#1
How dare you prove our bullshit IS Bullshit.
Of course it's being ignored.
(Except here on the "Burg" where we THINK, not fall for whatever scheme you think of to screw us).
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/21/2009 15:14 Comments ||
Top||
#2
One of the comments on the article is priceless - and sadly true:
"I think AGW has stopped due to a newly discovered element.
"Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.""
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/21/2009 15:56 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Hey, where'd my e-mail go? Weird. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/21/2009 15:57 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The data/cooling shows that the climate models are bunk and continued decisions based upon those models are pure fraud [which is another word for politicized bureaucracy].
#5
"Pickup again and continue to warm" > HMMMM, HMMMM, INTEWESTING [Elmer Fudd], so IOW IIUC GLOBAL-SOLAR WARMING, AKA "SOLAR ENERGY RELEASE", MAY ONCE AGAIN OCCUR AT ROUGHLY THE SAME FUTURE TIME AS COMET APOPHIS [Yarn 2029-2036] + MY DREAMS/VISIONS OF PEOPLE SEEING EXPLOSIONS ON THE MOON!?
* STAR WARS > DARTH VADER - "The Power to destroy a Planet is insignificant compared to the Force ..... I find your lack of faith disturbing".
* "SPIES LIKE US" Flick > D *** NG IT, A MILYUHN-AND-TRILYUHN-AND-SILYUHN DOLLAR OWG-NWO AGENCY, AND
(1) OUR GLOBAL-SPACE DEFENSE FACED THE WRONG WAY, +
(2) BEST SCIENCE-PERTS > WE MISSED THE ROGUE SOVIET MISSLE = COMET APOPHIS ANYWAYS, +
(3) PERHAPS MOST IMPOR, YOUNG TEEN AGENT CODY BANKS STILL WASN'T TAUGHT HOW TO TALK TO A GIRL.
#1
Sounds an awful lot like the ARVN, (with man-boy love added).
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/21/2009 15:32 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Why is it that Afghan Taliban fighters seem so bold and effective, while the Afghan National Police are so dismally corrupt and the Afghan National Army a washout?
Because Afghanistan is overwhemingly a clan and tribal society. You fight for your uncle, cousins, a related clan.
The Uzbecks seem to have progressed somewhat beyond this to an ethnic allegiance.
#3
Interesting article, even with the "Mother Jones" bias (the obligatory bits about corporate greed, sensitive M16, the description of the hulking, over-equipped US grunt,...),... wouldn't trust most RBers to partake the writer's worldview, but I'd believe he's highlighting a real problem re the ANA, and, beyond that, the effort to "prop up" afghanistan.
#4
No surprises there. It will take at least a generation to build the new army culture, and the same for the police, once the country is generally pacified, because until then the police will function as much as the core of community defence against roving bands of Taliban-bandits as they do at solving crime and catching criminals, even Rab-style. But we have to start somewhere. The native Afghan officer corps that recently started graduating from East Point will make a difference over time. At this stage the enlisted men see no possibility of becoming soldiers like the Americans, but when they see Afghans legitimately commanding and expecting them to perform up to the standard the Afghan officers have achieved, that attitude should start to change.
Bottom line, it is not realistic for the American journalist to expect that kind of leap, especially amongst the rawest of recruits that he observed, in such a short period of time. Nor is it realistic to expect the Afghans will be able to operate independently for at least several decades, no matter how much easier it would make our lives.
#5
Agree with everything TW says and would only highlight what is implicit in her comments: when embarking on a 40 year project it is counterproductive to look for quick fixes.
Osama bin Laden created al-Qaeda in the belief that the West must be defeated by force. It was only after he saw the trillion-dollar-plus damage the 9/11 attacks wrought that he realized that America can best be defeated through economic means. Many Salafi strategists and Wahhabi thinkers had come to this conclusion long before bin Laden did. In fact the father of the concept, Abul-Ala Mawdudi, had written about economic jihad decades earlier, during the Cold War.
Today America has no competitor militarily as it spends more on defence than all the other nations of the world combined. But at the same time, thanks in part to globalization -- which means nothing more than increased interdependence -- America is ironically more vulnerable than ever. The current global financial state of affairs is proof of that. The U. S. has become increasingly beholden to those nations and financial choke-points where the greatest concentration of American dollars and government bonds can be found. At the same time, imbalances in import-export ratios and declining domestic savings rates magnify the fact that the U. S. economy is more and more dependent upon the behaviour of political elites and institutions outside of its borders. As a result, the health of the U. S. economy and the Western economic system is more difficult to vouchsafe than ever before.
Even before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, there existed a push across Western financial markets to create shariah-compliant instruments and vehicles for Arab banks and Muslim consumers. Just open any issue of the Financial Times or The Economist for evidence of how successful this effort has been. The overall figures speak for themselves. Although not long established, shariah finance last year already totalled $1-trillion and has demonstrated on average a 12-15% annual growth rate. It is projected that by 2020 up to 60% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims will not use the services of normal secular banks but be putting their money in shariah-compliant institutions. As a result, the U. K. has already taken the strategic decision to make London the shariah finance capital of the world.
Continued on Page 49
#1
As a practical matter there is hardly any difference between shariah and non-shariah finance. However there are considerable legal implications and governments will have to make changes to accommodate shariah finance.
Shariah finance is pretty close to the bottom of the list of things we should worry about from the Islamic world.
Given recent events, here's a rather telling, and slightly now-ironic campaign speech from then-candidate Obama:
Sixty-one years ago, George Marshall announced the plan that would come to bear his name. Much of Europe lay in ruins. The United States faced a powerful and ideological enemy intent on world domination. This menace was magnified by the recently discovered capability to destroy life on an unimaginable scale. The Soviet Union didn't yet have an atomic bomb, but before long it would.
The challenge facing the greatest generation of Americans - the generation that had vanquished fascism on the battlefield - was how to contain this threat while extending freedom's frontiers. Leaders like Truman and Acheson, Kennan and Marshall, knew that there was no single decisive blow that could be struck for freedom. We needed a new overarching strategy to meet the challenges of a new and dangerous world.
Continued on Page 49
Iran has celebrated the propagandist Quds Day [Jerusalem Day] for years in order to demonstrate its alleged concern towards the Palestinian Cause, however what was new this year is that many Iranian citizens came out not to denounce Israel or America, rather the Iranian demonstrators came out to chant the words "No to Gaza and Lebanon...I will give my life for Iran."
This means that Iran's allies in our region have reached the tipping point, for half the Iranian population is openly against them, leaving them reliant upon a regime whose internal legitimacy is weak, and weakening even further day after day. The demonstrations and dissention has not stopped in Iran, and today this is no longer merely present in Tehran, but has spread to other Iranian cities. Despite the claims of the regime that the dissension has decreased and declined, the anger and opposition has been present [in Iran] since Ahmadinejad's re-election.
Clearly, the internal crisis that the Iranian regime is facing is both deep and dangerous, not just to the mullah's regime, but to those who stand behind it. The religious authority of the Iranian Supreme leader has begun to erode, and the Iranians have begun to challenge the authority of the Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guard became a part of the conflict, and the commander of the silent coup that took place in Iran by standing behind Ahmadinejad.
The people of Iran have begun to deal with the Revolutionary Guard in the same manner that they used to deal with the forces of the Shah's regime prior to the Khomeini revolution. Reformist sources informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the Iranians have launched the boycott of goods imported by the Revolutionary Guards, such as rice, cigarettes, and other goods. This means that the Revolutionary Guards, who are able to seriously benefit from external sources, are now beginning to suffer from the internal conflict in Iran.
All of this means that the Iranian regime, its Supreme Leader, and his military forces, are suffering from the loss of internal legitimacy. This has weakened the regime's position with regards to supporting its allies and agents in the region, whether they are groups or nations. In the end the [Iranian] regime cannot ignore this internal division in order to continue to provide external support, in fact [the issue of] external support may be part of an internal settlement in the future.
This clarifies the difficult position which Iran's allies and agents in the region are currently in, as there is an internal Iranian rejection towards them, and this means that Tehran is unable to continue to provide them with unconditional support as was the case in the past. And so at the same time that Ahmadinejad was making his Quds Day speech in which he -- as usual -- attacked Israel and expressed his skepticism towards the Holocaust, thousands of Iranians came out chanting "No to Gaza and Lebanon, I will give my life for Iran."
Of course [Hezbollah chief] Hassan Nasrallah and others are unable to accuse half the population of Iran of being agents of Israel and the West, unless Nasrallah is more Iranian than the Iranians themselves. We must now closely monitor Iran's position, and the position of its allies in our region who have become struck by confusion. In fact I have been informed that only a few days ago a high-ranking member of Hamas was present in Saudi Arabia, and he informed an Arab figure that he is more eager towards Saudi Arabia and Egypt than any other country, and that he is ready to reconcile with Mahmoud Abbas.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/21/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Not too sure about that. 1905 came before 1917. But there were a dozen years in between.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/21/2009 8:36 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Strategy Page recently pointed out the same thing. Apparently Hezbollah has been sounding much less warlike lately. This seems to be because they aren't sure their Iranian sugar daddies are going to be around much longer.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/21/2009 11:23 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The problem here is that Irans leadership has not required majority support since around the death of Khomeini. Back in the 1980's the regime depended on the patriotic unity of the Iranian population in its very costly war against Iraq. But since this mass army was eventually broken on the battlefield (Iraq won by bleeding Iran until Iranian morale failed), popular support has been much less important, and the regime has not relied on the people to support the government.
They are a clique, a subset of a subset of clerics, who are dependent only on their oil revenues and the limited following that their fanaticism and money bring them. They are not dependent on the rest of Iran for any of their power or influence.
I don't think that the Iranian people or even the regime elements that have broken off can do much if anything to end the regime. The other side not only has the money and arms, but it has far more loyal and much less accountable Praetorians than did the Shah. I suspect that unless somehow their oil revenues are cut off they can maintain themselves for at least another generation.
#5
They are a clique, a subset of a subset of clerics, who are dependent only on their oil revenues and the limited following that their fanaticism and money bring them. They are not dependent on the rest of Iran for any of their power or influence.
You left out the Revolutionary Guard; they control more of the Iranian economy than the clerics.
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.
Osama bin Laden created al-Qaeda in the belief that the West must be defeated by force. It was only after he saw the trillion-dollar-plus damage the 9/11 attacks wrought that he realized that America can best be defeated through economic means. Many Salafi strategists and Wahhabi thinkers had come to this conclusion long before bin Laden did. In fact the father of the concept, Abul-Ala Mawdudi, had written about economic jihad decades earlier, during the Cold War.
