#1
As per FREEREPUBLIC, Al-Qaeda is not only NOT dead, but is apparently prevailing + possibly winning agz the USA = Bammer Admin???
* FREEREPUBLIC > AL-QAEDA WINS THIS ROUND.
See also WORLD MILITARY FORUM > US, WORLD MEDIAS CONFIRM THE US IS NOW A SECOND-RATE POWER, US SEEN AS RETREATING FROM EXTRENAL INTERNATIONAL OR GEOPOL POWER CENTRES IN FAVOR OF DOMESTIC
"SELF-ISOLATION/CONTAINMENT". OBAMA + GLOBALIST REVITALIZATION OF THE US TO FOLLOW THE SOCIALIST PATH.
Iff one believes that Communism or Leftism-Socialism won the Cold War, then why not as per Radical Islam = God-Faith based [Arabist?] Socialism???
BY THE ABOVE, HOW CAN AL-QAEDA, ETAL. = ISLAM/ISLAMISM N-O-T WIN THE GWOT AGZ OWG AMERIKA???
h/t Gates of Vienna 1. Don't Believe Anything You Hear
...Middle Eastern politics is reality-selective, it's conspiratorial and it's based around shaky alliances between mortal enemies that are constantly falling apart.
...everything you hear coming out of Egypt is meaningless. Egyptian politics is completely cynical and completely unaware of its own cynicism. Everyone manufactures their own propaganda and conspiracy theories.
...Not only does no one there mean what they say, but they don't even know that they don't mean it.
The permitted/required lies of taqiyya, tawriya, kitman, and muruna make it hard to separate truth from lies, when the lie is actually higher truth, Allah being the master of deceit and all.
2. It's Not Democracy, It's Permanent Chaos
Democracy in the Middle East is just another means of political change. It's not any different than mob action, a coup or an invasion. It's just a way that one government replaces another.
"One man, one vote, one time." Or contrariwise, we will keep voting until the voters get the right answer.
It's just another way of describing business as usual...
Beyond all the obvious critiques of exporting democracy, the voting booth depends on a sense of law and order. It carries very little weight in lawless societies. In Egypt, mass protests really are as legitimate a means of political change as the ballot box. Probably better. It's harder to rig rallies of millions of people than it is to fake millions of votes.
Vote by mob is a very long tradition in Arab societies...
The Arab Spring represented political chaos in a lawless society, not social change or cultural enlightenment.
3. Everyone Will Always Hate America
The one thing that everyone in Egypt can agree on is that they hate America.
The Muslim Brotherhood hates America. Period. Not for anything we've done. This hatred is widely shared in Egypt. It will always be widely shared in Egypt. Denouncing America is one of the safest political positions to take. It's the Egyptian equivalent of motherhood and apple pie.
4. Fanatics and Democracy Don't Mix
One of the fondest myths of democracy promotion is that bringing terrorists into the political process moderates them. It doesn't.
John Kerry headed out on yet another peace process mission is a reminder of the futility of such thinking.
John Kerry is a reminder of the futility of thinking. He can't help it, poor man, he just wasn't born with the right tools. That's why the family sent him to school in France.
Bringing terrorists into the political process just gives them another set of tools with which to tear the system down. Which was their first goal...
Fanatics don't compromise because their goals require purity. They feint compromise only long enough to get to power. And then they turn on their former allies.
See required lies, above.
5. The Muslim World Has No New Ideas
...The three options are still military rule, strongman or theocracy. There is no fourth option. The Arab Spring tilted the rule of strongmen and soldiers toward theocracy. That outcome was as modern as the Caliphate. Now the military has once again stepped in. Eventually there will be a strongman. Or a theocracy. Or a junta. And they will go on overthrowing each other
Everything else is only window dressing or a disguise for where the power actually goes.
#1
Democracy in the Middle East is just another means of political change. It's not any different than mob action, a coup or an invasion. It's just a way that one government replaces another.
No different than anywhere else.
#2
Not only does no one there mean what they say, but they don't even know that they don't mean it
I think it was T.E. Lawrence who first commented on the Arab mind's astonishing capability to hold two opposing thoughts as equally true, at the same time.
[WHITEHOUSEDOSSIER] President B.O. continues to say nothing to a jittery nation about what some who have been briefed on the danger are describing as the worst terrorist threat since 9/11, declining to either offer reassurance or an explanation of the peril the nation faces.
Certainly, the president does not want to take questions about a threat he had minimized during the 2012 campaign. But what's striking is that he has not addressed the nation in a formal manner on the potential for a major attack.
Incredibly, the first question Obama might take on the situation could come from a comedian. Obama is scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, and the topic is sure to come up. He has an event earlier in the day, but it's a campaign-style appearance at a high school in Phoenix, also an odd venue to be discussing potential terrorist attacks.
Not everyone has been excluded from receiving a high-level briefing. Vice President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body... has met with members of Congress to discuss the threat, and some of the most specific information about what the United States is faced with has come from politicians.
Briefing news hounds Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney did not minimize the problem. "This threat is significant and we are taking it seriously for that reason," he said.
But Carney refused to specifically characterize the extent of the danger to the United States itself.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/07/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
Prob because, once again, NO ONE TOLD THE HARD BOYZ THE GWOT = GLOBAL JIHAD IS OVER???
#3
“I think we are providing plenty of information to the public. And what’s more, the president will have much more to say about the terrorist attack after it has occurred.”
#6
"Mr. President, about one year ago it was mentioned AQ was dead. What has happened in this time frame which has caused the USA to close embassies on 1/5 of the world's governments?"
#7
If Obama stood infront of America and said the truth of his opinion that the real threat is the tea party and returning vets from Afghanistan and Iraq. He would drop in the polls.
U.S. officials are warning, through strategic leaks to the press, that Al Qaeda — remember those guys? — has threatened to do … well, we don’t know exactly what. One thing we do know: The United States has penetrated Al Qaeda leaders’ communications. The volume with which officials have trumpeted this fact is almost certainly a mistake — one that could have real costs in American lives...
#3
The United States has penetrated Al Qaeda leadersÂ’ communications.
Sure stopped all those prison breaks. And Benghazi. I would have to guess that a plan attempting to capture/kill a US ambassador would get out to the local AQ warden, even if it was a closely guarded local job. Perhaps especially if it were a local job which took hours to complete. Where are the pics of before and during the attack, sure were a lot of the aftermath.
#4
Sure stopped all those prison breaks. And Benghazi.I would have to guess that a plan attempting to capture/kill a US ambassador would get out to the local AQ warden, even if it was a closely guarded local job.
They didn't break out of a U.S. prison; they didn't break out of a U.S. administered prison. Does one think that the Iraqis would have been informed, or, more likely if they had been, would have paid heed?
To be fair, one can't pin Benghazi on Al Qaeda - at this point. As the pros are saying, so many bad players in Benghazi and no scorecard to tell them apart. One also can't monitor communications if one isn't pointed to a particular place to monitor. IMNSHO, the Klingons weren't eager to put a spotlight on Benghazi prior to the attack.
The "kidnap/kill an ambassador" is a valid theory, but it's also among a herd of equally valid theories.
#5
No, in the US judges break people out of prison, and diplomats break out paleos. I'd put a safe bet that there is a parallel NSA program for international studies.
Its being sold as preventative, but is sounding more passive and reactionary. It is a tool, and only as effective as those wielding it. Going out into the wildes of Libya to weapon deal on 9/11 with a large groups of special operatives with nobody monitoring the radio/electronic traffic is some Custer grade work, I'd like to think they had that base covered.
I'm not sure which is the more depressing thought, that intelligence is not picking up the prison breaks, or the locals poo poo the info.
"President Obama wants his presidency to be about domestic policy – his plan to fundamentally transform the country, as he has put it. If he is conducting serious operations overseas, Obama will lack both the bandwidth and the money to drive his domestic agenda. And so he draws back. And al Qaeda is filling the space he abandons."
#1
They're in his mind. They understand that for him its all about preserving his 'image'. From that basis they can now conduct a campaign to manipulate how he responds or doesn't to their actions.
The New Republic editor Alec MacGillis vying for this year's Fisk Award for the dumbest editorial.
Sometime in the summer of 2009, back when I still worked as a reporter at The Washington Post, That you're no longer there is one point in favor of WaPo...
I found myself chatting over beers at the Post Pub, the unvarnished establishment cater-corner from the paper, with a business-side employee who mentioned a rather disconcerting stat: On one day in March of that year, in the very darkest days of the recession, there had been in the classified ad pages one job-wanted ad.
One. That sux, really. But I guarantee you that for every one story you print about how it is so hard in the media industry, I can personally relate 10. Business isn't like the government where you can print money and ignore the consequences. In the world outside Washington DC, economics have consequences.
I didn't need any primer on the troubles facing my industry--I grew up in a newspaper family and had worked at six papers, several of which were seriously diminished by 2009--but that stat has stuck with me ever since as the ultimate signpost of a crumbling business model. The public discussion of newspapers' decline tends to focus on circulation, but newspaper people know that the devastation came as much on the ad side and above all in the lowly classifieds, which in their humble agate type had for decades delivered a disproportionate share of newspaper revenues. Which we've only seen coming this past twenty years or so. Ten if you were especially blind.
This was where the digital revolution first exacted its toll--how could you keep charging $10 a line for a used car or apartment or job listing when there was a guy who was letting people post ads for free online--all the while subsidizing that operation by charging $5 or $10 for prostitution ads of the sort no respectable daily newspaper would ever think of running (the law eventually made him shut it down, but not before it was bringing in $36 million per year). The digital side has its problems as well, Alec. For instance digital advertizing is way too expensive for the impact it has, and I speak from experience. And that comes from a rightwinger, so I am certain at some moment some from your side have reached the same conclusion. Digital advertizing won't save the newspaper business model. Bezos is smart, but he ain't that smart.
Craigslist's Craig Newmark has not bought the Post, thank goodness--that would be too much to bear. It could have been worse. Bezos could have bought The New Republic and recognized it to be a loser, and then shut it down.
But Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the white knight provokes only slightly less shock and dolor. We knew the other guys had won a long time ago, but it's another thing when they can waltz in and, in the charmless guise of "Explore Holdings LLC," drop $250 million in cash for a legendary paper (that's a mere one percent of Bezos's net worth), as flip and easy as plucking an Apollo rocket engine from the ocean or building a $42 million, 10,000-year clock in West Texas. Capitalism is a terrible thing if you are a leftist, and you sound like a leftist, Alec. You a leftist, Alec? As much as I hate Bezos' political views, it's still his money. If he wants to drop $250 million on the craps tables at Vegas, he still has the right to do that. This is still America. Pretty soon you'll need a permit to drop $250 mil on a newspaper. Maybe even at the craps table. But a donation to the Donks? That'll never require permission...
There are already hopeful noises coming out of the corner of 15th and L about Bezos as owner, compared with other possibilities. He is promising independence. He is, for now, keeping the leadership team in place (let's hope in particular that he keeps editor Marty Baron, under whose leadership the paper has been doing some notably hard-edged and influential journalism). Unless it's about the White House, then it's rosey scenario and soft focus...
His politics are not visibly objectionable. But let's not kid ourselves here: The company that made him one of the richest men in the world has had a less than benign impact on our nation. It has devastated the publishing industry, from the big presses to the small booksellers. Just because you can't get YOUR book published...
Pooh. Anyone can self-publish on Amazon, and some make a more than respectable living doing so. It just hasn't the same cachet as dropping the name of that exclusive little publishing house that everyone knows of at the right Manhattan cocktail parties.
It has exacerbated the growth of the low-wage economy, to the point where the president feels the need to celebrate an increase in warehouse jobs that will pay barely more than minimum wage. (Fun fact uncovered by the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. two years ago: Instead of paying for air-conditioning at some Pennsylvania warehouses, Amazon had just stationed paramedics outside to take the inevitably heat-stressed workers to the hospital.) Amazon may have devastated the publishing industry, but it has also launched one of the great periods in literary history where now anyone can publish anything they want and sell it on the open market, taking on all the risks associated with that. And Alec, even more fun fact: I work without air conditioning routinely in 100 degree heat sans paramedics, doing a helluva lot more than pulling books from shelves, but with plenty of water. The trick is to prehydrate and keep alert and on your feet. It ain't ideal, but it beats the hell out of going to the emergency room Or standing in a welfare line. At least for some of us...
More generally, Amazon has embodied, more than any other of the giants that rule our new landscape, the faster-cheaper-further mindset that scratches away daily at our communal fabric: Why bother running down to the store around the block if you can buy it with a click? No risk of running into someone on the way and actually having to talk to them, and hey, can you beat that price? Why would I want to talk with random strangers? These days that can get you arrested and maybe even shot down by a overly-militarized police unit...
No thought given to the externalities that make that price possible--the workers being violently shocked every time they pull a book off the warehouse shelf, or losing a chunk of their lunch break to go through the security checkpoint set up by their oh-so-trusting employer. They're Somewhere Else, working for a company that is Out There, in the cloud. The subtext Alec wants you to think is that if you buy from Amazon, you have no life. Nice try, but no sale. And Alec, if prices on books are low, that means more people can buy and read. That's a good thing right?
Not that we should let ourselves go overboard in our lament for what came before. The Grahams are a remarkable Washington family, and I was as grateful as any of my fellow reporters for the notes that would occasionally arrive from Don with a kind and utterly sincere word for a piece he had liked. Do you need a breath mint, Alec?
But ...you saw that coming, right...
we also should bear in mind the many decisions that can be second-guessed in hindsight--among many others, the decision not to make the paper national in scope and distribution, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; ...there's room for only so many national newspapers...
to keep the online operation separate as long as it was; to hold off so long on instituting a paywall. And we should most definitely not forget the failure to prevent what unfolded at the company's Kaplan education division, which was raking in huge profits from for-profit colleges with a highly dubious business model; when those improprieties were exposed and the Obama administration proposed new rules to protect students and taxpayers from being exploited, Don Graham went to Capitol Hill to lobby aggressively against them, seemingly unaware that his indubitable virtue as grandfather of the Post did not necessarily transfer to this other realm. Profits are bad, Alec, we understand that, except that profits are what keeps businesses in businesses, even media. If the profits aren't there, money goes elsewhere. I understand that as a leftist economic logic is beyond you but do try to keep up. The only difference between the size of the office of the Kaplan's boss and that of the average university president is that the office of the latter is larger and more nicely appointed...
Now the Grahams can go back to doing as they see fit with Kaplan, without worry that they are in any way imperiling the newspaper's public trust. That trust has been passed to Jeff Bezos, who will hopefully treat it with more care than his company did those heat-stricken workers deemed undeserving of an air-conditioning system. I avoid buying from Amazon as best I can, but I'll keep subscribing to my old paper as long as they keep printing it, which, to hear Bezos himself tell it, will likely end sooner than the mogul's 10,000-year clock. Whatever public trust the WaPo may have had it was pissed away more than 20 years ago, Alec.
A few years I was waiting in line at the bank because I had no option with a physical cheque, and the man in front of me was saying he never he used online banking when banks were open, because he didn't want to make bank workers out of work. I thought, presumably you came here by horse and cart to save the jobs of blacksmiths and farriers.
Self interest on the Left is always rationalized to be the public good.
#4
Spot- on- Regressive progressives. Democratic political rag for years. They want welfare, they want votes from guess who? the takers. Who is left to pay the bills. Who is left to make donations. Who is left to purchase the Post. Long overdue reset. Woodward go cry to your handlers and that other guy? Bernstein, Who? :)
#5
WAPO, you DO remember the evil formula, right ?
In 1992, Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Bain Capital bought American Pad & Paper Co. (Ampad) for $5 million.
Over the next several years Romney's firm bled the company dry. Hundreds of workers lost their jobs. Stockholders were left with worthless shares. Creditors and vendors were paid less than 50 cents on the dollar. While they were exploiting the company, Romney's firm charged Ampad millions of dollars in "management fees." In all, Romney and his investors reaped more than $100 million dollars from the deal.
#6
I grew up in a newspaper family and had worked at six papers, several of which were seriously diminished by 2009
Sensing a trend Alec?
Here's a hint...Amazon didn't destroy your precious, technology and a lack of talent did. Humble agate type, horrid. Everyone in the waiting room knew that mag sold at a loss for the circulation numbers for advertising revenues, now I can carry the entire works of Shakespeare and Vivaldi in a space smaller than my wallet - or throw birds against a brick wall, depending upon what kind of customer I am.
#7
Yes, it's a shame the Grahams and Jeff Bezos were not as smart as Alec MacGillis! Had he been a consultant, he could have sold his advice to them for a profit.
Oh, there's that bad word, again...
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/07/2013 12:35 Comments ||
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#8
swksvolFF, I'm not sure lack of talent is really the right term for the failure of newspapers. I would say subverting truth for messaging while alternatives exist is what did them in.
#9
Well I remember the time when ordering English books at your local bookstore in Germany it took them at least 6 weeks to deliver at a price usually twice as high as in the UK or U.S.
Then came Amazon. Most English books arrive the next day, at the same price you'd pay in the country of origin.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
08/07/2013 19:08 Comments ||
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#10
rjscwarz, I get what you are saying and agree. It just seems that going to college to learn how to write at a 3rd grade level would require the suppression of any talent possessed.
Here's some newspapering:
"Now we do assert and we declare, despite all the bolts and bars of the iniquitous legislature of Kansas, that persons have not the right to hold slaves in this territory. And we will emblazon it upon our banner in letters so large and language so plain that the infatuated invaders who elected the Kansas legislature, as well as that corrupt and ignorant legislature itself, may understand it—so that, if they cannot read, they may spell it out, and meditate and deliberate upon it; and we hold that the man who fails to utter this self-evident truth, on account of the insolent enactment alluded to, is a poltroon and a slave, worse than the black slaves of our persecutors and oppressors. The constitution of the United States, the great Magna Charta of American liberties, guarantees to every citizen the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press! And this is the first time in the history of America that a body claiming legislative powers has dared to attempt to wrest them from the people. And it is not only the right, but the bounden duty of every freeman to spurn with contempt and trample under foot an enactment which thus basely violates the right of freemen. For our part we do and shall continue to utter this truth so long as we have the power of utterance, and nothing but the brute force of an overpowering tyranny can prevent us."
John Speer, Sept. 15, 1855, commenting on a Kansas Territory law forbidding any discussion or action deemed offensive to pro-slavery by a 2 year or more imprisonment.
"so that, if they cannot read, they may spell it out, and meditate and deliberate upon it;"
#1
We'll see soon enuff, as Iran is ignoring the Bammer's "red lines" + going Nukulaar; + China is still upping its escalations agz Japan in East China Sea + PHIL, etc. in South China Sea.
SEQUESTER-LED AMERIKA "PROUDLY SURRENDERING LIKE FRANCE" = UNILATER GIVING UP 1/2 OF THE PACIFIC TO CHINA + LIKING IT.
D *** NG IT, OWG "CO-SUPERPOWER" GLOBALIST AMERIKA DEMANDS THE CHINESE PLA [Islamist Navy(s)?] PATROL OFF HAWAII + WEST COAST!
#3
For those who doubt the long-term damage, take a read of 'The Forgotten Man' by Amity Shlaes [FDR and the Great Depression]. I agree with g(r)om. Expertly written as are nearly all of VDH's articles, but it in my opinion it arrives at a rather mistaken conclusion. If anything is to be learned from the Obama experience, it is the evils of unearned empowerment for the sake of equality and justice.
#5
Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice, and Joe Montana all had bad days.
So too with VDH.
Remember, VDH was a cheerleader for the Blue State model until way beyond the point that most of the center/right had figured out that the model was obsolete and morally and functionally a failure. That he was a late adopter of the post-Blue meme set gives some indication of what he is willing to tolerate as "lasting damage".
I'm a big fan of his writings, but that does bear mentioning.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
08/07/2013 9:06 Comments ||
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#6
Besoeker
"the evils of envy, government thuggishness, and the knowledge that one does not have the smarts, work ethic, or skills to produce anything worth your desired lifestyle, pretending to be policies done for the sake of equality and justice."
Fixed it for ya.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
08/07/2013 9:12 Comments ||
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#7
Thank you Nomouro, but did you have to make it so personal ?
"one does not have the smarts, work ethic, or skills to produce anything worth your desired lifestyle"
#8
If anything is to be learned from the Obama experience, it is the evils of unearned empowerment for the sake of equality and justice.
Moreover, there is no will on the part of the country to call Obama to an accounting for anything. It seems that no one wants to criticize the first African-American-Kenyan President even when deserving. It is a PC thing or something rooted deeply in the American psyche--maybe liberal white guilt.
#12
I don't think this is the case; I think we're on the road to finally answering Lincoln's rhetorical question about exactly how much ruin there is in a country.
I think Obama's role is to take the last two terms before the Really Big Collapse and make sure there isn't gonna be any seed corn available for whoever comes along after him.
#15
First of all, Arrest try and impeach president Obama, for lying to the people, second take "Slow Joe" and send him home, third elect ADULTS and quit nominating Frauds, fourth (From here on in all is well) De-fund obamacare,
That should do it.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/07/2013 22:12 Comments ||
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#16
The Obama presidency will be easy to sum up
#FAIL
Posted by: European Conservative ||
08/07/2013 23:05 Comments ||
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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.
Joe 
