany and Russia, Mackinder summarized his theory as follows:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island controls the world.
This dictum helps explain the essence of the Ukrainian crisis, as well as the motivation behind the continuing ambition of some U.S. policymakers to expand NATO eastward.
#2
The above indics nothing about which ideology or religion, etc. ideals will dominate said same "Heartland" + "World Island".
Things have greatly improved in post-Soviet Russia, but the country remains at high risk of external destabilization affecting internal or domestic affairs, e.g. COMMUNIST-VS-STATE- CAPITALIST CHINA + SOON-TO-BE-NUCLEAR ISLAM INCLUDING GLOBAL-JIHAD HAPPY HARD BOYZ.
As I've said or inferred times before, as per US-VS-CHINA-VS-NUCLEAR-ISLAM in ASIA-PACIFIC, the only question is whether the Hard Boyz will attack the USA or Rising China before attacking the other.
Pro-US or Anti-US OWG-NWO, Globalism or no Globalism, the "Great Game" = Substitution of Nations + Wealth by Another goes on agz all Comers or Camps, + irregardless of the merits.
THE GLOBIES WANT THE GREAT POWERS, ESPEC THE SUPERPOWER USA, TO UNILATERALLY GIVE UP POWER-N-INFLUENCE, ETC. SO THAT NEW POWERS OR OLD POWERS CAN RISE TO [rough?] GEOPOL PARITY INCLUDING NUCLEAR, + TO BE PRINCIPALS OR LEADERS IN SO-CALLED OWG GLOBAL FEDERAL UNIONS.
What the Globies haven't answered yet is HOW MUCH POWER-N-INFLUENCE can be SAFELY given up by the above so as N-O-T to inspire MilPol Wannabe Nation-States or Movements to take over by any means necessary.
OOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPSSSSS ... ...
* FYI CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [WaPo] RUSSIA NEEDS MORE TIME TO HAVE CAPABLE AIR FORCE + NAVAL FORCE.
[Iran Press TV] A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the US is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy ... derived from the Greek words oligos, a few and the verb archo, to rule, to govern, to command. Oligarchies are invariably effectual rather than established, to whit, they disguise themselves as other systems, working as the real government behind the face of of democracy, fascism, socialism, monarchy, or what have you... , meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study's opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:
"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."
To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.
The authors of this historically important study are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, and their article is titled "Testing Theories of American Politics." The authors clarify that the data available are probably under-representing the actual extent of control of the US by the super-rich:
Economic Elite Domination theories do rather well in our analysis, even though our findings probably understate the political influence of elites. Our measure of the preferences of wealthy or elite Americans -- though useful, and the best we could generate for a large set of policy cases -- is probably less consistent with the relevant preferences than are our measures of the views of ordinary citizens or the alignments of engaged interest groups. Yet we found substantial estimated effects even when using this imperfect measure. The real-world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater.
Nonetheless, this is the first-ever scientific study of the question of whether the US is a democracy. "Until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions [that US policymaking operates as a democracy, versus as an oligarchy, versus as some mixture of the two] against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues." That's an enormous number of policy-issues studied.
What the authors are able to find, despite the deficiencies of the data, is important: the first-ever scientific analysis of whether the US is a democracy, or is instead an oligarchy, or some combination of the two. The clear finding is that the US is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media). The US, in other words, is basically similar to other dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." That's it, in a nutshell.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/15/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Yeah....I'd probably agree with that, it's gotten to that point.
It takes a hundred ranchers in Nevada with guns to even get a local news station to cover the goings-on these days. I'm pretty sure I have been reduced to an inert wage slaving tax beast. I step out of line, they gut me; house, job, bank account, credit rating- gone.
Everybody in DC likes to argue FASCISM-VS-COMMUNISM, but nobody wants to discuss or talk about SOCIALISM-GOVTISM [Statism, State Capitalism/Cronyism, etc].
I liked the way the post-Soviet Russians said it, i.e. COMMUNIST-CAPITALISM = "COMMPITALISM".
#6
The correct term for the age of Obama is "autocratic collectivism".
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/15/2014 5:22 Comments ||
Top||
#7
This is news?
Yes, because the Permanent Party Propaganda Machine and it's Teachers Union agents refuse to teach this little fact in our schools in order to keep the subjects docile. Got to keep the rubes obedient to the decrees of people who sit for life and are unaccountable to the people. If it was a real republic, all elements of the government would be subject to the 'consent' of the governed.
#13
Every time there's an election we get to choose between two crooks. Then they water down our votes with illegal aliens, dead people, cartoon characters and people who vote in one state and then drive to another state and vote there. I don't believe there is a single honest man in all of Washington DC, Sacramento or sitting on any of the city councils in any city in the country.
All my life people have been telling me that it's still better than anywhere else. But I'm not sure anymore and even if it is, that's not good enough. Just because it's better than Libya, Russia or China doesn't mean it's acceptable.
Social Security, MediCare, ObamaCare, Affirmative Action, Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae and Sallie Mae are all scams perpetrated by a kleptocracy that is dedicated to enriching themselves and maintaining power at the expense of the rest of us. They keep it all under wraps with a media that is just as corrupt as they are so we have to get the news from Iranians.
They refuse to keep their spending within their means, they refuse to secure the border, they get us involved in foreign wars in which we have no interest and they tax the hell out of us.
After paying my taxes this year I'm mad as hell. It's nothing more than armed robbery.
#15
Ebbang - Yes, I wake up with it on this date every year. Generally lasts no more than four hours. It was so bad in 2012, I drove up to my urologist at Emory. By the time I had the car parked, it was over. I just came back home and took a long nap :-(
#20
Don't forget the gerrymandering of safe voting districts that disenfranchise 49% of the voters. You can't gerrymander based on race but you can sure do it by party affiliation.
#22
..doesn't have to. When was the last time you remember SCOTUS telling petitioners they had to go through the Article V process rather than put their action before the judiciary to change the Constitution?
I'm with you. And lets not forget the 49% of the population which pays No Federal Taxes at all - yet still get the right to spend the money of those who do - which usually means giving it to themselves.
And the concept that Welfare and the like are 'Mandatory spending' - and it grows and grows each and every year. WTF is that? Why are they 'mandatory' so they get pushed ahead of things which really are the Federal Government's responsibility: Defense of our nation and our borders. Oh no - we can't spend money defending our borders becase we have this 'mandatory' spending to give to the illegal aliens who violate those same borders.
[DAWN] WHAT will it take to slap our ruling civil and military elite out of its obsession with egotism, triviality and misplaced notions of honour? It can't get more absurd. A nuclear-capable state with one of the largest standing armies in the world is held hostage by its home-bred terrorists. Now, on the one hand we have our 'statesmen' and generals bending over to appease those slaughtering soldiers and citizens. And, on the other, the same sages can't stop frothing and preaching the pride and dignity of their respective institutions, parliament and the army.
Is parliament's supremacy now entrenched with its members having proclaimed it in thundering speeches? Has the honour and dignity of the army been restored after the army chief fired warning shots amidst cheering commandos? We have lost more than 50,000 of us to violence. We have had heads of FC soldiers severed and used as footballs. Whether it is Fata, Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , Islamabad's district courts or Rawalpindi's sabzi mandi, the state's writ is nowhere in sight. And yet our power wielders can't stop their bickering to focus on our existential crisis?
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/15/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
In consideration of the title, and fairness to India and Pakistan, I thought it only appropriate.
[DAWN] A TTP front man last week said that killing innocent people is 'haram'. The statement may have been the most perverse act of hypocrisy ever witnessed in Pakistain, which is saying something. Perverse not only because the TTP has contributed to the massacre of 50,000 Paks, but also because it issued the statement while deciding whether to extend a ceasefire -- one that has been punctuated by horrific violence.
As Pakistain negotiates with the TTP, it's important to consider what made the group think it could get away with such a public contradiction, and what it hopes to achieve by it. For weeks, the TTP has taken advantage of the ongoing peace talks to revamp its PR strategy, simply disowning acts of violence that echo its modus operandi and are traced back to it by intelligence agencies. Media-savvy spokesmen blame splinter groups, hidden hands, or foreign agents for the attacks, and we give them the benefit of the doubt even though it is known that turban groups are well networked and ready to collaborate.
The TTP has also tried to win the moral high ground through the negotiations process. It has made sure to come across as magnanimous in granting -- and then extending -- the ceasefire; it has also turned the tables on the army by demonising it for detaining non-combatants, including women and kiddies (while their repeated slaughter of the same bears no mention).
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/15/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
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.
[DAWN] WHAT will it take to slap our ruling civil and military elite out of its obsession with egotism, triviality and misplaced notions of honour? It can't get more absurd. A nuclear-capable state with one of the largest standing armies in the world is held hostage by its home-bred terrorists. Now, on the one hand we have our 'statesmen' and generals bending over to appease those slaughtering soldiers and citizens. And, on the other, the same sages can't stop frothing and preaching the pride and dignity of their respective institutions, parliament and the army.
In consideration of the title, and fairness to India and Pakistan, I thought it only appropriate. 
