In which an English BBC correspondent in Saudiland barely survives an al-Q ambush in Summer 2004. He thought he was doing everything right, before a gang of True Believers gave him a life-threatening object lesson in what it means to be a dhimmi. This is Part One of a series of excerpts from his new book. He is a very good writer, and I am keen to read more to find out what conclusions he has drawn from his experience. Via Jeff Jarvis.
Again and again I strolled across the wasteground towards the camera, pausing to deliver my words and point out the villas in the background where police had traded fire with militants six months earlier.
After about half an hour we were on the verge of packing up when a car pulled up close to our minivan. I was vaguely aware of some people in the distance, but when a young Saudi got out of the car there was nothing suspicious about him at first.
Like every adult male Saudi, he wore the traditional white thaub, essentially a smart shirt that extends all the way down to the ankles. He looked very young, perhaps still in his teens, and had a kindly face with a hint of a smile, almost as if he knew us or our two Saudi escorts. Was he coming to ask directions? Perhaps he knew the driver and had come to chat.
Looking straight at me, he called out, Assalaamu aleikum (Peace be upon you). All over the Arab and Islamic world this is the traditional Muslim greeting, a reassurance to a stranger that you wish him no harm.
I replied with the standard response: Wa aleikum assalaam wa rahmatullah wa barakaatuh (And upon you the peace and the mercy of God and His blessings).
The man paused, a curious look on his face, then with no sign of haste he reached his right hand into what must have been a specially extended pocket sewn into the breast of his thaub. I did not need to see the weapon to know what was coming next. It was like a film with a predictable ending.
No! Dont do this! I shouted instinctively in Arabic.
He pulled out a long-barrelled pistol. Oh my God, I thought, this cannot be happening.
I ran for my life, sprinting away from our van and into the deeply conservative quarter of Al-Suwaidi. There was a loud crack behind me and I felt something sting my shoulder. I didnt know it then but the bullet passed clean through, hitting the shoulder bone on the way.
My adrenaline must have been pumping because I remember it being no more painful than a bee sting, and I ran on, trying to put as much distance as possible between me and the gunman. For a few brief, happy seconds I thought I was actually going to make it, trusting in the power of my legs to outrun my attackers.
I felt almost euphoric at the prospect of escaping them, and I began to look ahead for cover. There was not much. Everywhere I looked there were high, windowless walls, locked doors and wide open spaces. But it was academic; I never made it that far.
There was another loud bang and the next thing I knew I was down on my front on the tarmac, felled by a bullet in the leg. I had run slap into the terrorists second team; they had overtaken me in a minivan to cut off my escape. Now they were crowded inside the open sliding door of their van while I lay prone and helpless on the ground, looking up in horror at this group of Islamist gunmen.
They appeared very different from my first attacker; they had made no attempt to disguise their jihadi appearance. Their thin, pale faces were framed by wispy, unkempt beards in the style of most extremists and they had the look of people who spent all their time indoors.
Instead of the neatly arranged headdresses with a sharp crease in the middle worn by ordinary urban Saudis, these men wore theirs wound tightly round their foreheads like a bandage. It was the isaaba, the dress worn by jihadi fighters who consider they are about to go into battle, the same style worn by the 9/11 suicidal hijackers in their video testimonies and by Mohammed Siddique Khan, the leader of the July 7 London bombers, in his posthumously released video warning to the West.
I realised then that I was doomed. These men were no casual, have-a-go amateurs; they were the real thing, a hardcore Al-Qaeda terror cell bent on attacking their government, killing westerners and cleansing the Arabian peninsula of infidels.
In that instant I glimpsed faces driven by pure hatred and fanaticism. I pleaded with them in Arabic, as so many hostages have done in Iraq, while they held a brief discussion as to what to do with me. It did not take long. They responded to my pleas by opening fire once more.
"...And then the strangest thing happened. Nobody helped me. In Muslim society, charity and hospitality are legendary. I have known Egyptians cross four lanes of rush-hour traffic to help with a flat tyre; an Omani minister once gave me his prized walking cane inscribed with his title in silver; Indonesians have slaughtered their sole goat to share with me. And yet here I was, lying in the road, obviously very badly injured, and yet nobody came to help.
That is one of the things I remember most: the terrible feeling of loneliness, the sense that I was completely on my own, that I could not rely on anyone to help me. I was obviously an object of interest: there was plenty of discussion and pointing at the empty cartridge cases that lay all around me. But something to staunch the blood? A pillow? A glass of water? Even a few words of comfort? Forget it.
The only charitable explanation I can think of is that perhaps nobody dared come near me lest they get dragged off to the police station as a witness."
#3
In Muslim society, charity and hospitality are legendary.
But not in Saudi Arabia, not in wahabi societies. Let's remember the text published in Arab News a couple weeks ago (and linked in Rantburg) about the way Saudis treat foreigners and cats. The author, a Saudi, wondered why there was so much hate ion Saudi society.
At the height of the morning commute on March 11, 2004, ten bombs exploded in and around four train stations in Madrid. Almost 200 Spaniards were killed, and some 2,000 wounded. The next day, Spain seemed to be standing firm against terror, with demonstrators around the country wielding signs denouncing the murderers and assassins. Yet things did not hold. Seventy-two hours after the bombs had strewn arms, legs, heads, and other body parts over three train stations and a marshaling yard, the Spanish government of José María Aznar, a staunch ally of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq, was soundly defeated in an election that the socialist opposition had long sought to turn into a referendum on Spains role in the war on terror.
Much more at link, very long but very good summation of Europe's death knell
#2
Earlier this year, five days short of the second anniversary of the Madrid bombings, the Zapatero government, which had already legalized marriage between and adoption by same-sex partners and sought to restrict religious education in Spanish schools, announced that the words father and mother would no longer appear on Spanish birth certificates. Rather, according to the governments official bulletin, the expression father will be replaced by Progenitor A, and mother will be replaced by Progenitor B.
I get it!
How to avoid a lifelong institualization in the nuthouse, in Europe?
The tributes to Bernard Lewis, the man who coined the term 'clash of civilisations', fail to convey how controversial he is.
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, headed a select list of guests yesterday to celebrate the 90th birthday of Bernard Lewis, the White House's favourite historian and the man who coined the term "clash of civilisations".
An article in the New York Sun says Prof Lewis is "considered the world's foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East". It quotes a former student as saying that his book, The Muslim Awakening of Europe, is "one of the best history books ever written" and adds that "even his rivals acknowledge his intellectual power".
The Wall Street Journal has a similarly glowing tribute ("A sage in Christendom"), as does the Times ("A pillar of wisdom in the great Islamic debate").
None of these articles really convey what a controversial figure Bernard Lewis is. He seems to be revered by many Americans (especially those who don't know much about Islam) but his views are far less influential elsewhere.
Among academics specialising in the Middle East (including many in the US), the praise is mainly for his early work. He hasn't travelled much in the Arab countries and his area of greatest expertise is Turkey - not the most typical of Muslim countries.
Although he has a track record of coming up with interesting - if debatable - ideas, in recent years his ideas have been based less and less on solid research, and directed more and more towards providing a scholarly veneer for the Bush administration's Middle East policies.
His track record in that area is pretty bad. He was one of the key figures promoting the invasion of Iraq and, presumably drawing on his knowledge of Turkey, he argued that his chum Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted fraudster, could become an Iraqi version of Ataturk.
More recently, he has had some batty thoughts about an Islamic takeover of Europe by the end of the century - a prediction that is now "widely accepted" according to at least one fear-mongering American commentator.
For more sceptical appraisals of Lewis's work, readers may like to peruse the following:
Alain Gresh: Malevolent fantasy of Islam
Oliver Miles: Lewis gun
Shahid Alam: Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism
This article calls out for a full Rantburger drawing and quartering. Unfortunately, I have to go to work, so I can't join in the fun.
#1
"More recently, he has had some batty thoughts about an Islamic takeover of Europe by the end of the century..."
"Batty"? What the hell's so "batty" about it? Seems rather self-evident to me that all one has to do is open his eyes and look at the present situation, and where things are headed, and an eventual Islamisation of Europe becomes a real possibility.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/02/2006 8:56 Comments ||
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#2
The batty part is the end of the century. More like 2050.
Posted by: ed ||
05/02/2006 9:47 Comments ||
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#3
it's sad, their obscessive compulsive addiction to Bush Bashing with silly little pieces of trash like this one. Such a waste of good writing talent. This current political climate will one day pass and all that these types will have to show for their work will be childish natterings at their favorite whipping boy.
Ironically, Bernard Lewis' work will last a bit longer. Maybe they are just jealous cause they know that's true.
#4
In this case, it seems more professional jealousy. Bernard Lewis is a well respected professor and popular author, whereas Brian Whitaker is just the dweeb Middle East editor for al Guardian. A short look at Lewis's life (ht: Wikipedia) explains the antipathy. The most prominent reasons are bolded:
Born to middle-class Jewish parents in London, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, performed post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, returned in 1938 to the University of London as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History, once again at SOAS.
During the Second World War Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps, before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war he returned to SOAS and taught there until 1974, when he accepted a position at Princeton University, becoming an emeritus professor there upon his retirement in 1986. He has been a naturalized citizen of the United States since 1982.
Alain Gresh: Malevolent fantasy of Islam
Says nothing.
Oliver Miles: Lewis gun
"Poor fellow, doesn't know as much as we reporters do. US policy is the great culprit."
Shahid Alam: Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism
His hatred for Lewis is venomous, and his attack is ugly. On the other hand, his is the only article actually worth reading, since he tries to refute Lewis by bringing up aspects of history other than the Palestinians. About half the time he makes Lewis' point without realizing it. If you can stomach it. . .
Posted by: James ||
05/02/2006 13:17 Comments ||
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#7
The self-proclaimed intellectual elite at its typical.
There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II.
For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along--if admirably--in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even as we seem unable to stop it. Not sure I agree, but pretty interesting, I've been wondering this very question for some time. More at link.
#1
Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression.
Every now and again I do a Google search to see if any of the MSM have reported an American victory in a battle in Iraq or Afghanistan. The word seems to have dropped out of their style manuals.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/02/2006 8:42 Comments ||
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#2
Excellent article. RTWT.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/02/2006 8:57 Comments ||
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#3
"I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not."
Lot's of good insight in this article, but it somehow has a defeatist tone. America acts guilty because it has been morally stigmatized? No, only with the assent of the West can we be condemned as guilty and lacking moral authority.
Other cultures all over the world have aggressed and gone on imperial campaigns, yet they do not seem to be plagued with this debilitating guilt, nor self-stigmatized because of it. Perhaps we in the West are better at admitting our past transgressions and the other-the non-West-are better at not going all neurotic over their past transgressions.
#4
Jules nails it. The "crimes" of the U.S. and Europe really amount to behaving pretty much as every human culture always has but being able to do so with unprecedented effectiveness due to superior technology.
The native tribes of America, for example, had fought brutal territiorial wars for scores of generations before the Europeans arrived and joined in. The only difference was that superior weaponry allowed the Europeans to win unprecedentedly one-sided and permanent victories. The pattern repeated in Africa, Asia and the Middle East through the second half of the last millenium and into today.
We see this in the occasional rumblings that it's unfair or inhumane that smart weapons allow the U.S. to win conventional victories with so little risk to many of our troops. Like it's somehow "unsporting".
I guess if you can't win the game, the other side will try to change the rules, and has done so successfully enough that the U.S. has been unwilling to use it's full conventional power in any conflict for more than 50 years. That combined with increasingly sophisticated assymetrical tactics like terrorism and guerilla warfare have made our position more difficult than it has to be.
#6
Remember that there are two war ongoing. The official war, that gets all the Internet coverage even if most of it is ignored by the MSM; and the secret, SOCOM war, all but invisible.
The last count I had was over 300 SOCOM personnel had died in the line of duty. My guesstimate is that for each of these lives, we take down on or about 100 enemy, worldwide. Do the math.
My point is that in the conventional war, we follow all the rules of war; but the SOCOM war has only efficiency as its rule. And I suggest that efficiency, in this case, ventures into realms that few of us would prefer to consider.
The X-Files is an enjoyable TV show. It would be far less enjoyable if we knew our side was actively doing things that unwholesome, even to a repugnant enemy.
#7
This is the real issue in the CIA's war on the administration. SOCOM is doing what the CIA once did, when it was formed, but can't do and doesn't want to do anymore.
This is also the real target of the political attacks re: data collection.
And of the generals from the regular Army who are threatened in fundamental ways by what Rumsfeld has put in motion with SOCOM.
#8
Dr. Sanity has a good post discussing Steele's column. Well worth reading.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/02/2006 15:47 Comments ||
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#9
The native tribes of America, for example, had fought brutal territiorial wars for scores of generations before the Europeans arrived and joined in. The only difference was that superior weaponry allowed the Europeans to win unprecedentedly one-sided and permanent victories.
A little nitpick for reasons presently unknown, Native Americans did not have the genetic immune diversity found in African, European, and Asian populations. As a result smallpox and other imported diseases killed up to 90% of the existing Native American population. Native American diseases had no impact on Europe. This greatly aided the displacement of Native Americans by Europeans and Africans.
AUTHORS NOTE: This article was prepared and approved before the London Times report this past weekend which verified that longtime Hezbollah terror chief, Imad Mugniyah, has been tapped by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to initiate attacks against the West, especially the U.S., in the event that any preemptive strikes are made against Iran's nuclear facilities. In the following article we identify Mugniyah and his extensive role in a number of attacks on Americans since the 1980s and have assumed that any action taken by Hezbollah would be directed by Mugniyah, but this new supporting information was important enough and directly relevant to the discussion at hand to warrant us including this authors note to call our reader's attention to it. This new report reinforces our argument made here that Hezbollah and its operations inside America and throughout Latin America pose an immediate national security risk that should be among the primary topics of consideration in the ongoing border security debate.
Death to America was, is, and will stay our slogan! Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Secretary-General (Hezbollah Vows Anew To Target Americans, Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2003)
(...)
Long article on the far reaching arm of hizbollah in the USA and elsewhere (latin connections notably), drawing from numerous arrests and attempted attacks in the past, and what it means re Iran. See at link.
By James Woolsey The following speech was given as part of Restoration Weekend 2006, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Feb. 23-26, 2006 -- The Editors. Key points at end of speech:
Now, what might one do? The President has, over the course of the last week or two, been mentioning two alternatives time and again and I think hes right on those. The only thing I would say is that I think he is focused entirely on research and development and these are fields in which the Wright Brothers have already flown. What we really need is not so much invention, but some type of encouragement one way or another to have things move into the market quickly.
One possibility is cellulosic ethanol. The word cellulosic is important because it means making ethanol not from corn, which has to be cultivated and fertilized and is expensive to grow and so forth. But rather, as the President mentioned, from things such as switch grass, which is a variety of prairie grass. Or, for that matter, kudzu or corn cobs or any other waste agricultural products.
Whats new is that people have now succeeded in inventing genetically modified microorganisms that can take the place of the enzymes that break cellulose down in cows stomachs every day and turn it into sugar that the cows live on. Its doing that with genetically modified biocatalysts and fermenting the different types of sugar there with genetically modified yeast.
That is now being done commercially by a company called Iogen in Canada with Shell Oil backing it. It does not need to be invented. It needs help to be moved promptly into the marketplace into E8585% ethanol. But it does not need to be invented.
The same is true of the other way to use inexpensive fuels that the Presidents been talking about, which is plug-in hybrids. A plug-in hybrid is a hybrid electric vehicle which, of course, goes back and forth between electric power and gasoline, while the batterys being charged by the deceleration and by the use of the gasoline motor. My Prius gets about 50 miles to the gallon: a little worse on the road, a little better in town. It likes start/stop driving.
Hybrid gasoline electrics are fine, but what is really interesting is if you can increase the capacity of the battery by about a factor of 6, and today thats about a $6-7,000 cost, but it ought to be less as time goes on and batteries get cheaper. But if you increase the capacity of the battery, lets say, in a Prius by a factor of 6, plug it in overnight, top it up fully and then drive for 20-25 miles as an electric car on your overnight power before the hybrid back-and-forth feature cuts in, you turn that 50-mile-a-gallon Prius into about a 125-mile gallon of petroleum-based fuel Prius.
By the way, in most of the country, the average cost of off-peak nighttime electric power is 2-4 cents a kilowatt hour which is the rough equivalent of 25-50 cent a gallon gasoline. So if you have two cars, one kind of stays around the neighborhood and drives less than 25 miles a day, while the other maybe goes on long commutes. The one that goes on long commutes will be getting about a 125 miles per gallon of petroleum as it goes. The one that goes around the neighborhood and around town may go to the gasoline station once every six months or so because its running on off-peak overnight power the rest of the time.
Again, the Wright Brothers have already flown. This has been invented. Its being assembled in kits to modify cars in California beginning next month. People will lose some of their warranties and different car companies are wringing their hands and theres much Sturm und Drang. But it is not something that needs to be invented. If you have 125-mile-per-gallon, because its a plug-in hybrid car and it is running on 85 percent ethanol and only 15 percent gasoline, you have something in the ballpark of a 500-mile-per-gallon car with existing technology.
You want to get the Wahhabis attention, thats the way to do it.
Thank you.
Posted by: ed ||
05/02/2006 09:20 ||
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Link ||
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#1
That is now being done commercially by a company called Iogen in Canada with Shell Oil backing it.
A tip for you day traders out there, not that I know anything about it.
The goose that laid the golden eggs is being slowly suffocated to death by its keepers. Oil was the energy of the 20th Century. It's now the 21st. Time to move forward.
#2
Spend just 1% of the money wasted on the wide range of grant idiocy such as Tokamaks (an especially pernicious money drain) and put it into electrical storage systems (not necessarily conventional batteries) and we can lower our transportation uses of oil very dramatically. Not hybrids - and I truly respect Woolsey, he's just following the incremental approach - but I mean all-electric vehicles with simple but smart add-ons such as flywheels or other secondary storage capabilities.
Due to my job, I've been lucky enough to try out 2 electric test vehicles and they rocked in every way except getting tire smoke - only the storage issue remained. I loved my 1968 California Special Mustang with a teenager's passion, but reality has relegated that thrill to long-term memory. Now I want grown-up golf carts (Yes, they can have backseats, too, LOL) that won't send my money to Wahhabist or Hezbollah assholes.
Everything is there except (long-range) storage capacity. It's not as "sexy", but it beats the hell out of wasting our tax dollars on exotic pie-in-the-sky grants which have ZERO ROI records or funding the killer morons of the planet. Let's get it done and quit fooling around. K.I.S.S.
#3
The US still generates electricty from guess what? Oil. And Natural Gas which existing cars can be easily and cheaply adapted to run on, not too mention a whole lot more efficiently than electricity and batteries.
The US generates more electricity from oil and gas combined than nuclear. Almost all spare generating capacity is oil or gas.
When the last oil/gas fired generating plant is shutdown, I'll take electric cars as a way to get off imported energy seriously. Until then it's just more pie in the sky, wishful thinking.
#5
When the last oil/gas fired generating plant is shutdown, I'll take electric cars as a way to get off imported energy seriously. Until then it's just more pie in the sky, wishful thinking.
And I'll continue to smoke until they pry the cigarettes out of my cold, dead hands.
Change. Change your priorities and don't insist on being the last. Lead. Do not follow.
#6
Miscellaneous comments:
--- I'm currently paying 10+ cents a kilowatt-hour to my local municipal entity. If I could pay the 2-3 cents an hour cited in the article, I'd have enough money left over to buy a lot of $3 a gallon gasoline.
--- An obviously custom-modified Ford pickup passed me on I-70 in IN last week during the midnight hour. Its bed had been raised about a foot to accommodate a large bank of what appeared to be 12-Volt auto batteries, in an array whose size was equal to the area of the bed. The tires were unusually large, probably to hold the extra weight. The motor was high-pitched and loud. The truck was doing 80 mph to my 70. I wondered if this were a home-brew job, or a Ford research project being tested or moved surreptitiously.
Until the last oil/gas power station is shutdown, all electric cars will do is replace one means of consuming imported energy with a less efficient means of consuming imported energy.
I.e. they will substantially increase energy imports (oil/gas).
And before someone says nuclear only costs two cents a whatever. Generators run their cheapest source of electricity to the max, then their next cheapest, etc. Therefore increased demand is **always** satisified from the most expensive source.
In reality, what electric cars do is free load a subsidy from all electricity consumers to give the illusion they are cheaper.
#10
Coal or nuclear (and even hydro) is used for base load. Nuclear power is 3.5-4 cents/kwh, coal still cheaper. Gas and oil plants are used for peak power load. Charging batteries at night soaks up unused (up to a point) base load capacity. In addition, communication tech exists to stagger or limit charging rates to most effciently use the base load capacity.
Posted by: ed ||
05/02/2006 23:39 Comments ||
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#11
assuming big friggin capacitor stations?Or....?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/02/2006 23:40 Comments ||
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#12
gromgoru, this UK study says its 28%, although introduce a battery into the system and you will more than half that. Batteries are less than 40% efficient. So using electricity generated from oil in a battery car is not much more than 10% efficient.
From memory modern cars are aboyt 40% efficient.
So it takes four times as much oil to power a battery car than a gasoline car, and that ignores mechanical inefficiencies in the electric car, which will take the ratio even higher.
#13
Ed, I'm aware there is some unused base load at night. But then that concedes my point, because using up that unused capacity will only charge a relatively small number of vehicles, i.e. its not a solution to imported energy.
#14
Cars are more like 25-30% efficient. Battery charging efficiency is over 70% or higher for lead acid and over 95% for lithium-ion. Efficiency is lost in battery resistance (function of power curve), power electonics and electric motors, but motors are 90% efficient. Power are about 45% efficient and 10% is typically lost in electric distribution.
In the US, charging cars at night uses cheap coal and nuclear energy, not oil. It is not about energy efficiency, but the amount of usable energy per dollar. In addition, domestically sorced energy also adds to security.
Posted by: ed ||
05/03/2006 0:23 Comments ||
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#15
Phil, there is quite a lot of unused base load available for night use. In addition, as night usage increases, the economic incentive is to increase the base load capacity. For each 1 MW of base load increase, that decreases by 1 MW the need for peak load capacity (e.g. nat gas and oil) and older, highly polluting coal fired plants. By using each lowest plant closer to full time, the total economic effiency of the electic infrastructure goes up, lowering the peak load and total electric costs. A win-win in my book.
Posted by: ed ||
05/03/2006 0:33 Comments ||
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The state department of corrections has sent out a "diversity calendar" to employees noting the birthdays of Ho Chi Minh, Karl Marx. V.I. Lenin, and other luminaries in the economic and human rights pantheons.
A state legislator is upset, but a department spokesman says it is supposed to be an "instructional tool" to "provoke thought," for employees who may want to learn more. Maybe the department can send each employee a copy of the "Black Book of Communism."
The Yakima Herald-Republic broke the story Saturday; but the P-I offers a very truncated AP version this morning, which leaves out the following:
Dave Holbrook, 52, a community corrections officer in Vancouver, said when he opened the calendars in his e-mail at work, he was offended. "I'm a Vietnam veteran and to see Ho Chi Minh's birthday there, that just set me off. Then Memorial Day, when we honor my brothers and sisters who died," Holbrook said in a telephone interview....Diversity may be valued at Corrections but objecting to some of the names on the calendars is not, or at least not in Holbrook's case. He responded to the e-mailed calendars by hitting the "reply to all" key that he was offended by them. In a half hour, a supervisor showed up at my desk and said my e-mail was an inappropriate use of e-mail."
#4
What about Stalin, Guevara, Castro, Chavez, et al?
Seems like not much of an ethnic group to me...I mean - Marx and Lenin were both Russian (sorry, Soviet) communists. Uncle Ho seems like he was thrown in just so they could include a token "little yellow guy".
These guys really need to learn to diversify their own stereotypes and prejudices...
#1
When 'economic refugees' were overwhelming Florida from Haiti with a not too distant election looming, President Clinton invaded the island to put a stop to the dumping. It's time to do the same in Mexico, just declare it the 'Clinton Doctrine'.
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.
but very good summation of Europe's death knell
