It’s supposed to hit a 106° in Austin today. Sadly, not all of these links will help you keep your cool…
Posts Tagged ‘Lebanon’
LinkSwarm for March 14, 2013
Thursday, March 14th, 2013This week we’ll do it Thursday rather than Friday:
The degrees of broke-ness varies: from completely and utterly broke, like Greece or Italy; to wobbly, like the U.K., France, the U.S., or Japan; to getting poorer like Germany. But all of them are going to have to raise the percentage of gross domestic product they collect in tax — and many of them very significantly.
The U.S. deficit is more than 7% of GDP. The U.K.’s deficit is just as high. There is very little sign that spending cuts to close gaps of that magnitude are on the cards, nor is there any sign that growth will be sufficiently strong to make up the difference — certainly not in countries like the U.K. or Japan.
Huge sums of additional revenue will have to be raised.
Willie Sutton once famously remarked that he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.”
In the same way, governments will look to raise more tax from companies because that’s where the money is.
Or they could, you know, actually cut spending…
Syrian Rebels On Outskirts of Damascus
Monday, January 30th, 2012What the headlines says, although they were repulsed.
If President Hamlet was thinking about helping topple Assad, now would be a Real Good Time to jump off the fence.
Plus, unlike Libya and Egypt, not only would it be very hard for the next government to be worse than the current one. Plus it would be a blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and thus would dramatically improve the possibility of real peace and a stable government in Lebanon.
(Hat tip: Michael Totten)
France Pushing Intervention in Syria?
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011Alain Juppe, France’s foreign minister, has raised the possibility that western powers could intervene directly intervene [sic – LP] to protect civilians in Syria from the Assad regime.
He suggested that “humanitarian corridors or humanitarian zones” could be established to protect those under attack.
As the Assad regime presses ahead with its attacks on Syrian rebels, Mr Juppé has become the first senior western figure to raise the possibility of such an intervention. He said the issue would be discussed by European Union foreign ministers at a meeting next month.
Of course he goes on to say that “full scale military intervention by the west in Syria was not being considered.” But I remember hearing much the same thing about the intervention in Libya, and we all know how that turned out.
France’s sudden belligerence may seem out-of-character, but they’ve been pissed at Assad ever since he had Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri assassinated in 2005. France has a long history of ties with Lebanon, and the Hariri assassination was just the most overt act in Syria’s semi-successful attempt to turn Lebanon into a puppet state. I have no doubt that France would be happy to knock off Assad if they were sure they had NATO (or at least American and UK) backing and could be sure the job was done right.
In other news, UNSECO’s executive board unanimously elected Syria to a committee dealing with human rights—even though the U.S. has a representative on the committee. Must be more of that Obama Administration “smart diplomacy” we keep hearing about…
Syria Finally Ready to Blow?
Sunday, November 13th, 2011Maybe. News that the Arab league has suspended Syria indicates Bashar Assad may be on even shakier ground than previously thought. Getting suspended by the Arab League for oppressing your own people is only a couple of steps above getting kicked out of the Klu Klux Klan for being too racist.
And unlike Libya, even a hardline Islamist government would be a slight improvement on Assad, especially in Lebanon, if only because the Sunnis would break with Iran and cut off funding for the Shia Hezbollah.
But it’s hard to tell. When Syrian generals defected at the end of July, that looked like it might have been the final push, but wasn’t. never underestimate a cornered dictator willing to do anything to stay in power.
Frontline does a report from inside the Syrian uprising.
Will Obama decide to roll out drone strikes in Syria? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it, as Obama hasn’t seemed terribly interested in Syria, even by the lax standards of his foreign policy engagement. Also, the geography is more daunting than in Libya; to be effective, they’d have to come in over Lebanon or Israel to hit targets in Damascus, each of which presents (different) political problems.
Stay tuned…
Books Received: Michael Totten’s The Road to Fatima Gate
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011My copy of Michael Totten’s The Road to Fatima Gate came in today. Since I’m also an insane book collector (and since he does good work), I got an autographed copy. (One book collector gripe, Michael: If you’re going to send out autographed first editions in a USPS Priority mailing envelope, you should really use bubble wrap to protect it. Signed, a guy who has a business selling collectible books on the side.)
Also, since I can’t resist a good meme, here’s a picture of the book in the now-traditional style (click to embiggen):
Regular readers will no doubt recognize the gun.
This Week in Jihad for January 27, 2011
Thursday, January 27th, 2011The big Jihad news this week, of course, was the Moscow bombing. But that was hardly the only thing of note:
Dokka Umerov has repeatedly made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with al Qaeda, or bin Laden.
The latter point reveals the following about the global War on Terror. First, the US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded in destroying al Qaeda’s reputation amongst Islamist organizations. If an Islamist cause as major as the Caucasus Emirate wants to stay clean of al Qaeda, it means that al Qaeda equals trouble. Al Qaeda involvement means interference from the world’s great powers.
Second, Russia’s situation reveals that the US and British efforts have failed to do significant damage to the ideology of Islamism. If a nationalist movement turns itself into a movement with Islamist objectives in order to make itself stronger, then it proves that the ideals to which al Qaeda subscribes have not been significantly damaged.
This Week in Jihad for January 20, 2011
Thursday, January 20th, 2011Another roundup of jihad-related news from jihadWatch and elsewhere.
- Suicide Bomber kills 60 in Tikrit.
- Meanwhile, in Pakistani, Jihadists are blowing up bombs among school-children.
- In 1620, Puritan officials in Salem, Massachusetts arrested more than 150 women as witches. And by 1620 I mean 2010, and by Salem I mean Gaza, and by Puritans I mean Hamas.
- The revolution in Tunisia may not be the triumph of democracy some think it.
- Hezbollah: Nice Prime Minister you’ve got there Lebanon. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
- Texas own Ninth District Democratic Congressman Al Green wants to help out Pakistani illegal aliens.
- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appoints attorney Sohail Mohammed, who represented muslims with ties to terrorism after 9/11, to a state Superior Court judgeship. Hmmmmm…….
- Why Christian clergy are among the most easily duped as to the true nature of Jihad. Just as many were duped by Communism…
- Speaking of Christians, they’re not the ones calling for the executions of gays these days.
- A quote from a famous “extremist”: “Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is uncontestable.”
This Week in Jihad for January 13, 2011
Thursday, January 13th, 2011Time for another installment of This Week in Jihad.
Please note that these weekly installments are only a sampler of Jihad-related news from around the world, and that I skim a lot more stories than I post here. One reason is that, from Africa to Indonesia, regular Jihad-related violence is depressingly frequent. So I don’t report every suicide bombing or honor killing that goes on. There’s just too much to keep up with.
However, given Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, I thought I would change that for this week’s roundup, to provide glimpses of places in which political and religious violence are the rule rather than the exception. So here’s a list of all the deadly incidents related to Islam I could find mention of from this past week:
- Suicide bomb kills 18 at a police station in Pakistan.
- Suicide bomber kills two on bus in Afghanistan.
- Two killed, six wounded in Taliban attack.
- Off-duty policeman shoots a 71-year old Christian man dead on a bus in Egypt.
- Jihadis open fire in a bar, killing seven in Nigeria.
- That follows hot on the heels of 11 people being killed in Jos, Nigeria.
- Jihadist suicide bomber kills 17 at bathhouse in Afghanistan.
- Couple axed to death in Punjab, India.
- Man killed and mutilated in honor killing in Multan, Iran. “Murtaza’s ears, lips, tongue, nose were sliced his eyes were gouged out with a knife before his head was severed.”
- Ireland suffers its first honor killing.
- Iraqi police chief killed by a roadside bomb.
- Six NATO soldiers killed Wednesday in Afghanistan.
- The figure above presumably includes U.S. Private Benjamin Moore, killed by an IED.
- The figure presumably does not include Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan Giese, killed on Friday.
- Nor that of Private First Class Robert Near, also killed in Afghanistan on Friday.
- Finally, I count two more names on this list of the fallen, for the time period specified, not including those killed 1/12: SPC Ethan C. Hardin and PFC Ira B. Laningham IV (the latter of Zapata, Texas).
If I’m counting correctly, that brings the total, just for this week, up to 73. There could be twice that many I didn’t have time to search out yet, either from the Foreign Policy/Jihad sources listed to the right (JihadWatch was, as always, invaluable) or just doing a Google search. And there could be twice (or ten, or even a hundred) times as many Jihad-related killings that didn’t make news reports. I did not include Iran’s execution of five accused drug-smugglers in the total. Nor any of the other 46 executions the Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out in the last 20 days.
Other Jihad-related tidbits:
- Christopher Hitchens on the assassin of Salman Taseer
- Speaking of Taseer, Pakistani’s clerics have weighed in overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly in favor of his assassination, that is.
- Want to know what soft Jihadis actually think? This piece by M. Shahid Alam, a mixture of truths (Pakistan’s elites are corrupt), half-truths (America is their pupper master), half-digested second-hand Marxism (“the Pakistani state fell into the lap of lumpen elites”), conspiracy theories (“The military dictator who preceded him had boasted in his autobiography that his government had garnered US$50 million by capturing and selling Pakistanis to secret US agencies.”), and Islamist rhetoric (“Pakistanis worried that this was only the start of a campaign to repeal the [blasphemy] law – and open the floodgates for Salman Rushdi-style smearing of the blessed Prophet.”). Oh, and this guy is an economics professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
- American Center for Law and Justice sues to halt construction of the Ground Zero Mosque.
- If you didn’t already have enough to worry about, the coalition government in Lebanon has collapsed.
- Not News: Jihadist death threats against synagogues. News: In Fargo, North Dakota.
- First they came for the beer…
- Hamas linked CAIR is singing from the same hymnal as The New York Times in blaming the Tucson shooting on “inflammatory political rhetoric”.
- In Saudi Arabia, accused in rape case sentenced to one year in prison, 100 lashes. The accused rape victim, that is.