h/t Instapundit
Hypocrisy, thy name is Barack Obama. The president has singled out industrialists Charles and David Koch for supposedly orchestrating a movement to undermine his agenda, especially the various "climate change" policies that he's pushing via unprecedented federal regulation.
These policies represent a massive tilting of the playing field toward wealthy and well-connected renewable-energy companies -- special interests that now receive billions of taxpayer dollars every year.
This makes it all the more notable that President Obama has failed to mention the actual coordinated campaign in favor of this agenda -- a campaign coordinated with the White House.
#1
An interesting discussion of the most recent list of known unknowns not -- or poorly -- acounted for in the current unpredictive models here. There's an awful lot we know we don't know enough about to quantify in the models.
#3
TW, the biggest gap in the economic models is that the wonks refuse to accept visible cause and effect.
Example: you do something, and make a lot of money at it, and it makes you happy. Fairly obvious? The Social Model builders find that so wrong that they won't even consider it's validity, while at the same time sucking up to the wealthy for their insights.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/25/2015 12:30 Comments ||
Top||
#4
I had only thought as far as the climate models, ed, but of course you are right.
[Hurriyet Daily News] Murat Yetkin, our editor-in-chief, mentioned in his Sept. 24 column "a self-criticism of the Islamic world by a top Turkish official in Mecca." Indeed, it was important that The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's top Moslemholy man, Professor Mehmet Görmez, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), said that "[Moslems] failed to do our works with justice, mercy and love. We called violence as jihad, oppression as victory." He also condemned "movements like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] as 'terrorism.'"
No doubt, Professor Görmez deserves praise for all the self-criticism. All the same, one other evil habit in the Islamic world that he probably deliberately avoided condemning was the typical reluctance of the "Learned Elders of Islam class" to condemn un-Islamic acts committed by the ruling Islamist class.
It could be a bad coincidence that the top Turkish holy man's condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIL as turbans came only after the Turkish government joined an allied campaign against both, not before. Really, why did Professor Görmez not condemn ISIL over the entire previous year, when its videos of utmost brutality were known to every soul in the world?
"We [Moslems] have called oppression as victory." Very true. And what does Professor Görmez think about the culture minister's "passionate" call to open a sixth century Orthodox church, Hagia Sophia, to Moslem prayers? Victory? Or the childish feeling of conquest? Justice, mercy and love?
A professor of theology, Professor Görmez should know better than this columnist that the Islamic holy scripture commands "modesty" in more than 60 verses. Does he think that spending several hundreds of millions of dollars in a presidential palace and private jets should comply with the Islamic commandments on modesty? If he does not agree, would he say that publicly? Why has he not been self-critical of the Islamist man who spent that money?
Professor Görmez recently said he would return his fancy Mercedes car, adding that he hoped his decision to return the car would "be a precedent to everyone." But after this President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... said he would give him "a better, armored Mercedes car." What happened to his Mercedes? Did he return it? Has he agreed to accept the Mercedes that the president promised to give him?
"We [Moslems] called victory as jihad." Very true. But what does Professor Görmez think arming jihadists should amount to? Did he think that the Sunni jihadists' war on Syria's Shia regime was legitimate? Was it violence? Or just innocent jihad? At least, Professor Görmez should have shared his views on the Moslem Brothers' systematic attacks on Egypt's Coptic community. Was that violence or jihad? Why was he totally silent when Egyptian Islamists attacked more than 50 churches overnight in 2013?
It is no doubt praiseworthy that Turkey's top holy man resorted to something that is extremely rare in Moslem lands: Self-criticism. But it is not good enough when self-criticism comes in carefully-worded speeches designed to self-criticize but not to annoy the ruling class of Islamists -- in other words, his employers. Could the Learned Elders of Islam be frightened of speaking the Islamic truth in the face of the ruling class?
Too many questions. To be realistic, there is no prospect of a single answer.
Professor Görmez's nice words in Mecca were indeed self-criticism in the Islamic world. But they were merely "selective" self-criticism in the Islamic world. Religious leaders of Islam should more bravely encourage free thinking and advocate justice instead of paying servitude to the men of power -- at least for the sake of advocating Islamic commandments on justice.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/25/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Muslim Brotherhood
h/t Instapundit
Today Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on cybersecurity. Senator Tom Cotton asked him two questions, the second of which was brilliant: 1) Are the communications of the president's most senior advisors, including those that may be unclassified, a "top priority for foreign intelligence services?" and 2) What would he think if he learned that Russia's Foreign Minister, or Iran's, was conducting official business on a home-brew server?
Blogpost addressing a hypothetical. Moved to Opinion.
All-caps title modified for BETTER DRAMATIC IMPACT!!
#6
Iff what #2 says doesn't happen, FM Lavrov could always end up being "poked" wid a KGB-now--RSB, Russian Mafia poison umbrella, either to kill him right off, or perhaps to "warn" Lavrov by covertly seriously damaging his body wid select drugs e.g. that MSM-Net mentioned new "Croakadil" drug from couple years back to kill biological tissue + cripple/disable him???
VLAD WILL PCORRECTLY-DENIABLY CLAIM IT WAS DIABETES OR CANCER, ETC, THAT KILLED LAVROV BUT IN REALITY IT WAS KGB-RSB LED SPY DRUGS.
[TOME CRUISE'S mISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION > BRIT MI6 CHIEF TO LADY SPY = "THERE ARE NO FRIENDS/ALLIES IN STATECRAFT, ONLY 'COMMON INTERESTS'. ETHAN HUNT MAY BE AN AMERICAN + CIA AGENT, = AMERICAN A CLOSE ALLY OF BRITAIN, BUT IFF SOLOMON LANE WANTED YOU TO KILL ETHAN HUNT YOU SHOULD'VE DONE SO].
Her mission was to get MI6 rogue Solomon Lane, Not save Ethan Hunt either as an American andor as a CIA Agent.
[DAWN] When Haroon's counsel Tariq Asad appeared before the court in 2013, he claimed that Haroon was very young when Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed in July 2007, which was why he did not approach the police for the registration of an FIR.
The matter was heard by an additional district and sessions judge, Rafaqat Awan, who dismissed the petition on April 24, 2013 with the remarks that after a lapse of over 7 years, the petition was filed to gain cheap publicity.
The judge, however, was killed in March the following year when holy warriors attacked the district courts in Islamabad.
It was in July of 2013, when Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), disposing of a petition filed by Haroon, ordered the police to register an FIR against Gen Musharraf.
Musharraf remained under arrest in the Abdul Rashid Ghazi murder case, but later was granted bail when the police, in their interim challan, declared him 'innocent' on the basis of weak evidence.
However, you can observe a lot just by watching... Gen Musharraf is still on trial, which is pending before an additional district and sessions judge of Islamabad.
A spokesperson of the Lal Masjid ...literally the Red Mosque, located in Islamabad and frequented by all sorts of high govt officials. The proprietors, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, unleashed their Islamic storm troopers on the city, shutting down whorehouses and beating people up who weren't devout enough. The Musharraf govt put an end to the nonsense by besieging the place. Abdul Aziz Ghazi was nabbed while he was trying to escape dressed up like a girl. BBC reported that the corpse count at 173, but other claims, usually hysterical, say there were up to 1000 titzup. Among their number was Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Everyone then said tut-tut and what a nice guy he had been... -led Shuhda Foundation Trust, in a statement, claimed that the police tossed in the slammer Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! Haroon in order to force him to withdraw the complaint against Gen Musharraf.
The statement claimed that in 2004, police had implicated Abdul Rashid Ghazi in an identical case as they recovered 'fake' weapons from the vehicle. According to the statement, Ghazi was later acquitted by the courts.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/25/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
Wehell, I could tell you, but then I'll have to kill you - nothing personal, its just the Law.
From a few days ago, but still useful information, I think.
[IsraelTimes] Operating on assumption sanctions will be lifted, Tehran increases support to proxies, while freezing out Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, leader Khaled Mashaal.
On Sunday, the director of the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, arrived in Iran for talks on the nuclear agreement, as part of what appears to be an attempt by the UN nuclear watchdog to evaluate whether Iran ran a military nuclear program in the past.
Amano is expected to meet with various Iranian nuclear scientists for answers on this very subject. On December 15, ahead of the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on Tehran, he is slated to present the world with definitive answers that will determine whether Iran complied with the terms of a nuclear deal signed on July 15. But the Islamic Theocratic Republic is not waiting for a green light from Amano or the international community, and is working under the assumption that the sanctions will be lifted.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/25/2015 00:00 ||
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[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Didn't the Hezbozos just announce they were out of the ISIS fight? I thought they wanted to save their ordinance and anger for Israel.
#2
Yea, well, maybe---just maybe---USA shouldn't have tried to achieve its goals (whatever they are) in Syria by engineering a "pro-western" coup in Ukraine to deny Crimean naval bases to Russia. Haven't they anybody who ever read a relevant history book---to know that Russians go psycho when Motherland is invaded?
#4
Haven't they anybody who ever read a relevant history book---to know that Russians go psycho when Motherland is invaded?
Why read relevant history? Surely a rhetorical question. Are you suggesting some degree of critical thinking and analysis be undertaken? It's much more profitable to blindly re-live previous failures. Have the senseless conflicts of the past not served our betters well? Have the defense establishments not prospered ?
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.
[DAWN] When Haroon's counsel Tariq Asad appeared before the court in 2013, he claimed that Haroon was very young when Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed in July 2007, which was why he did not approach the police for the registration of an FIR.
