Posts Tagged ‘Zsa Zsa Gabor’

LinkSwarm for April 6, 2018

Friday, April 6th, 2018

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s LinkSwarm runs the gamut from Ann Althouse to Zsa Zsa Gabor. So dig in…

  • This New York Times piece on the Islamic State is must reading for its glimpse as to just how the murderous would-be caliphate was able to hold on to and rule significant swathes of territory for years at a time. In short: Bureaucrats and taxes.

    Weeks after the militants seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

    Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices.

    To make sure every government worker got the message, the militants followed up with phone calls to supervisors. When one tried to beg off, citing a back injury, he was told: “If you don’t show up, we’ll come and break your back ourselves.”

    The phone call reached Muhammad Nasser Hamoud, a 19-year veteran of the Iraqi Directorate of Agriculture, behind the locked gate of his home, where he was hiding with his family. Terrified but unsure what else to do, he and his colleagues trudged back to their six-story office complex decorated with posters of seed hybrids.

    They arrived to find chairs lined up in neat rows, as if for a lecture.

    The commander who strode in sat facing the room, his leg splayed out so that everyone could see the pistol holstered to his thigh. For a moment, the only sounds were the hurried prayers of the civil servants mumbling under their breath.

    Their fears proved unfounded. Though he spoke in a menacing tone, the commander had a surprisingly tame request: Resume your jobs immediately, he told them. A sign-in sheet would be placed at the entrance to each department. Those who failed to show up would be punished.

    Meetings like this one occurred throughout the territory controlled by the Islamic State in 2014. Soon municipal employees were back fixing potholes, painting crosswalks, repairing power lines and overseeing payroll.

    “We had no choice but to go back to work,” said Mr. Hamoud. “We did the same job as before. Except we were now serving a terrorist group.”

    Snip.

    After seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria, the militants tried a different tactic. They built their state on the back of the one that existed before, absorbing the administrative know-how of its hundreds of government cadres. An examination of how the group governed reveals a pattern of collaboration between the militants and the civilians under their yoke.

    One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it.

    Ledgers, receipt books and monthly budgets describe how the militants monetized every inch of territory they conquered, taxing every bushel of wheat, every liter of sheep’s milk and every watermelon sold at markets they controlled. From agriculture alone, they reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to popular perception, the group was self-financed, not dependent on external donors.

    More surprisingly, the documents provide further evidence that the tax revenue the Islamic State earned far outstripped income from oil sales. It was daily commerce and agriculture — not petroleum — that powered the economy of the caliphate.

    They also seized land and goods from Shia, Christians, etc. and redistributed it to their followers as ‘war spoils.”

    Also this: “Mr. Hamoud noticed something that filled him with shame: The streets were visibly cleaner than they had been when the Iraqi government was in charge.”

    Read the whole thing.

  • Last week: Kevin D. Williamson leaves National Review for The Atlantic. This week: The Atlantic fires Kevin D. Williamson for wrongthink. Well, there goes my chance to snag the Sarcastic Texan Chair at National Review
  • Black people should stop mindlessly voting for the Democratic Party says…Donna Brazile?

    “We have to stop giving up our votes. I have done just about everything in the Democratic Party but run for office – everything that they have asked me to do. I have done it. I have registered millions of people in my lifetime. I have knocked on so many doors that I cannot even see the black of my own knuckles. I have carried their water,” Brazile said during her keynote address at the Stateswomen for Justice Luncheon last week, which was organized by Trice Edney Communications.

    “I have put their platform within my heart to support. I have championed their issues. And when it came time for me to say what I believed was important, they said ‘shut up, Donna’ and I said ‘hell no, I am not shutting up,’” she added.

    Forgive me if my enthusiasm for Brazile’s truthtelling is tempered by the suspicion it comes less from deep philosophical conviction than resentment at taking the fall for Hillary’s dishonest and incompetence.

  • “Study: 70% of Europeans see rapid population growth of Muslims as a serious threat.”
  • “Anti-Mass Migration Sweden Democrats Polling First Among Young Voters.” It’s almost like a party standing against rape is more popular than the party standing for “multiculturalism.”
  • Chicago suburb Deerfield, IL passes law allowing confiscation of modern sporting rifles if they have more than a ten shot magazine. (Gun owners have already filed a lawsuit, backed by the NRA-ILA.) So remember: When Democrats state they “don’t want to confiscate your guns,” they’re lying. (Hat tip: Director Blue)
  • EPA Director Scott Pruett ends “secret science” (i.e., regulating on the basis of unpublished, unverifiable studies), and the New York Time (naturally) goes crazy. And here’s the debunking of same. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 68% of India’s military equipment is “vintage” (i.e., old Soviet crap).
  • Apple to drop Intel? Maybe, but not until 2020. If so, does this mean Apple will build their own fab? That would be an expensive proposition, but one Apple would be one of the few companies in the world capable of affording. Or they could keep getting their chips fabbed by TSMC. (Or, the hybrid option, pay TSMC to open up a fab dedicated to producing the new chip at x number of years for y price, after which TSMC would own and run the fab, a technique Apple has used for other component manufacturers before.)
  • Man using the lady’s room at Target exposes himself to little girl. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Kurt Eichenwald pens a bold screed at the evil conspiracy to make him look foolish, mentioning Parkland kid Kyle Kover but oddly omitting a certain media figure whose initials are “K.E.”…
  • Republican Tim Pawlenty to run for Minnesota governor again, an office he held from 2003 to 2011.
  • If you view the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as Christ having “masochistic sexual relations with his own father,” then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching at Holy Cross.
  • Ann Althouse watches and annotates an episode of Roseanne so you don’t have to. However, one correction: I’m pretty sure that the Conners don’t think of themselves as “poor,” they think of themselves as “broke.”
  • Speaking of Roseanne Barr, never forget that she’s a nut case. Indeed, back in 2012 I got into a tiny Twitter spat with her over whether HAARP controlled the weather…
  • When it comes to basic technical facts about firearms, liberal gun grabbers are proudly ignorant.
  • ESPN’s revamped morning SportsCenter is losing to Peppa the Pig. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • If you ever wanted something from the Zsa Zsa Gabor estate, now’s your chance. Especially if you wanted a painting of Zsa Zsa or her sisters: she had plenty…