The Telegraph reports that the National Association of Muslim Police has attacked government policy on countering Islamic extremism. In evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating Islamic extremism, the NAMP attacked
the Government's anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an 'affront to British values' which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest... that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the 'driver' behind recent terrorist attacks. Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security... that Muslims were being 'stigmatised' by the Government's attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to 'hatred' against entire communities.
...The memorandum warned that Muslims were subjected to 'daily abuse' due to the strategy. 'We must not diminish our British values further by continuing to allow such behaviour and policies to continue unchecked.'
This is an extremely alarming development.
First, a general point. The very idea that police officers form themselves into interest groups of any stripe whatever should be anathema to the ethic of policing. That applies equally to Black, Gay, Jewish or One-Legged Transgendered Red-Haired Police associations.
I'm in love with the person who wrote that sentence. Yum! On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with a group of Jewish police persons encouraging members of their synagogues to apply to the police academy instead of the London School of Economics or King's College's English department.
Police officers should serve the entire community equally, and should have no agenda but that professional commitment of equal public service to all. The idea that they identify themselves as an interest group is simply wrong, and the police service should never have allowed this to develop.
The memorandum by the National Association of Muslim Police, however, is of a different order of magnitude altogether.
To take their least serious point first: the idea that there is no Islamic threat and that the real threat to Britain comes from the 'far right' is demonstrably ludicrous. The 'far right' poses no threat to Britain other than some low-level thuggery. The Islamist threat to Britain is very great indeed. Dozens of Islamist plots aimed at murdering thousands of people have been thwarted, and the security service say between 2000 and 4000 British Muslims are radicalised to potential acts of terrorism. This terrorism is part of a global holy war being waged in the name of Islam. While many British Muslims support neither the aims nor the tactics of this holy war, an insupportable number do. For Muslim police officers to deny this is extremely disturbing. It means they have bought into the radical narrative of systematic denial and deceit.
But the NAMP went much, much further than this. They attacked government policy; worse, they attacked government policy aimed at protecting the lives and safety of British citizens; worse still, they suggested that British Muslims should resist that policy, and implicitly threatened disorder if it were not changed.
Let us pinch ourselves: these are British police officers, subject to the same disciplinary and professional codes as any other police officers. Yet their call for action to 'check' counter-terrorism policy, and the implicit threat of violence if it is not so checked, suggests that rather than helping form the line of defence against the Islamist threat, these police officers must be considered to be part of that threat.
On its website, moreover, NAMP recommends that British Muslims reporting crimes should also 'report any such actions to the Islamic Human Rights Commission'. Let's think about the implications of this for a moment. The IHRC is an extremist organisation with links to Iran. The NAMP is therefore advising British Muslims to use an extreme Iran-linked Islamic jihadi front organisation, which threatens the security of this nation, as a parallel law enforcement mechanism in Britain. The attempt to set up parallel Islamic institutions and jurisdiction in Britain is a core element of the Islamist attempt to suborn and take over this country.
The irony of this frightening situation is extreme. The government has bent over backwards to avoid associating Islam with terrorism. In an attempt to peel moderate Muslims away from the radicals, it has poured more than £140 million a year into 'moderate' Muslim groups. It has positively fallen over itself to encourage the recruitment of Muslim police officers in the belief that that this would persuade British Muslims that the government had no problem with them, only with the radicals in their midst. Yet these are precisely the policies which the NAMP claims have led to 'hatred against Muslims' which 'has grown to a level that defies all logic and is an affront to British values'.
Thus the fruits of appeasement. Rather than taming jihadi extremism in Britain, the cowardice of politicians has merely resulted in fracturing the thin blue line that protects us -- and turning it into a potential weapon of the jihad.
The central battle in our time is over political primacy. It is a competition between the public sector and the private sector over who defines the work and the institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.
This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unionsThe American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.
They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency. There's no way out for these Democrats. They made a Faustian bargain 40 years ago with the public unions.
Scott Brown's victory has given the GOP a rare, narrow chance to align itself with an electorate that understands its anger. Now the GOP has to find a way to disconnect from a political legacy that smothered governments at all levels and is now smothering the Democratic Party.
#1
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.
So this is when people in government began to put union affiliation and party above country.
Those who like to bury their heads in the sand won't want to read this. Some of us, on the other hand, enjoy it...
This is about Fox News and its march over the nation's news media, knocking off and steam-rolling other news channels while cementing its stranglehold at the top. A lib attempts to understand what's incomprehensible to libs...
Most of us who live in the blessedly enlightened Washington-New York-Boston corridor like to brush off Fox News as the home of the intellectually challenged. Error number one: dismiss your opponent as a dumbass. That way you'll be surprised when he/she/it makes some pretty intelligent moves...
We mock its slogan, "First, Fair and Balanced," and laugh off its rabble-rousing commentators as neanderthal, bigoted, biased right-wingers. It's terrible when they don't tell you what you want to hear. More important, when you present news you should be predictive: what you're describing should conform to what's actually happening. If you say, for instance, that the world's getting hotter and hotter until we're all gonna melt, we shouldn't be seeing a hard winter...
Fox's millions of viewers -- those little people in nowhere towns and backwater cities
What are Fox New's rating in the enlightened DC-NYC-B corridor, pray tell?
who don't read books or watch "Mad Men" -- are ridiculed and caricatured as dumb and dumber. Most of us can count, if only on our fingers. We don't read a lot of trendy books, but we're pretty good with manuals. And Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin seem to sell a lot of books to somebody, don't they?
And that stream of adjectives reveals no bigotry whatsoever on the part of the journalist and her crowd.
They are the hollering, red-faced crowds in the rowdy protests at town hall meetings last August. They are the social and political throwbacks of the Tea Party movement. They are the unfashionable, middle-America, small-town folks who queue up for hours to get a glimpse of their action hero, Sarah Palin. I can remember when it was only libs and commies and anarchists who took to the streets.
I remember when the bien pensent were clever enough not to reveal that they thought the rest of the world merely unfashionable rather than philosophically addled.
So why is Fox News No. 1? They have a better quality product?... Naw. That can't be it.
Stack its lineup of stars -- Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity -- against the liberal MSNBC's lineup of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and you've got a pretty good picture of why Fox comes out on top. Matthews is a political hack. Olbermann's demented. Maddow's barely coherent.
It's simple. Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity -- as disagreeable as they might be to someone with my political leanings -- seem in varying degrees more in touch with centrist-to-conservative America, which is, like it or not, the heart of the country. They speak the language -- simple, straightforward. Who can't understand O'Reilly's pinheads and patriots? Who can resist Glenn Beck's boyish persona and oversimplified view of the world? And how about Sean Hannity, who proudly wears his biases on his sleeve? O'Reilly's more of a libertarian than a conservative. Beck's presentation makes me expect him to be a nut, but what he presents as facts turn out to be verifiable, which suggests his conclusions are valid. Hannity used to be paired with Colmes in a right-left "fair and balanced" show. Colmes is such an unimaginative dullard you ended up feeling sorry for him.
Controversy is their bread and butter. They stoke the fires and stir the ashes and hold court with the low and the high. They don't dine and party with insiders. They are anti-establishment. They are suburbanites (none lives in Washington or Manhattan). They are outliers. Unlike the trendy folk like the writer...
And now they've got Sarah Palin, the Wasilla beauty queen. And former governor of Alaska...
Not to mention that Cosmo centerfold Brown of Massachusetts.
When she made her debut on "The O'Reilly Factor" last week as a Fox News political analyst -- however much we enjoy chuckling at that -- the ratings went through the roof. Her appearance drew 3.9 million viewers, more than anything else on other cable news shows combined in the 8 p.m. hour. People were curious as to whether she could actually produce and defend ideas up close and personal or if she was only good at giving speeches. She did pretty well, I thought. But then, I actually watched it, unlike the writer...
At the same time, MSNBC, which employs brand-name anchors such as Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews, has wrapped itself in the liberal flag. It goes back to the 2008 campaign. Who can forget Matthews' revelation on national TV that he felt a tingling up his leg upon hearing Barack Obama speak? O'Reilly actually had candidate Obama on his show, and was quite polite to him. I thought he got pretty gentle handling. He also had Hillary on and he was actually gallant to her.
During the campaign, MSNBC discovered what Fox News had discovered years ago -- politically biased reporting and analysis are a winning combination. But Matthews and Maddow, with their overwrought liberalism, and Olbermann, with his professorial sarcasm,
Professorial? The writer clearly is not qualified to have an opinion.
can't possibly match Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity in head-to-head competition for the vast center of America. The MSNBC crowd speaks to the Eastern elite; the Fox boys speak to the middle between East and West. That's the area that's seen its jobs go, that can see its standard of living going with them...
"The public is not only shifting from left to right," the liberals' favorite conservative columnist, David Brooks, wrote recently. "Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year." He went on: "A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the Tea Party brigades have all the intensity." It's that predictive thing I was talking about. It doesn't take an awful lot of brain power to see that despite being told how great it would be if labor was unionized those industries that were most heavily unionized are now in the gutter -- railroads, steel, automobiles, and airlines all used to represent good jobs as well as strong industries. If you tell me that we can spend our way out of debt we don't have to think too long on the subject to come to the conclusion that either you're lying or you're insane. We can form that sort of conclusion regardless of whether we've read anything Oprah's recommended.
While most of us were ignoring the Tea Party crowds as fringe, right-wing crazies, Fox News was there. They started from the assumption that the Tea Party movement represented valid concerns. The lefties started out calling them "tea baggers" -- Bob Beckel used the term on Fox just the day before Brown beat Marsha Martha Coakley.
Some might say that Fox actually promoted and gave life to the Tea Party movement. That's reaching too far. What Fox did is what Fox does with such success. It found the beginning of a populist wave and now it's riding its crest. The libs are still snickering like 8-year-olds, visions of sex acts dancing in their heads, having moved well beyond the point where they can make any sort of peace with the movement. The best they can do is send some SEIU goons around to thump some heads.
The SEIU goons could certainly try... but they'd be up against the grandmas, and it wouldn't be a fair fight.
Perhaps if Washington and the liberal media had paid more attention and listened to the rising political winds, the Democrats would not have lost Massachusetts and with it, perhaps health care reform. If you don't listen to your opponent you'll be surprised every time. I think that's basic Sun Tzu, isn't it?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/22/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
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#2
The lefties still don't get it. Fox kills the competition because it is the sole cable news occupant of any position on the political spectrum to the right of center-left in a country whose population self-identifies as conservative at double the rate it self-identifies as liberal. While Fox's competitors compete with each other for the same viewers, Fox stands alone as the sole choice for those right of center.
The only thing surprising about the success of Fox News is that they don't (yet) total double the combined viewership of all of their competitors.
#4
"Fox's millions of viewers -- those little people in nowhere towns and backwater cities who don't read books or watch "Mad Men" -- are ridiculed and caricatured as dumb and dumber. They are the hollering, red-faced crowds in the rowdy protests at town hall meetings last August. They are the social and political throwbacks of the Tea Party movement. They are the unfashionable, middle-America, small-town folks who queue up for hours to get a glimpse of their action hero, Sarah Palin."
That would describe perhaps 5% of Fox News viewers. The other 95% are people who've grown tired of the low-quality "news" offered by the other broadcast and cable networks and prefer reporting that doesn't read like propaganda churned out by the Democratic National Committee or some liberal, Nanny State think-tank funded by George Soros.
If this dimwitted bint really wants to understand why Fox News is #1, she only has to look at why Air America just went Tango Uniform, and notice the strong ideological and stylistic resemblance between AA and the rest of her favored, "progressive" news outfits.
Americans are getting fed up with that shit.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
01/22/2010 5:59 Comments ||
Top||
#5
viewers=advertisers=money
Why hasn't anyone else tried to become more like Fox?
I really enjoy watching Beck. I just wish he was on later than 5pm.
#8
Perhaps if Washington and the liberal media had paid more attention and listened to the rising political winds, the Democrats would not have lost Massachusetts and with it, perhaps health care reform.
That's as close as she comes to 'getting it'. If only they'd listened, they could've trampled the 65% of Americans who don't want their health care modified.
Fortunately for "us", "they" will never get it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/22/2010 6:26 Comments ||
Top||
#9
For those who do not believe in God, yes, it was just a coincidence that an evil, drunken, SOB happened to die and provide an opportunity for right to prevail.
#10
...seem in varying degrees more in touch with centrist-to-conservative America, which is, like it or not, the heart of the country.
Which is the key admission that the liberal-left does not represent the heart of the country. That their goal is not the classical definition of a democracy or republic. Rather, their goal is to rule through a facade of one while disenfranchising the real majority. All, of course, in the name of 'social justice' [ie the socialist peoples' democratic form of government - Marxism].
#11
The writer is a former assistant national editor at the NY Times. That means she's heard of flyover country, may even be able to find it on a map, but certainly wouldn't be caught dead there (because, after all, there may be only one store in the whole state that sells Manolo Blahniks.)
BTW, Luisita, more Democrats watch Fox than watch MSNBC. Really. Kinda like more liberals listen to Rush than listened to your beloved late Air America.
#13
This really is a serious article? What a elitist, condescending piece of crap.
This is what passes for Journalism these days? No wonder the NYT is circling the drain.
And she still doesn't get it. Fox News is top because they report opposing views.
And they actually report the news (such as ACORN) while the others hide the news in reams of opinion - if they report it at all. Beck and Hannity don't try to wrap themselves up as 'journalists' while Chris and Olberman do.
And the reason the MSNBC/CNN/etc... 'anchors' are doing so bad is that, lacking any logical argument, they resort to name calling (Teabaggers). People find that dishonest and, frankly, disgusting.
#15
Further proof that the journo-class should use foreign correspondents when reporting on locations outside of "the blessedly enlightened Washington-New York-Boston corridor".
#17
Bright Pebbles, I suspect most Christians believe life is a test to determine if you are qualified to go to heaven. An easy test would be worthless. A test of faith that had to overcome war, death, disease, authoritarian dictators, Marxists and filthy hippies might be a bit too hard for most but it certainly is a test.
#18
Since I do not want to drag this thread too far from the original topic, I will confine myself to three sentences:
RjSchwarz, Christians do not believe that life is one big test to see if we qualify. Christians know that everyone sins and nobody qualifies, so the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ, accepted the punishment for sin on our behalf. Our response to his gift is to accept it, live lives of gratitude to God and to share God's grace and mercy with others as it has been extended to us.
#20
Ok then lets sum it up shall we? The reason Fox has better ratings is not because it provides a higher quality product. No Sir! Its because, compared to the limited population of the blessedly enlightened educated class there are simply more dimwitted rubes to be manipulated. This all makes perfect sense in a pompous Progressive elitist sort of way.
#21
... the blessedly enlightened Washington-New York-Boston corridor ...
Ah yes. So "blessedly enlightened" that two of my kids (both extremely bright), have vowed to get as far away from Mass as they can as soon as they can. They simply can't stand the smug, patronizing, smarter-and-holier-than-thou attitude of so many of the people here. I can't blame them one bit, though I'll miss them (and their votes).
#28
those little people in nowhere towns and backwater cities who don't read books
Why do city people always talk like this? I live in one of the most rural places in Nevada and let me tell you: many of us don't do anything but read. What are we supposed to do - go to the opera?:
#29
And ANOTHER thing, as long as I'm just starting to get really angry: why do city dwellers always act like their particular urban abyss is the center of the Universe? It's not the center of my universe! I don't even like going to Reno to resupply my ranch!
"Blessedly enlightened Washington-New York-Boston corridor?" Lady, I don't even lock the doors when I go on vacation. How about you?
#30
Our journalist needs to drill down into the statistics a bit. At which point she'll find that not all Fox viewers are unlettered rednecks from Podunk Village, TS (The Swamp). An awful lot of them are like one of my fellow PTA moms: a retired hotshot engineer married to a corporate executive who lectures at Harvard in his spare time. She has two (2!) daughters who are National Merit Scholars as well as being nationally ranked classical musicians and state ranked athletes. My girlfriend watches Fox News precisely because, as Fred writes, their news comports more closely to reality... and of course, she has enough science and statistics background to know when ignorant journalists are purveying partial or total untruths.
In fact, it would be interesting to look into the strength of the correlation between science/statistics/history knowledge and choice of news source... not to mention political identification. It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party had morphed from the party of the labour unions to the Know Nothing Party while we weren't looking.
#31
AND ANOTHER THING! "They are the unfashionable, middle-America, small-town folks who queue up for hours to get a glimpse of their action hero, Sarah Palin."
Action hero? What they hell is that? Listen: who am I supposed to relate too as a rural American?
Obama: a narcissistic, urbane, anti-Second Amendment yuppie who supports the idea that newborn children with Down's syndrome should be subjected to something called "post-birth abortion."
Palin: a gun-loving rural woman who has a child with Down's syndrome?
(Full Disclosure: I have a child with Down's syndrome.)
To summarize it the night of the Massachusets thunderclap MSNBC had only liberal guests and one of the anchors (the guy who is suspoosed to be reporting and let us decide) ended sepcualting about how "we" aka the Democrats could bounce again to success.
By contrast Fox news had a balanced plateau with both liberals and conservatives. So this arrogant and stupid lowlife "balanced" is being 100% liberal and have the peasants obey their betters that is not rocketscientists but the people who graduated in a such third trate discuipline as journalism.
#33
Once upon a time, JFM, reporting was considered a skilled trade for those who had an innate grasp of grammar and no business sense, in the same class as plumbing if a tad less damp or financially stable. Dear Mr. Samuel Clemens perfectly epitomized the breed, as he wrote his way round the world to pay off debts resulting from unsuccessful business speculations.
Separately, one has to love the journalist's headshot at the link. She is clearly so intrinsically fashionable she chooses to look like an absolute frump in utterly conventional New York City all-black, little changed since the reign of dear Queen Victoria. If only she had the cheekbones to justify the rusty widow's weeds, but alas!
#34
I read this less literally than some of you seem to have. The author's tongue is firmly planted in her cheek, caricaturing her bi-coastal readers' prejudice with her outlandish characterization of those in flyover country. But she still couldn't get a job at Fox.
The war news and ongoing widespread rumors about an imminent, unprecedented, devastating, unconventional and massive Israeli attack against Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are causing very serious and extensive contagious public moods of tension, anxiety and fear among the Lebanese Shiite community. Apparently, there is a huge gap of confidence and trust between Hezbollah's leadership's imaginary allegations of power and the Shiite residents of its cantons and ministate.
Hezbollah's Party General Secretary Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, his deputy, Sheik Naem Qassim, as well as numerous high ranging party's officials very close to Nasrallah have been lately uttering almost on a daily basis bold empty rhetorical threats to annihilate Israel, defeat and humiliate its worldwide reputable, strong and highly efficient military apparatus, change the region's face, and impose a new pro-Syrian and -Iranian resistance status quo in the Middle East in any upcoming war with the Jewish state.
Nasrallah's sickening and high pitched bragging of Hezbollah's military powers, both offensive and deterring, are not bought or swallowed by the majority of his own Shiite community. How could they take his delusional rhetoric seriously when they had suffered vast and enormous losses in both lives and property during the 2006 war that Hezbollah instigated through kidnapping and killing members of an Israeli army border patrol?
How could they believe Nasrallah's big lie of the so called "divine victory", in that war when they had lived for 33 days in an actual hell and almost one million of them were displaced and forced to take refuge in schools, government buildings, churches, mosques, parks, hospitals and roads, while Nasrallah and his party's top notch leadership were hiding in their fortified underground bunkers.
The Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyassah unveiled in a report published today that Hezbollah and its armed ally, the Shiite Amal Movement, are secretly but firmly and seriously trying through both force, and persuasion to hold back the massive fleeing of the Shiite community members from Hezbollah's ministate stronghold located in the suburbs of Beirut.
The daily report quoted anonymous political resources, members in the eighth of March coalition spearheaded by Hezbollah, saying that a large Hezbollah - Amal military scale campaign is proceeding to stop the fleeing process.
Those fleeing are mainly heading either to Syria or to the Shiite Bekaa Valley towns and villages adjacent to the Syrian borders. It is worth mentioning that during the 2006 war, the almost one million Shiites who were forced to flee south Lebanon and the Hezbollah mini-state in the suburbs of Beirut were welcomed and hosted by the Druze, Sunni Muslim and Christian regions of Chouf, Alley, Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli, Kesrwan, Baabda, Jbiel, Zahlie and many other Lebanese cities.
According to the Al-Seyassah report, the hospitability situation at the present time is extremely different and the Druze, Sunni, Christian cities that suffered Hezbollah's bloody invasions of May 2008 are no longer welcoming the Shiites. Many stressed and scared Shiite families living in Beirut's southern suburbs (Hezbollah's mini-state) and its surrounding areas are calling friends and relatives in Syria and many European countries to rent apartments for them.
The report said that Shiite migration to Europe, Africa and Latin American countries where there are large Shiite communities has hit a record high since the beginning of last December.
Meanwhile, Israel has made it very clear that its military response to any Hezbollah missile attack will be devastating, crippling and that Lebanon's entire public institutions, infrastructure, and army will be targeted. The Israeli leadership officially warned the Lebanese government several times lately that it will be accountable for any Hezbollah offenses after members of this terrorist Iranian organization were given ministerial portfolios.
The beating of war drums is very serious in both Lebanon and Israel as well as in Syria and Iran. Numerous reliable sources in Paris, New York, Cairo, Amman, Tel Aviv and Lebanon strongly believe that the war is inevitable and will take place within a few months.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed yesterday his fear of a possible Israeli operation against Lebanon in an interview published on by the French newspaper Le Monde. Hariri said: "We fear an Israeli operation. Last week, 25 over flights for the Israeli fighter jets were recorded in one day".
Officials from the USA, EU, Turkey, Egypt, and many other Arab countries have been warning Lebanon of an Israeli invasion if Hezbollah continues to stockpile weapons. Israel's military revealed on Monday that among this huge weaponry are Syrian-built missiles equipped with chemical war heads with ranges that could reach all Israeli cities.
Reiterating and stressing what was stated in my previous editorial of January 18/10: The Free World must be aware that the Lebanese people alone can no longer stop Hezbollah from taking over the whole country, topple its free and democratic regime and replace it by a replica of the Iranian mullah's Islamic republic. The Free World and the moderate Arab countries must come to Lebanon's rescue because Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist army, threatens not only Lebanon, but also all the Arab countries and nations of the Free World. All these countries should understand that by helping Lebanon they will be helping themselves, because the same inferno that is now consuming Lebanon will reach them soon if not extinguished in Lebanon and the lunatic arsonist, Hezbollah, is disabled.
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 
Those who like to bury their heads in the sand won't want to read this. 
The war news and ongoing widespread rumors about an imminent, unprecedented, devastating, unconventional and massive Israeli attack against Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are causing very serious and extensive contagious public moods of tension, anxiety and fear among the Lebanese Shiite community. Apparently, there is a huge gap of confidence and trust between Hezbollah's leadership's imaginary allegations of power and the Shiite residents of its cantons and ministate.
