May 25, 2005

The Liberia and al Qaeda Connection

By Matt from WMD:

Voice of America reports:

Officials of the U.N. appointed Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal say exiled former Liberian leader is deeply involved with al Qaeda, and believes West Africa can be turned into another Afghanistan.

Briefing a closed session of the Security Council Tuesday, chief court investigator Alan White said he had turned up evidence of Mr. Taylor's active involvement in several efforts to create turmoil in the region, including last January's attempt to assassinate Guinean President Lansana Conte.

"In November, we started learning about a plot that Charles Taylor and others in the region were trying to engage in destabilizing the region. In particular GuineaÂ… We reported it in November, and we reported it in December in January it went down exactly the way our sources had reported it was going to occur, and that is on January 19th the assassination attempt on president Conte," he said.

Mr. White said those sources have advised him that another attempt on President Conte's life is being planned.

Question: Are we looking for OBL on the right continent???

Taylor is yet another one of those dictators that needed the Saddam treatment long before he got it... Is he still a player for al Qaeda? Who knows, but it seems clear that the groundwork for operations in Africa was laid under his watch and with his supervision.

Posted by: MattWMD at 07:15 AM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
Post contains 238 words, total size 2 kb.

Package Deal?

Big Ed at Captain's Quarters notices that the threat of a filibuster on John Bolton has been removed. Was this part of the deal?

Hmmm...I may have to rethink this.

Posted by: seedubya at 02:10 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

The best columnist you've never heard of

Doug Kern has a typically fascinating piece up at Tech Central Station. This one's on Revenge of the Sith and the nature of mercy. Look through his archive, too. He's funny, and he's pretty deep, too. He keeps doing that thing where he says exactly what I would have said, if I knew exactly what it was I wanted to say. He ought to be syndicated.

There's a Lee Harris piece up at TCS as well. He's another good one--I don't always agree with him but he's always thought provoking. He's also the guy who wrote this long ago, which dates from 2002 but remains one of the best essays on the War on Terror.

Posted by: seedubya at 12:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 129 words, total size 1 kb.

The European Empire

The EU is violating Godwin's law, notes Mark Steyn, in their rush to ram the new EU constitution through, claiming that without a unified Europe the concentration camps are just around the corner.

That is a particularly bad analogy, I think, because the Holocaust happened under a Europe newly unified under the Third Reich. There was no Holocaust in Switzerland, nor in England. I suspect, although I don't know this for sure, that even Jews under Mussolini had much less to fear than they did in occupied Poland.

EUcrats might point to the devastation of WWI as an example of rampant suspicion and security dilemmas piling up in a fragmented and militarized Europe. But the Holocaust happened within a Europe without national firewalls--firewalls the new Constitution will bring down.

Posted by: seedubya at 12:04 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 135 words, total size 1 kb.

May 24, 2005

Guerrilla Blogging

The lone blogger wanders from village to village in China, righting wrongs and exposing evil. Worthwhile read from Kristof.

Posted by: seedubya at 04:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

Jawapalooza Forever

Probably of little interest to all but a few.....

more...

Posted by: Rusty at 03:04 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 280 words, total size 2 kb.

Give Saddam Some of that Old Time Rock 'n Roll

Saddam Hussein does his best Tom Cruise impression.

Posted by: Rusty at 01:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

Add the Middle East to the 'Red States'

David sends along this WSJ editorial for Greg's reading enjoyment:

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs. For decades, the intellectual classes in the Arab world bemoaned the indifference of American power to the cause of their liberty. Now a conservative American president had come bearing the gift of Wilsonian redemption...

The children of Islam, and of the Arabs in particular, had taken to the road, and to terror. There were many liberal, secular Arabs now clamoring for American intervention. The claims of sovereignty were no longer adequate; a malignant political culture had to be "rehabilitated and placed in receivership," a wise Jordanian observer conceded. Mr. Bush may not be given to excessive philosophical sophistication, but his break with "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in the Arab-Islamic world has found eager converts among Muslims and Arabs keen to repair their world, to wean it from a culture of scapegoating and self-pity. Pick up the Arabic papers today: They are curiously, and suddenly, readable. They describe the objective world; they give voice to recognition that the world has bypassed the Arabs. The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Mr. Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim "exceptionalism" to the appeal of liberty.....

As I made my way on this Arab journey, I picked up a meditation that Massimo d'Azeglio, a Piedmontese aristocrat who embraced that "springtime" in Europe, offered about his time, which speaks so directly to this Arab time: "The gift of liberty is like that of a horse, handsome, strong, and high-spirited. In some it arouses a wish to ride; in many others, on the contrary, it increases the desire to walk." It would be fair to say that there are many Arabs today keen to walk--frightened as they are by the prospect of the Islamists coming to power and curtailing personal liberties, snuffing out freedoms gained at such great effort and pain. But more Arabs, I hazard to guess, now have the wish to ride. It is a powerful temptation that George W. Bush has brought to their doorstep.

I certainly hope that Fouad Ajami is right.

Posted by: Rusty at 01:14 PM | Comments (23) | Add Comment
Post contains 590 words, total size 4 kb.

Mexico Uber Alles

Overheard at a rally at the Baldwin Park, CA, Metrolink station,

"Too bad Osama Bin Laden didn't have a hydrogen bomb
to drop on that Jewish shit hole called Manhattan..."

"Osama Bin Laden Rules!

"Zarqawi the Gringo killer, yes!, yes"

I've been out of the loop for awhile so maybe you've already seen this. They've got video. It's pretty freaking disgusting.

Hat tip: Pixy Misa

Parenthetically I used to live about 3 or 4 miles down the road from the Baldwin Park Metrolink station and had been there dozens of times. I never once noticed the anti-American slogans until I saw this story explode on the blogosphere several weeks ago.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:29 AM | Comments (151) | Add Comment
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.

Religion of Peace Update

By Matt from WMD:

Moderate Muslims don't seem all that interested in defending the Religion of Peace as a religion of peace and attack those who do.

From the Washington Times:

Though met by modest crowds, the recent first-ever Free Muslims March Against Terrorism could be considered a success in one key respect: It further exposed the unwillingness of most major Muslim groups to condemn the radicals that have come to dominate their religion.

It also further cemented the growing reputation of organizer Kamal Nawash, head of the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC), as one of the only genuine moderate leaders of a national Islamic organization.
While I don't expect every Muslim to go to rallies like this one, it would be nice to hear condemnation of terrorist attacks whenever and wherever they happen. At worst, it would be seen as a good public relations move; at best, such action would deter further attacks.

Do I expect it to happen? Not with these people calling the shots for the Religion of Peace...

Groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have a track record of condemning — but only targets like the Fox television show "24," which they blasted earlier this year for having terrorists who were Muslims.

Never mind that CAIR officials have refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah when asked to do so by The Washington Post and others, describing questions about the terrorist groups as a "game." And MPAC maintains, for example, that the Hezbollah murder of 241 Americans in Lebanon in 1983 was not a terrorist attack.
These people don't understand the problem they face...but do they really want peace? I don't think so...
Although not shy about badmouthing Mr. Nawash and FMC, CAIR and MPAC largely stayed silent regarding the rally. But CAIR was careful to refer people seeking comment about the rally to Hussein Ibish, former communications director at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), who used to work in the same office as Mr. Nawash years ago.

Mr. Ibish has been on a tear of late, writing two rambling smear pieces on his former co-worker. In one, he labeled Mr. Nawash "unsavory" and called his efforts to condemn radical Islam in the same breath as terrorism "appalling." This is a marked contrast to how he responds to fellow Muslims who call for "jihad" and "Death to America."

Appearing on CNN in August 2002, Mr. Ibish was asked about a 1991 fund-raising letter from suspected (and indicted) terrorist Sami al-Arian that read, in part, "Jihad is our path! Victory to Islam! Death to Israel and victory to Islam! Revolution, revolution until victory! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem!"

His response? " 'Death to Israel' does not necessarily mean violence. Jihad can mean a lot of things," he explained. Without explanation, Mr. Ibish abruptly — and bizarrely — switched the topic. "I'll tell you who is advocating violence. It is Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who advocated torturing people."

These are the kinds of people that are their spokesmen. And the message isn't one of peace, no matter how you define it.
[The Muslim-American Society (MAS)] is the most ardent advocate of the United States forging closer ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the worldwide Islamist organization that has served as the theological inspiration for many of today's leading terrorists. Muslim Brotherhood's main goal is to create Islamic states around the world.

The kinds of Islamic states that Muslim Brotherhood and MAS would create, ironically, would be most inhospitable to someone like Mr. Ibish, who loves both wine and women. Though he does not shower praise on Islamist organizations, Mr. Ibish rarely criticizes them. Targets of his wrath, in fact, are almost always the enemies of the Islamists whom he should consider his enemies.

Were Mr. Ibish to change course and attack rabid Islamists rather than defend them, his stock among Muslim leaders would plummet. Such is the culture of conformity that punishes the likes of Mr. Nawash, while Mr. Ibish and other secular defenders of venomous Islamists thrive.
Read that last paragraph again. That tells me all I need to know...

Posted by: MattWMD at 07:28 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 685 words, total size 4 kb.

Senate Compromise on Judicial Filibusters Reached (a slightly different take)

The buzz in the blogospere is frantic over the compromise reached by the 14 Senators concerning the 5 Judicial nominees offered up by George Bush. Here is my take, the Republicans won this round. Here's why:

1) We have an up or down vote guaranteed on the 3 most contentious nominees Brown, Owen and Pryor.

2) We have given up nothing. The Dims promised not to filibuster unless under extraordinary circumstances. The other two nominess can be brought to the floor and if filibustered the Dims can be made out to be liars because the 3 most arguably extreme judges have already been allowed through.

3) The nuclear option can still be be used at any time.

4) The Dims got absolutely nothing except it allowed them a way out of this morass without totally losing face.

5) It will be virtually impossible for the Dims to try and filibuster one of these nominees if they are ever in line for the Supreme Court because they have already capitulated on them.

I was never sure that Frist had the votes to go nuclear, if he did he will have them a few weeks down the road should they be needed, if he didn't he averted a potentially devastating embarrassment. The Liberals blinked and we are better off now then we were a week ago.


Posted by Traderrob

Update: Frist on the Senate Floor:

I am not a party of the MOU signed last night by 14 of our colleagues, I have had the opportunity to further review in more detail and the MOU makes modest progress in that three individuals will get up or down votes.

But to me it does stop far short of guaranteeing judicial nominees of the up or down votes for other nominees and other nominees in the future. I say that with civility and trust and with the MOU being a starting point and the spirit in which it was generated, I think we can successfully bring these judicial nominees to a vote. It will be spun by the left and right in various ways but I look at that MOU which I didn't sign off on because it stops far short of what we want, but it does show a way to go forward with nominees with filibuster.
Frist: Other qualified nominees deserve the same up or down vote. The agreement stops far short of the principal that I have brought to the floor.

The agreement if followed in good faith will make filibusters in the future, including Supremem Court nominees, almost impossible. The words in the agreement about extraordinary circumstances, obviously I'm concerned about that because if extraordinary circumstances are described about people like Miguel Estrada, then this agreement will mean very little.

Frist continues, the constitutional option remains on the table. It remains an option and I won't hesitate to use it if necessary as a last resort. It is the only response if there is a change in response like the last Congress. My goal is restoring the principal of fairness for 214 years until the last Congress for up or down votes.

If the other side of the aisle continues the obstructionism and filibustering, the constitutional option will come out once again and I'll set a date to use it.

It's not a threat. It ought to be used to enforce appropriate behavior. All it does it bring it to the floor.
Hmmmm, interesting

Posted by: Traderrob at 06:52 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 594 words, total size 4 kb.

Pony-Digging

I only remember the punchline of this joke, which involves a gleeful little boy on Christmas morning, digging giddily through an enormous pile of horse puckey that has appeared there overnight.

"Do you realize what this means?" exclaims the star-struck little boy, up to his elbows in road apples. "It means there must be a pony here somewhere!"

Ah, youth. Well, some denizens of the rightish Immedia are looking for that pony in the new F.U.C.U.P. ("Filibuster: Unconditional Capitulation by Unmitigated Pansies") deal. Digging away are:

Orin Judd:"the deal looks excellent" and "Only [both sides'] most rabid partisans will be distraught."
Alexander McClure: "In short, this is the submission of the minority to the will of the
majority."
Jeff Harrell: "Compromise used to be virtuous"
Jon Podhoretz: "If the Democrats insist that the next nominee(s) are bad enough to invoke the "extraordinary" right to filibuster, the Republicans have the right to say the Democrats are full of it, kill the deal and go to the nuclear option immediately."

(which they could have done without this agreement)

Have fun, little shavers! Let us know when you find that pony! In the meantime, bear in mind that even the irrepressible Hugh "Specter will work out great!" Hewitt thinks the deal is not a good one and that this pile of horse poo is only that, and nothing more.

Posted by: seedubya at 05:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 226 words, total size 2 kb.

Vichy Republicans

Punting on the goal line.

I'm not going to be able to type much here before lapsing into incoherent burbles of profanity.

I have taken a lot of crap for my politics. I have stood up--respectfully, politely--for unpopular conservative positions in ways I believe have negatively affected my career. These Senators exhibit no such conviction.

What reason do these puddle-spines give for this wonderful, breakthrough pact of theirs? How can they justify it? Comity? Compromise for its own sake?

Pathetic.

Posted by: seedubya at 12:44 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.

May 23, 2005

I'm ba-aaack.....

gmailimage.gif
----------------------------------------------

yahoomailimage.gif

........er, it might be awhile before things get back to normal around here.

Posted by: Rusty at 12:12 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

Sunnis Step Off Political Sidelines

This is the final nail in the coffin for Iraq's murdering terrorist'. Any shred of legitimacy they might have enjoyed from within Iraq is gone. The only support left in country is from the die hard Baathist's desperately trying to regain power and their numbers are miniscule.

BAGHDAD, May 21 -- More than 1,000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads ended their two-year boycott of politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq on Saturday, uniting in a Sunni bloc that they said would help draft the country's new constitution and compete in elections.

Formation of the group comes during escalating violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has raised the threat of sectarian war. The bloc represents moderate and hard-line members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and other main groups of the disgruntled Sunni minority toppled from dominance when U.S.-led troops routed Hussein in April 2003.

Sunnis have remained on the sidelines of the Iraqi government since then. Most Sunnis boycotted national elections in January that put the long-suppressed Shiite majority in charge. Meanwhile, a Sunni-led insurgency appears to have become increasingly unpopular among ordinary Iraqis as the death toll from bombings and other attacks climbs.

Make no mistake, this is a big deal. The move effectively diminishes the chance for an all out civil war breaking out between Sunnis and Shiites to practically nil. All major parties are now participants in the process leaving the radical elements essentially isolated and powerless.

Posted by Traderrob

Posted by: Traderrob at 06:26 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
Post contains 260 words, total size 2 kb.

May 22, 2005

Chavez: nuclear ambitions?

First he may have been looking into chemical weapons, now he's smooching the mullahs and looking for, as Clarence Boddicker might phrase it, "state of the art bang bang".

H/t to the Little Green Footballs.

Posted by: seedubya at 11:38 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

Tiger in Your Tank, Stool Pigeon Under Your Hood

Dave at Garfield Ridge, the man who puts the "Air" in "Air Power", announces that Oregon, ("The Bozo State"), wants to put a GPS chip in every car to track your mileage, so you can pay a mileage tax. He links to Partisan Pundit, with much, much more, e.g.: "The state of Oregon is finding ways to anally penetrate its motorists for more cash..."

If there was ever a measure capable of causing a rebellion all across the political spectrum, this is it.

Patterico reported a while back on a similar plan under deliberation here in California. The LA Times article he linked to (now offline) also said that the Federal Gummint is considering implementing a nationwide program to do the same thing, and that research is ongoing at the DOT.

(It's already the law in New Zealand, according to a friend of mine who owns a farm there. He has to write down his mileage and pay an extra tax because he owns a gas-guzzling, forest-leveling V-6 Toyota truck. No chips for them, just a mileage log.)

This is stupid on at least two enormous levels, and probably some smaller ones I haven't considered yet. But to start, see the extended entry:
more...

Posted by: seedubya at 05:13 PM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
Post contains 503 words, total size 3 kb.

Which Numbers Matter? The NCTC Report Revisited, Recoded and Reanalyzed

By Demosophist

At Rusty's suggestion I'm moving this reanalysis of the Terrorism Chronology back to the start, for another run through the gauntlet. What I'd like to make clear is that I disagree that there's any implication in the numbers that we're losing, or losing ground, in the fight against Totalitarianism 3.x. In fact, we're confounding them at every turn, which is one reason they're becoming more vicious. In addition, they're raising the number of attacks in certain places, such as Kashmir, at the expense of "quality." Anyway, here's the original post, from last week:

Marc Danziger (by way of reader T.M. Lutas) recently emailed an Excel file containing the narratives from the report released by the National Counterterrorism Center entitled A Chronology of Significant International Terrorism for 2004, describing the 651 terrorist attacks it identified.  (Although there has been a debate with Larry Johnson over the significance of these numbers I've no argument with the idea that we ought to be concerned.  After all, I'm concerned or I wouldn't be posting this re-analysis. However, I object to the notion that these numbers are some sort of signal that we're not winning the war.)  At any rate, I've been mulling over these data since Marc dropped them to me about two weeks ago, doing a lot of what data geeks do with this sort of delicacy, and thought I'd post a little of what I've found. 

First of all, Marc's post on Winds of Change describes his preliminary findings, according to which it's clear that two countries, India and Iraq, account for over 3/4ths of the terrorist attacks that took place in 2004. (If all attacks listed in the report are included these two countries account for 76.2%).  After looking more carefully at the narratives in the glossy report the first thing that one finds is that there are about 70 events on the list of terrorist attacks that may not belong.  That's because the target of those attacks was clearly military, rather than civilian.  These amount to about 11% of the total number of attacks listed, and more than 80% of these (57 of 70) occurred in Kashmir.

Now, it's true that the folks who did these dirty deeds probably were not very concerned about "collateral damage" to civilians, so I don't have reservations about including them, provided some civilians were either wounded or killed, but in 36 of the 70 cases where the objective was clearly military there were no civilian casualties at all.  I'm not sure why these events even appear in a terrorist attack database, but their inclusion tends to put more emphasis on terrorist activity in the troubled Indian state than might otherwise be the case.  This is not so much because the events were included for Kashmir, but more because similar events were not generally included elsewhere.  But whatever the justification, as one deletes some of these questionable "terrorist" attacks from consideration the percentage of attacks in Iraq rises from roughly 31% to 34% while those in India/Kashmir fall from about 45% down to 41%.  So, while the proportion of "terrorist" attacks rises for Iraq and falls for India after you do a bit of circumspective culling, those two nations still account for approximately 3/4ths of all terrorist attacks in the world.  That fact doesn't change.  And in sheer frequency of attacks, India/Kashmir is still more active than Iraq, or anywhere else.  But that's not the whole story, by a long shot.

more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 01:22 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
Post contains 3381 words, total size 43 kb.

More Hypocrisy From the Left.....Go Figure

Another glowing example of the blatant hypocrisy of the left concerning filibusters. We have pointed out the complete reversal of conviction from the likes of Schumer, Levin, Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein etc. over the past weeks. It appears we have another inductee into the disingenuous Democrat hall of political shame.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who publicly crusaded against Senate filibusters 12 years ago, now says he opposes banning filibusters against judicial nominees - the so-called "nuclear option'' fueling a bruising Capitol Hill showdown.

``I would vote against changing the filibuster rule right now,'' Frank (D-Newton) told the Herald in a telephone interview Thursday. Frank explained he still supports an ``across-the-board'' ban against all filibusters, but he opposes the Republican ``nuclear option'' because it only outlaws filibusters against judicial nominees.

In 1993, Frank led a public fight to end Senate filibusters, asserting in a Washington Post op-ed piece: ``I believe legislative bodies should scrupulously abide by two principles: complete openness and majority rule. The filibuster is a godsend to potential gridlockers.''

PUHLEEEAZE Barney.... sounds like Kerry, he's against it except when he's for it. Is it possible for these crapweasels to be consistent on anything.

Posted by Traderrob

Posted by: Traderrob at 11:18 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
Post contains 210 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Traderrob at 11:12 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 0 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 181 of 284 >>
273kb generated in CPU 0.0769, elapsed 0.2663 seconds.
134 queries taking 0.2139 seconds, 676 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.

Search Thingy



Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Sample link

Monthly Traffic

  • Pages: 195304
  • Files: 451
  • Bytes: 2.2G
  • CPU Time: 321:36
  • Queries: 19926987

Content

  • Posts: 5690
  • Comments: 76627

Feeds


RSS 2.0 Atom 1.0