According to opinion polls and word on the streets, if the November US presidential elections were to be decided by non-Americans, Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama would beat the Republican's John McCain with about 90 per cent of the vote.
Obama's popularity abroad, and indeed in the US, is almost dizzying. However if the elections were left to African presidents to decide, McCain could probably beat Obama with 90 per cent of the vote.
This might be surprising, given that Obama is not only an African-American, but his father was a Kenyan chap who went to the USA as a fellowship student - and like every conflicted African abroad, abandoned his American family and came home to find for himself a strong-backed local girl.
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#1
Now you will have a Black president who not only won an election honestly, but went on to govern competently and solve some of the problems of his country.
And what if Obama governs incompetently. After all many of Africa's woes have to do with their following Marxist economic policies.
Will the world decide that blacks are incapable of proper government if Obama fails? They won't say so out loud of course but it's gonna be there.
#1
"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
Any psychological clinicians in the house? This sort of verbalization sounds more than a little grandiose.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
07/30/2008 11:23 Comments ||
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#2
"This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
Too rich! He's NOW beginning to believe his own kak! Keep talking you bugger, keep talking.
#5
This sort of verbalization sounds more than a little grandiose.
Showmanship. If you look at it in the grand tradition of P.T. Barnum, or old style evangelists, or say, Muhammed Ali, it becomes understandable. Repulsive, but understandable.
#7
Every four years we get to roll out the work presumptive. In this case it is presumptuous. He doesn't even have the nomination clinched yet! The more articles we see like this, the more we will know Hillary has not lost control of the press.
During the past year, several federal agencies -- including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the National Counter Terrorism Center -- have declared a war on words. Specifically, these agencies have issued memoranda discouraging their employees from naming the enemy in the War on Terror. The prohibition included words such as "jihad," "Islamist," "Islamofascism," and "caliphate," among others.
It's not that the terms are inaccurate. Quite the contrary, as the agencies conceded, they often are used by the terrorists themselves. But they urged censorship all the same. Calling jihadists "holy warriors," as they call themselves, is accurate, but it risks glorifying them. Moreover, even when used accurately, words like "Islamist" might be misinterpreted by moderate Muslims -- who are henceforth to be known as "mainstream Muslims" -- and should therefore be avoided so as not to offend anyone in the Muslim community. The phrase "Muslim community" should also be avoided.
To be sure, all the memos featured disclaimers stating that they were "not official policy." But the fact that they were distributed on agency letterhead suggested at least a tacit endorsement of their content. Taken together, the memos marked a victory for government-imposed political correctness over clarity in the War on Terror.
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Posted by: ed ||
07/30/2008 09:55 ||
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Henceforth, the words or phrases ‘jihadist’, ‘jihad’, ‘Islamofascism’, ‘caliphate’, ‘Islamist’, ‘Islamic terrorist’ or 'intelligence community' will be replaced by 'those people' or 'their kind'. In addition, the words 'black hole' will be replaced by 'a black a hole'.
FOR a few short hours the ISI had a new boss: Rehman Malik. Yes, the hyper-powerful, state-within-a-state, doer-of-all-things-bad-and-evil, Taliban-loving, government-slaying, election-rigging, tool-of-the-establishment ISI was going to report to a civilian, unelected adviser to a lame duck prime minister.
So confident were Messrs Gilani and Malik of the scheme that they scampered out of the country before the news was broken.
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Posted by: john frum ||
07/30/2008 11:22 ||
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The U.S. has agreed to play by local rules in Pakistan, in order to get the government to take stronger measures to prevent al Qaeda from setting up bases in the Afghan border areas. This involves a large bribe, in the form of allowing the Pakistanis to shift over $200 million from American aid for counter-terror operations, to a program for updating Pakistani F-16 fighters. The reasoning behind this is actually quite simple. While many (up to a third) of Pakistanis back Islamic radicals (like the Taliban and al Qaeda), nearly all Pakistanis fear an attack from India. There is good reason for this fear, as India has more than six times as many people, an even larger economy and 3-4 times the military power of Pakistan. But most importantly, the Pakistani government has been, for nearly three decades, been supporting Islamic terrorist groups that make attacks against Indians. This angers the Indians quite a bit, and most Pakistanis know it.
The Pushtun tribes (at least some of them) along the Afghan border are supporting the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Pakistani government is very reluctant to take military action against these Islamic radicals. It's an ancient problem. Put simply, the Pushtun tribes (15 percent of the population, in the north and east, along the Afghan border) and the Baluchi tribes (four percent, in the southwest) do not get along with the majority Punjabis (45 percent of the population) or Sindhis (14 percent) in the eastern lowlands. The resulting violence has been going for over a thousand years.
This is particularly important when it comes to getting the Pakistani army to take down the Taliban. The Pushtun tribesmen, who run the Taliban and contribute most of the manpower, are, well, feared by the lowlanders. For thousands of years, the tribes periodically came out of the hills to raid the wealthier and more numerous lowlanders. The larger population meant that the Punjabis and Sindhis would eventually chase the tribesmen back into the hills. But the lowlanders also found, time and again, that the tribal warriors were even more formidable, and nastier, when you fought them in their own element.
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Posted by: john frum ||
07/30/2008 10:23 ||
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What have we given to them in the past. Billions.
What have we obtained?
#1
I had an odd thought after reading that headline. What if Iran didn't really want to hit Israel (people of the book and people capable of hitting back). What if they really hit India (pagans according to Islam) who is capable of hitting back but might easily blame Pakistan by mistake.
It would be the best chance to rile up the Islamic World without getting nuked.
Obviously, not all angry young Muslim men are engaging in violence -- nor, of course, are all Muslims terrorists. But many terrorists are found to be Muslims. Ms. Khan's remark purports to explain the linkage.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Mr. Khawaja has Pakistani roots. In recent years, Pakistan has become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists. For longer than that, jihadis have recruited Pakistani boys and men to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan. These brainwashed men may be volunteers headed out to fight infidel "invaders" and "occupiers" of Muslim lands, but it cannot be said that they are acting entirely on their own initiative.
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According to the report, the sources said that during 2000-2003, Iran expropriated the lands and homes of thousands of Arab citizens from the Al-Zarqan region, destroying homes of thousands of Arab citizens from the Al-Zarqan region.
Destroyed homes, fields, orchards, and wells, and built a three-meter-high wall around the project site, which allegedly measures hundreds of kilometers.
SO, if it finally gets bombed, and sprays radioactive waste all over the place, it's one of the subject ethnic groups who's going to have to live with the pollution.
July 29....(Ken Timmerman) Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the US intelligence community "doesnt have a story" to explain the recent Iranian tests. One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea. "They've got test ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches," Dr. Graham said. "Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea?"
Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude," Graham said. "Why would they do that?"
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#4
"Senator Obama has been quoted as saying, 'I dont agree with a missile defense system.
No problem. Maybe he has a sticks and stones defense system in the works to take up the slack after we lose the deterence offered by said missile defense system?
#6
And when an attack sub surfaces and showers Iran with 30 MIRVs what are the going to do?
Attack subs don't launch seaborne ballistic missiles, our missile boats (boomers) do. And they don't need to surface either. Sheesh, read a Clancy book or two would ya! ;-)
I suspect that if that comes to pass, then they will cease to exist. Long overdue if you ask me. If Iran does attempt a strike, maybe they could do us a favor and hit New York City, Boston or D.C.! That would thin the Liberal herd a bit and maybe convert a few to the Right.
Posted by: Grease Dark Lord of the Algonquins9226 ||
07/30/2008 13:33 Comments ||
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Maybe I misunderstand EMPs but the way I understand it if something is not running on electricity it will not be effected. And if that thing is hardened (most military stuff) it won't be effected.
So the grand scheme of things is no serious effect on the US Military, a major blackout and rush to get transistors to the inflicted area and a lot of pissed off Americans who missed American Idol and want pay-back.
#9
Eh, if it were me on the Axis and Allies board as iran wanting to get the great victory I would bank on bo becoming president and removing US ground forces post haste, then strike when half of the forces are gone and the other half crated and in line in for Kuwait then swarm conventionally to "liberate Iraq from the infidel puppet government blah blah blah." Close the strait and make large land gains, capture some cities and take my licks - it will still be a propaganda victory and they will look tough, invigerate the whole movement once again. Let the proxies do the nuke thing so that the official government hands are clean.
#10
Hush rjschwarz, EMP dissipates just like other electro-magnetic radiation. It would a lot more than one to dwarf the damage of a direct nuclear strike on a US city. The United States "would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country." Else the Russians might have saved a few bucks. Ed?
#11
proxie-schmoxie...you don't think we'd know who was behind it if some random nuke went off in a US city? They would be toast. They would be toast if they tried to hit our troops as they were lining up to exit. Think we wouldn't have significant naval assets in place to protect those troops during egress? If Iran so much as farted they would get all F-ed up. Utter hogwash. I don't care if BO is president, the military leadership is not going to let its people be killed en-masse by this group of crap weasels.
#14
" As of today, we have no defense agz such an attack [EMP]" . YET ANOTHER REASON, VIRGINIA, FOR BABY/MINI-BLACK HOLES = WORM HOLES APPEARING OVER GUAM -WESTPAC, besides Proto-TIME/SPACE WARP TRAVEL!
#18
"The United States "would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country."
Oh, my, that might turn out to be a terrifically amusing sort of scenario... in the early 19th century, the US stomped the Barbary pirates once and for all, sent the major eastern Indian tribes packing to the west (Trail of Tears and all that) demolished a British Army at the Battle of New Orleans, purchased a huge tract of territory from France at bargain-basement prices, demolished Mexico in another war and got all of Mexico's northern territories in one fell swoop...
Be careful of what you ask for, people... you just might get it, and a little more.
And Great Britan didn't do too badly as an early 19th century country, either. Just saying...
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.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Mr. Khawaja has Pakistani roots. In recent years, Pakistan has become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists. For longer than that, jihadis have recruited Pakistani boys and men to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan. These brainwashed men may be volunteers headed out to fight infidel "invaders" and "occupiers" of Muslim lands, but it cannot be said that they are acting entirely on their own initiative.
