Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Speaking of Refuge...

Israel, like the US is to the world, is still a beacon of light in the Middle East. People still die trying to reach her borders.
"The egyptian authorities opened fire at a group of african refugees who were trying to cross the border to Israel."
Even Iraqi children get to feel the light.

And while we're on the topic of Iraq, Chemical Ali Set to Swing Anytime.

Next....

Sure would like to get this guy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the King of Spades.

Faster, please!!

And holy, smolely. Talk about a big fish. Yemeni al Qaeda leader Jamal Badawi surrenders.
"Badawi was the leader of the al Qaeda cell that [was] responsible for the December 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen."

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Apologies to Hamlet

If there is something rotten, it sure isn't in the State of Denmark. This little country is standing tall and proud and doing what my country should be doing.

Hirsi Ali offered refuge in Denmark

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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Shifting Dynamics in the Middle East

Israeli land grabs erode confidence, says Rice

This is not the first time an official in the Bush administration has chastised Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. I remember well the gut feeling I had when the Iraq war began, that one of the unspoken reasons for taking out the Butcher of Baghdad was to put Israel in a position where they owed the US big time. Israel would then have to make some long overdue concessions. I even read an article which quoted then Israeli Prime Minister Sharon saying as much.

I have also noticed that the media has not been reporting on Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel for a long time. Three possible reasons may account for this: 1) with the principal funder of Pali-Terror now out of the way, the dirty job has become more difficult to pull off; 2) Arafat is dead and along with him, his movement, allowing for the seeds of a Palestinian democracy of sorts to have been planted; or 3) the media was bored and moved over to Iraq instead.

The first one is likely the most important and we can thank the Bush administration for that and for a whole host of democratic reforms, though none yet particularly dramatic, that followed throughout the Middle East, including the establishment of self-rule in the Palestinian territories.

However, the game ain't over yet. Palestinian government is rather thuggish, to put it mildly. And surely, the external interference in Iraq, which has now pretty much subsided and been defeated, was a reaction to what was correctly perceived by Arab and Iranian dictators as a bigger threat than Israel - namely the unleashing of a grassroots desire for democracy among their own demoralized, brainwashed citizens. The external interference in Iraq certainly succeeded in halting that nascent development by taking attention away from it. And thank you, Western media, for your complicity!!

How, then, do the Americans nurture and breathe new life into what they had started by invading Iraq and removing the worst example of Arab Nationalism that had ever emerged? By encouraging the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic to shift, that's how. It will be a long, slow, methodical process, but genuine peace in the Middle East will not be possible as long as those grotesque bastard offspring of Arab Nationalism can point to Israel's continued propensity to lay new claims to Arab land, even if by doing so, decades of Palestinian terrorism may actually be seen as having borne its intended fruits.

So goes the course of history. Nothing ever ends in a bed of roses, with perfect solutions and everybody living happily ever after. The petty thugs now in charge of Palestinian territory are small potatoes compared to Saddam Hussein and his capacity to keep the terror machine well oiled and running at optimum capacity. A slow, inch by inch movement toward compromise and realism will very likely empower those Palestinians who are sick and tired of the old ways of their brutish masters. Israeli hawkishness will only give way to more moderate forces, when conditions have been created that allow for Palestinian moderates to come to the table. Condi Rice's open criticism of Israeli actions is one more example that the process has advanced another inch. When the media's fixation on terrorist events dries up, one more inch along the road will have been gained.

Hmmmm. Does that mean the Blackwater fiasco has an upside?

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Saturday, October 13, 2007

On the Seventh Page, in Small Print Near the Bottom....

All the news you won't hear at the top of the hour so they can go on and on about Blackwater, Sanchez, etc. etc.

Saturday civilian toll falls dramatically to just 4 reported deaths

"The daily number of civilians killed, not including those on days when there were massive casualties from car bombs, had climbed above 100 at the end of last year and the beginning of 2007.

Saturday's decline in deaths was in line with a sharp drop in September of both Iraqi civilian and U.S. military fatalities."

Poland won’t ’desert’ Iraq: PM

"Poland is determined to maintain its forces in Iraq despite a bomb attack which wounded its ambassador and killed his Polish driver and two Iraqis, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said....


Poland has become a close US ally since the collapse of its communist regime in 1989. It joined NATO in 1999....

Warsaw was a solid supporter of Washington in run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, earning it the ire of anti-war governments in Europe, particularly France....

On Saturday, Poland’s defence ministry announced it was preparing to send a new contingent to Iraq at the start of 2008, if required."

Mosque says to avoid Western holidays

"A Toronto mosque is telling Muslims not to say "Happy Thanksgiving" or invite friends into their homes for turkey dinner on the holiday weekend.

The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque says to "avoid participating" in dinners, parties or greetings on Thanksgiving because it is a kuffaar, or non-Muslim, celebration.

A two-part article on the mosque Web site says Muslims should also "stay completely away" from "Halloween trick-and treat nonsense," Christmas, New Year's, anniversaries, birthdays and Earth Day.

How can we bring ourselves to congratulate or wish people well for their disobedience to Allah? Thus expressions such as:Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, etc, are completely out," it says.

In 2003, the Khalid mosque, which mainly serves the Toronto Somali-Canadian community, apologized for a newsletter that compared wishing someone a Merry Christmas to congratulating a murderer.

At the time, a junior employee was blamed for the slight, but the mosque's Web site has since posted similar edicts covering not only Christmas but also virtually every other Western celebration.

Muslims who participate in the holidays are termed ignorant and hypocritical.

While not all are religious holidays, the Internet site says Muslims are required to be different from non-Muslims "in matters which are representative of them or are characteristic of their identity."

Also banned, it says, are: watching sports or soap operas, walking dogs, family photos, wedding bands, Western hats, mingling and shaking hands with the opposite sex."

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Sunday, October 07, 2007

New World Order?

I could be wrong, but were there any protests over Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, or his destruction of the marshlands in the south of Iraq which displaced thousands of Iraqis, or his invasion of Kuwait, or his financing and rewarding of Palestinian terrorism? Other than those who had direct knowledge of these events through Iraqi relatives and so on, we in the West didn't know much of that was happening, so maybe that's the critical difference.

In any case it sure is gratifying to see this happening now.

Protests around world against Myanmar crackdown

Europe, Asia Protest Myanmar Crackdown

Still, there's always going to a useful fool, I suppose, who writes articles like this one:

Since taking power Robert Mugabe has ravaged his country, but no one seems to care. Oh yeah, Zimbabwe doesn't have any oil

Extreme over-simplification, race baiting and ever vigilantly omitting certain key distinctions are the hallmark of far too many idiots with jobs in the editorial rooms. Of course, there should be protests about Zimbabwe, too. But where are they? Why is it permissible to protest the crackdown in Burma, decry the lack thereof over the disaster in Zimbabwe, but God help the Iraqis if someone dares to end their long, brutal nightmare? It seems with some, if you have oil under your feet, you can be completely discarded.

In the meantime, let's hope the Burmese and the Zimbabweans manage to pull off their own revolution. If the US attempts to help them in any way, legions of useful idiots in editorial rooms, who enjoy near perfect freedom in more ways than just freedom of the press, will surely invent some strawman argument and demand that they remain in their wretched positions, rather than give credit to the Americans for doing something right.

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Saturday, October 06, 2007

HEHEHEHEHE!! Love it!!

"Israel 'blinded' Syrian radar"

"This is greatly worrying Iran. Why? Because Iran might be having the same radar systems guarding their nuclear sites. And it’s even very probable that they were the ones who got it to the Syrians; after getting it from Russia of course!"

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. What's that sound you are hearing, Mullahs?

H/T Big Pharaoh

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Friday, October 05, 2007

Iraq Falls Off the Radar Screen

What would happen if Iraq comes through the al Qaeda onslaught and succeeds in establishing a democracy?

Well, unless you read blogs, the answer is you'll never know.Violence is way down. General Petraeus' surge has produced the desired results, in large part due to the wisdom of the Sunni leadership and their decision to turn against Al Qaeda. But the media doesn't cover that ad nauseam, apparently.

And, surprise, surprise, after having staked their careers on promoting and ensuring Iraq's failure so that Bush could be bashed, the left leaning media, as well as the Democrats in Congress, have suddenly found new things to occupy their tiny little minds and fickle hearts.

Well, too bad. So sad. Iraq will make it, and perhaps will even do far better, because the MSM and the lunatic left has moved on and are no longer paying any attention. Meanwhile their friends, Al Qaeda in Iraq, are feeling betrayed and are crying the blues.

I just hope the Americans find a strong Republican candidate for President in 2008 (my hope in invested in Guiliani), because the war on terror is far from over.

But for now, God bless Iraq. They will almost certainly be the jewel of the Middle East in very short order. And, once again, thank you George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Junichiro Koizumi, Jose Maria Aznar and all the others, even if you have since lost an election and are no longer calling the shots in your respective countries. Your contribution and your stand in support of a democratic Iraq have earned you a special place in history, far more honorable and distinguished than any of the fools on the left, comparable in stature to Winston Churchill.

Thank you for initiating one of those pivotal events in history, which will bring about a new and better future for millions of people. Democracy will spread throughout the Middle East, just as it is doing in most other parts of the world, and I maintain my belief that the war in Iraq provided the inspiration for this turning point.

Thank you most of all to the American men and women in the theatre and their families who sacrificed so much, and to all Americans who supported this war.

Now, Godspeed to the Burmese people. I pray your quest for freedom of oppression does not take nearly as long as Iraq's. Somehow, I don't think it will.

AND A GREAT BIG RASPBERRY TO THE LUNATICS ON THE LEFT WHO NOW HAVE THE EMBARRASSING AND HUMILIATING TASK OF COMING UP WITH REASONS WHY THEIR BEST EFFORTS TO DERAIL THIS MOVEMENT WERE ACTUALLY IN ANYONE'S INTERESTS, LET ALONE IRAQ'S OR AMERICA'S!!!!

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Harper's Drug War and the Logic of the Left

Canadian Prime Minister recently announced a new Conservative Party platform that would see illicit drug pushers severely punished while the addict would be offered help to get off the habit. Quite naturally, this announcement has caused a big debate.

This morning, I was listening to the John Gormley show while he was taking calls from listeners about this policy and the problem it is designed to address. The huge profits that the drug trade engenders for drug lords and pushers was part of the debate. The idea that drugs should be legalized and regulated and the presumption that that would solve the problem is nearly always advanced in this argument, and sure enough, more than one caller raised this point.

So many people believe this, it's mind boggling. Has the control and regulation of alcohol stopped the bootleg business? Of course not. It certainly hasn't stopped people from abusing alcohol in the first place and all the societal costs of that. Why would regulation of cocaine or meth ampthetamines be any different?

A corollary argument suggests that addicts should go to their doctors for their fix, and this would destroy the profit motive that drives the pushers and the drug lords. This is also a ludicrous argument. No doctor in his right mind, unless he is thoroughly corrupt, is going to prescribe an illicit drug to someone who is not yet addicted, so where are the not-yet-addicts going to get the stuff that turns them into full-blown addicts? There will still be an illicit drug trade and profits to be made, folks.

So, now that we know that we are not going to be able to prevent the curse of drug addition, are we going to have a drive by window sort of service in which doctors are handing out fixes to addicts who are dying for their drug at 3:00 am on a Saturday night? Will we have a cadre of medical professionals doing the grave yard shift to keep addicts high? How many want to do this kind of work and for what sort of pay? We have a hard enough time attracting and keeping doctors as it is.

This whole scenario is macabre in the extreme.

Hmmm.

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Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Free Burma

Monday, October 01, 2007

UPDATE: Is Joe Biden a Republican?

And it gets worse. Way to go, Joe.

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