Earlier today, a dog who's visiting me found herself in a frightening position, on a wobbly table twice her height above the ground. She's a timid and defensive creature, growls while eating even though none of the other dogs threatens her or her food. Give her a little extra attention, though, and she tries to be Queen of the Pack, only to find she can't back up the claims with tooth or nail. At which point it's back to cringing.
So here she found herself, in a scary place. She could easily have jumped down without much danger, but she froze in place trembling. Snarled at the other dogs below, but couldn't bring herself to move. Struggled with me as I went to lift her off the table.
Ironically, it's her defensiveness that triggers the other dogs to dominate her. She's caught in a loop of her own making.
If she were staying here I'd name her Europe. For her behavior is just like that of many of the EU countries during the last 5 years and more. Insecure, unable to defend themselves, making claims to power they cannot back up, pushing aside -- and deeply resenting -- the stronger dogs in the pack.
And in the face of the obvious evidence of growing Islamofascist threat, they have frozen. What strength they have, they will not use.
For much of the last 5 years I have been furious with Europe. Now I see those countries differently. I know from my work with dogs that no amount of coaxing or anger will make their behavior go away. *IF* it is possible to modify their behavior a little, it will be through absolutely refusing to give them attention and status when they are ill-behaved, and rewarding them only to the degree that their behavior improves.
In dogs, temperament is about 75% genetic and the rest due to experiences in the environment. It is possible to change learned behaviors, but a dog that is shy and defensive at 12 weeks of age, after the basic pack socialization has occurred and the main brain connections are in place, can at best be mitigated by placing it in a home which has the fewest triggers for those feelings. They seldom can deal in the rumble-tumble busy-ness of a pack. They can thrive only within an environment of artificial peace and tranquility.
Which is exactly what the EU is trying desperately to create for itself -- a world in which they have legislated away all threats, all challenges, all competition, all aggression.
I no longer look for Europe to change at all, although I am glad to support voices of sanity and strength in those countries.
We had better get used to going it alone except for cooperation from many of the security forces there, who both know the threat and are trained and temperamentally inclined to meet that threat with something other than impotent snarling and pathetic cringing.
Posted by: runs with wolves ||
08/26/2006 11:21 ||
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#1
I have read stories of white-flight from the Netherlands. That will escalate.
#2
Yup. They're going to Canada and Australia, mostly. I'd change our immigration laws to grant any European who wants to come here an immigrant visa (1:1 with visas for legal immigrants south of our border, how's that?).
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2006 12:16 Comments ||
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#3
There is no question that the most damaging act we could take against the security of the EU would be to open our borders. The only people left would be the government employees and the jihadis.
#4
I'd change our immigration laws to grant any European who wants to come here an immigrant visa
I think we'd want to be somewhat selective, though.
The EU has a higher proportion of moonbats than we do, and we shouldn't just let any of them come here and screw the US up even more than it is.
That would be rewarding Euro fecklessness.
On the contrary, we might be better served telling them that since they won't have easy refuge here, maybe they should focus on cleaning up the mess in their own lands.
#5
The only people left would be the government employees and the jihadis.
Or a vast mass of inept people like me, too scared to change. Oh, well, I'll just convert, then. Besides, it will enable me to get my long-awaited revenge on uppity wimmen.
#8
No way open immigration from Europe. First as charger said, why import socialists to foul our nest as they have already done in Europe. Second, the ruling elites may take the opportunity to export their muslim population as Castro did with Cuba's prison population in 1980 (Thank you again James Earl Carter, you sanctimonious SOB). The only way to allow increased immigration from Europe is to be highly discriminatory wrt religion, politics, and job skills. Supermodels exempt.
Posted by: ed ||
08/26/2006 14:10 Comments ||
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#9
Our anon could always go on jihad and take a couple dozen captive. It's never to late to start a harem collection.
Posted by: ed ||
08/26/2006 14:12 Comments ||
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#10
I would make an excellent muslim, though, I'm bitter, I seethe easily, I nurture grudges, I'm an unproductive under-achiever, sexually repressed, and I can be violent when there's no risk for me. If I convert, I could be all that, AND be part of the Master Religion.
As for the european vs the arab/african (who don't always love each others, and that's an understatement), the typical case of the european minority in muslim 'hoods holds a precious lesson : if you play the dhimmi card well IIUC (denigrate what's to be denigrated, fast on ramadan, speak with a proper accent, loath pork, always say what you're supposed to say,...), you can assimilate pretty well to your new majority, even if you're not a true muslim; trick is to be more "arab" than the arabs or what-have-you.
Of course, you're right about the historical status of converts, especially low class ones.
#14
More seriously, this is from a blog more rightwing than most RBers, but the writer have a compelling point; to me, if this ggoes all to the end, and this might easily, this won't end with a bang, but with a whisper; not WWII redux, but conquest of Spain II (same causes, same effects) :
I hope and pray we don't get hit again, like we did on September 11. Even one life lost to the violence of terrorism is too much. If I somehow knew an attack was coming, I wouldn't pause for a second to report it in order to prevent it from occuring.
The guy's a lib, so there's got to be a "but..."
But on the other hand, I remind myself that without the ultimate sacrifice paid by 400,000 U.S. soldiers in World War II, tyranny could well have an iron grip on the world, and even on this nation. If the Nazis had prevailed, tens, if not hundreds of millions more would have been killed.
Sounds like all the more reason to hunt down terrs and kill them without ruth...
That realization has led my brain to launch a political calculus 180 degrees removed from my pacifist-inclined leanings. An entirely hypothetical yet realpolitik calculus that is ugly, and cold-hearted but must be posited:
This being from the Huffington Post, we expect rather more politik than real...
This is a type of calculus that Pentagon war games planners and political consultants do all the time- a combination of what-if actions and consequences that are unpleasant to consider but are in the realm of plausibility.
The Pentagon does it all the time, huh?
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
Hmmm... Good question. It reveals a certain lack of depth and principle in the writer, to whit, would a high death toll within the United States advance the writer's partisan political aims? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like living in a country where the leadership thought like that.
I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has "kept us safe," and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.
Since the Dems are doing no job of combating terrorism, that's not saying much. We're not safe somewhere, Binny and Ayman and their boyz are plotting and planning, wanting nothing more than to bring death and destruction to random points within the U.S. The major difference between the two political parties is that the Publicans take that as a given and the Sinners take it as a political tool.
If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under. If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate
If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.
Not necessarily. There would also be a certain percentage of Dems who would pop their sleepy little eyes open and cry "Maybe the Pubs are right!" They'd end up voting for the party that takes the threat seriously and even supporting it until attention span deficit disorder kicked in again. The writer's proceding from the assumption that people think like he does, when he's demonstrably not thinking like most of us. He's not even pausing to wonder if perhaps Bush's approach to the WoT is better than his.
and be in a position to:
Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;
Blocking supreme court appointments? To protect abortion? Many of us are against abortion, but ambivalently so. But neither do we live in a world where the right to have an abortion is the most important issue there could ever possibly be. With aircraft exploding and bodies burning, with Islamic heroes gunning down people in the streets, most of us wouldn't even be thinking of abortion. It's a separate issue that can be settled in the normal course of political argument. Terrorism isn't susceptible to argument.
Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008.
In other words, to get more people to vote for the writer's political party...
A regime change that would:
Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;
Does this crap come out of some talking points factory? Are there people with lunch buckets and cloth caps lining up at the factory gates at 7 a.m. every day, to toil on assembly lines that turn out this sort of yip-yap?
Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;
Like universal health care, this has nothing, naught, zippo, nada to do with the fact that our nation and our culture are under attack.
More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;
I guess that'd give the terrs more buses to boom, but he's still so far off topic he might as well be in Singapore...
Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;
And leave us with nothing with which to shoot back at the terrs when they're rampaging through Fond du Lac or Milpetas...
Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;
I'm getting the idea now, dense though I am: a mass casualty attack on the United States would advance the Dems' domestic agenda they don't have an international agenda that goes further afield than Turtle Bay...
Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;
Nobody ever mentions cutting the minimum wage or even abolishing it. Since it goes nowhere but up, up, up, why not get the next few hikes out of the way at once and set it around $30 an hour. But when you do so, make a mental note of which marginal businesses wink out of existence.
Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.
The Dems would be less inclined to launch any wars, foolish or otherwise, unless somebody important was about to be indicted or impeached.
I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered anything else but evil and hurtful.
You really shouldn't be proud of yourself. I find you small minded and despicable, a person who confuses the national interest with his own opinion.
And I know that when I weigh the possibility that such an attack- that might, say, kill 100- would prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from dying who otherwise would- I am exhibiting a calculating cold heart diametrically opposed to everything I stand for as a human being.
You're also estimating pretty low, bub. A hundred dead would be Iraq-level terrorism. Try thinking in terms of Nord Ost-level casualties, or Beslan-style atrocities. Picture the recent plot to boom 10 airliners simultaneously as a success, or another 9-11. Accepting such things as the breaking of the eggs to achieve your Democratic omelette tags you as either a dipshit or as a person without any scruples at all.
A human being, who, just so you know, is opposed to most wars and to capital punishment.
But not if they achieve your political ends.
But in light of the very real potential of the next two American elections to solidify our growing American persona as a warlike, polluter-friendly nation with repressive domestic tendencies and inadequate health care for so many tens of millions, let me ask you this. Even if only from the standpoint of a purely intellectual exercise in alternative future history: If you knew us getting hit again would launch a chain of transformative, cascading events that would enable a better nation where millions who would have died will live longer, would such a calculus have any moral validity? Any at all?
In a word: No. In further words: None. Zip. Zilch.
#1
Ummm... are you mad? What makes you think electing another Clinton to office would improve this situation. If that happened then I would truly be afraid. You do make a valid point of why we might be attacked again though. I am sure... anyone related to the axis of evil would not want to see another four years with the United States led by a government that when push comes to shove... would be willing to use force.
#4
What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
Stop right there! Chiroptera Lunae alert!
If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate and be in a position to:
Appease terrorists in a fashion previously unknown to mankind?
Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;
Mebbe so, but the important issue of women's self-actualization takes a back seat to fighting the predominance of a religion that would mutilate women's genitals, confine them like sheep and allow for the wholsale slaughter and abuse of them like some sort of unique farm animal.
Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:
(Oh f&ck, here it comes)
Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;
That is paid for by who? Our government can barely pay its way as it is. Do you really want to hand over the reins of what would surely be one of the most cost-intensive programs in all history to a bunch of money idiotic grubbing politicians?
Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;
How so, pray tell? By outlawing SUVs? By restricting the sale of gasoline? By legislating against cow farts?
More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;
Sure enough. Amtrak (however important America's rail system might be) can't make a thin dime. Where is all this "mass transit" financing going to come from? Who is going to administer it? Politicians? [spit]
Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;
Better judged by twelve than carried by six. 'Nuff said.
Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;
Sure thing, ethical stem cell research is just around the corner. Finally, a half-way reasonable proposition.
Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;
The minimum wage has nothing to do with crime. A false sense of entitlement (something liberals know lots about) does.
Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.
OH F&CK, where to start on this one? Decline to address a paramount threat in the foolish hope that it will simply go away of its own accord? Need I go on?
I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered anything else but evil and hurtful.
Then why the hell don't you STFU and crawl back into your hole until you have something of substance to say? BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
You have to spout off with these half-baked propositions in order to make sure that people continue to be mislead by socialistic nanny-state horseshit ideology. FOAD.
#6
remember who and what Arianna was - wife of a supposed conservative Republican running against Feinstein for the Senate, except he wasn't. He was a gay liberal masquerading. So was Arianna. Her current Eva Gabor of moonbat politics is just another schtick. Bemoaning global warming, SUV's, too large of a home for the little people, while she flys in a Lear jet, drives an SUV, and has a huge home, courtesy of the divorce. She's a patent liar, demagogue and political whore....and not even a good writer, commentator, or speaker.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/26/2006 8:03 Comments ||
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#7
C'mon Frank; don't sugar-coat it. Tell us what you think. [snicker]
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/26/2006 8:18 Comments ||
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#8
She's a patent liar, demagogue and political whore....and not even a good writer, commentator, or speaker
And this disqualifies her as a liberal in exactly what way?
#9
Russell belongs in Brussells or some similarly "enlightened" Euro town. He sounds just like one of them, a nanny state pinko that doesn't understand economics, and who never met an aggressor he couldn't appease.
I find it difficult to accept there are Americans who think this way, yet here it is in black and white.
#10
This is how these people think. The most important thing in the universe (to them) is the electoral success of the Left. If it costs a few thousand lives for them to get power, well, you gotta break a few eggs and all that. (It's easier if they're people you don't know personally, of course. If any of them are registered Republicans, so much the better.)
Posted by: Mike ||
08/26/2006 9:57 Comments ||
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#11
Lovely. I wonder if he would support this hypothetical slaughter of 100 innocents if they all happened to be drawn from the pool of Mr Shaw's family, friends and acquaintances? I mean, it's for the common good, right?
#14
M. Shaw is much like any other political, intellectual, or cultural elite in any other country.
Because of their few-ness, better living standard, better security, they know they are relatively safe. Becaus they are safe, they can blithely figure the casualties of an attack, civil strife, or pomgrom will be under-weighed by the long-term benefits that result.
History is littered with the results of such thinking.
#15
It occurs to me that the currently nameless author of all the "John Titor" time travel stuff was thinking along the same lines, but thought it would produce the exact opposite effect than described here.
(And before anyone asks, I still think it was a hoax).
Posted by: Phil ||
08/26/2006 13:54 Comments ||
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#16
One of my colleagues at work, very liberal, challenged me about 9/11: "why do you feel threatened, after all none of the planes hit Chicago."
I recovered sufficiently to retort, "am I supposed to wait until they take out the Rockefeller Chapel here on campus?"
That's the mentality we face today, folks.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2006 16:03 Comments ||
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#17
The Athenians had it right. Democracy needs an exile mechanism for those who so blithely betray fellow citizens. But in Shaw's case I recommend sell him into slavery. Sudan sounds good.
Posted by: ed ||
08/26/2006 16:27 Comments ||
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#18
Steve,
Are you at the U of C? Cuz that's where I is, two!
#19
So I guess this guy would consider Binny and the boys as the equivalent of, like, what, Democratic activists? Hillary Clinton supporters? Lamont campaign workers?
"I hope and pray we don't get hit again"? Bullshit. You pop wood just thinking about it, you demented fuck.
#20
Dems have always been willing to do anything to control whose first at the feeding trough. As for gun control, when these wimpy f**ks decide they are willing to disarm the street gangs and the drug lords and actually do it, then they can talk about gun control. Until then, they are just poseurs.
#21
Tell ya what, Russ. If they wanna wipe out say, I dunno... Portland, Oregon... Oh, you're from Portland? Well, whaddya say? Still wanna put your theory to the test?
IT'S a pity George W. Bush spoke of Islamic fascists in connection with the failed plot to booby-trap passenger aircraft heading for the US from London.
Islamo-fascist is catchier: it's only one word, is easier to say and holds promise of developing the acronym IF (pronounced eye eff). We may even borrow from communism's epithet bank and refer to Islamo-fascist hyenas.
Al-Jazeera devoted an hour to discussing Bush's use of his phrase. Viewers who called in said they were infuriated. Tough. Bloggers have disputed the legitimacy of connecting Islam and fascism.
Personally, I consider Islamo-fascist among the most useful of the present neologisms, acceptably accurate in its portrayal of our enemies and filling an awkward gap in English vocabulary. It's not even particularly neo. The idea is believed to have surfaced in a 1979 Washington Post editorial that described the Ayatollah Khomeini as an Islamic fascist.
The first use of Islamo-fascist was probably made by the English newspaper The Independent in 1990.
The Oxford English Dictionary is rather stuffy about fascist. First it sends you away to fasci, which it defines as "groups of men organised politically in Sicily in 1895".
Back at fascist, it points you to Italian nationalists gathered together to oppose communism, then to the Partito Nazionale Fascista, led by Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943. Finally, the OED concedes that fascist can loosely describe any form of right-wing authoritarianism.
Merriam-Webster lets in more light with its definition: "A political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for centralised autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe social and economic regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition."
Hezbollah, al-Qa'ida, Hamas, Jemaah Islamiah, the Taliban and the Government of Iran, to name a few of our Islamic foes, fit comfortably under the Merriam-Webster umbrella. None of the usual labels such as terrorists, Islamists, fundamentalists, jihadists, militants, Muslim radicals or insurgents is adequately descriptive of specific Islamo-fascist groups or of their common purpose - to damage and, ideally, destroy Western society - and their identical murderous tactics.
Not having a name to call enemies who describe us as satanic puts us on the back foot.
Writing in The Guardian after the foiled London plot, Max Hastings declared, for instance, that "Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous. He sounds more like the Mahdi preaching jihad against infidels than the leader of a Western democracy. He is indifferent to the huge variance of interests that drives the Taliban in Afghanistan, insurgents in Iraq, Hamas and Hezbollah fighting the Israelis."
But even Hastings finds need for a collective label and refers to "violent fundamentalists". Not all Muslim fundamentalists are violent, however, and the violent are not necessarily being faithful to the fundamental principles of Islam.
A much less effete Englishman, William Shawcross - who had the machismo to write a biography of Rupert Murdoch against his subject's express wishes - called Hezbollah Islamo-fascists during a BBC interview.
"That's a very controversial description," the interviewer exclaimed. She ended the interview almost immediately.
But Shawcross kept the motor running in a subsequent column: "Don't people know that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the eager seeker of nuclear weapons, considers the destruction of Israel an Iranian priority? Or that Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah has said he wished all Jews would gather in Israel so that they could all be destroyed at once? Or that among the prisoners Nasrallah demands that Israel release are men arrested after rejoicing in smashing out the brains of Israeli children?"
American historian Paul Berman has pointed out that "when fascism arose in Europe in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, similar movements cropped up in the Arab world. While different from their European counterparts" they had "similar mythology and paranoia: a cult of hatred and a cult of death".
One such movement was the Muslim Brotherhood, originating in Egypt with the mission of creating a unified Muslim theocracy. According to Berman, the Brotherhood "schooled many young radicals", among them Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the No.2 man and reputedly the brains of al-Qa'ida.
It appears that before President Bush spoke of Islamic fascists, aides ran the idea past the professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, Fouad Ajami, a Shi'ite Muslim who saw no harm in the phrase: "There are people waiting to be offended. They want to be offended. They're eager to be offended."
Calling somebody a fascist is undoubtedly intended to give offence. But it doesn't seem to break John Howard's bones. It offends only those caught clearly in the act of emulating the sinister founders of fascism.
In London and, I understand, in Sydney, demonstrators who purported to be turning out for Lebanon displayed banners declaring: "We are all Hezbollah now."
Should this not have read: "We are all fascists now"? Would they consider a rewrite?
#1
Hezbollah, al-Qa'ida, Hamas, Jemaah Islamiah, the Taliban and the Government of Iran, to name a few of our Islamic foes, fit comfortably under the Merriam-Webster umbrella [definition of fascism]. None of the usual labels such as terrorists, Islamists, fundamentalists, jihadists, militants, Muslim radicals or insurgents is adequately descriptive of specific Islamo-fascist groups or of their common purpose - to damage and, ideally, destroy Western society - and their identical murderous tactics.
Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah ...
It appears that before President Bush spoke of Islamic fascists, aides ran the idea past the professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, Fouad Ajami, a Shi'ite Muslim who saw no harm in the phrase: "There are people waiting to be offended. They want to be offended. They're eager to be offended."
You mean ... Skinless people in a sandpaper world?
Link is a pdf.
HAS THE HOUR OF AL-QAÏDA AND/OR THE HEZBOLLAH COME?
By Claude MONIQUET, President of the ESISC
A few days ago, we underlined the very particular aspects of the last taking of hostages in the Gaza Strip - that one that concerned Fox News American reporter Steve Centani and his New Zealand cameraman, Olaf Wiig. After having recalled that most of the taking of hostages of Westerners ended within a few hours or one day or two, we concluded that: "In this case, the unusual duration of this kidnapping and the fact that no faction appeared is likely to cause real concerns".
Unfortunately, the facts have just given us reason: on August 23, an unknown group, the Brigades of the Holly Jihad, asserted the kidnapping by diffusing a video showing the two journalists. The claim is clear: all the "Moslem prisoners" in the United States must be released within the 72 hours", meaning this Saturday evening at the latest. This will not happen and the continuation of the story will allow us to understand how serious is this threat, which is a new misadventure of the Palestinian terrorism.
Right now however, this terrible news gives substance to the fears expressed, mezzo voce, for more than two years by some Israeli, American and European experts who feared to see the al-Qaeda network being established in the Gaza Strip.
The Brigades are completely unknown and one can even doubt that they have a real existence: it is much more likely a kind of new brand intended to hide an organization, quite real that one, like, for instance, the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the more extremist Palestinian fractions, which is considered to be related to al Qaeda.
The claiming message which accompanied the video cassette evokes the traditional rhetoric of the extremists: Koranic references, apology for the sacrifice of the Mujahideen, critics of the action of the "forces of the evil" in Afghanistan and Iraq, call for conversion of "all the infidels". This message ended in a relatively elliptic way: "Release our prisoners and we will do the same", no allusion being made to the fate of the hostages if this claim were not met.
Several elements seem to indicate that the Brigades are probably an emanation of the al-Qaeda network. Should it be the case, it would be an important strategic projection for the Salafists, who had never succeeded until now in being deeply established in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By investing this new ground, al-Qaeda would get back to its own profit the most emblematic conflicts opposing (to mention again the Salafist phraseology) "the Moslem world" to "the Occident" or to the "Zionists". This true tender offer on the Palestinian "cause" could pay off and would give a new legitimacy to the Jihadist parties.
In addition, if the Brigades are a creation encouraged by the Hezbollah which always had a great influence on Hamas in spite of its Shiite obedience - and other Palestinian extremists parties, it would not be either a good news: crowned with its quite relative "victory", the Hezbollah could afford the luxury of opening, by interposed Palestinians, a new front against "the Zionist entity ".
In any cause, one thing is for sure - the Brigades moving in the Al Qaedacircles or in the Hezbollah circles -, the situation is obviously ripe, in the West Bank but especially in Gaza, to see an even more radical tendency than Hamas or the Islamic Jihad emerge. Fatah is discredited by years of bad management and of corruption, Hamas obviously struggles to be essential, but more especially, the al-Qaeda network and/or the Hezbollah can estimate that the events of these last weeks showed the relative "weakness" of Israel and that the recourse to "hard" methods more would make it possible to gain points and to get much more than through negotiations.
It is certainly extremely difficult to directly attack the Israelis - although a resumption of the attacks is possible who are protected on the one hand by the security fence and on the other hand by draconian safety measures, but to strike the Westerners present at Gaza and their interests (or, if possible, the Israeli interests abroad) can be an interesting option in the eyes of the Jihadists who could thus hope to lead the international community to be more involved in the payment of the conflict.
The risk would be then to see this community still isolating more Israel. Another major risk is to see the Gaza Strip to rock definitively in a chaos with Iraqi who would destroy what is actually remaining of the Peace process and would have a destabilization effect on all the area.
One last word to regret that Israel, precisely, is not at the top for the moment - with a chief of staff who dabbled on the stock exchange, a weak Minister of Defence, an undecisive Prime Minister and other eminent members of his political elite implicated in regrettable scandals - to face this new threat with efficiency, resolution and intelligence. A few weeks ago, some inscriptions had flowered on the walls of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: "Sharon wake up, Olmert is in the coma". Sharon, unfortunately, has few chances to awake but the coma of Ehud Olmert seems to worsen....
The Jihad network and the Hezbollah are doing well. Thanks for them
The claim is clear: all the "Moslem prisoners" in the United States must be released within the 72 hours", meaning this Saturday evening at the latest.
Hoo boy, talk about sorely mistaken individuals. Trying to blackmail the Bush administration by kidnapping and threatening the lives of some journalists. These dingbats are in for a real whopper of a surprise.
This message ended in a relatively elliptic way:
Translation: These SOBs are really, really loopy.
"Release our prisoners and we will do the same"
Hookay! So, if we free their prisoners, they will free their prisoners too?
... crowned with its quite relative "victory", the Hezbollah could afford the luxury of opening, by interposed Palestinians, a new front against "the Zionist entity "
I don't know exactly how many more of these "victories" Hezbollah can stand but it sure explains why the Israelis recently have been entering Gaza with impunity for the sole purpose of taking names and kicking more Arab ass.
It is certainly extremely difficult to directly attack the Israelis
And the award for Best Understatement of the Year in a Supporting Role goes to may I have the envelope please?
The risk would be then to see this community still isolating more Israel. Another major risk is to see the Gaza Strip to rock definitively in a chaos with Iraqi who would destroy what is actually remaining of the Peace process and would have a destabilization effect on all the area.
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.
