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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Suicide bomb attack kills 28, wounds dozens in Cameroon
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Lord Grantham's mum scorches big government - Video
[HotAir] "For years, I've watched governments take control of our lives. Their argument is always the same: 'Fewer costs, greater efficiency.' But the result is the same, too. Less control by the people, more control by the State -- until the individual's anguishes count for nothing. That is what I consider my duty to resist."
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 07:52 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The background of the Dowager's comment comes from her dispute regarding the take over of the village hospital by a larger hospital syndicate in York. A subtle indictment, but not very.

Bemoaning the ills of modern [1926] society, other snarky predictions from the Dowager included a "female Field Marshall" and a "female Pope." The more I see and hear of her, the more I enjoy.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 8:44 Comments || Top||

#2  ...until the individual's anguishes count for nothing.

The National Health Service in a nutshell, as they delay testing and treatment until people die of it, and choose others to be withheld food, water, and bedpans while they die in agony on a hospital bed in their own filth, because odds are they're going to die soon enough anyway.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/26/2016 10:18 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Kerry Pontificates on Solving Central America's Problems
Lurch wrote an editorial exclusively for the Dallas Morning News, which appeared Saturday. That seems to have been the extent of its publication.

BLUF: If we all just work together and provide adequate funding, we can solve the problems of Central America and then we won't need to build a fence.

I can't seem to copy more than about 12 words from the site. How clever of them. I did piece together the conclusion:

The U.S. and Central America have a common interest in creating a future in which the people of the region can find safety, security and prosperity in their own homes. To achieve that, we need a true and sustained partnership, backed by adequate resources and political will on all sides, to implement reforms, improve governance, combat crime and expand opportunity.
Maybe we could work on that in our own country, Mr. Secretary?
Count your blessings: as long as Jahwn is focused on Central America he isn't making a mess of the Middle East...
Posted by: Bobby || 01/26/2016 07:52 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  we can solve the problems of Central America

Maybe reducing GDP dependence on a single labor-intensive export product that is not demand priced at the point of origin would be a start.
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/26/2016 8:56 Comments || Top||

#2  Getting rid their patrician (right and left) ruling class wasn't in the text?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/26/2016 10:23 Comments || Top||

#3  Quickly! Look! A potential presidential finding or an idea machine. Only you can decide.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 10:34 Comments || Top||

#4  The US has become more and more like Central America lately in that the most important crimes that need fighting are those perpetrated from within the regime, clique, cabal, bureaucracy, administration of the moment.
Posted by: AlanC || 01/26/2016 11:30 Comments || Top||

#5  Just takes a little bit of somebody else's money, huh Jawn?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/26/2016 12:35 Comments || Top||

#6  Want to help Latin America, decriminalize drugs and otherwise leave them be to make their own mistakes or successes.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/26/2016 16:27 Comments || Top||

#7  First questions come first - IFF MEXICO IS SUBORNED UNDER OWG NORTH AMERICAN UNION [NAU] + RELATED ALONG WID THE US, CANADA, + GREENLAND, WHAT NATION-STATE = US-STYLE/PAR "CO-SUPERPOWER" OR "GREAT POWER" IS INTENDED TO LEAD OR DOMINATE OWG CENTRAL AMERICAN UNION + LINKED???

Mexico again? Post-Castro Cuba? Nicaragua? Alliance?

'Tis likely safe to say that ARGENTINA wants the job of leading or dominating any OWG SOUTH AMERICAN UNION + LINKED iff BRAZIL is NOT interested.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/26/2016 19:56 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
SPENGLER: The Resistible Rise of Donald Trump
"Imagine if Hitler had liked Jews," I told an Israeli politician recently who asked me to characterize the Republican frontrunner. The comparison seems more apt every day. The title of this note refers to Bertolt Brecht's 1941 satire, "The Resistible Rise of Alfonso Ui," portraying Hitler as gangster in the mode of Al Capone.

Donald Trump has tapped an ugly mood in America's middle class, whose prospects have dimmed noticeably since the 2008 financial crisis.

...A lot of Americans are looking for someone to blame, and Trump is there to point the finger: It's Mexican illegals. It's the Chinese dumping goods on us. Deport 11 million illegals! Slap a 40% tariff on Chinese imports! Never mind that there aren't 11 million Mexican illegals in the U.S., and a trade war with China would blow the world economy to piece. Neither China nor Mexico has very much to do with America's economic woes. There are fewer illegals in America today tha in 2008 and the growth rate of Chinese imports has fallen to next to nothing.

...America's embattled middle class doesn't want charts and graphs, facts and statistics. It wants a leader who will identity culprits and take ruthless action. It's a different electorate than I remember. My business partner in the late 1980s, the supply-sider Jude Wanniski, liked to say that the American people in its wisdom wanted a nice guy as president. They knew that the American president was the most powerful man in the world, and if he acted out of rancor the consequences could be terrible. Not any more. Americans want a nasty president.

...We're a long way from Germany in the late 1920s, to be sure, but the parallels are disturbing. The Republican Establishment shouts from the rooftops that it prefers Hitl--, er, Trump to the horrible Ted Cruz. As Bob Dole put it, Trump could "probably work with Congress, because he's, you know, he's got the right personality and he's kind of a deal-maker." Robert Costa at the Washington Post, David French at National Review, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, and other commentators too numerous to mention have weighed in on the same theme.

Why does the Establishment hate Cruz so much? He threatens their livelihood, unlike Trump, whose real estate and casino business has required friendly dealings with politicians of all stripes for half a century.

...The Amerian economy is cartelized and monopolized to an extent we haven't seen in two generations. Why is this so-called economic recovery so miserable? The entrepreneurs are gone. In all previous postwar recoveries, new businesses led employment growth.

...Without a return to entrepreneurship, America's economy will stagnate and America's middle class will continue to lose ground. Donald Trump represents the triumph of resentment over hope. I don't know what American voters will do. But I'm frightened.

Update: I'm not the only one that's frightened, though. Ted Cruz terrifies the Establishment, and we have had no better explanation for that terror than a Jan. 20 Facebook post from Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's erstwhile Labor Secretary
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/26/2016 11:02 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  What utter bullshit. I wish those who pretend to be on "our" side would spend their time and effort on attacking Hillary and Bernie.
Posted by: Crusader || 01/26/2016 11:41 Comments || Top||

#2  Really another Hitler comparison. Never rabble rousers like Thomas Paine or Patrick Henry?

Donald Trump has tapped an ugly mood in America's middle class

Well, one, there seems to be a lot of blue collar working class Reagan Donks at those speeches not just white collar middle class.

Two, if you've been lied to time and time again, you get a bit agitated. That's the problem of the liars not those lied to.

As for authoritarians, we've had one for seven years ignoring the law and the Constitution. A little late now to be concerned with niceties. It was the Left that decided it was all about power. You either play their game or lose.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/26/2016 11:42 Comments || Top||

#3  Robert Reich's rebuttal at the end of the article is the best argument I've to vote for Ted Cruz.

Al
Posted by: Frozen Al || 01/26/2016 12:26 Comments || Top||

#4  Again with the NAZI thing. Never mind that Trump is not a socialist. If he doesn't subscribe to progressive dogma he must be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/26/2016 12:49 Comments || Top||

#5  And, of course, if he wants to secure our borders he must be a racist.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/26/2016 13:01 Comments || Top||

#6  Spengler, this an embarrassing misreading of what Trump has said. He is not making an economic argument about illegal immigration, he is focused on the violent crime they bring.

Comparisons with Hitler are the refuge of the most simple minded hack. Apparently it does not go without saying that there is a difference between "let's enforce our borders" and "let's kill six million citizens."
Posted by: regular joe || 01/26/2016 13:04 Comments || Top||

#7  Falwell Jr endorses Trump for US president
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/26/2016 13:31 Comments || Top||

#8  And it's Arturo Ui, not Alfonso.
Posted by: Grunter || 01/26/2016 13:31 Comments || Top||

#9  I went to the article to see what Robert Reich said, and Frozen Al is spot on target - "Robert Reich's rebuttal at the end of the article is the best argument I've [seen/heard]to vote for Ted Cruz."

What's not to like about Ted?
Posted by: Bobby || 01/26/2016 13:35 Comments || Top||

#10  Donald Trump has tapped an ugly mood in America's middle class, whose prospects have dimmed noticeably since the 2008 financial crisis.


So, nothing else happened in 2008 that contributed to this situation?

And Reich's comments about Cruz... come up a little short.
Posted by: Raj || 01/26/2016 13:39 Comments || Top||

#11  The donk's MO is to demonize opponents. Why am I not surprised that Trump is being demonized. Hilter? Please.
Posted by: Sven the pelter || 01/26/2016 13:44 Comments || Top||

#12  Interesting that the Establishment GOP would rather betray everything they pretend to stand for then put the graft on hold for 4 to 8 years while the country gets itself back into shape.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/26/2016 13:50 Comments || Top||

#13  Isn't it?
Posted by: Sven the pelter || 01/26/2016 13:53 Comments || Top||

#14  It really does read as if Robert Reich is pro Cruz. Laughably so. Cruz is smarter, stands for something, and believes in things most Republicans believe in.

Reich doesn't mention that Cruz is a Constitutionalist who knows what he can and can't change so he's unlikely to executive order Gay Marriage out of existence. A little Presidential restraint and return to the Constitution and balance of powers is something we all could use about now.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/26/2016 13:54 Comments || Top||

#15  The trouble with Trump, aside from the silliness of some of his statements, is that he seems to be closer in his ideas to Obama than to the Republican party, and seems also to be totally full of himself and his own ideas. The establishment press lionizes him almost every day and ignores all the other Republican candidates.
I constantly see from commentors an apparent hatred of Republicans who are said to betray and be worse than Democrats.
Actually, the country did well under Republicans, and what has been failing is the lack of success of the Democrats, who have had power for 9 years (the last two years under Bush the dems controlled Congress, and Bush refused to veto.) When opposed by congress recently Obama has acted (unconsitutionally) on his own. And the dems when in power gave unelected government agencies the right to legislate against the interests of society with no constraints other than from the Supreme Court.
Even at present with 56 Republican Senators it takes 60 to bring a bill forward in the Senate.
This has made Congress almost powerless to oppose the President.
Yet commentators blame the Republicans for the awful policies and malaise concocted by the Democrats.
The establishment in Washington are the Democrats and the Press; the Republicans have little or no part in it.
Cruz and his supporters seem to see Republicans as their enemies. This is crazy. If he cannot convince those who are close to him in politics of the value of his approach, how will he convince those who are further away? Many Democrats in the Establishment now fear jail time if the Republicans win as a result of the extravagance of their own antics when in power. They will do anything to win this election.
A candidate who can unite the Republican party and Conservatives and Libertarians is essential for the restoration of this Country.
Neither Trump nor Cruz is it. Maybe Rubio is the one to do it.
Maybe Cruz could do it, if he mended his relations to his party. The Republicans should be the party of all those interested in limiting government power, and making government employees accountable for their misdeeds, and all those who favor a strong military and a realistic foreign policy, not one built on dreams.
Posted by: Grins Snese4215 || 01/26/2016 14:42 Comments || Top||

#16  Spengler is often brilliant. Last year he wrote an article demonizing anyone who displayed a Confederate flag. He implied, in no uncertain terms, that any American who did so was equally as despicable as as someone defending the holocaust. I don't believe he understands or likes Americans as they are. Like Obama, he imputes evil to those with whom he disagrees.





Posted by: Sgt.D.T. || 01/26/2016 14:50 Comments || Top||

#17  Trump is a shit stirring megalomaniac .. Seems an ideal choice for POTUS, I'm mean you only need to look to the Chump to see what credentials are needed to get into the white house
Posted by: MacNails jnr || 01/26/2016 15:00 Comments || Top||

#18  Spengler, of all people, is unfamiliar with Godwin's Law? Sad.
Posted by: JHH || 01/26/2016 15:00 Comments || Top||

#19  Trump and Chump , lol ... Sorry
Posted by: MacNails jnr || 01/26/2016 15:01 Comments || Top||

#20  Even at present with 56 Republican Senators it takes 60 to bring a bill forward in the Senate.This has made Congress almost powerless to oppose the President.

Wrong.

They can't override a veto but there is a whole helluva lot they could do and there is a whole lot more they could refuse to do. Passing the latest budget is a prime example. They have a duty to resist the bankruptcy of our country but instead they acquiesced. Everything Obama wants, he gets. Everything. It's like there is no Congress, no opposition party, only a rubber stamp for the Emperor.

And before Obama, Bush wasn't much better. He did nothing about illegal immigration, he let the debt get out of control and he pretended not to see the looming mortgage meltdown.

If you're not angry, you haven't been paying attention.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/26/2016 15:10 Comments || Top||

#21  I don't think Trump is a nazi or nonantisemitic fascist. (or a prosemitic fascist).

I also don't think he's the guy who's gonna fix the mess we're in.

I don't think the hyperbole helps the situation.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 01/26/2016 16:11 Comments || Top||

#22  Not in support anybody but this was commonly said about Reagan:
Posted by: 3dc || 01/26/2016 16:11 Comments || Top||

#23  Spengler is at his best when he discusses foreign policy.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 01/26/2016 16:29 Comments || Top||

#24  I just want a leader who likes his/her country, seems like a lot to ask these days from the US, Canada and EU.
Posted by: regular joe || 01/26/2016 16:31 Comments || Top||

#25  For Trump, rhetoric is a negotiating technique. It is geared towards shaping the battlefield. The downside is that it is difficult to intuit Donald's interests given his positions. Also, Donald counterpunches using ad hominem attacks. It is a sign of weakness because it means you can't win the argument on its merits.
Posted by: Sven the pelter || 01/26/2016 16:46 Comments || Top||

#26  Yah, but it's a good tactic for poaching supporters from the Camacho for President campaign.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 01/26/2016 17:19 Comments || Top||

#27  Trump in '16 = Schwarzenegger in '03. An outsider promising to clean up government with some obvious and long overdue reforms. Schwarzenegger even gave it a real effort - for the first few months. Then he cut deals and basically became exactly what he had run against in the first place.

Remember, you heard it here first.
Posted by: Iblis || 01/26/2016 17:42 Comments || Top||

#28  I always figure Trump running to protect the viability of his assets. Esp. the gambling ones. If the nation's currency is worthless and it's people cash poor there is nothing useful to be skimmed by gambling. So.. unless he can physically move his halls elsewhere and they culturally fit he's screwed.

It's in his interest to have a nation worth skimming.
Posted by: 3dc || 01/26/2016 18:11 Comments || Top||

#29  It is a sign of weakness because it means you can't win the argument on its merits.

Seems to have worked for the Left for a couple of decades. When was the last time they asked the urban community to look in the mirror for the cause of their problems rather than blame the 'man' or institutionalized bias? (See - white privilege)
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/26/2016 18:51 Comments || Top||

#30  P2k, turnabout is fair play eh? OK, I'll buy that.
Posted by: Sven the pelter || 01/26/2016 20:15 Comments || Top||

#31  Sgt.D.T. I think you have Spengler read all wrong.

"... he imputes evil to those with whom he disagrees"

No, he disagrees with those who he believes are evil.

Spengler is one hard ass dude, who believes what he says. So, for him to drop the bomb on Trump is altogether the correct thing for him. And I expect nothing less from Spengler. That is why he is magnificent. If he writes, he delivers.

Spengler paints in black and white, with a few accents in blood. See what he portrays and discuss with yourself, and us, why you agree or not.
Posted by: Elmavigum Lumplump4030 || 01/26/2016 21:39 Comments || Top||

#32  Dammit, I forgot to change the auto-name of Elmavigum Lumplump4030 to my own.
Posted by: rammer || 01/26/2016 21:43 Comments || Top||

#33  Spengler views the American middle class with disdain. They don't want 'facts and statistics" they want a ruthless leader who picks scapegoats to appease them. "They want a nasty president". This middle class is too stupid to listen to his opinions and act in accord with his high standards. After all the electorate is different than he remembers it. He says the parallels to 1920's Germany aren't the same, but follows by saying "the Republican Establishment shouts from the rooftops it prefers Hitler/Trump to Cruz". Therefore he believes they evil. They are not. I have fought beside southerners who didn't like blacks or Yankees like me. They weren't evil. They fought and died in great percentages. I don't know if Spengler for America in the wars of the 20th century but I believe he is wrong to place the middle class before his literary firing squad. He does"t know them.

Posted by: Sgt.D.T. || 01/26/2016 22:36 Comments || Top||


How Hillary Got Classified Information Onto Her Private Email
[TheFederalist] If the latest allegations are true, Hillary Clinton and her minions committed several felonies. And they knew this when they did it.

People can and do go to jail for screwing up. Well, at least the little people do.
Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 01/26/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Someone in Russia has her e-mail contacts.

Actually, some nobody has it too.

Someone had a text account of oodles of things.

It's over.

Go find a President.
Posted by: newc || 01/26/2016 2:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Great piece by COL(Ret) Kurt Schlichter. It was clearly a 'cut and paste' effort by the Beest's staffers. Breitbart has more here.

As said here many, many times, classified info simply does not jump from SIPR or JWICS onto an UNCLAS network. There has to be a man in the loop. Whomever the staffers [or other DoS employees] were that did it, they had SIPR and JWICS accounts and probably figured they'd be protected by the Hildebeest.

Anyone besides me think the cough is a preliminary move for admission to Bethesda Naval Hospital and a 'back door' out of the race? Days remaining predictions ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 3:00 Comments || Top||

#3  Hillary has already fleeced hundreds of millions just this year and almost certainly over a billion counting the past three decades. The victims were Democrat donors and corporate cronies.

Personally, I hope she stays active in the primary season and gets nominated.

Having Hil do the perp walk post nomination would be a thrill.
Posted by: lord garth || 01/26/2016 5:57 Comments || Top||

#4  There are a number of scenarios which could lead to her not running. Without exception, I would happily applaud them all.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 7:33 Comments || Top||

#5  She'll neve be charged. Lynch will see to that. She has too much dirt on everybody. The I. G. recommended cares of embezzlement be brought against Humanity Abedin and Lynch did nothing. We have two different sets of laws now.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 01/26/2016 8:11 Comments || Top||

#6  She has too much dirt on everybody.

Perhaps she's been Litveneko'd. Go ahead, try to tell me that you don't think Champ would go there. After all he is, "... pretty good at killing people."
Posted by: Halliburton - Foreign Affairs Division || 01/26/2016 9:03 Comments || Top||

#7  FRONT PAGE NEWS
Hillary Laughs It Off – Literally LOL!

Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 01/26/2016 20:37 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Pathankot affair
[Dawn] THE attack on the air force base in Pathankot, India, came at a critical juncture in the relationship between India and Pakistain. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise visit to Pakistain a few weeks prior had indicated a thaw in ties between the two countries, a welcome development considering a series of LoC conflagrations and India's tense rhetoric in the preceding year.

However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate...
while combating regional terrorism is a point of convergence for both India and Pakistain and would certainly help strengthen ties, the unique circumstances of the Pathankot attacks call for a more nuanced approach. While it may be sensationalising for the Indian media to raise unsubstantiated claims vis-à-vis the Pak military and the country's security establishment, such xenophobia not only harms relations between the two states, it also complicates an already complex situation.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/26/2016 00:24 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Jaish-e-Mohammad


Fighting terrorism
[Dawn] THE Bacha Khan University attack forced us to relive the horrors of APS. The punditry following the attack tells me that it may have come as an even bigger shock than APS to most. The state's consistently positive readouts on Zarb-e-Azb
..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)...
and the improvement in the overall security situation over the past year seemed to have convinced people that the Taliban were no longer in a position to pull off something like this again. This is perplexing.

On the one hand, the palatable feeling among commentators that Charsadda must necessarily cast doubt over the efficacy of the military's anti-TTP efforts points to little more than a case of unrealistic expectations. If you look at contemporary insurgencies around the world, one common trend is immediately apparent: holy warrior groups manage to retain the capacity to attack state interests long after they have passed their peak.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/26/2016 00:00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Olde Tyme Religion
"Try To Relax Here For A While Because They’re Going To Kill You Anyway"
by Daniel Greenfield

[FrontPageMagazine] This is an excerpt from a larger Asra Nomani piece on honor killings in the Wall Street Journal. It's quite a dark look at what life under Islamic mores is like for women.

In one particularly poignant chapter, Ms. Zoepf steps through the doors of a girls' prison in Syria, where 16-year-old Zahra al-Azzo was jailed for being raped. (That's right, they jailed her.)

The prison is a sort of holding facility for girls like Zahra who are at risk of being murdered by their families in a so-called honor killing. Yet there is little to protect the young women once they leave.

"One of the girls came to me, crying, the other day," the head social worker tells Ms. Zoepf. "She wanted to go home and it's an honor crime situation. I told her, 'Try to relax here for a while because they're going to kill you anyway when you're released.' It sounds cruel, but I needed to calm her down, to get her to behave sensibly.'"

Expecting a culture where you throw a party for murdering your own daughter who had been raped to treat us better than they have, let alone to understand that killing is wrong, is just unrealistic.
Zahra was eventually freed from the prison in order to marry a cousin. Shortly thereafter, she was hacked to death in her apartment by her own brother--with the blessing of their parents. Zahra's crime: "losing her virginity out of wedlock." Her brother believed he was "washing away the shame" to the family.

The day of her murder, Ms. Zoepf chronicles, the girl's family threw a party.

When you consider the problem of terrorism, it's important to remember that we are dealing with societies where dehumanization and murder of even one's own closest relatives is not an aberration. Expecting a culture where you throw a party for murdering your own daughter who had been raped to treat us better than they have, let alone to understand that killing is wrong, is just unrealistic.

Ms. Zoepf gingerly traces the roots of twisted practices, such as honor killings, to Islamic concepts such as fitna, or the "chaos" that is often connected to "temptation of a sexual nature."

That accusation, incidentally, has also been directed from the Muslim world at the entire West.
Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 01/26/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hominids from this sort of sub-civilized culture simply cannot be allowed to migrate to civilized nations. There are not capable of assimilation.

You do not allow rabid animals to migrate unmolested into your midst. The same policy should be applied to these Orcs.
Posted by: Lone Ranger || 01/26/2016 0:49 Comments || Top||

#2  This is called an honor killing but it is really revenge for depriving the family of her bride price.
Unlike most societies in which the bridegroom's family pays dowry to the bride, the Arab tradition is that the groom's family pays a bride price to the bride's family.
This money is needed by the brother to pay as bride price so that he can marry. He is outraged at the loss of this which may make it impossible for him to marry. He has counted on this money all his life.
If his sister ran off with some guy, the problem would be much less, because it might be possible for that guy's family to come up with some money to pay off her family. In the case of rape, that is hopeless. So she must pay with her life, for stealing this money from her brother.
It should be called a mercenary crime, which to us is a crime of dishonor. The brother dishonors the family by his selfishness more than she dishonored it, in the eyes of the civilized world.
Posted by: Grins Snese4215 || 01/26/2016 3:15 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Could Tehran become a major international aviation hub?
Posted by: ryuge || 01/26/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sounds great.
Bigger TARGET!
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/26/2016 8:59 Comments || Top||


Who is the fourth U.S. prisoner released by Iran?
Posted by: ryuge || 01/26/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Culture Wars
Thomas Sowell: The Demand for Villains
[HotAir] The latest tempest in a teapot controversy is over a lack of black nominees for this year's Academy Awards in Hollywood.

The assumption seems to be that different groups would be proportionally represented if somebody were not doing somebody else wrong. That assumption carries great weight in far more important things than Academy Awards and in places more important than Hollywood, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

In an earlier era, the groupthink assumption was that groups that did not succeed as often, or as well, were genetically inferior. But is our current groupthink assumption based on any more hard evidence?

Having spent decades researching racial and ethnic groups around the world, I have never yet found a country in which all groups -- or even most groups -- are even roughly equally represented in most endeavors.

Nor have I been the only one with that experience. The great French historian Fernand Braudel said, "In no society have all regions and all parts of the population developed equally." A study of military forces around the world failed to find a single one in which in which the ethnic makeup of the military was the same as that of the society.

My own favorite example of unrepresentativeness, however, is right at home. Having watched National Football League games for more than 50 years, I have seen hundreds of black players score touchdowns, but I have never seen one black player kick the extra point.

What are we to conclude from this? Do those who believe in genetics think that blacks are just genetically incapable of kicking a football?
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 08:08 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Obviously French historian Fernand Braudel has observed the British model. Auzzie Lieutenants Harry Morant and Peter Handcock were unavailable for comment.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/26/2016 8:38 Comments || Top||

#2  The assumption seems to be that different groups would be proportionally represented if somebody were not doing somebody else wrong.

Diversity, the anti-Democarcy
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/26/2016 10:15 Comments || Top||

#3  As a generation of neurotics becomes firmly ensconced as the "Voices of Truth" (TM), we can expect more of this distracting B.S. as Rome burns.

“I tried being reasonable, but I didn't like it.” - Clint Eastwood

Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 || 01/26/2016 16:17 Comments || Top||



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