Posts Tagged ‘Hezbollah’
Thursday, March 14th, 2013
This week we’ll do it Thursday rather than Friday:
Obama is trying to work the same magic on America’s economy that a half century of Democratic rule has worked in Detroit. More details here.
And Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is going to prison.
Since 2002, total federal spending has increased 89% while median household income has dropped 5%.
In Iran, 5 of top 10 porn search terms are for gay porn (no nudity, but NSFW-ish terms, and the usual warning that it’s (ick) Gawker).
Thanks to ObamaCare, your veterinarian bills are going up as well as your medical bills.
Thomas Friedman hates the Keystone pipeline because the oil is dirty, but loves China, where industry is a thousand time dirtier than here in the U.S. And where will that oil go if the pipeline isn’t built? China. Maybe Friedman just wants all the jobs to be in China. That, or actual checks from the Chinese government or their business subsidiaries, would explain an awful lot of Friedman’s writing over the last few years…
“Most developed nations are fundamentally broke.”
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…
I’ve not been following the Prenda Law case closely. Fortunately, Ken over at Popehat has. Exceptionally brief background: Scumbag copyright troll lawyers operate shakedown operation, filing dubious (at best) copyright infringement lawsuits. Then they compounded the problem by suing bloggers and lawyers in an attempt to silence them. As you might expect, that strategy isn’t working out very well for them… (Hat tip: Dwight)
Florida Democrats want mandatory anger management classes for people buying ammo.
From Popcap Games, the makers of Plants vs. Zombies, comes Trees vs. Rockets. Wait, did I say Popcap Games? I meant the Israeli Defense Forces.
White House journalists as Ring-Wraiths.
Third round of Climategate documents released?
Michael Totten says that Lebanon is ready to explode from the spillover effect of the Syrian Civil War.
News of the horrific 5-year old terrorist who brandished her fearsome Hello Kitty assault bubble gun (link fixed).
Tags:China, Democrats, Detroit, Energy Policy, Greece, Guns, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Italy, Keystone Pipeline, Kwame Kilpatrick, Lebanon, ObamaCare, Popehat, Prenda Law, Syria
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, ObamaCare | No Comments »
Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Some people have wondered why Egypt’s high court, doing the military leadership’s bidding, just invalidated the Egyptian parliament, even though the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity, though strong, seemed to be on the wan. I think the simplest explanation is not that they were afraid of losing their grip on Egyptian society (though that’s probably part of the equation), but that the Egypt’s military leadership prefers not be be killed. I don’t mean this in a metaphorical sense, I mean that there was real (and probably justified) fear that a government lead by Muslim Brotherhood would lead, in very short order, to the liquidation of the military leadership. I think they were facing not one but two existential threats.
First, as shown in Turkey, when a nation’s existing military leadership also acts as an independent power base, islamists are only willing to tolerate potential threats to their own rule as long as they have to. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s islamist AKP has moved to put vast swathes of Turkey’s previously independent military leadership on trail for blocking Islamist aims in the past. Egypt’s military is just as strong a power center (albeit one considerably less scrupulous than Turkey’s); how long do you think it would take the Muslim Brotherhood to move against the military leadership after they had consolidated power? My guess is not long at all, and the military knew it too.
Second, if we take the Muslim Brotherhood at their word, it’s obvious they’re itching for another war against Israel. And why not? They regard the “Zionist Entity” as a literal affront against God, one that must be wiped off the face of the earth. Moreover, what better way to tighten control over the levers of governmental powers than with a war against a hated enemy? There are are all sorts of ways to use “emergency wartime decrees” to eliminate opposition figures and seize direct control of businesses and ministries when everyone’s focused on the military action.
And who would bear the brunt of any war against Israel? The hated military. Win, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood government are heroes to Muslims all over the world. Lose, and it could only be attributable to traitorous disloyalty by the military leadership, which would be immediately purged.
And make no mistake about: Egypt would lose. Badly. No matter how they may try to spin the 1973 Yom Kipur War as a victory, the Egyptian military got it’s ass handed to it in all four of the Arab-Israeli Wars. The Six Day War was particularly brutal, with Israel destroying all the Arab air forces arrayed against it, most on the ground, and decisively crushing Egyptian forces in the Sinai while taking minimal casualties; they could even have taken Cairo were it not for frantic pleas of the U.S. and heavy threats from the Soviet Union. Egypt lost the Yom Kippur War as well, but actually managed to bloody Israel’s nose in the Sinai, using effective anti-tank tactics to inflict real damage on the IDF before being overwhelmed. This would be pretty much the only instance where an Arab army stood toe-to-toe with the IDF (even temporarily) until the 2006 war on Lebanon, which Hezbollah would survive despite being badly mauled.
The Egyptian military knows it would lose any war against Israel for the foreseeable future (even discounting Israel’s likely nuclear weapons arsenal), and it knows the best way to prevent one is to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from coming to power. Strangely enough, in this instance the Egyptian military leadership is actually acting in the best interests of the nation, even if the end result also happens to be saving their own hide.
Tags:Arab, Arab-Israeli Wars, Egypt, Hezbollah, Islamist, Israel, Jihad, Military, Muslim Brotherhood, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Six Day War, Turkey, War, Yom Kippur War
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »
Friday, March 30th, 2012
A few nuggets of insight before you head off for the weekend:
ObamaCare is bad already, but it’s going to get a lot worse.
Why ObamaCare can’t work: “It is a perverse but very real fact of life that the more complex and rich the system to be regulated, the less the ‘experts’ and the goo-goos have the political power to impose their vision on the regulatory process. The more carefully crafted a law needs to be, the more it is going to be full of lobby lollipops and sweat heart deals. A legislative body trying to write a health care law for a country like ours is like a neurosurgeon operating, drunk, with one hand holding a chainsaw and the other in a boxing glove.”
Reason notes that ObamaCare’s “limiting” principles sound a lot more like expansionary principles.
Is somehow ObamaCare survives to 2014, expect a raft of lawsuits over the elective abortion-premium mandate.
Paul Ryan endorses Mitt Romney. That’s a great pickup for him, and it eases, ever so slightly, my concerns that Romney will be a “big spending Republican” in the mode of Bush43 should he get elected.
Dwight notes a Hezbollah connection to the story of a chain of Austin bars that weren’t paying their employees what they were owed.
From Michael Totten comes word that the Islamists appear to have been defeated in Tunisia, which is good news indeed.
Will Azerbaijan help Israel hit Iran? If so, good for them. (Naturally, Obama is objecting.) (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
So a Hispanic Democrat shoots someone who might or might not have been assaulting him, and suddenly Texas Democrats are ready to drag gun control back on the agenda. Thanks Rep. Garnet Coleman (Democrat, Houston)! I was a little worried that gun owners might be not be motivated to go to the polls in Texas in 2012 (what with the House, Senate, and Governor’s mansion all under Republican control), but your proposal to end the castle doctrine is just the tonic we need to get them to the voting booth!
Serial torturer killer Robert Ben Rhodes sentence to life in prison rather than the death penalty.
The King Street Patriots in Houston have a Democratic Judge rule against their tax-exempt status in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party. I wanted to point out the frivolous nature of this lawsuit, but Big Jolly already beat me to it.
Tags:abortion, Austin, Azerbaijan, death penalty, gun control, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Michael Totten, Mitt Romney, ObamaCare, Texas, Tunisia
Posted in Austin, Guns, Jihad, ObamaCare, Regulation, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 30th, 2012
What 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)
Tags:Bashar Assad, Damascus, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Michael Totten, Middle East, Syria
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
Sunday, November 20th, 2011
The rebels in Syria seem newly emboldened, as they just attacked the ruling Baath Party building in Damascus.
One estimate of the death toll since mid-March of 4,500 Syrains killed, which strikes me as much too low.
Barry Rubin says that Syria is no longer a revolution, it’s a civil war. He also says that the newly formed Syrian National Council is dominated by Islamists. Lovely. Guess who the U.S. is backing?
It is hard to overestimate how disastrous Obama Administration policy has been. Not only has it promoted an Islamist-dominated leadership (which might be pushed into power by monopolizing Western aid) but this mistake has fractured the opposition, ensuring there would be several anti-SNC groups. This strategy has also angered the Kurds and Turkmen minorities who view the SNC as antagonistic to their hopes for some autonomy. As a result, these two groups have reduced their revolutionary activities.
Rubin also recommends Syrian Revolution Digest as a source to keep up with the latest developments. And here’s a news scroll for events in Syria, courtesy of Lebanon’s NOW.
How bad has it gotten for Assad? A pro-Syrian demonstration in Beruit only drew dozens of supporters, where previously Assad count count on his (and Iran’s) puppets in Hezbollah to throng the streets with tens of thousands. Of course, Hezbollah and Amal are still in Assad’s corner. I do wonder if Assad could start importing Hezbollah fighters wholesale, since his own army seems unable to contain the rebellion. I also wouldn’t put it past Iran to send combat troops on to prop him up, though that seems less likely.
In the Weekly Standard, Lee Smith goes so far as to state: “Bashar al-Assad is finished.”
Tags:Amal, Barry Rubin, Bashar Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, Islamist, Lebanon, Middle East, Military, Obama, Syria, Syrian National Council, unrest
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
Maybe. 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.
Here’s an interactive map.
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…
Tags:Bashar Assad, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Islam, Lebanon, Michael Totten, Middle East, Predator Drone, Syria
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
My 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.
Tags:Books, Guns, Hezbollah, Israel, Jihad, Lebanon, Michael Totten, The Road to Fatima Gate
Posted in Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad | No Comments »
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
All eyes on Libya this week, but, as usual, there’s a lot more Jihad-related news from around the world:
Saudi man arrested in Lubbock on terrorism charges.
“Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
Hillary Clinton says the Taliban are just peachy with her.
The failure of multiculturalism in France.
Hezbollah told to be ready to invade Israel. In other news, Woody Allen is “getting ready” to kick Mike Tyson’s ass.
“Fifty members of the military community were gunned down, their ears still ringing with ‘Allahu Akbar!’ shouted by a man wearing their own uniform. And the official DOD report on the attack never mentions Islam once.”
Add South Dakota to the list of states outlawing Sharia.
Australia struggles with un-assimilated Muslim immigrants.
Stratfor on Libya’s deep roots in Islamic radicalism.
Important safety tip: Try not to go skiing in regions where Jihadests kill skiers.
Mullah’s insistent that there will be no math
(Hat tips: JihadWatch, Stratfor, Michael Totten, Instapundit)
Tags:Australia, France, Hezbollah, Israel, Jihad, Texas, This Week in Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Another roundup of jihad-related news from jihadWatch and elsewhere.
Tags:Al Green, Chris Christie, Communism, gay, Hezbollah, Iraq, Jihad, Lebanon, Texas, This Week in Jihad, Tunisia, witchcraft
Posted in Communism, Jihad, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, August 16th, 2010
This Jeffrey Goldberg article on the late stage of Iran’s nuclear project, and Israel’s need to stop it before completion, is essential reading. Goldberg has spent a lot of time talking to just about all the major players in Israel, and has come to some sobering conclusions. Such as the fact that if Iran won’t halt it’s nuclear program (it won’t) and Obama doesn’t have the United States (which is far better equipped to make sure a strike actually destroys targeted facilities) launch a strike instead, which seems very unlikely, then Israel will have no choice to strike on their own, and probably sometime in the next 12 months.
Israel perceives (quite correctly) that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weapons project is an existential threat, something that could completely destroy the nation in a second shoah. Given that the first shoah happened within living memory, Israel is never going to let that happen. Other Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia have made no secret of the fact that they support a strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even if it means letting the Israelis do it. Their biggest worry is that Israeli won’t be able to do enough damage to significantly set the mullah’s nuclear ambitions back.
Which is, of course, why many hope Obama will order a U.S. strike. Personally, I see nothing in Obama’s decisions thus far to indicate he actually cares enough about foreign policy in general (at least beyond basking in the approval of “the right kind” of transnational elites), much less the “hard” diplomacy of actually threatening military action, much less carrying through, to see him making a credible threat against the mullahs. Or indeed, of doing anything at all beyond throwing up his hands and saying “We tried!” when toothless UN sanctions fail and the mullah’s detonate their first nuclear device. All of his “outreach” to the Muslim world will prove to be meaningless if the other power-holders in the Middle East believe his resolve is inferior to those of the mullahs and drift into Iran’s orbit out of self-preservation, especially since compromise is viewed as weakness. Arabs respect the powerful and despise the powerless.
It looks like Obama is going to get a another war in the Middle East whether he wants one or not. The only question is whether it will be on his terms, or the mullah’s.
Tags:Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Jeffrey Goldberg, Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | 1 Comment »
