When the Saints Go Marching In
Most of us will have doubtless heard of Timbuktu. Its fame since ancient times has rested on tales of a fabled city which few had seen. Founded by at the junction of trade routes from the interior and the coast (“where the canoe met the camel”) it was closed to the infidel.
In 1824, the Paris-based Société de Géographie offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first non-Muslim to reach the town and return with information about it. The Scotsman Gordon Laing arrived in August 1826 but was killed the following month by local Muslims who were fearful of European intervention. The Frenchman René Caillié arrived in 1828 travelling alone, disguised as a Muslim; he was able to safely return and claim the prize.
The less literate among may be unaware that Timbuktu is also the graveyard of the 333 venerated Muslim saints, whose tombs alas are not accorded much respect by al-Qaeda. So it is to the infidel, ironically, that the Muslim world looks to save these mausoleums from demolition by the Islamists.
“Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu, Allah doesn’t like it,” Abou Dardar, leader of the Islamist Ansar Dine group, told AFP. “We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area.”
Witnesses confirmed the claims. …
The vandalism of the Muslim saints’ tombs in the UNESCO World Heritage site came a day after other Islamists in the northern city of Gao announced they had amputated two people’s hands.
The continued strict application of sharia law is seen as a sign that the armed Islamist groups are unfazed by the UN’s green light for the African-led military operation.
Their unfazedness is understandable. It has been a long time since anyone was fazed by the UN. But now the UN has powerful help: the EU. They have issued a statement.
Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, condemned the Islamists.
A statement from her office said she was “deeply shocked by the brutal destruction of mausoleums and holy shrines in Timbuktu…
“Their destruction is a tragedy not only for the people of Mali, but for the whole world.”
Ansar Dine began destroying the cultural treasures in July.
But it is more than the tombs of the Muslim Saints are at risk. So is the honor of France and the safety of the Western world. Mali is now the biggest single territory in the world controlled by al-Qaeda. Its descent into chaos began with the influx of arms generated by the fall of Khadaffy in Libya.
Now it is a problem that no one can ignore. Drat. And there we were thinking that Osama bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive.
Many in the West fear that northeast Mali and the arid Sahel region could become the new Afghanistan, a no-man’s-land where extremists can train, impose hardline Islamic law and plot terror attacks abroad. And France, former colonial ruler to countries across the Sahel, is a prime target.
“This is actually a major threat – to French interests in the region, and to France itself,” said Francois Heisbourg, an expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a partially state-funded think tank in Paris. “This is like Afghanistan 1996. This is like when Bin Laden found a place that was larger than France in which he could organize training camps, in which he could provide stable preparations for organizing far-flung terror attacks.”
Naturally the UN has deputized the United States to help out. The US for its part insists that Africans lead the way under a democratic regime in Mali. Washington Post reports that “the U.N. Security Council on Thursday voted unanimously to establish a U.S.- and European-backed African force to rebuild Mali’s troubled military and to begin preparing it for a possible military offensive to retake control of sections of the country from separatists and Islamic extremists.”
The resolution does not specify what role the United States would play in the military campaign against extremists. But it provides wide legal scope for foreign governments to “take all necessary measures” — including the use of lethal force — and to provide “any necessary assistance” in support of the Malian fight.
The resolution does not specify what role the United States would play in the military campaign against extremists. But it provides wide legal scope for foreign governments to “take all necessary measures” — including the use of lethal force — and to provide “any necessary assistance” in support of the Malian fight.
The Obama administration has harbored deep misgivings about the ability of a Malian-led force to prevail in combat with Islamic radicals in the region, including those aligned with al-Qaeda. But Thursday’s vote ended weeks of tense negotiations between France, which was determined to authorize a new force before the year’s end, and the United States, which wanted to wait until the country had elected a new civilian president … U.S. law restricts U.S. financial assistance to Mali, because its democratic government was ousted in a coup in March.
But Deutsche Welle has expressed some doubts about whether the operation will succeed without a serious American involvement. They have a sneaking suspicion — as do the West Africans themselves — that without US power behind it the intervention may be ill-omened. “West African States are keen to liberate northern Mali from the grip of Islamists. France has voiced support for military intervention, but there are doubts about the depth of commitment from the UN and US.”
One fear is that the African intervention force will have to be rescued by the US if it gets into a tight military spot fighting al-Qaeda. It’s happened before.
The proposed force would be provided by the 15 member states of regional bloc ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and would be stationed outside the capital Bamako. Their target would be a coalition of hard-line Islamist militants, some linked to Al Qaeda, which seized control of the north of the country soon after the March coup …
West African officials have said that an ECOWAS deployment will require funding and support from the UN. Previous ECOWAS military deployments in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s had patchy success and were marred by corruption and abuses.
During Liberia’s civil war the Nigeria-led force, known as ECOMOG, was nicknamed ‘Every Car Or Moving Object Gone’ for some officers’ indulgence in corrupt business dealings, including providing weapons to the armed factions it was there to stop.
In Sierra Leone ECOMOG had to be rescued from defeat by a UN and British force.
After all, how does a force so disparate achieve the cohesion so necessary to beat al-Qaeda? And so, as the UNESCO writhes in outrage over the desecration of yet another world heritage site, the planet can take comfort in the auspicious numerology. There are 333 saints (“Are there really 333? Why that number exactly? Who are they? These are not easy questions to answer.” asks one blog) set to be rescued by a group of 15 West African nations guided by the wisdom of a US Secretary of State whose fortune is based on 57 varieties of food products.
If the saints won’t go marching in, then the world will at least march in for the saints.
And when the sun refuse (begins) to shine
And when the sun refuse (begins) to shine
Oh lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching inOh when the saints go marching in
When the saints go marching in
Oh lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
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AQ must take some pleasure in “shocking” European bureau-chicks. One must believe she was really ingratiating herself with her own constituency. Certainly no one in Mali could give a flying Fruit Loop as to her protestations. Maybe she will get an award for being shocked. Maybe if she collects enough of them someone will take pity on her and buy her a cup of coffee or tea.
But the US insistence on using homegrown troops is itself an arrogant mocking of reality. Perhaps they should take Mali blood and incubate it in a Petri dish and upon it grow a civilization capable of such things and reinsert it in place. In so many ways this is how it is tried. But one would think that the past 800 years sufficient enough to have made up their mind as the kind of empire that they’d desire and what you see is the culmination of their dreams as met by their means. But then again, perhaps a handful of Harvard and Yale grads could set that straight. They could clone the very social morals that they have so successfully taken over here in the US like an invading species and clone it onto the ancient cultures of the world, while respecting and celebrating them for what they are now of course, knowing that respecting means sending bags of money instead of ideological improvements.
And short of an ink spot method of eradication, the only solution is to put a better handout in front of the locals who are gripped with grinding poverty. The fact of the matter is that AQ does a better job of helping the locals. They are not living in a hostel full of Peace Corp volunteers diddling their iPods but live amongst their chosen recipients and give them a full spectral indoctrination with religion, food, legal framework, punishment, and weapons. [lawyers, guns, and money]
These international garden sites will spread and grow where there is no society willing to use a greater and deadlier force to contain them and I’d like to think unless there was a very broad ROE that the US is done with taking out the world’s garbage. Let France give it a try.
If France and the rest of the EU whiners are so worried about Mali, Let THEM arm and finance a force to go deal with it. They can tax their citizens 99% of their income and HAVE AT IT. By the way, exactly when was the last time France, Italy, Spain and the rest of the limp-dicks in Europe won ANY kind of war. Let them burn up their own young men and treasure in another muslim sh*thole.
If the United States has to be involved there, let it be strictly with nuclear weapons from about 35,000 feet. A pox on ALL of the EU and their stupid policies!
“When the saints go marching in…”
Or alternatively, “Onward Christian soldiers…”
Oh, the UN will handle it with all of the competence they did in The Former Yugoslavia.
Where, it will fail to be recalled by some, they sent unarmed “peacekeepers” provided by Bangladesh, who did not have so much as winter clothing and who became, effectively, hostages to actual effective action.
“We need more military assistance in order to get our peacekeepers out before they freeze to death.” was the next reason for the U.N. requesting aid from countries with actual, real military forces.
In the 60′s the U.S. considered intervening in the Congo using an all black force of U.S. troops in order to keep it from looking like we were there. If Obama tries to take this route we will have, unlike the false claims about Vietnam, a real example of poor American minorities being sent to fight in a foreign land to meet some DC-generated need. Of course, Obama can get away with this.
”By the way, exactly when was the last time France, Italy, Spain and the rest of the limp-dicks in Europe won ANY kind of war. Let them burn up their own young men and treasure in another muslim sh*thole.”
Oh, righteous, brother … righteous indeed!!!
What we need is another Kennan-style Containment Doctrine, a politico-military quarantine to keep the disease from spreading, while they devour themselves or whatever they intend to do.
The idea that people in ‘muslim sh*tholes’ want to be just like us was a fatal illusion, brought about by fuzzy-headed theories from people who really know nothing about such matters and just see what they choose to see.
How would we react in a similar situation? After all, we’re convinced our way of life is the superior one, no? So it must follow that if we’re friendly, win hearts and minds, build roads, show them how to vote, and all that then they will just peacefully convert to a representative democracy.
Of course, we have to protect them first because the people with all the power in the sh*thole have some opinions of their own.
No, you can’t compress and telescope perhaps 2500 years of Western Civ into one tidy little war; ain’t gonna happen Chester.
Leave them to their own chosen life; if we identify specific areas where low-level local attention might help, give it a modest try; where there are groups whose aims lie outside their own home area and plan to do us harm, hunt them down relentlessly and confine them to their own sh*tholes … that’s all that realistically can be done.
“If France and the rest of the EU whiners are so worried about Mali, Let THEM arm and finance a force to go deal with it.”
The Hollande government has higher priorities…like sending a crack team to Belgium to kidnap Gerard Depardieu.
Wretchard: “Most of us will have doubtless heard of Timbuktu”
Timbuktu was an expression, a byword, for some exotic faraway place. It looks like we will hear more of it, more than we want, as another idiotic chapter of history unfolds before our eyes, courtesy of our Ruling Class.
Now, if the USA were actually engaged in a War on Terror…
Annoy Mouse 1,
Methinks you underestimate the cost of the poor lady’s paycheck. You and every other taxpayer in the West are picking her tab, and it isn’t for coffee but caviar.
Maybe if we add to the majestic ire of the UN and EU the collective wisdom of the triple threat city councils of New York, San Francisco, and Chicago that would impress them. Places like Mali are not countries. They need to lose their UN seats and be placed under Trusteeship.
Merry Christmas to all and let us work towards making 2013 better than 2012.
I went to that web site about Timbuktu. It gives a list of many places where you can stay during your getaway vacation to Timbuktu.
Here’s just one example:
Here’s another example that sounds like something from a spy novel:
It gives a list of many places where you can stay during your getaway vacation to Timbuktu.
The charm of distant places was that everyone could live beyond the law. Bad hotel rooms are tolerable, indeed desirable in the company of a bottle of whiskey in the suitcase, a beautiful lady to meet in the lobby and .38 special to see off the hustlers at the door.
You go to the edge of the earth so that for just once you could be beyond the supervision of the sour wowsers who check your food for organic content, your pronouns for gender neutrality and your ideas for sensitivity. If adventure is “somewhere East of Suez where there ain’t no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst” then prison is a PC campus only with flies and no running water.
All the fun goes away when only the visiting team is required to behave with strict politically correct decorum while all the locals can behave as formerly. It is adventure plus garbage dumps that make for unforgettable memories. Alone and without recompense, garbage dumps are not the stuff that dreams are made of.
Been to Timbuktu twice: the first time by road, the second time I flew in with Jimmah Carter’s Mama, Miss Lillian. I was thoroughly prepared to be swept off my feet by the charm and the history. It was a depressing place with very little to recommend it. Had it not been for the history of the place, one would certainly not have gone there even once. As for the Muslims destroying the holy relics, frankly, they’re not my holy relics. Let the Euros do what they want, just don’t spend any American blood or treasure there.
Merry Christmas to everyone. Tomorrow is a holy day; a day to celebrate.
Yes, Merry Christmas to all! As the angel said to the shepards of Luke, it’s a day “for all people”. I suppose that includes even the morons in Timbuktu blowing up the tombs of their own saints, somehow. What can ya do?
“No, you can’t compress and telescope perhaps 2500 years of Western Civ into one tidy little war; . . .”
Hmm, South Korea and Japan come to mind as reasonably successful efforts.
However, as long as Obama is in charge of our foreign policy and war fighting there seems little point our getting involved since he would screw it up.
Of course, with the Obama administration policy of unilateral disarmament we may find that we simply don’t have the means to get involved even if we are so inclined.
I am wondering if the world is beginning to wake up to the fact that pax Americana wasn’t such a bad thing. The Filipinos couldn’t wait to kick us out of Subic Bay, now they are having to confront the Chinese. Europe loved to belittle us while they lived under our protection and funded their socialist policies instead of helping pay for their own defense. Hell, we use to pay them rent for the privilege of basing our troops in their countries to protect them from the Soviets. I also recall the french refused us fly over rights when Reagan bombed Khaddafi. A certain part of me wants to simply shrug my shoulders. Careful, you may get what you wish for.
Merry Christmas and a safe 2013. Hope to see you all back here this time next year.
“This is like Afghanistan 1996. This is like when Bin Laden found a place that was larger than France in which he could organize training camps, in which he could provide stable preparations for organizing far-flung terror attacks.”
Isn’t Francois Heisbourg describing Sudan?
Wasn’t it the Sudan where AQ was born? I thought is was only after OBL destroyed the embassies in Africa — those under the purview of Susan Rice — that he was kicked out of Sudan.
I know that my memory is shot…
So, if anyone remembers, just when did OBL take his crew out of Africa?
God Bless us, every one!
For today, the healing Balm of Gilead instead of my usual vinegar and ashes.
It seems appropriate to recall that the caravan of merchants (to whom Joseph’s brothers sold him in order to rid themselves of Jacob’s favored son) are thought to have been carrying that luxury, the resin of the Commiphora opobalsamum…
Joseph was carried to Egypt, as the story goes, to be sold as a slave. Through a series of adventures and trials, he kept his faith and in the fullness of time became a trusted counselor to the Pharaoh, and the instrument of the survival of both the Egyptians and his own family.
Gives a body hope… No matter how dark things seem, no evil lasts forever.
On the other hand, the Bible points out that in the time of famine Joseph which foresaw and for which he prepared, he traded the stored up grain in the Pharaoh’s warehouses to the people in exchange for their lands, priests being exempted from this deal. So the Pharaoh ended up owning all the land.
Didn’t see that in the dreams, eh, Joseph???
We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own. Have a nice day.
I’m afraid that the Wan is going to beach our boys in Timbuktu.
Even the Africans are afraid he’ll strand ECOWAS there.
========
What a beau geste’r.
Merry Christmas to all, and especially to Our Generous Host.
Mohammedan saint is an interesting juxtaposition of words. Wonder what Sr. Alighieri might have had to say about that.
Never been to Timbuktu.
Have been to Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucumonga.
Been to Las Cruces, CA (yes, California). And Skidmore and Courtney, both in FL. And Townsend, GA
Anyway, Merry Christmas, y’all!
National Geographic has an interesting article titled “Timbuktu Falls”. It begins with the author recollecting the celebration in the city over Barack Obama’s election in 2008 and follows its descent thereafter.
The article mentions the “Libyan spillover”. Khadaffy had recruited Tuareg units, and when the Duck of Death shuffled off his mortal coil, these links became the vector whereby Libyan weapons flooded back into Mali. The Malian government attempted to strike back against al-Qaeda but a punitive expedition it mounted in response to the killing of a Malian officer only resulted in the destruction of the the government unit.
Since then al-Qaeda’s been on a rampage. It ejected the Tuargeg leaders and began ransacking all the libraries and cultural sites that Western philanthropists and governments had funded. It is impressing ‘child soldiers’ into its ranks. Now many of the National Geographic journalists’s former contacts are on the run. Peter Gwin tracked one down and nostalgically reminded him of the night Obama was elected.
There may be a moral in there somewhere. A few that appear reasonable might be: unintended consequences, not only in Libya but in Mali, Syria and the United States. Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get. Another is: never judge a book by its cover. Promises don’t always come true. Another is: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’ll bet a lot of Malians thought the al-Qaeda were a good idea. Surprise, surprise. All that philanthropic money may simply have attracted AQ like bees to honey.
Seventy years ago insignificant little islets in the Pacific became huge battlegrounds for no reason apparent to the natives. Today it is happening again. A global war is like that. Timbuktu is still where the camel meets the canoe. Geography is often fate. The earth changes but slowly and the human heart changes perhaps even less.
As for the manuscripts of Timbuktu, I expect they shall be lit to provide cooking fires in the tombs of its Muslim saints. What survived the infidel could not survive the faithful.
Yesterday Google showed their “saints” stopped dead in their tracks and grinning while the (red) grand marshal marched on. Today the marshal is distracted as a train barrels down on him.
You can’t tell me it’s just the artist being cute… Schmidt, Page, and Brin are engaged in psychological warfare and scheming to destroy everything that’s red in the world. The Google spies in China got off easy — all of them should have been detained and tried for their crimes.
Merry Christmas, I suppose, if you’re not an English Red Coat.
No way am I reading all that, but I skimmed it over. Sounds like National Geographic flew in teams of actors and agents to do their usual thing – create victims out of nothing, enemies out of less, film it all and cash in on the chaos they created. Oh and vote democrat is their answer to these “complex” issues.
The destruction of history is not limited to Al Queda extremists.
The moderate secular peace loving Palestinians are doing this in the heart of Jerusalem right now. While the world cheers the rights of the Palestinians to a capitol in Jerusalem, and slamming Israel for building houses there, the Palestinians are busy destroying thousands of years on history on the one spot they do control – the Temple mount.
From Times of Israel:
The Muslim authority managing the Temple Mount on Sunday dumped tons of unexamined earth and stones excavated from the holy site into a municipal dump, in violation of a High Court injunction, Maariv reported on Monday.
Israel’s top court in September 2004 prohibited removal of earth from the Temple Mount and ruled that, should it be necessary, the Antiquities Authority must be notified a month in advance so it may examine the earth for artifacts.
Jews regard the Temple Mount as their holiest site, where the First and Second Temple were located. Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary and regard it as their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina. According to the existing arrangement, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, or trust, administers the Temple Mount complex.
Despite the High Court of Justice’s ruling, the Waqf has reportedly removed large piles of dirt from the Temple Mount in recent years and dumped them in the valley east of the Old City walls, provoking an outcry from biblical archaeologists and Jewish groups.
…
Soil from the Temple Mount that had been removed to the Kidron Valley in recent years has yielded “tens of thousands of finds, including signet rings from the First Temple era, painted floor tiles from the Second Temple era, ancient gold coins, and horseshoe nails and arrowheads belonging to the Knights Templar, who stabled their horses in Solomon’s Stables,” Dvira said.”
Christian and Jewish sites all around the middle east are being turned into parking lots as the Muslim world completes its ethnic cleansing. The religious ego identity that is Islam is too fragile to admit of anything that came before it.
Why bother with Timbuktu when we’ve already got Timbuk 3?
The future’s so bright…
26. Baobo
Yesterday Google showed their “saints” stopped dead in their tracks and grinning while the (red) grand marshal marched on. Today the marshal is distracted as a train barrels down on him.
You can’t tell me it’s just the artist being cute… Schmidt, Page, and Brin are engaged in psychological warfare and scheming to destroy everything that’s red in the world. The Google spies in China got off easy — all of them should have been detained and tried for their crimes.
……………..
Google Official Blog
A new approach to China
January 12, 2010
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.
First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.
We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this Report to Congress (PDF) by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (see p. 163-), as well as a related analysis (PDF) prepared for the Commission, Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.
We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Yes, I know you can copy-and-paste… plus you’re the “red” they’re after, so why should I care.
@ 5 Gordon: “”What we need is another Kennan-style Containment Doctrine, a politico-military quarantine to keep the disease from spreading,….”
To do that, we’ll need much more military force structure than we’ve currently got; even more, once the DOD budget gets whacked.
Let them burn. I’m tapped out of sympathy for the Muslim world. The only reason we should go back is if we declare a crusade. For which we’ll need force structure.
“We need Obama now more than ever.” Yes, four years of misery demands more… more than ever. The world is a hopeless changeling where the only hope is the salvation of fire and death. May it burn into the depths of the devils keep and chastise all who worship him.
“The destruction of history is not limited to Al Queda extremists.”
The way to attack the present orthodoxy is to rewrite history. What savages would do such a thing? A short list; Al Qaeda, Nazi’s, Stalin, Democrat-Fascists.
The way to destroy the constitution is to attack its champions.
The Democrat Underground –
“to run this country….. Same sex couples are being discriminated against just in the same way that blacks and other minorities have been and are discriminated against…. IT IS WRONG!!!! Kind of funny how when you are a kid and in school that we are brainwashed into thinking that all of our FOUNDING FATHERS and past Presidents were heroes but to the contrary, they were most if not all BIGOTS and CRIMINALS>!!!”
“But I am proud to say George Washington is the father of our Country. We could have done alot worse.”
“did George Washington not have SLAVES???? I do believe Mr. George Washington was a slaveowner and just as our Founding Fathers RAPED, KILLED AND TORTURED the American Natives, the same thing is happening in Iraq…… I tell you people, the ENGLISH RACE IS THE MOST CRUEL RACE ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET…”
“look at the world in whole….. the US, England and others go, gind a place that they want and they STEAL it from other nations, no matter what the cost….. I am not UN AMERICAN… but I am a realist…. I can see through all the brainwashing that we are subjected to in early life…. MY favorite historical “rewrite” is the Thanksgiving episode …. I can really see the Indians sitting down to dinner with the Pilgrims….. The Pilgrims were nothing more than a bunch of THUGS who were on a conquest, a conquest to steeal this land from it’s rightful owners…”
“just as we are. They actually thought they were doing good by “taming the wilderness,” “converting the heathen,” and “civilizing the savages.” What we see in retrospect as mass murder, they thought of as defending Christian civilization. Blacks were property, and Jews and Roman Catholics were (sadly) discriminated against. As for their being criminals, certainly they were. The sensible, peacful, law-abiding citizens stayed in Europe! And then the depraved colonists had the gall…the GALL! to commit treason against their benevolent mother country. Same-sex couples, in those days, would probably have been killed out of hand by anyone who discovered them, and that act would have been hailed as the right and proper thing to do. Believe it or not, civilization is progressing, though at a glacial pace sometimes. I think it is now inevitable that same-sex couples will eventually gain all the rights and recognition that different-sex couples now have. And speaking as a gay man, I hope it’s sooner rather than later.”
The obvious problem is we need gay marriage. This alone will salve the world’s wounds. /sarc
And I hear this increasingly on propaganda TV. And open borders will fix everything. And more taxes and more spending. This will solve everything. Plus we need to save the earth by making work more expensive. Green everything.
As time sloughs on I suspect that I will have more in common with Al Queda than the Democrat Underground. And underground really? These people have become the authority that no one questions and the middle aged people that youngsters must trust.
This is of course “secret knowledge” passed on by the enlightened professors: a new myth for our time and a blood libel all in one. Teach them that their country is special and when they are older and rebeling from their parental charges, capture them with sacred writings of the Left. Set them forth on their graduation day, in debt, jobless, and hateful of all they received. The Saudi’s could hardly improve on the formula. The next terrorist threat is hatching their plans inside a Starbucks as we speak. A million chickens marching home to roost.
TWANLOC, all.
It is truly the season of X-mas.
Can anyone answer me this?
How is it that the “liberals” or “secularists” in Egypt did not have a clue that their revolution would end any differently than it is currently ending?
I suppose one could excuse Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton, or the entire United States State Department for not forseeing this, but what about the people “on the ground” and “in country” in Egypt who have to live with the consequences. Yeah, yeah, the French Revolution, the Kerensky government, etc., etc., but we all know universities in the U.S. are going downhill.
I mean even the Saudi royals were able to “see this coming” and they are party of a religious state. Um, so were the “Egyption liberals” educated in America and equally clueless? I thought the Saudi elites are also educated in the U.S., but they seem to have a much better sense of the big picture?
30. Baobo
Yes, I know you can copy-and-paste… plus you’re the “red” they’re after,
……….
You might right. I’ve been thinking today that its time to renew my google adwords account to take advantage of google’s mobile traffic.
When I get my new account I’ll let you know whether Google has any traffic from red china. I have not seen any advertising as yet that’s aimed at the mainland there. While google has a pretty brainy group at their HQ–the size of the internet really dwarfs them. In advertising–which includes banner and text ads email and whatnot,google and assorted search engines have about 1% of the worldwide addressable market. Currently google’s biggest competitor is likely to to be Amazon. Neither have fully grasped the handheld internet–which is the next huge thing.
33. Paul Milenkovic
Can anyone answer me this?
How is it that the “liberals” or “secularists” in Egypt did not have a clue that their revolution would end any differently than it is currently ending?
…………..
A lot of the liberals and secularists in Egypt who instigated the revolution — were funded by westerners of one stripe or another including the Obama admin.
I think that’s why Putin evicted all the western non profits that were working in Russia. He saw how truly clueless and dangerous they were.
Of course, funding is not the be all and end all. The Iranian revolution in 1979 was initially instigated by westernized Iranian types –on their own I believe– in Iran before the Khomeini took over and sent Iran’s direction in the same direction as now the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt envisions.
Neither did the coalition that ganged up against the Czar nor the Bolsheviks even. None of them guessed they were in their turn going to be the objects of liquidation. We can go down the line: the Spanish Civil War, the people who supported Pol Pot, the oldest comrades of Mao. Nobody sees it coming. Why? In large part because they’re convinced they have friends at court. In due time they learn that with such friends you may as well not have enemies.
I daresay that many of those who rooted for the current administration will in due time come to reflect on their choices, as have so many in history before them. The bad news is that by then it will probably be too late.
Well if it didn’t hurt they wouldn’t learn would they? We think mankind reforms from foresight. In truth they often repent from regret. Oh Lord I’ll never take up the bottle again. I’ll stay away from women (men) like that! I’ll never buy on credit again! The gutter is full of the wise, but they are wise after the fact.
Reality usually gets the last laugh. Eventually it is not the “great and the good” but the fed-up and disgusted that restore the balance. Things never go back to what they were; yet neither are the revolution’s dreams realized. But these things must run their course. People haven’t had enough of a bellyful yet.
why would liberals in egypt be any more grounded in reality than the ones here? a drone is a drone is a drone (the bee kind, not the obama kind).
if the world situation got so chaotic that globalization retracted/failed, then the U.S. economy would again provide enough good jobs to re-inflate the middle class.
to W @ 36 : very well said.
Merry Christmas to you, your family and all the BCer.
SF
26. Baobo
The NY Times says in this article pretty much what we have been saying about the shale revolution for the last two years or so. I’ve copied and pasted the salient paragraphs for you below.
The Shale Revolution’s Shifting Geopolitics
By ALAN RILEY
Published: December 25, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/global/the-shale-revolutions-shifting-geopolitics.html?_r=1&
China has even greater incentives to develop its shale gas resources. According to the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, the country’s recoverable resources are larger than those of the United States at 36 trillion cubic meters. The main geostrategic reason for Beijing to develop shale gas for transportation is that the U.S. Navy controls the Pacific and most Chinese oil arrives by tanker. Large scale use of natural gas for transportation would protect China from much of the effect of a U.S. blockade.
Geopolitically, the shale revolution strengthens the United States, reduces China’s energy dependence, generates a major global stimulus, which takes the Western economies off the fiscal rocks, while potentially destabilizing both the Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia. We must continue to press ahead with it.
…..Wretch’ and I to Mali went,
…and met some terrorists in a tent.
…..They were many, we were few,
…I killed one, and Wretch’ killed two………
31. Abbie Nornal
We basically agree but I didn’t literally mean the Kennan-style militarily, with bombers, missles, the whole modern army/navy/USAF scene.
We don’t need that with this enemy, just whatever it takes to keep the poison contained where it is now. Then, as you said, let ‘em burn. If the Iranians start handing out nukes, all bets off.
This thing is tailor made for US intervention by this regime, in the following manner.
With a compliant infotainment industry and education industry in full hagiography mode, the Dear Leader has been made out to be the savior of the health care system. the savior of auto manufacturing, the rescuer of the poor from business owners, etc.
Ah, but he is missing something, very, very important to cement the all important legacy: military victory to prove that he is also a brilliant military mind, a general for the ages. It was the one thing that Bill Clinton did not have to link the Dems over the years with FDR. If you think an opportunity to add “protector of America against a terrible enemy” (I know, I know, it’s only Mali, but stay with me) to the legacy will be passed up, I think you are delusional.
This is a made-to-order thing for him. Some time after a couple of conservative SCOTUS justices end up going the way of Breitbart and the second amendment is gutted or annulled, this gives the president the leeway he needs to do some silly thing militarily that will be hailed as the greatest military victory since Gettysburg. Vindication for minorites who gave their tribal loyalty, public employees who voted to keep the magic checks coming, and ideologues who will point to Obama as proof of principle that affirmative action works.
39- Should I buy your book, or not?
(You know you’re arguing with someone who thinks the color blue is a conspiracy…)
The EU might want to build some helicopters before the Euro collapses. Or issue stronger statements.
wretch,
you miss the point.
why are islamists killing muslims?
jerry
jerry…
Proximity makes practice.
===========
It’s AQ’s recruitment drive….
The Spartans and Cosa Nostra required murders of anyone before they could be deemed a ‘made man.’
It’s the way of the gangster…
RE: Why didn’t they expect…. “No One Ever Expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
Merry Christmas and to All a Good Night. / erc
Two theories for the price of one, and a bargain at half the price.
1. The Hagel for SecDef balloon, which Instapundit is reporting as popping already, was really a feint to provide cover for the Kerry nomination to State. The job of the next SecDef will be to manage the winding down of forces while salting the flag ranks with apparatchiks and arranging payoffs from a shrinking pie. The occasional death from above by drone will still be needed but it would not surprise me if in 4 years the uniformed services had as many gender/race/disease/religion advocates/counselors as marine/army infantry Platoon Leaders. For Obama and his allies the need is to prevent the Armed Forces from filling the role they once performed on behalf of civilization. The real damage will be done to America’s interests through the State Department. It is Obama’s plan to accelerate the use of the “soft power” interests in empowering his allies. Expect more travesties like the UN savaging of Israel as cheered on by Waters of Pink Floyd.
2. I hereby proclaim a new law to be known as Blast’s Law. In any dispute on the Internet over time the probability that Monty Python will be invoked will approach unity. To the naked eye this may look suspiciously like I’m just cribbing from Mr Godwin. The point is that over time the probability of any argument being made will approach 100%. The question is which argument will be used first? If we live long enough someone will mention Hitler or the Spanish Inquisition or the relative merits of the P-51 and the Zero or Desalinization, and the evidence is that it has little to do with the content of the original topic. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Personally I’d rather deal with the Spanish Inquisition than with Eric Holder.
Eurocrats: Why buy the cow when the milk is free.
America: Mooooo.
What is a Muslim saint anyway? Undoubtedly some guy who blew himself to bloody smithereens in the process of killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
Don’t let words like saint and charity cloud your minds. Muslim saints are murderers. Muslim charity is money to buy them weapons.
Who cares if the tombs of Muslim saints are destroyed. They should be destroyed, along with the rest of their wretched pseudo religion.
48. Blast From the Past
If we live long enough someone will mention Hitler or the Spanish Inquisition or the relative merits of the P-51 and the Zero or Desalinization, and the evidence is that it has little to do with the content of the original topic.
,,,,,,,,
Let me be the first to mention desalination.
Merry Chistmas to all.
jerry @ 45: “why are islamists killing muslims?”
Might as well ask — why did European Christians spend the better part of four centuries killing each other? Why were Christian Protestants & Catholics at each others’ throats in Northern Ireland until quite recently?
The divisions within the Muslim world are huge. The Iranians understand this — and are using it to stir troubles in Iraq, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The real questions are — why are the self-advertised Best & Brightest in the Foggy Bottom crowd not able to use those splits within Islam to at least as good effect as the Iranians? Why is a post-American Citizen of the World with a Muslim upbringing like Soetero not able to direct his malAdministration to use the splits within Islam to accomplish great things? Well, we all know the answers to those questions.
Be of good cheer this Christmas! Things will get better — after they first get worse.
HantaYo @ 2 – Back in the 1960′s my neighbors had some of their cousins from France visit for the summer. Dad had been a WW II AAF bomber pilot and Mom was his French bride. The cousins were veterans of the Algerian War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_war
Look familiar? Note that given the Muslim influence, these nations were also the “Hood” of the black slave traders who sold American blacks’ ancestors into slavery from the surrounding tribes. Dhimitude, don’t you know?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_modern_Africa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave_trade
Now that Oprah knows from whence her ancestors were sold into slavery, does anyone think she might be interested as to who sold them?
NAH. Didn’t think so. The continent of Africa still suffers from its European colonial past, whether it was French, Italian (Libya, Ethiopia and Somalia), or Great Britain (Egypt).
The Suez crisis was an example of how America stood apart from France and Great Britain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
And the Middle East and Iran are aftershocks of British (KSA, Iraq, Overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran etc) and French (Syria & Lebanon) influences.
Madame Assad est tres chi, n’est pas?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
bftp @ 48: The Hagel for SecDef balloon, which Instapundit is reporting as popping already, was really a feint to provide cover for the Kerry nomination to State.
It’s the theater of the absurd, Blast, these guys don’t know when they’re feinting, look how far Hillary took it – I’m surprised she knew when she really hit her head.
If Rice had weasled through, Kerry might have been nominee for Defense. After Hagel, I have it on good authority are Rosie O’Donnell, Lawrence O’Donnell, the von Trapp family, and Sean Penn.
BTW, the two Defense under-secretaries also named as possibles, each sound *excellent*. No, seriously, I was shocked too. Um, who are they you ask, …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Carter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Flournoy
Click through to the papers Flournoy has written. It’s easy to forget in the heart of the Obamanation, but we really do have some meritorious public servants. Or at least, we did.
Josh @ 54 – I still say
GEORGE CLOONEY FOR SECRETARY OF STATE!
Rosie Who?
Lawrence, Nora and Kelly O’Donnell combined don’t match up to George.
Spicolli?
What ever happened to having a female Secretary? If George won’t do because of affirmative action, then Phoebe Cates!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000121/bio
Her husband, Kevin Kline, has already previewed his role as Dave
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106673/
Why settle for ugly and dumb when we can have pretty and dumb?
I was interested that “F” @ 13 had been to Timbuktu, and reported that it was a shithole.
I’ve been to some offbeat places in the world that were supposed to be interesting to fabulous, and they usually turn out to be shitholes (the Louvre is not, it is fabulous). But again we wonder “why” are we interested in Mali, really?
It is the springboard to…..what? The rest of the African continent? And it’s perpetually untapped “vast” wealth?
People are alarmed by Al Qaeda? Really? The military forces of the EU? Really?
At one time in the early 20th Century, the armies of the European powers were something to be feared, in their numbers and relative technological superiority. And then they extinquished themselves in the Great War, and have been fading ever since. The Third Reich briefly rose to grasp the world by the throat, only to be bombed and burned and occuppied for 2 generations.
There is no European military force to deal with Mali. Talk about the Emperor’s new clothes. And why would we deal with Mali? To save some worthless Muslim antiquities in some hellish nowhere back of beyond?
And yes, it is the perfect set-up for Obama to look Presidential in fighting Al Qaeda or whomever the enemy is this week for the Obama regime. 30 round magazines, the Fiscal Cliff, obscure videos on YouTube. The talking points war.
Whatever really happened to the “War on Terror”? Gone to talking points, all of it.
Obama, now more than ever.
But again we wonder “why” are we interested in Mali, really?
Because its a dagger pointed at the heart of Mauritania?
B ft P @ 48: “it would not surprise me if in 4 years the uniformed services had as many gender/race/disease/religion advocates/counselors as marine/army infantry Platoon Leaders.”
It’s already started. The Air Force, for one, established the “Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Strategic Diversity Integration.” Wheeeee!
Josh @ 5: Michele Flournoy is a Les Aspin acolyte. Remember “Bottom-up Review” and “Base Force C?”
“The Air Force, for one, established the “Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Strategic Diversity Integration.” ”
This will reinforce the *Department of Redundancy, Redundancy Department. Boyo-boy. Will budgets never cease?
* In conformance with Blast’s Law.
Vanguard @ 57: By golly do you ever have that wrong! Take a look at a larger map: Africa is a dagger pointed straight at the heart of (drum roll. . . ) Antarctica!
Here’s a clue.
First Rule of New Age Realpolitik: The less likely a conflict will relate to a US national interest, the more likely we’ll intercede. Obama didn’t create that yardstick, Clinton did. Oil an issue, God forbid. Nuclear weapons, bite your tongue. Go out their and fight for Moslems and see what points you can glean. Self-interest only applies to Obama phones and extended unemployment benefits.
Second Rule of New Age Realpolitik,: If you must engage a real enemy never, never put boots on the ground and risk casualties. Clinton was big on aerial bombing of empty tents. It looked like action. Drones attacking the Pakistan’s Northwest frontier a little more look like action, but again no coffins bound for Dover. These are all minimal risk chest-thupping.
Third Rule of New Age Realpolitik: If the consulate’s under attack, don’t help. It fuzzys up the vision of a democratized Arab Spring. All those former SEALs (in Benghazi, Libya) or former Marines (in Matamoros, Mexico)aren’t “our kind,” they’re hard to discipline, and they cling to Bibles and guns.
Now who for the new Defense Secretary? Where’s Les Aspin when we really need him? Sure, he verbally spit on Vietnam veterans, but the guy won a Silver Star that he pretended to throw over a fence. Well, it could open up a Senate seat, some benefit there. Who else could they put up? Jane Fonda? Barney Frank? Tiny Tim? Pee Wee Herman? Look we’ve ground those guys who wear uniforms and cling to the Bibles and their guns into the ground. Now’s the time for the coupe de grace.
I would like to nominate Christiana Amanpour for Secretary of State (or Sec Def). Years ago you could pretty reliably figure where the next worthless sh*thole we were about to invade would be by looking at good ol’ Christiana with a “poor starving todler ” in her lap. Sure enough, we’d be sending troops there soon (an early iteration of R2P?). I haven’t watched CNN in so long I don’t even know if she works for Ted anymore. So hard to find “good reliable indicators” any more. We have to do with lying scum like Susan Rice.
Oops!