Following reports about Saudi Arabias attempts to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan, a political analyst says an archaic, kleptomaniac and totalitarian Riyadh armed with nukes is as much a danger as Israel.
[Hurriyet Daily News] I had previously written that developments in Syria had widened the scope of the Kurdish problem and that we are face to face with control getting out of our hands. I believe we have three options:
1-To take steps to solve immediately our internal problems and reconcile with our Kurdish-origin citizens.
2-To wait for the outcome of developments without doing anything.
3-To widen the military fight against the Kurdish entity.
The prime minister's current policy is limited to bringing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to its knees. The previous courageous steps taken are considered sufficient. Yet, the scope of the Kurdish problem in general in the region is fast widening. The PKK is preparing to take an important role in international games. The messages of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani and the article in daily Star by his adviser Yalçın Akdoğan show that things are not going well.
Akdoğan has warned Barzani on behalf of the prime minister and said, "choose the friendship of Turkey."
Iraq is under his control. Syria is shaking. It is even enough to have those two unite. Then may come Iran. If the support of Washington, who might just want to punish Tehran, comes that will get us one step nearer to Greater Kurdistan.
In all of this game the PKK finds a place for itself. It has voice in armed struggle.
It becomes stronger.
In short the changing dynamics in the region are taking the Kurdish problem to stages undesired by us.
#3
Erdogan got more than he bargained for. He is losing his grip in his own country(economy stinks in Turkey also). Sounds like back room deals in Hillary's toolbox at work. Israel doesn't have to do anything here. Things are so unstable and now with Russia putting Assad's use of WMD off the table why bother. Hillary has other plans and will push Israel like one of her tools in her box. She is doing her own thing. This is not the work of Obama. Making her mark in history.
#4
In Drudge today looks like Romney is supporting a Israeli effort. Go ahead guys, we'll cheer you on in the background. I'll have more flexibility after the election.
"...Accordingly, the leaders of Syria's proscribed Muslim Brotherhood held a four-day conclave in Istanbul and announced plans on Friday to create an "Islamic party". "We are ready for the post-Assad era, we have plans for the economy, the courts, politics", the Brotherhood's spokesman announced. "
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/29/2012 9:24 Comments ||
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Pakistain's gradual alienation from democracy and its irreducible secular conditionality is owed to the growth of the idea of Islamic governance, today showcased by the Taliban
Pakistain follows the rest of the Mohammedan world in thinking about the state. There was a time when it was normal for a Pak to say that he was a Pak first; now he says he is a Mohammedan first, little realising that he was negating the modern state. Most of the states in the Mohammedan world began as modern states but are now on the brink of choosing a pre-modern order that is stranger to democracy. Egypt that leads the Mohammedans of the world intellectually now manifests the following symptoms:
Democracy as 'tyranny of the majority':
There was a time when it was normal for a Pak to say that he was a Pak first; now he says he is a Mohammedan first
1) On the role of religion in government, 61 percent of Egyptians chose Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... as the preferred model.
2) Asked whether Egypt's laws should strictly adhere to the Koran, 60 percent said yes while 32 percent said it should follow the values and principles of Islam and only six percent said laws should not be influenced by the teachings of the Koran.
3) The survey found that 61 percent of Egyptians want to diplomatically de-recognise Israel, while only 32 percent think it should be recognised. The feeling against Israel has surged among the youth.
Another poll found that 52 percent of Paks too wanted sharia and desired an increased role of religion in their lives. Pakistain's wealth is in the hands of a conservative elite which controls the media. Once upon a time the state TV was extreme in its Islamic tilt; now PTV is moderate compared to the 'free' TV channels numbering nearly 80. A new book Radicalisation in Pakistain by Muhammad Amir Rana & Safdar Sial (Narratives 2012) tells us on the basis polls that 87 percent of the journalists think that radical elements 'have an effect' on the media. You don't have to read John Stuart Mill to conclude that Mohammedans demand democracy to impose 'the tyranny of the majority' on their societies.
Urdu and conservatism:
Conservatism in traditionally tolerant Mohammedan societies has morphed into fundamentalism threatening enough to cause three categories of Mohammedans to shut up: secularists, liberals and the moderate. The nation in Pakistain is weaning itself from the bilingual ambience of the past despite an increasing trend in the private sector to employ persons proficient in the use of English language.
Urdu is the vehicle of Islamist view. Pakistain is moving towards the status of a single-language country because of the ouster of English-language TV channels. Most graduates from universities are less able to use English and tend to be conservative if not Islamist in their aggressive rejection of secularists and moderates. This trend is shockingly clear in the social media. Some analysts are frank enough to say that the youth that dominates the social media - facebook, youtube, twitter, etc - will threaten the modern state in the Mohammedan world.
Radical assault on social media:
80 percent of the sermons given in the mosques of Punjab condemn women who 'go out shopping without veil, showing off their presence'
The West was deceived by the Arab Spring. Western commentators trusted that the social-media savvy youth of Egypt wanted democracy as an adjunct of the modern state. Many social scientists also equated Mohammedan middle class aspirations with a desire for democracy in the modern sense: a pluralist society with equal rights for the minorities and women. What has emerged through polls is that the Mohammedan middle class is deeply conservative and wants the state to revert to its pre-modern traits.
In Pakistain the assault on the modern state is led by youths using the social media. Moderates, secularists and liberals, still airing their views in the English-language print media are attacked there. It is not a two-way debate on the internet; the non-extremist citizen simply does not participate in it, except for those who plead that they have been wrongly accused, fearing that they could be killed by jihadi elements working in tandem with the faceless myrmidons belonging to the non state actors nurtured by the Pak state in the past.
Moderates as 'American agents':
Pak politicians, after assessing that the aggressive and activist sections of society have turned against America - with much help from the media - have moulded themselves to the new environment of fear. A moderate raising his voice against extremism is dubbed an American agent and condemned as a traitor. The Army has intensified its traditional but somewhat muffled negative interpretation of the 'American connection' and has joined the chorus of extremism through its retired officers. The criterion for this judgement is India - and America's betrayal over the decades by favouring India at crucial moments of Indo-Pak conflict.
Terrorism, clothed in the vocabulary of Islam, presides over this essentially anti-democratic scenario. After radical support for Blasphemy Law, the minorities and the squeezed liberal lobbies are targeted. Advocacy NGOs, funded from outside Pakistain, are abominated on the media and accused of 'working for the Americans'. Women in Pakistain are under rising pressure from an aggressive change in male behaviour. In a research project by Mashal, an NGO based in Lahore, 80 percent of the sermons given in the mosques of Punjab condemn women who 'go out shopping without veil showing off their presence'. (Laki Marwat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... has actually banned single women from shopping in Ramadan.)
A conservative Supreme Court:
A factor in the increase of conservative influence is the Supreme Court of Pakistain. It is supported on the Pak street by an aggressive lawyers' community, lending muscle to the activism of the judiciary, but intensifying further the innate conservatism of judges serving under an ideological constitution. The 'basic structure' argument has once again revived the Objectives Resolution of 1949 declaring Pakistain an Islamic state. Some liberal lawyers have opined - in English - that if called upon to adjudicate on the constitutional provision of pardon and presidential immunity, the Court might declare it against the 'spirit of the constitution' which, in the eyes of most conservative commentators, is more correctly reflected in Article 63 of the Constitution, laying down conditions of Islamic ritual adherence for public representatives.
An ideological state finds it hard to be democratic. It lays down the point of view of the state and punishes the 'variant point of view' under law. Ideological democracy loses its credentials by suppressing freedom of expression. It institutionalises intellectual anxiety by constantly positing an unfulfilled ideological agenda - an agenda that remains utopian and therefore impossible of fulfilment. The Mohammedan League under Jinnah was never clear about the nature of the state Pakistain was going to be. It was unhappy with the 'philosophically untenable' thesis of Jinnah to duplicate the secular Indian state after separating from it.
An ideology of isolationism:
The Mohammedan League thought that the people would not accept liberal democracy unless it was couched in the vocabulary of an Islamic worldview. After Jinnah's death, it adopted the Objectives Resolution and parted ways with India's secularism by declaring the Koran and Sunnah as its 'ground norm'. Pakistain's gradual alienation from democracy and its irreducible secular conditionality is owed to the growth of the idea of Islamic governance, today showcased by the Taliban.
Today's Pakistain is indoctrinated with an anti-West and anti-Hindu interpretation of world and Indian history. Overlaid with notions of international Islam, it is today poised to confront the entire world, making economic recovery virtually impossible. Most citizens, when asked for a solution to the national crisis, helplessly recommend extreme isolationism as the only cure. Persistent economic decline undermines democracy just as economic prosperity increases popular tolerance of dictatorship. It simply proves that economic security is finally more important than the security of the state. Alas, the Army, which still rules Pakistain, will not hear of it.
#2
DEFENCE>PK/FORUMS > NINETY-FIVE PERCENT [95%] OF PAKISTANIS ANGRY WID THEIR COUNTRY'S LEADERS.
and
* SAME > [Senior PAK Supreme Court]JUDGE: REVOLUTION IN PAKISTAN IFF POOR DON'T GET JUSTICE.
Ditto for the US or any other Country - no Country on Earth is immune or invincible. Nothing in Representative or Constitutional Democracy prevents US Politicos from putting anti/post-Nationalist "Globalism", OWG = Space Govt-Order, and anti-Constitutional Socialism-Govtism before US Voters in nation-wide referendum(s). US Voters likely won't even be asked to vote on these ventures until many years after its already been deeply entrenched in American life.
"POST-CONSTITUTION" = don't have any Document higher than same, nor AFAIK are even working on one - not even in support of OWG or "Globalism"???
Asking for TROUBLE, i.e. DOMESTIC UNREST, PERHAPS EVEN CIVIL WAR.
#1
"May God bless America, and may He bless and protect the Nation of Israel."
That by itself is enough to cause heads to explode the world over.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/29/2012 20:04 Comments ||
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#2
An anti-Iran ROMNEY = "MITTENS" is why Iran will stay on the strategic defensive + do nothing to induce a US or US-led Coalition attack agz it, as well as to ensure the Bammer wins re-election in 2012, via mucho $$$ in third-party [proxy] campaign contributions ala 1990's Bill Clinton.
Romney will also the support of the post-2012 Congress to attack Iran.
With 100 days left in the presidential campaign, perhaps the two most vexing questions in American politics are: How could President Obama possibly lose? And, how could he possibly win?
Americans are scared, angry and struggling. They used to talk about job satisfaction; now they talk about just holding on to their jobs. No incumbent since FDR has ever won reelection with unemployment numbers remotely resembling today's. What voters feel about their lives and dreams in the months leading up to an election tends to stick to the president when they enter the voting booth. And right now what's sticking to Obama isn't good. Nevertheless, it's not his fault!
But it sure helps to face a candidate as uncomfortable in his own skin, as likely to say by accident what he really means and as wrong for the times as Mitt Romney. If Obama offers what well-paid elites call a "jobless recovery," Romney offers the only thing worse: a promise to restore the policies that led to the joblessness that made a recovery necessary. What's that? Democratic-mandated housing for those who can't afford it?
So, beyond the anemic economy, why do the latest polls show the former Massachusetts governor in a dead heat with the president? Because Obama's administration made three crucial errors that enabled the Republican obstructionism that has tied his hands for the past two years, with GOP leaders shooting down any idea -- even if it's one of their own -- that might have helped the president strengthen the economy. See, this guy - and a great many others in the MSM - seem to forget: the evil republicans blocking the Lightbringer were all elected by the people! I guess those rubes just don't know what's good for them!
Obama's first mistake was inviting the Republicans to the table. The GOP had just decimated the economy No, it was a bipartisan affair (see Freddie Mac, housing bubble, TARP, and the Fed)
and had been repudiated by voters to such an extent that few Americans wanted to admit that they were registered Republicans. And those same voters gave the Pubs back the Congress two short years later. That rather negates the hypothesis here...
Yet Obama, with his penchant for unilateral bipartisanship, refused to speak ill of what they had done. You obviously weren't listening...
The American people wanted the perpetrators of the Great Recession held accountable, and they wanted the president and Congress to enact legislation to prevent Wall Street bankers from ever destroying the lives of so many again. Heavens to Betsy. I can't go on. One of us is insane, and it ain't me! Don't read any more if you have recently eaten. Second mistake: Stimulus too small, Trunks fault. Third mistake: It's hard to find, but seems to be that he failed to explain how wonderful his Obamacare really was for everyone. Maybe he hasn't finished reading the entire bill yet. For a 'Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry' at Emory University, the author seems rather .. emotional, no?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2012 11:14 ||
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Link ||
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#1
The American people wanted the perpetrators of the Great Recession held accountable
You bet. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd ought to spend the rest of their miserable lives in jail.
It's been, in my moderate amount of experience, that to be a mental health issues expert, one generally has to have mental health issues to begin with.
#5
Yet Obama, with his penchant for unilateral bipartisanship
"Eric, I won"
lying asshats at the WaPo will pull out all the stops for their overlord
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2012 15:11 Comments ||
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#6
I can't understand why anyone would vote for this guy with the terrible record he has had. The only thing I can figure is that they are getting a lot of free stuff, favors, and lots of promises.
#8
Is this dumb-a$$ for real? Apparently he didn't listen to the same news, read the same newspapers, listen to the same radio programs, or check out the same Internet sources I did, because he's told some whoppers here even David Axelrod wouldn't attempt. This guy's playing solitaire with less than half a deck.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/29/2012 19:29 Comments ||
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#9
Good point, grom.
Sorta like preferring a syphalitic camel to Bambi, because syphalis can be cured....
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/29/2012 19:42 Comments ||
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Even Obama 'doubters' are taken to task. Yet another WaPo piece. They're all in for Champ. In both the issues of Obama's birth and of his religion, documents and common sense lead in one direction. Obama's doubters run the other way: His birth certificates must be fake; his espoused Christianity must be a cover. Another group of right-wing doubters hold on to the notion that Obama is a closet socialist, some sort of Manchurian candidate, an idea that his every move as a pragmatic liberal politician over the past 16 years has utterly disproved. Huh? We are clearly on different planets, Mr. Maraniss! They keep praying for a Romney 'macaca' moment, don't they...
Some others maintain that he was not smart enough to get into Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law, but smart enough to hide his transcripts and too inept to write his own memoir, which one particularly obsessed conspiratorialist claims was penned by the former radical Bill Ayers. I thought Ayers admitted ghost-writing the book? And when did he become a former radical? You need a scorecard to keep track of the lies, half-truths and misleading statements in just that one sentence...
What about the well-written letters from Obama that are published in my book? Those, too, must be frauds slipped to me by the Obama administration. Maybe he can write letters, but he's still a socialist/Marxist.
In the introduction to my book, I took note of a sick political culture where "facts are so easily twisted for political purposes and where strange armies of ideological pseudo-historians roam the biographical fields in search of stray ammunition." That cuts both ways, but of course, the MSM has more ink. And TV time.
That sentence is now cited on right-wing Web sites as evidence that I hold them in contempt. If you pigeonhole all "right-wingers" with the "Obama Haters" as fitting the description above, you fit right into the "sick political culture." And you do hold us in contempt, as demonstrated by the tone of this very piece...
True enough, one of the few accurate things that I've read from them. I do hold some of them in contempt, not because of their politics, nor because of their dislike of Obama. Political debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of American democracy. No, I hold them in contempt for the way they disregard facts and common sense and undermine the role of serious history as they concoct conspiracy theories that portray the president as dangerous, alien and less than American. Can we agree on dangerous? And socialist, too? While he's an American, he sees 'American' as radically different than we do. Can we make that a friendly amendment to your statement?
What drives them? Some of it can be attributed to the give-and-take of today's harsh ideological divide. Some of it can be explained by the way misinformation spreads virally to millions of like-minded people, reinforcing preconceptions. And some of it, I believe, arises out of fears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism. You knew that was coming, didn't you? 'Arises out of ... racism'. Adroit phrasing; the mouth-breathers on the Left will clearly get the beginning and end of his sentence.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2012 09:44 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Obama is easily the worst self inflicted wound on the US in the past 75 years.
How exactly did you expect the first American president to grow up not having had the American experience to govern?
#3
Obama is easily the worst self inflicted wound on the US in the past 75 years.
That's a real accomplishment considering Jimmy Carter is the second worst.
Maraniss is a real idiot. almost all the comments about his book in the conservative press has been positive. Antagonizing conservatives never leads to success. Just look at "Law and Order". It was very popular until they decided to portray Christian conservatives as whacked out crazies. Then its popularity took a nose dive.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/29/2012 10:49 Comments ||
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#7
...they had no problem with it when directed against the enemies of the state their philosophical and political opponents. It's their 'New and Improved' civility narrative after they dragged that canard through their own cesspit.
#11
Beside, I don't hate him. I just want him to rapidly fade into an obscurity that makes Jimmy Carter resonate like Madonna. Welcome to historical insignificance.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2012 13:30 Comments ||
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#12
Having no male offspring is definately a plus. Just playing the virtual devil's advocate.
#14
Just as commies became greens, communist haters developed a strong dislike of Obama. Coincidence? Or perhaps changing the names around doesn't really fool people.
#16
Maraniss is trying to get back in with his natural leftist crowd. They've been really pissed at him for actually, ya know, doing Journalism in his book. Conservatives jumped on the reveals that he inadvertently didn't whitewash. Bad mistake, David
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/29/2012 15:14 Comments ||
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#17
I don't hate the man. I just want him far away from any position of power in this country so he can't hurt me any more than he already has.
You say ObamaCare is not socialism? Well it sure as hell ain't the free market so what is it?
No, I don't believe he's a Muslim. I believe he is a communist.
There is one quote, I won't repeat it, from Jeremiah Wright that give me cause to doubt that Obama is a Christian. I don't believe a Christian would have said that and I don't believe a Christian would have attended Wright's church for 20 years.
Clearly, there is room for doubt about the place of his birth. If, instead of having the initial lawsuit by a Clinton supporter quashed, he had produced a valid birth certificate the whole matter could have been settled four years ago. Why didn't he do that? Is that not a reasonable question to ask?
And why can't we see his college transcripts? Any halfway decent job I ever had, they wanted my transcripts. But these documents are not required for the President of the United States. OK. Maybe, legally, they're not. But it's called vetting and the MSM didn't do it.
Finally there's the race card. It always gets down to that. When all else fails they always play the race card and with Obama, all else has failed.
Now if you want haters, I remember the Nixon haters. They were a special breed with a deep, burning, irrational hate. Payback's a bitch, ain't it?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/29/2012 15:32 Comments ||
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#18
I, too, am a fan of the witch/wood/duck scene in Holy Grail.
#19
No, I don't believe he's a Muslim. I believe he is a communist.
Nah. Fascist. International fascist.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/29/2012 18:27 Comments ||
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#20
#15 He's not worth hating, that's the lefties don't understand. It'd be like hating bacteria or fungus. Posted by: Silentbrick
I'd go with comparing him to a crappy virus -- the kind your body throws off in a day or two, but while it lasts, you feel about as good as the economy of the last 3+ years.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/29/2012 19:35 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.
In both the issues of Obama's birth and of his religion, documents and common sense lead in one direction. Obama's doubters run the other way: His birth certificates must be fake; his espoused Christianity must be a cover. Another group of right-wing doubters hold on to the notion that Obama is a closet socialist, some sort of Manchurian candidate, an idea that his every move as a pragmatic liberal politician over the past 16 years has utterly disproved. 
