Posted by: Mike ||
01/27/2008 09:28 ||
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#1
Damn Euro-typefaces maker me want to puke... Fetch my California Case and take your damn hands off my descenders!
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
01/27/2008 10:43 Comments ||
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#2
I like the McCain font very much.
However, we see that the analysts' reasoning is flawed by their praise for the John Edwards logo. That sort of chunky san-serif was popular in the '70s and just screams "CARTER ADMINISTRATION!" Do not touch with 30-year pole.
And I find Obama's font a bit wishy-washy. It looks like it belongs on a corporate annual report. It's afraid to offend anyone. It wets the bed at night and is terrified someone will find out, and it's too ashamed to go to the doctor.
#1
See also DEBKA > BARAK - IRAN IS WORKING ON MISSLE WARHEADS [advanced SSM's]; + IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM IS MUCH BEYOND THE LEVEL OF THE US MANHATTAN PROJECT.
Newsweek in its recent cover story claimed that Musharrafs stubbornness to desperately hang on to power is distracting Pakistanis from tackling the real enemy i.e. Islamic extremism. I am in agreement. But the reasons behind such a happening are not quite as black and white.
Certainly, theres now a rapid consensus developing across Pakistani society that the time has come for Musharraf to leave. But the larger question is: exactly how will this address the bigger issue of extremism? I concur that Musharrafs recent antics and blunders have made his reputation precariously venerable to critics of all shapes and sizes. But it is simplistic to assume that all shall be hunky-dory if he steps down. The truth is that this anti-Musharraf vigour is not really a case of distracted energies.
First of all, the fact that violence-prone extremism was ironically the creation of the CIA, with patronage provided by petro-dollars and the local intelligence agencies.
From Jinnah's "Direct Action Day" in Calcutta in 1946, the Pak elite has used violence to further political ends. It was Jinnah who threatened the British with Jihad.The CIA had nothing to do with the 'lashkar' sent to plunder Kashmir in 1947. The madrassa system was massively expanded, and curriculum changed long before Afghanistan. It was done as a response to the Baloch uprisings and defeat in the 1965 war (when "freedom fighters" entered Kashmir to "liberate" it for Islam.
There is not an iota of doubt about the history of these agencies using the concept of jihad as a calling card to gather fighters for the so-called Afghan jihad in the 1980s. A string of radical Islamic scholars was used along with the state-owned media and madressahs to fervently indoctrinate a huge number of young Muslims.
The indoctrination took place using a sternly orthodox and puritanical strain of Islam, especially in Pakistan where more than 70 per cent of the population followed the more apolitical school of Islam. The idea was to radicalise them to fight Americas proxy war in Afghanistan. Interestingly, though a majority of Pakistanis still belong to an apolitical school of religious thought, the aggressively puritanical version of Islam that was propagated did manage to penetrate the psyche of a substantial number of Pakistanis. Todays extremism is a monstrous fruition of the seeds planted in the past.
More dangerous was the way droplets of this aggressive strain started to trickle down to shape the sociology and politics of Pakistanis who are not extremists. Thats why, for example, if you mention names like Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif, one wont be surprised to see a number of Pakistanis leap to action, getting into an animated mode, criticising and lambasting corrupt politicians and power-hungry generals. However, the moment you try to discuss a recent episode of suicide bombing, most Pakistanis can then be seen suddenly going into a shell, trying to avoid the topic.
The majority will not condone suicide bombing, but they will not condemn it either. And thats dangerous. Some would avoid discussing it altogether, actually believing that maybe criticising the holy warriors (no matter how violent they may be), is like criticising Islam, while some would gladly become navel-gazing apologists of such acts.
In other words, they really don't have a problem with suicide bombing, just who it is used against. It is OK against Hindus in India and Jews in Israel, but bad against others.
Whom should we blame, seems to be the question on their mind. The thinking is that blaming the extremists is perhaps equal to agreeing with Musharraf and the US. It is this narrow, egocentric mentality, coupled with echoes of years and years of indoctrination of a contradictory and xenophobic strain of Islam that has left a bulk of Pakistanis apathetically suffering and subdued by matters such as extremism and terrorism.
What Musharraf represents in the form of the establishment comes with a historical and visible baggage. It is thus a target that can be clearly seen, pinpointed and attacked, whereas extremism remains an elusive enemy. Some would even go to the extent of negating its very existence, in spite of the ubiquitous sights of blood, bodies and limbs quivering on blackened streets. So, it is not general apathy or distracted energies of the people that the extremists are feeding on; it is a collective case of denial on the part of an increasing number of Pakistanis that is strengthening the extremists. The denial is made worse by the apologists.
Though it is true the terrorists are not overwhelmingly popular with the masses, it is also true that most Pakistanis have yet to perceive the extremists as the kind of enemy that they really are. With ready-made explanations like RAW, CIA and that fellow Muslims are being subjected to state atrocities in the north spiel being their best answers to the madness of extremism and terrorism, it is highly unlikely to expect Pakistanis to tackle the issue anytime soon regardless of who the next president or the PM will be.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/27/2008 12:24 ||
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#1
Pakistan's free fall into crapulence couldn't have anything to do with Zia's 1978 overthrow of Common Law inherited from the Brits to implement sharia. Instead it was the CIA's mid 80'sgift of a few dozen Stingers. That would make the Pakis the World's Cheapest Whores.
Posted by: ed ||
01/27/2008 13:40 Comments ||
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The documentary, Clash Of The Worlds: Mutiny, telecast by BBC-1 on January 7, carried some distortions of historical facts. It suggested that the 1857 uprising against the British was motivated, organised and fought by the jihadi Muslims of India. The background of jihad was linked to 1830-31 Wahabi movement led by Syed Ahmed Brelvi who was a disciple of Mohammad Bin Abdul Wahab of Arabia (1704-92).
The documentary traced the roots of Wahabism as an anti-British movement, leading finally to an armed struggle against the British in India; establishing a jihadi camp in Peshawar against the British under the command of Syed Ahmed who was killed in 1831 without telling who he was fighting against and who really killed him. Some important facts have been ignored or misrepresented because they did not fit into what the documentary was trying to impress upon i.e. the Islamic Jihad always targeted the British, irrespective of time and space in the history of mankind.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
01/27/2008 00:00 ||
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Quite a lot of reworking of history here. While the Indian Mutiny started due to British disregrard for Hindu ritual sensitivities, Wahabi jihadists played a major role later in the rebellion.
Subsequent to the Mutiny, British policy toward the Arabs was largely shaped by their impact on Indian muslims. The British supported the Arabs, because they thought it would help avoid a rerun of the Mutiny.
The Wahabists were anti-christian much more than the British were anti-moslem.
#2
Philby served as a minister in the government of Al-Saud. He changed his name as Abdullah apparently after embracing Islam but still served the British Intelligence. He was exiled by King Saud in 1955.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
01/27/2008 10:44 Comments ||
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#4
It was Kim Philby who intoxicated the British into supporting Tito instead of Mihailovic. At nthis time it was the Chetniks not the Communists who were the more dangerous enemies of the Germans. It was only after teh cutting of British aid that the Chetniks who were being harrassed from both sides (Communists and Germans) that they ended collaborating. Another factor was that the Communist moved faster that the Chetniks to seize Italian weapons after Italy's surrender. I don't discard they weren't tipped by Philby or one of the guys of his cell (Mc Lean, Burgess).
This chat was downloaded from the web. It is a conversation that took place between the commander of a jihadi outfit and a middle-rung functionary operating somewhere in Jammu and Kashmir. To mask their personalities, we decided to call them jihadi 1(J1) and jihadi 2 (J2) respectively.
J2: Salaam Waleiqum Boss, I have bad news to report. Infidel dogs of the Indian security forces have mounted a great deal of pressure on our jihadi groups. As it is, the cold wave in the Valley is at its peak. It has snowed all over and made movement difficult. The local population is less scared of us than before, so we are having trouble finding safe houses. Worse, we are having great difficulty recruiting. In spite of all our brainwashing efforts and sustained Pakistani support, we aren't getting enough locals to act as informers or porters. Even our hardcore people are getting frustrated and want to go back home. Tell me, Boss, what should I do? Really need your guidance now.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
01/27/2008 00:00 ||
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A footnote from Cliff May from the National Review:
One footnote: Barnes reports that just before Robert Gates took over as Secretary of Defense, he informed Bush that as a member of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, he favored a surge of additional troops in Iraq.
As a member of the expert advisory group to the Baker-Hamilton Commission, I can tell you that a surge or any robust military approach was something few of my colleagues favored. Indeed, most opposed it with astonishing vehemence.
Even now many members of this group do not acknowledge the success of the revised Iraq strategy and give little credit to General Petraeus (and none to President Bush.)
The date: December 13, 2006. The location: a windowless conference room in the Pentagon known as the Tank. It was an inauspicious place for President Bush to confront the last major obstacle to the most important decision of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency. And the president chose not to deal with his hosts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a commander in chief would address subordinates. He hadn't come to the military brass's turf simply to order the five chiefs and two combatant commanders to begin a "surge" of additional troops in Iraq and to pursue a radical change in strategy. For that, he might have summoned them to the Oval Office or the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. He had come to the Pentagon to persuade and cajole, not command.
The president was in a weak and lonely position. After Republicans lost the Senate and House in the midterm election on November 7, nearly 200 members of Congress had met with him at the White House, mostly to grouse about Iraq. Democrats urged him to begin withdrawing troops, in effect accepting defeat. Many of the Republicans were panicky and blamed Bush and the Iraq war for the Democratic landslide. They feared the 2008 election would bring worse losses. They wanted out of Iraq too.
Inside his own administration, Bush had few allies on a surge in Iraq aside from the vice president and a coterie of National Security Council (NSC) staffers. The Joint Chiefs were
disinclined to send more troops to Iraq or adopt a new strategy. So were General George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, and Centcom commander John Abizaid. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice favored a troop pullback. A week earlier, the Iraq Study Group, better known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, had recommended a graceful exit from Iraq.
The presence of former secretary of state James Baker, a longtime Bush family friend, on the commission was viewed in Washington and around the world as significant. It was assumed, correctly in this instance, that Baker wouldn't have taken the post if the president had objected. (At least one top Bush adviser faulted Rice for not blocking the amendment by Republican representative Frank Wolf of Virginia that created the commission in the first place.) Baker was seen as providing cover for Bush to order a gradual retreat from Iraq.
But retreat was the furthest thing from Bush's mind. "This is very trite," he told me. "Failure was no option . . . I never thought I had to give up the goal of winning." He wanted one more chance to win. Con't at link
#1
BusHitler is a stuborn SOB. He's letting the Messicans raise gas prices and burying the habeus corpus.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
01/27/2008 15:36 Comments ||
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Dubya may get a lot wrong and doesn't speak very well, but on that day he stood tall. When the world stood against him and he was alone, DAMN but he stood tall.
The only reason gas price are high is because of those in this country who keep our own resources out of the production process. As for habeas corpus, there is suspension during war time. And just how many have been subjected to this in 7 years?
Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law." Obviously, he's been Mind-Kontrolled by the Zionist Deathray.
Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.
Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem. The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel.
San Remo
The relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration... in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there.
The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization" to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.
League of Nations
The League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause: Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted.
In 1945, the soon-to-be-failed United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations. Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed, in or of itself, to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
UN Partition Plan
However, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan. It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.
Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.
Referendum Scheduled for Jerusalem
The UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise. After the ten years, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."
The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.
After 1967
After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan. Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had secure and recognized boundaries. The resolution was notably silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem, with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.
Today
Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held as soon as possible. Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business. "Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes. "He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs wont agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."
Posted by: anonymous5089 ||
01/27/2008 07:50 ||
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#1
boy, that's gonna start some seething
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2008 8:32 Comments ||
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Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer
Can expect a summons to Canadian Human Rights Commission (the same guys who're after Steyn now) in 5..4..3
#2
Pict of SGT Jill and contestants doing push ups immediately after the announcement SGT Jill was leaving the finals. She waved, dropped and about half of the final contestants joined her! Audience when loud.
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.
