Ann Coulter om de amerikanske medier

Ann Coulter har noget af et rygte på sig som højreorienteret kommentator og provokatør. Som Caryl Rivers beskrev hende: "She’s cute, blonde, mini-skirted, mean as a warthog, and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.”. Samtidig er hun eminent læsbar. Forleden havde hun et hib til den venstreorienterede presse i USA:

I enjoy making fun of CNN as much as the next guy, but CNN is not that liberal. It may be liberal compared to an average American, but it's certainly not liberal compared to CNN pre-Fox News. Consider that Peter Arnett used to be treated as a serious journalist on CNN. Even his work on the "Tailwind" hoax program did not jeopardize his standing.

Now, even MSNBC won't hire him. (Although I hear Arnett has a big interview at al-Jazeera next week — good luck, Peter!) After initially trying to stand by him, NBC was forced to fire Arnett after Americans erupted in fury at his traitorous comments on Saddam's state-run TV at the outset of the Iraq war. This is what liberals mean when they say the country has become "polarized." Now when they try to put traitors on air, Americans complain.

Og heldigvis for det.

Henrik

Pro-Bush demonstrationer i USA

Hvis man følger bare minimalt med i nyhederne, og især holder øje med nyheder fra USA, så vil man efterhånden have lagt mærke til at anti-folkene i USA nu har fundet på at hjernevaske (se feks her) en sørgende mor og bruge hendes skyldfølelse over sønnens død til at vinde billige point i kampen mod at bringe demokrati og frihed til Irak. Moren - Cindy Sheehan - har de betalt for at slå sig ned i Crawford, Texas, hvor hun så kræver at Præsident Bush skal trække 150.000 amerikanske soldater ud af Irak fordi hun siger han skal.

Hvad man nok ikke vil have lagt mærke til er at der pt er flere pro-Bush-demonstranter i Crawford end der er anti-folk (via Little Green Footballs):

CRAWFORD - President Bush’s supporters poured into Crawford Saturday by the thousands, for the first time outnumbering war protesters led by Cindy Sheehan, who began a vigil here three weeks ago, demanding a personal meeting with the vacationing president to talk about her son’s death in Iraq....

An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people attended a pro-Bush rally in Crawford, waving flags and pledging their allegiance to U.S. troops. At times, they accused Cindy Sheehan of dishonoring the war death of her own son, Casey, who was in the Army.

Jeannine McEwin, 69, said she and her husband, Harold, made the six-hour trip from their home on Toledo Bend Lake, a mile from the Louisiana border, to help conservatives overcome the dominance anti-war demonstrators have had here since Sheehan came to town on Aug. 6.
“The left has had so much publicity, and we have sat back and done nothing,” McEwin said. “We have allowed them to take over.”

Harold McEwin, 70, said he came to support Bush and the reasons for the war in Iraq.

“When I was 8 years old I walked the streets of Shreveport picking up metal coat hangers to be used to build bombs and bullets” for World War II, he said, adding: “I started out my patriotism right there.”

Der er stadig mennesker i live der kan huske sidste gang verden kæmpede mod totalitære terrorister.

Update:

LGF har også et link til et billedarkiv med billeder fra pro. Bush demonstrationerne.

Update II:

Azygos har billeder og en veskrivelse af en anden pro-Bush demonstration. Hvis nogen skulle undre sig, så STFU = Shut The Fuck Up.

Update III:

Ups - Azygos påpeger at de godt nok støtter Bush i hans egenskab af Commander-in-chief, men at en del af dem er knapt så tilfredse med ham ellers. Så vi laver lige "pro-Bush" i Update II om til "pro-commander-in-chief".

Henrik

Apolitisk

Et totalt apolitisk indlæg:

Jeg faldt idag over Billy Harveys hjemmeside, designed til at reklamere for hans musik. Den er rimeligt opfindsomt lavet, prøv selv at tage ind og surfe lidt rundt. Der er masser af musik.

Henrik

Undskyld fordi jeg er modig

Det er så så vidt det er kommet med tøsificeringen af den vestlige verden - nu er folk nødt til at undskylde at de ikke flæber og er bange hele tiden:

I, myself, am not stressed after the London attacks. I do not want to come across as arrogant or anti-defeatist but I really do refuse to let what has happened change my outlook on this country. These shameless people have one very distinct motive: to scare people. I will never let that happen. In fact at this great time I feel more patriotic than I have ever felt. Though I am not stressed about the attacks, I am deeply angry and empathetic for the families and victims.

Claire, Whitnash, England

Modig kvinde. Sørgeligt at hun føler hun skal undskylde for det.

Henrik

Den Amerikanske Fremmedlegion

Bobby Bran fra Bobbys World er kommet op med en udmærket ide til på samme tid at stabilisere Afghanistan og give USA flere tropper. Der er mange fordele:

....it is an innovative and creative way to enhance the Total Force-- a buy-in of fifty US officers establishes a fully-functional infantry battalion. But it also allows us an opportunity to integrate a segment of the population that may otherwise be attracted to the "other side." It enhances opportunities for cultural training and understanding within the US Army, and it's extremely cost effective (the cost of these battalions would be anywhere from one-third to one-half of a Regular Army combat battalion). Finally, while I note that recruiting is down and deployments are up, and this proposal provides us an opportunity to optimize our national resources, I do want to note that I would endorse this proposal even if recruiting was not an issue and there was no War in Iraq or elsewhere-- this proposal just makes great strategic sense.

Bobby Bran har selv været over et år i Afghanistan med det amerikanske militær, og har fremlagt idéen ved en nylig konference blandt amerikanske officerer.

Henrik

Italiensk Røde Kors støtter terrorisme

Der har i lange tider været rygter om at de italienske myndigheder betalte en stor løsesum for at få to kvindelige italienske gidsler i Irak fri. Nu viser det sig at gidseltagerne i hvert fald er blevet betalt med vidtgående hjælp fra Italiensk Røde Kors.

Det viser sig, at Røde Kors ikke bare har lappet fire oprørere sammen, så de kunne gå ud og slå flere civile ihjel, de totale idioter gjorde også alt for at hjælpe "oprørerne" ved at smugle dem gennem adskillige amerikanske kontrolposter:

"We collected them in the place we had been told and then took them to hospital with a series of precautions for them to be admitted into hospital as quickly as possible and without any hindrance," he told Rai.

He added that US checkpoints were among the hindrances he was referring to.

Og hvad har chefen for Italiens Røde Kors så at sige om at han har bidraget til gud ved hvor mange uskyldiges død?

"Had the Americans known about it, this could have damaged the subtle strategy,"

Jeg har ikke ord nok at svine den nar nok til med.

Henrik

Slaveri og undskyldninger

De sidste par måneder har der været tidvise forlydender i medierne om at beboerne på de tidligere Dansk-Vestindiske Øer er ude efter "reparations" for dengang slavehandelen kørte i forrige århundrede. Officielt skal det forestille at betyde en "undskyldning", men mon ikke det ændrer sig til at de også vil have "erstatning" når først de har undskyldningen?

Fornylig var Shelley Moorhead derfra i Danmark for at føre kampagne for sagen, og MINUT bloggede blandt andet om det - de var ikke så glade for for ideen.

Personligt kan jeg heller ikke se hvorfor vi skal sige undskyld for noget ingen nulevende har haft lod i. Og da slet ikke hvorfor vi skal sige undskyld til folk der overhovedet ingen berøring har haft med slaveriet. Altså med mindre vestinderne kan trylle en hundrede-og-nogle-og-tres-årig frem.

Som folkene fra MINUT har jeg også lidt svært ved at se hvorfor det altid er hvide mennesker der skal sige undskyld. Da Clinton spurgte Ugandas præsident Museveni om han gerne ville have en undskyldning for slaveriet ramte Museveni sømmet på hovedet med sit svar:

"African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them," he said.

"If anyone should apologise it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today."

En velkommen afveksling fra den flæbende "blame whitey"-attitude det meste af verden har.

Henrik

Tanker om 2008-præsidentvalget i USA

I USA er Pat Buchanan, it takt med at han er rykket længere og længere ud på den amerikanske højrefløj ved at have mistet det meste af sin troværdighed. Ikke desto mindre begik han for nylig på Human Events Online en udemærket artikel, der troværdigt argumenterer for at det Demokratiske Parti er på vej ud i en situation som den det befandt sig i i 1968.

Dengang lavede det Demokratiske Partis radikale venstrefløj så meget ballade pga Vietnam-krigen at det førte til en veritabel flugt af moderate stemmer fra det Demokratiske Parti kun fire år efter partiet havde fået den største stemme-andel set i nyere historie. Siden er det kun lykkedes demokraterne at få valgt to præsidenter: den højreorienterede demokrat Jimmy Carter efter skandalen omkring Nixon, og den højreorienterede demokrat Clinton to gange i 90erne, hvor det aldrig lykkedes manden at få et flertal af stemmerne.

Men tilbage til Buchanans artikel (det skal med at Buchanan - rimeligt plausibelt - går ud fra at Hillary Clinton bliver demokraternes kandidat i 2008):

In June, I ventured a prediction: "A Eugene McCarthy will appear soon to pressure and challenge Hillary Clinton in 2008, if Hillary does not convert herself into an antiwar candidate ..."

Observing the Cindy Sheehan protest, I updated the prediction just last week: "September could see the coalescing of an antiwar movement that ... divides (the) Democratic Party ..." And so it has come to pass.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Gene McCarthy emerged in the person of Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. ..

Consider Hillary's predicament. Today, she is taking the same cautious position on Iraq that Richard Nixon took in the fall of 1968 on Vietnam. She is saying she supports the war and the troops, but the war has been mismanaged and America needs new leadership.

No risk there. Hillary's problem is she is three years away from 2008, the antiwar movement increasingly looks on her as a collaborator in "Bush's War," and Democrats like Feingold are going to give these antiwar militants the rhetoric and stances they demand. Hillary's most rabid followers will depart if she does not leave Bush's side -- to lead them.

This surging antiwar movement will not permit moderates to get away with a stay-the-course, we-support-the-troops position. They will demand a timetable for withdrawal and rally to the candidate who offers one, just as antiwar Democrats rallied to Gene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern in 1968.

The Democrats' dilemma is hellish. If this war ends successfully, Republicans get the credit. If it ends badly, Bush will be gone, but antiwar Democrats will be blamed for having cut and run, for losing the war and for the disastrous consequences in the Persian Gulf and Arab world.

Så demokraterne har et problem. Spørgsmålet er så om republikanerne kan finde en kandidat, der kan udnytte demokraternes problemer. Conoleezza Rice er oplagt, men indtil videre har hun afvist at være interesseret.

Update:

Det er ikke kun højrefløjen, der har øjne for problemet. Michael J. Totten har en artikel på Tech Central Station om den vensreradikale aktivist-fløj i USA, og han er ikke glad.

Henrik

Når Islam går ud over hukommelsen

BBC har en skæg lille historie om en ex-sovjetisk soldat (før Nikolai, nu Nasratullah) der blev taget til fange af Mujahediner i Afghanistan i 1981, og siden omvendt til islam. Først kommer virkeligheden:

"We captured Nasratullah during an ambush in Kaligai village in 1981," recalls his white bearded former commander, Sufi Payda Mohammed ..

The mujahideen commander remembers "a very terrible fight" during which they killed around 20 Soviet soldiers.

Nikolai was the sole survivor, captured after he exhausted his ammunition and hid in a drainage ditch under the road.

Altså taget til fange efter han gemte sig i et drænrør. Sandsynligvist er manden konverteret af frygt for at blive henrettet (artiklen nævner også at begge sider rutinemæssigt henrettede fanger), har siden været med til at slå sine tidligere kammerater ihjel, og har altså haft brug for at retfærdiggøre sit forræderi over for sig selv. Derfor finder "Nasratullah" på sin helt egen historie med gode muslimer og onde kristne (soldater i den sovjetiske hær sværger på bibelen, no less!) der massakrerer civilister. Som selv BBC er nødt til at indrømme:

Nasratullah himself tells a different, more ideologically-driven version of how he came to fall into mujahideen hands.

Undrer det?

Henrik

Kastrationer i Gaza

To nyheder, adskildt i tid af mindre end 24 timer, illustrerer meget godt forskellen på de to sider i Palæstina-konflikten:

Mens israelerne redder herreløse kæledyr i Gaza, dolker en araber en Brite ihjel i Jerusalem.

Følgende sætning kunne jeg ikke lade være med at klukke over:

On its website the charity details how it has sent medical and neutering vans into Gaza.

Some 1.4m Palestinians remain living inside Gaza, many in cramped conditions rated among the most crowded and impoverished in the world.

Det var kæledyrene, ikke araberne, der blev kastreret :-)

Henrik

Tre historier fra de varme lande

Nyheder fra Afrika fra lidt mere en 24 timer:

Korruption i Namibia
Korruption i Sydafrika
Korruption i Uganda

Er der et mønster?

Henrik

En udmærket ide

I USA dominerer venstreorienterede undervisere og deres disciple blandt de studerende langt de fleste universiteter. I løbet af de sidste 10 år er højreorienterede studerende imidlertid begyndt at kæmpe imod med næb og kløer. Til tider er midlerne ret opfindsomme, som følgende:

Ikke helt dårligt....

Henrik

Ligestilling

De fleste kan vel huske den kampagne for flere kvinder i leder-stillinger der blev kørt for måske et halvt års penge siden. Den kom efter Norge gennemførte en lov om at minimum 40% af alle virksomheders bestyrelsesmedlemmer skulle være kvinder, og muligheden af at det skulle gennemføres i Danmark blev da også drøftet. Kampagnen blev kørt under sloganet "ligestilling", men når man kogte det ned til realiteterne var de reelt ude efter tvangsmæssige massefyringer af mandlige ledere så deres jobs kunne blive givet til ukvalificerede kvinder.

Et af argumenterne der blev fremført var at firmaer med kvindelige ledere gjorde det bedre rent økonomisk. Her har Filtrat så gravet en artikel fra This is money frem, der laver pænt store huller i det:

In fact, investing in stock market-listed companies run by women or with female executive directors is a 'surefire recipe for underperformance', according to Shares magazine. ..

The impact, according to the report, is a 'huge' shortfall of 30% over five years compared to companies run exclusively by men.

Denne undersøgelse er bygget på fakta, men virkeligheden kan selvfølgelig ikke få lov til at påvirke ideologiske fantasi-slotte, så modangrevet satte ind med det samme. Læg mærke til at der ingen argumenter er, det er bare ren fordømmelse:

Nicola Horlick, dubbed 'Superwoman' for juggling her job as managing director of Morgan Grenfell Investment Management with bringing up five children, dismissed them as 'complete nonsense'.

'You can't take the share prices of a company and attribute it to one woman executive. It is wholly coincidental,' she said.

Tory family spokesman Theresa May, a former City high-flier, called the findings 'codswallop'. 'Having a man in charge doesn't necessarily lead to success,' she said. 'When given the opportunities, women have proved they can be successful. What they don't need is this kind of ridiculous stereotyping.'

Et ord: hylekor.

Henrik

DR vågner op

Jamen dog - to dage i streg med nyheds-indslag der kunne tyde på at DR måske er ved at vågne op og forholde sig til virkeligheden.

Tirsdag havde DR pludselig opdaget venstre-ekstremismen (DR via Polemiken):

Svensk politi har anhold en mand, som man sigter for politisk mordbrand. Manden er ifølge politiet tilknyttet det venstreekstremistiske netværk “Global Intifada”, men poltiet ønsker ikke på nuværende tidspunkt at komme med flere oplysninger.

…Netværket “Globalt Intifada” har blandt andet påtaget sig at have udført et brandbombeangreb på et polsk konsulat, et angreb på den danske ambassade i september 2003 og en bombesprængning mod en russisk ambassadebil.

Man kan selvfølgelig undre sig over hvorfor de kalder en organisation der planter bomber for et "netværk" og ikke en terror-organisation, men så længe det går i den rigtige retning er det vel OK.

Onsdag fik vi så en floromvunden indrømmelse af at P1 kører venstre-orienteret propaganda fra DRs nye general-direktør, Kenneth Plummer. Plummer ville selvfølgelig ikke sætte navn på hvilken fløj der domineret P1 hidtil, men man behøver jo sådan set bare tænde for radioen for at få syn for sagn (JP via Angantyrs Hjørne):

»Jeg har talt med kollegerne i direktionen og en række politikere, lige som jeg selv har lyttet til P1. Jeg må konkludere, at vi politisk ikke kommer hele banen godt nok rundt. Ikke i alle programmer,« siger Kenneth Plummer.

Han afviser at udpege, hvilke udsendelser der misligholder sine alsidighedsforpligtelser, og generaldirektøren vil heller ikke identificere de politiske partier, som lider under de journalistiske prioriteringer på P1. »Jeg kan bare konstatere, at sådan er det. Vi er ikke retfærdige nok. Vi er for hårde mod nogle og for søde mod andre.«

Han lover så at tingene vil blive forandret til det bedre, men selv om jeg da håber han får sin vilje, så kan jeg ikke lade være med at frygte at den institutionelle træghed (=venstreorienterede taburet-klæbere der er vant til at få deres vilje og ikke gider lave om på det) vil gøre de forhåbninger til skamme.

Så er der jo fall-back-håbet om at Rupert Murdoch køber TV2 når kanalen bliver privatiseret og rusker op i den danske medie-verden. til nød kan TvDanmark også gøre det - SBS har lige solgt alle aktiver (deriblandt altså TvDanmark, Kanal5 og skod-stationen The Voice) til to investeringsforeninger, der før eller senere vil sælge dem videre for at få lidt profit.

Men tilbage til DR: Plummer leger også med tanken om at skabe to nye kanaler - en historisk og en til børn og unge. Pt kan jeg ikke se behovet for det sidste - jeg har endnu ikke oplevet den dag hvor nevøerne har været ude af stand til at få børne-fjernsyn på dansk døgnet rundt. Den historiske kanal lyder derimod lovende.

Historie-kanalen lyder en del mere lovende, især taget DRs efterhånden store bagkatalog af dokumentarer af mere eller mindre historisk tilsnit i betragtning, men når man tænker på floppet med den store vikinge-serie DR skulle have lavet sammen med Moesgaard museum stiller jeg mig nu også tvivlende over for chancerne.

Vi får se.

Henrik

Hvorfor atomar jihad vil ende i muslimsk nederlag.

Belmont Club havde i 2003 et indlæg omkring truslen om at al Qaeda kunne få fat i atomvåben. De når frem til konklusion at en atomar jihad kun kan føre til et muslimsk nederlag. Efter en stadig eskalation er USA ved følgende korsvej:

At this point, a United States choked with corpses could still not negotiate an end to hostilities or deter further attacks. There would be no one to call on the Red Telephone, even to surrender to. In fact, there exists no competent Islamic authority, no supreme imam who could stop a jihad on behalf of the whole Muslim world. Even if the terror chiefs could somehow be contacted in this apocalyptic scenario and persuaded to bury the hatchet, the lack of command and control imposed by the cell structure would prevent them from reining in their minions. Due to the fixity of intent, attacks would continue for as long as capability remained. Under these circumstances, any American government would eventually be compelled by public desperation to finish the exchange by entering -1 x 10^9 in the final right hand column: total retaliatory extermination.

The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the 'rational' American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset. ..

The most startling result of this analysis is that a catastrophic outcome for Islam is guaranteed whether America retaliates or not. Even if the President decided to let all Americans die to expiate their historical guilt, why would Islamic terrorists stop after that? They would move on to Europe and Asia until finally China, Russia, Japan, India or Israel, none of them squeamish, wrote -1 x 10^9 in the final right hand column. They too would be prisoners of the same dynamic, and they too have weapons of mass destruction. ..

Even if Islam killed every non-Muslim on earth they would almost certainly continue to kill each other with their new-found weaponry. Revenge bombings between rival groups and wars between different Islamic factions are the recurring theme of history. Long before 3,000 New Yorkers died on September 11, Iraq and Iran killed 500,000 Muslims between them. The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Apokalyptisk tænkning, men ikke uden en vis logik.

Henrik

Politiarbejde i Palæstina

Jeg faldt lige over en flok links jeg gemte til senere brug i juni, og et par stykker fortjener da at blive blogget. Først en fra de varme lande....nærmere betegnet Palæstina:

Fatah gunmen admitted over the weekend that nine Palestinians who were murdered in Bethlehem on suspicion of collaboration with Israel were actually innocent victims of lawlessness. ..

Most of the "collaborators" in Bethlehem were kidnapped and executed in public squares by Fatah gunmen, some whom have been given sanctuary in European countries after hiding in the Church of Nativity during the IDF incursion of 2002.


Hours before IDF tanks rolled into Bethlehem, dozens of Fatah gunmen raided PA prisons and abducted nine men who were being held as Israeli spies. The detainees were made to stand against walls, where they were shot before cheering crowds.

A leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the city has now referred to the victims as "victims of lawlessness," hinting that they may have been innocent after all. "These detainees were not protected as a result of lawlessness."

The group blamed Israel's military offensive for the lawlessness.

Husk: det er altid jødernes skyld.

It said that after reviewing the files of the victims, "The Aksa Martyrs Brigades has decided to close this case for once and for all. No one is allowed to talk about it from now on. Anyone who violates or tries to create internal strife will be punished severely."

Historien taler jo sådan set for sig selv.

Henrik

Billeder siger mere end tusinde ord II

Nu jeg er igang tager vi lige et kig på den ene af verdens tre eneste tilbageværende sovjet-republikker: Nordkorea. De to andre er Cuba og Grønland*. For at skabe lidt afveksling tænkte jeg, jeg ville se på noget folk har brug for overalt på kloden, nemlig lys om natten:


Bemærk det sorte hul der er Nordkorea. De socialistiske stater Vietnam og Myanmar er heller ikke ligefrem oplyste - i nogen betydning af ordet.

Henrik

* Andre østblok-enklaver som Göteborg og Odense Centralbibliotek ikke nævnt, ej heller glemt.

Billeder siger mere end tusinde ord

Man siger jo at et billeder siger mere end tusind ord, så i den anledning har jeg tænkt mig at lave en af mine pænt sjældne billed-indlæg idag.

Det startede da jeg var igang med at lede efter kort over fordelingen af ejerskab af jord i Palæstina i 1948 (lidt nørdet skal man jo være), og jeg så istedet faldt over følgende satellit-billede af området:


Bemærk hvordan jøderne har fået Israels jord til at blomstre, mens de arabisk-beboede områder både i de besatte områder, men også feks Egypten er betydeligt goldere.

Et billede til, denne gang fra oven, og med grænserne trukket op:

Kommentarer burde være overflødige.

Henrik

To nye stater i Palæstina

Hans Hauge havde for et par dage siden en klumme i Jp om rømningen af Gaza, der genoptages idag. Et par pluk:

Der er noget unikt og usammenligneligt ved denne situation. Ingen andre steder i verden findes der bosættere. Mig bekendt er det kun jøder, der kan få denne betegnelse hæftet på sig. Danskere i Grønland er ikke bosættere. Palæstinensere i Vollsmose er heller ikke. En bosætter er en jøde, der bosætter sig på arabisk jord. ..

Der er for det første plads nok. Hong Kong var besat af englænderne i mange år, og de klarede sig fint. På lidt plads og med mange mennesker. Der findes utallige små selvstændige stater i verden. Uheldigvis mener de i Gaza, at de skal høre sammen med Vestbredden og Jerusalem, fordi de bilder sig ind, at de er ét folk.

Men den slags tror vi jo ikke på heroppe. Vi ved, at al den folkesnak er højreorienteret nationalisme og derfor noget pjat. Derfor må vi råde dem til at gøre Gaza til Mellemøstens Monaco.

Lige på kornet, især den første betragtning udstiller hykleriet i den pro-palæstinensiske propaganda. Hvorfor er feks de palæstinensiske flygtningelejre ikke bosættelser?

Med kommentaren om at araberne i Gaza bilder sig ind de skal høre sammen med dem fra Vestbredden har Hans Hauge imidlertid måske ramt sømmet endnu mere på hovedet end han selv tror. På Middle East Intelligence Bulletin faldt jeg over en artikel om en evt opdeling af de besatte områder i to stater grundet på vidtrækkende forskelle i sproglige, familiemæssige, sociale og økonomiske forhold. Det bliver imidlertid først rigtig skægt når man læser følgende:

Shiqaqi's study, entitled The West Bank and Gaza Strip: Future Political and Administrative Relations, shows the existence of a prevalent West Bank belief that the Gaza Strip is "nothing but a big refugee camp."6 Further, West Bankers see the Gaza Strip as a backward society with "increased crime . . . and inclined to roughness, extremism, grimness, fanaticism and instability."7

Gazans, for their part, expressed their misgivings over the patronizing and discriminating West Bankers, who show them little respect.8 They also note that while Gazans are typically willing to accept the consequences of insurrection against Israel, "workers from the West Bank fill the work spots left vacant from when [Israel] prevents Gaza workers from coming to their jobs in Israel."9

Of particular interest is Shiqaqi's mention of the period between 1967 and 1971, when approximately 20,000 Gazans emigrated to the West Bank towns of Qalqiliya and Tulqarem. Extensive interviews revealed that during this first attempt at integration between the territories, tensions ran high. West Bankers saw their guests as messy, dishonest, less cultured, less educated and predisposed to poverty.10 Gazans felt that the local inhabitants were "racist," and treated them as "third class" citizens.11

Hvor er det nu, vi har hørt sådanne påstande før?

According to an Israeli internal security (Shin-Bet) report before the outbreak of the Intifada, those sentiments have generally gone unchanged. The report noted "mounting hostility and a growing rift between the West Bank and Gaza Strip," to the point that "senior officials in the West Bank are against opening the 'safe passage' route [between the West Bank and Gaza Strip], as the result could be to flood Judea and Samaria with Gazans."12

Læg oveni de politiske forskelle, med en Hamas-domineret Gaza-stribe og en Vest-bred domineret af Fatah. Artiklens forfatter har oven i købet fundet en parallel til en evt opdeling af de arabiske områder af Palæstina:

Incidentally, this notion of separation is not without precedent. In 1948, after the withdrawal of the British, Bangladesh and Pakistan became two separate, culturally distinct territories under a single rule. For more than two decades, Bangladeshis grumbled about their role as junior partner in this unlikely marriage. Then, in 1971, with a deepened sense of nationalism that could no longer be denied, Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan after 23 years.

With the existence of differing dialects, differing economies, almost no intermarriage, and a growing animosity, the Palestinian territories may take less time than that.

Tænk over det.

Henrik

Live fra den radikale venstrefløj

Jeg indrømmer at jeg fra tid til anden hænger ud på Rød Ungdoms debat-forum - lidt håb har jeg da om at de engang vågner op og ser lyset.

Så er der selvfølgelig også de dage, hvor man glæder sig over at en af dem er faldet ud af rollen og kommer til at tale frit fra leveren:

Det er her, en socialist adskiller sig fra en anarkist. Jeg mener ikke, staten skal afskaffes som det første. Jeg mener den skal bruges som et redskab til at indrette vores samfund, så det ikke længere er muligt at rage magt og penge til sig på andres bekostning. Så behøver man ikke at bekymre sig om, hvordan man skal få folk til at tænke anderledes personligt har jeg det heller ikke så godt med folk der tænker sådan :-).

Jeg tror, at hvi samfundet indrettes, så det ikke kan betale sig at bruge sin energi på at komme til tops i hierarkiet, så vil folk hurtigt finde på noget andet og forhåbentlig nyttigere at tage sig til.

Men husk: de er DEMOKRATISKE socialister. Det siger de selv.

Henrik

Cindy Sheehan, pt II

Jeg har før blogget om Cindy Sheehan, det nye offer de amerikanske venstreradikale har fået at tilbede. Nyhederne på både DR og TV2 har nu også opdaget hende og giver hende rigeligt opmærksomhed. Eller.....det eneste der får opmærksomhed er når hun står og tuder og kræver at USAs præsident skal ignorere millioner af vælgere der har stemt på ham, og istedet føre udenrigspolitik efter hvad hun synes han skal.

Som før nævnt er der mere til den historie.....men det ender ikke der - Slate har mere:

After Slate published her real opinions on politics (a weird confection of pacifism with paranoid anti-Zionism) last Monday, she was eventually asked about her statement that her son Casey had been killed in a war for Israel, and she denied ever having made it. So, we must now say that, as well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.

After Slate published an extract from a letter that she wrote last March to ABC Nightline, Anderson Cooper of CNN asked her about the anti-Israel remarks the letter contained. She denied making them and proceeded in her blog to assert that someone had gotten hold of her original letter and somehow doctored it. This dark and murky allegation—evincing further paranoia on her part—has been easily and convincingly refuted, as can be seen in this sidebar. Cindy Sheehan, not content with echoing the Bin-Ladenist line that the president is the real "terrorist" and that he is the tool of a Jewish cabal, has dug a pit of falsehood around her own wild story. ..

Then there is the question of humanitarian or pacifist emotion. Some have perhaps been drawn to "Camp Casey" out of reverence for life. Their demand, however, is an immediate coalition withdrawal from Iraq. Have they seriously asked themselves how humane the consequences of that would be? The news of a pullout would put a wolfish grin on the faces of the "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" brigade, as Mr. Zarqawi's force has named itself in order to resolve all doubt. Every effort would be made to detonate every available car-bomb and mine, so as to claim the withdrawal of coalition forces as a military victory for jihad. I can quite understand Ms. Sheehan's misery at the thought of her son being killed on some desolate road. But will she be on hand to console the parents whose sons are shot in the back while being ordered to surrender and withdraw?

Næppe.

Henrik

Kup i Israel

Normalt bliver vi fra socialfascistisk hold bombarderet med påstande om at Israel stort set styrer USA. Aaron´s CC leverer argumenter for den absolut modsatte påstand - at USA i en alliance med den israelske venstrefløj har truet sig til den tilbagetrækning fra Gaza-striben der er i gang for tiden, og at det kun er det seneste tiltag i en amerikansk indblanding i israelsk indenrigspolitik der har stået på siden Clintons dage.

I denne omgang er det - ifølge Aarons´s CC - direkte afpresning af Sharon der er midlet.

Konspirationsteori eller virkelighed - døm selv.

Henrik

Piraten bin Laden

Kampen mod terror har indtil videre været hæmmet af, at verden ikke har kunnet nå frem til en fælles definition af terrorisme, og derfor heller ikke nogen fælles indsat mod den - uden definition er den ene mands terrorist jo bare den andens frihedskæmper. På Legalaffairs.org er der imidlertid en mand der mener han har fundet løsningen på problemet: Douglas R. Burgess, Jr.. Og hvad er så løsningen?

Pirater.

Fra artiklen "The Dread Pirate Bin Laden":

TO UNDERSTAND THE POTENTIAL OF DEFINING TERRORISM as a species of piracy, consider the words of the 16th-century jurist Alberico Gentili's De jure belli: "Pirates are common enemies, and they are attacked with impunity by all, because they are without the pale of the law. They are scorners of the law of nations; hence they find no protection in that law." Gentili, and many people who came after him, recognized piracy as a threat, not merely to the state but to the idea of statehood itself. All states were equally obligated to stamp out this menace, whether or not they had been a victim of piracy. This was codified explicitly in the 1856 Declaration of Paris, and it has been reiterated as a guiding principle of piracy law ever since. Ironically, it is the very effectiveness of this criminalization that has marginalized piracy and made it seem an arcane and almost romantic offense. Pirates no longer terrorize the seas because a concerted effort among the European states in the 19th century almost eradicated them. It is just such a concerted effort that all states must now undertake against terrorists, until the crime of terrorism becomes as remote and obsolete as piracy.

But we are still very far from such recognition for the present war on terror. President Bush and others persist in depicting this new form of state vs. nonstate warfare in traditional terms, as with the president's declaration of June 2, 2004, that "like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States." He went on: "We will not forget that treachery and we will accept nothing less than victory over the enemy." What constitutes ultimate victory against an enemy that lacks territorial boundaries and governmental structures, in a war without fields of battle or codes of conduct? We can't capture the enemy's capital and hoist our flag in triumph. The possibility of perpetual embattlement looms before us.

If the war on terror becomes akin to war against the pirates, however, the situation would change. First, the crime of terrorism would be defined and proscribed internationally, and terrorists would be properly understood as enemies of all states. This legal status carries significant advantages, chief among them the possibility of universal jurisdiction. Terrorists, as hostis humani generis, could be captured wherever they were found, by anyone who found them. Pirates are currently the only form of criminals subject to this special jurisdiction.

Men læs det hele selv - jeg lærte en del af det.

Henrik

Star Trek og pædofili

Ellen Ladowsky har begået en usædvanligt interessant artikel om et meget obskurt emne: sammenhængen mellem pædofili og Star Trek. Blandt de spøjse observationer:

1) Torontos sædeligheds-forbrydelses-afdeling er citeret for, at der af de over 100 pædofile de har arresteret over de sidste fire år kun har været 1 (én) der ikke var en hard-core Start Trek-fan.

2) Det viser sig at der er skrevet en hel del bøsse-porno involverende kaptajn Kirk og dr. Spock - ofte skrevet af heteroseksuelle kvinder.

3) Autister identificerer sig gerne med dr. Spock.

Det kan man så synes er interessant eller ligegyldigt (jeg kan godt lige at læse om ubemærkede sammenhænge, så jeg synes det er interessant), men artiklen indeholder også følgende udtalelse fra dr. Peter Mezan, en psyko-analytiker fra New York, der rammer sømmet på hovedet:

"There is an impulse that is common to perversion and to utopian thinking. The wish is to create a world in which differences make no difference. The great utopian thinkers have been immensely inspiring, but there is a reason that utopian communities have never worked out. In the name of equality of every sort and in the attempt to eliminate the tensions that normally divide us, they propose to create a marvelously unnatural world without the usual boundaries. But then it gets all fucked up."

Bedre kan det vist ikke siges.

Henrik

IFF rejser oprørsfanen igen

Så er det vist ved at være tid til lidt PR for IFF (Initiativet Fred og Frihed, alternativt Identification Friend or Foe). Kim fra Uriasposten har trommet nogle andre historikere og historiestuderende sammen for at brygge på et læserbrev om den skandaløse hvidvaskning af massemorderen Che Guevara, der fra slutningen af måneden vil finde sted i Aalborg. Det er krasse sager:

Marco Evaristti har i andre sammenhænge fortalt om sine kommunistiske forældre, og når han allerede i 9års-alderen dannede sig en politisk overbevisning – så indikerer det et eller andet om hans politiske sympatier.Suppleret med ovenstående udtalelser illustrerer kuratoren med al ønskelig tydelighed, at fotoudstillingen må betragtes som et primitivt forsøg på at vedligeholde myten om Che Guevara og Cuba på trods af den klare dokumentation, historieforskningen har frembragt. Forskningen sætter i det hele taget Marco Evaristtis historiske indsigt og ulækre holdninger i relief, og det ville være ønskeligt, hvis danske historikere med detailviden om Latinamerika i den pågældende periode ville tage klar stilling til fantastens skønmalerier.“

Undertegnede - trods alt stadig historie-studerende rent formelt - føler sig lidt forsmået over ikke at være inviteret med som underskriver, men er blevet lovet posten som medie-luder i Aalborg når vi tropper op for at oplyse som plaster på såret, så mon ikke en borgerkrig i IFF bliver undgået?

For mere information om den virkelige Che Guevara (ikke den todimensionelle T-Shirt version), kig her.

Henrik

Tudeblogs med for meget tid til overs

Som Filtrat har bemærket har den venstredrejede del af den danske blogosfære har fundet ud af, at der ikke rigtig er nogen der gider læse deres udgydelser. Som de ofre de jo pr definition er, er de selvfølgelig gået igang med at finde syndebukke for deres egen ligegyldighed, og da det ikke kan være dem selv der er problemet har de fundet nogle andre de kan pege fingre ad og flæbe over: den virkelighedsbaserede del af samme blogosfære.

Flæbe-bloggerne har nemlig fundet ud af, at vi her i virkeligheden ikke rigtigt gider at linke til deres blogs med mindre vi vil pege fingre ad dem, og det er jo noget skidt. At de ikke selv gider linke til os er bare med til at udstille dem som de dobbeltmoralske tude-dukker de er.

Det er så hvad det er.

Som vi alle ved er man jo imidlertid ikke en rigtig venstrefløjser medmindre man finder på pseudo-videnskabelige forklaringer på hvorfor man ikke kan lide folk. Det har Allan fra Mavepusteren - manden der lyster efter at plante flag i hundelorte - så rådet bod på, og i den anledning har han ordnet Mr Anderssons liste over danske politiske blogs efter hvor meget han kan (=venstreorienteret) eller ikke kan (=højreorienteret) lide dem. Taget i betragtning at han bare finder på vil jeg faktisk synes at det er lykkedes ham nogenlunde så vidt.

Problemet er, at det åbenbart ikke er sofistikeret nok for ham. Derfor har han fundet på en ny måde at ordne blogs´ne på: nationalisme eller internationalisme. Ser De, hvis man kan lider indvandrer (!) og muslimer, så er man international, og hvis man ikke kan (uhauha), ja så er man (GYS) NATIONAL.

Og hvad skal der så til for at være national? Tjo, åbenbart skal man bare synes det er et problem når visse grupper er overræpresenterede i kriminalitetsstatistikkerne, eller at en totalitær ideologi bygget op af en pædofil epileptiker og lystmorder truer med at underminere den fred og frihed vi har i landet.

Resultatet kan ses på Hr Allans lille diagram med alle Mr Anderssons oplistede blogs plottet ind.

Så har de altid noget de kan pege på og sige "Se selv: de er onde. De er helt nede i højre hjørne af diagrammet".

Henrik

Begyndende fornuft på venstrefløjen?

Ovre på Filtrat har de fået øje på noget så sjældent som et tilfælde af fornuft på den radikale venstrefløj:

..The far Left will always support Third World peoples against what they view as an imperialist West,’ notes one analyst who has closely followed the phenomenon. Another says, ‘Islamists in the West have skilfully used the tools of intellectual intimidation to build an inviolate wall around Islam, giving it a sacred status that brooks no criticism.’ The French Leftist leader Olivier Besançonneau added political piquancy when explaining his inclusivist approach to the Islamists: ‘Are these not the new slaves? Is it not natural they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist system?

’But there are small voices of doubt. To some within Britain’s Trotskyite Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, the unholy marriage is outright heresy. One Trot describes SWP advocates of the Black–Red alliance as ‘demoralised Guardian readers with headscarves’, a withering allusion to the SWP organiser who ordered secular, socialist women to cover their heads while demonstrating with their Muslim sisters outside the Israeli embassy in London. And he is scathing of SWP monitors who enforced gender segregation to mollify Muslim sensibilities at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.

Et isoleret tilfælde, eller er der grund til håb?

Henrik

Marx og Iran

Jeg har før citeret artikler fra Tech Central Station, og sørme om der ikke er en mere her. Denne gang er det Uriah Kriegel, der faktisk mener Marx engang kom til at sige noget fornuftigt om revolutioner, der kan bruges på problemet med Irans atom-program:

In a wonderful historical twist, this piece of Marxist-Leninist wisdom may be the key to the undoing of the Iranian theocracy. But to make it so, the US must play it clever and ignore the Iranian government's repeated provocations.

Because provocations they are. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his cohorts know full well that the only way to maintain and tighten their grip on the Iranian populace is to provoke the US and its Western allies into confrontation. Once that happens, wide support for the new national cause drowns domestic concerns about the totalitarian regime.

The Iranian people are by and large friendly to -- to some extent even admiring of -- the United States. Iran has a large and well educated middle class with an unabashed entrepreneurial spirit and economic vested interest in a stable middle east. This is why Iran does not produce terrorism so much as sponsor it abroad: although Hezbollah and its likes get much of their financial and organizational support from Tehran, Iranian citizens are rarely involved in terrorist acts.

En meningsmåling citeret tidligere her på bloggen underbygger overraskende nok dette.

The Iranian people are thus not the kind of human material that could be easily turned against the West on the basis of a well informed and rational public discourse. What is needed is a machinery of propaganda that taps into the politics of victimization and nurses real and imagined grievances of any order so as to channel negative energy outward.

Her kom jeg personligt til at tænke på den flæbende venstrefløjs anti-vestlige propaganda, men det er nok bare mig.

With an eye to this, the ayatollahs created three years ago a political party consisting mostly of political unknowns, headed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who previously held only the Tehran mayoralty (a title which, I am told, goes with virtually no power or name recognition in Iran), and spreading a populist message with not much more than empty slogans and evocative phrases.

With the aid of election rigging the scale of which nobody knows for sure, the populist party took over the elected government, thus shoring up support and legitimacy for the ayatollahs' dictatorship. The catch phrase of Ahmadinejad's campaign was "the corrupt Western way of life." His most notable act as mayor of Tehran had been to ban advertisements featuring British soccer superstar David Beckham. ..

The formula is simple and well known by now: generate a confrontation with the world's most powerful nation. A decision by the latter to lead an international campaign of sanctions, which would hurt the Iranian populace rather than governance, would be particularly helpful! ..

Our best bet is to ignore the Iranian provocations altogether: not even issue a formal condemnation. We should put our faith in the Marxian mechanism of boiling, seething internal unrest and its revolutionary outburst. Once the Iranians are left alone, left to turn inward and focus on the scope and depth of their own illness, nothing good can happen to the ayatollahs.

We should keep in mind that an Iranian security threat is far off in both time and probability. A recent US intelligence report warns that the Iranians may be a decade away from acquiring the bomb.

Stof til eftertanke.

Henrik

Social-fascister

Ovre på Minut tager JKN lidt pis på social-fascisterne i "Anti-fascistisk" aktion:

De selvforherligende gadekrigere i Anti-Fascistisk Aktion definerer fascismen således:

"Men hvad er fascisme så? Ja, det kunne det skrives lange bøger om. og det er der heldigvis også nogle kloge hoveder der har gjort. Imidlertid er vi nok hverken kloge eller enige nok til at give en fyldestgørende definition"

Allerede her, synes jeg at filmen knækker en smule. ..

Personligt har jeg jo ikke noget i mod at uegennyttige borgere bekæmper totalitære kræfter i samfundet, problemet er bare at anvender man det fascistiske minimum, så opfylder Anti-fascistisk Aktion flertallet af de ovennævnte parametre.
De afslutter da også i deres manifest med, at citerer Mao Tse-tung (drivkraften bag 80 millioner dødsfald): "Folket og kun folket er drivkraften i skabelsen af verdenshistorien". Mon de er stand til at definerer ”folket”.

Har jeg nogensinde nævnt, jeg synes Minut-drengene er dejligt slagkraftige?

Henrik

Iraq og CSA

Fra Varifrank:

Once upon a time there was a country and a people beset by war. Thousands of people died in the war, civilians and soldiers. In the end, the country was occupied by a foreign power. The defeated army fled the invading army from the battlefield with their weapons in hand and ran into the country to mingle with the civilian population. One of the defeated generals began to form a group to fight back as an insurgency against the occupying power. This group took the form of a secret society, one that had the direct support of part of the population.

This group began to terrorize the countryside, harassing, threatening and killing members of the populace that supported the occupying army and its new rules which flew in the face of cultural values that the people of the defeated country had lived with for years.

Eventually, the occupying army “pulled out” The secret society thrived, and many more people died. For years afterward, it was simply unsafe for certain people to walk in certain parts of town. Public killings and bombings of public places were common and almost never persecuted, as the secret society had infiltrated its members into the police force and into the judiciary.

So were talking about Iraq again, right? Oh no dear reader, this is you and me I’m talking about. This is Mississippi and the rest of the Confederate States of America. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest didn’t like the fact that his country had been defeated, and he and his band of “dead enders” created an organization called the “Ku Klux Klan”. They terrorized the newly emancipated black population and anyone who supported them. For 100 years, black men were lynched with disturbing regularity in the south. General Forrest wrapped himself in the flag and perverted the bible and sold his secret society as a way for the men who had been defeated to maintain their honor and sacred heritage.

He used that platform of hate to justify terror against a civilian population to take revenge for his defeat at the hands of a superior army on the battlefield.

Der er meget mere. Læs det hele selv.

Henrik

Etnisk udrensning af jøder

Mens den israelske hær foretager etnisk udrensning af jøder fra Gaza-striben, er Mr. Andersson faldet over en glimrende artikel om tidligere tiders ditto. Den er godt nok fra før Iraks befrielse, men det ændrer jo sådan set ikke på fortiden:

A total of 586,269 Jews from Arab countries arrived in Israel3 with at least 200,000 emigrating to France, England and the Americas. Including their offspring, the total number of Jews who were displaced from their homes in Arab countries and who live in Israel today is 1,136,436, about 41% of the total population. At least another 500,000 currently reside in France, Canada, the United States, Latin America and Australia. ..

It is not generally known that the number of Palestinians who fled the newly formed State of Israel was surpassed by the number of Jews who were forced to emigrate from Arab countries. ..

When the State of Israel was established, the Jews in the Arab countries became hated outcasts in their own lands, terrorized, imprisoned and often banished. This led to mass immigration of Jews who sadly realized there was no future for them in the land of their birth.

Derefterfølger en gennemgang af de arabiske lande, land for land:

1. Iraq

Less than a year after Israeli independence was declared in 1948, repressive measures were taken in Iraq. Thousands of Jews were imprisoned or taken into "protective custody" on charges of "Zionism". Jews applied in large numbers for exit permits to Israel, but legislation was quickly passed freezing Jewish bank accounts and forbidding Jews to dispose of their property without special permission. Jewish emigrants who succeeded in obtaining exit visas were allowed to take only fifty kilograms of luggage per person. Soon after, a decree was issued blocking the property of all Iraqi Jews who, by leaving the country, "had relinquished their nationality" and Jewish property was sold at public auction. A year later, laws were passed, restricting the movements of Jews, barring them from schools, hospitals and other public institutions, and refusing them import and export licenses to carry on their businesses. The program was so effective, that by the middle of July 1950 more than 110,000 Iraqi Jews had registered for emigration. ..

The overwhelming majority of the population was relocated to Israel, as a result of intensified anti-Jewish actions which started with the UN resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947 and continued till after the cease fire with Israel in 1949. Hundreds were killed and imprisoned during several anti-Jewish riots. Jewish property was confiscated and Zionism, the wish to return to the Land of Zion, became a capital crime. Jews were thus forced to flee and to leave all of their belongings behind. Between 1949 and 1952, 123,371 Iraqi Jews were airlifted directly to Israel in what became to be known as "Operation Ezra and Nehemia".

Ikke at De nogensinde får det at vide i medierne - Palæstinenserne er jo de stakkels ofre, der skal ynkes og beskyttes. Ikke jøderne.

Men spekulerer over hvordan verden havde set ud hvis araberne istedet for at spærre de arabiske flygtninge fra Israel inde i lejre og lade FN (og derigennem også Israel) føde på dem faktisk havde taget hånd om dem og integreret dem?

Hvis den Israelske regering samtidig havde holdt de jødiske flygtninge fra den arabiske verden i transit-lejrene (der heller ikke i Israel var særligt hyggelige steder) og nægtet at integrere dem, så kunne vi måske idag se "The Liberation Army of Reuben, Manasseh and Gad" foretage indfald i Jordan for at befri de gamle jødiske lande i Transjordan-landet, og samtidig give deres tidligere arabiske plageånde en over snuden.

Nå, men det er jo fiktion. I virkeligheden er vi for tiden vidner til at Israel bukker under for terror, og spiller terroristerne det bedste kort i hænde: et bevis på at terrorismen virker som våben.

Henrik

Æresdrab

Fra BBC:

Five people have been shot dead in the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot in what police suspect were "honour killings".

All five were relatives of a man said to have married a girl from the family of the alleged attackers.

The couple has disappeared since the attack on Sunday. Police say they fear for their lives.

Hundreds of people, especially women, are killed or injured in Pakistan every year in the name of honour. ..

Survivors from the Abbas' family allege the girl's father along with several relatives attacked their house with firearms on Sunday.

One person was killed on the spot while four others, including Mr Abbas' mother, were said to have been abducted by their attackers.

The bodies of the five victims were found late on Monday.

Hvis man ser bort fra at politiet ikke kom og arresterede morderne før de begik deres udåd har jeg svært ved at se forskellen på dette og hvad der skete i Odense for et par uger siden.

Et spørgsmål om tid.

Henrik

Tingene eskalerer i Kina

Jeg har lavet en del indlæg om uroligheder i Kina, men nu lader det til at de er begyndt at eskalere. Det kunne tænkes at vi lige så stille ser begyndelsen til en kinesisk borgerkrig? Washington Post:

Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said last month that the number of what he called "mass incidents" was rising fast across China, according to an official who heard Zhou speak at a closed meeting. Zhou said that 3.76 million Chinese took part in 74,000 such protests last year, which he characterized as a dramatic increase.

Perhaps more worrisome, Zhou continued, is a "noticeable" trend toward organized unrest, rather than the spontaneous outbursts that traditionally have led to violent clashes between citizens and police. ..

As far as is known, even the most violent protesters have been armed only with farming tools in the spate of unrest over the last several years. Similarly, police responding to riots have generally been equipped only with clubs, staffs and tear gas. There have been no reports of firearms being used.

However, officials told a party newspaper in Guangxi province last week that police found arms, ammunition and explosives in a raid Thursday against villagers who refused to heed orders to stop illegal mining. The villagers had already clashed once with police in late June, the Reuters news service reported. ..

Deng, who was at a meeting of the conference addressed by Zhou recently, said the minister showed concern about instances in which police must react violently to bring protests under control. This was particularly true, he said, when police broke up a protest in Beijing in April by People's Liberation Army veterans demanding better retirement benefits. Another protest by disgruntled PLA veterans was held last week in Beijing as the army marked its 78th anniversary, witnesses said, and police intervened to break it up by hauling away a number of demonstrators.

Razziaen i Guangxi-provinsen (En provins i SV-Kina beboet af Chuang-folket, der er tættere på thai´erne end kineserne) bliver beskrevet således af Reuters, via Yahoo News:

About 800 policemen clashed with armed villagers during a pre-dawn raid in southern China and arrested 47 people after residents defied a crackdown on illegal mining and went on a rampage, a local paper and officials said.

Police raided four villages in Hezhou in Guangxi province on Thursday and seized firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators and machetes, said the Legal Express, which is published by the Guangxi branch of the Communist Party.

The newspaper's Friday edition did not say if any policemen or villagers were injured in the three-hour raid in which police "fought bravely." ..

Disgruntled villagers had gone on a "beating, smashing and looting" rampage in June, it said, without elaborating. Officials declined to provide details of last month's turbulence.

Wielding clubs and shields, policemen took 42 men and five women into custody on Thursday, a propaganda official said.

"They're suspected of violently resisting the law in the June 24 incident," the official surnamed Li told Reuters. ..

Land disputes, corruption, abuse of power and a widening gap between the rich and the poor were among the reasons leading to the number of protests shooting up to 74,000 last year from just 10,000 in 1994, a Hong Kong newspaper reported last month.

The number of people involved in those demonstrations jumped to 3.76 million in 2004 from 730,000 a decade earlier, the Beijing-funded Ta Kung Pao quoted Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang as telling parliament's top advisory body. ..

In June, some 300 toughs with rifles, clubs and sharpened pipes descended on Shengyou village in the northern province of Hebei and clashed with farmers, who were angry over a lack of compensation and staged a sit-in on land slated for a new lime plant, in one of the bloodiest in a wave of rural unrest.

Six villagers were killed and scores injured in the clash, which highlighted growing disputes over land rights in China, where rapid development is encroaching on rural property and where the government places an overriding emphasis on the need for social stability.

Samtidig var der også oprør i Indre Mongoli (en nord-kinesisk provins). The Guardian via Taipei Times:

More than 1,000 villagers in Inner Mongolia took the local Communist Party chief hostage Thursday in the latest land dispute to rock the Chinese countryside.

Amid signs of division in the government about how to handle rural unrest, the residents of Qianjin village have also driven off hundreds of armed police and blocked construction of a motorway they claim is being built through their crops and homes without adequate compensation.

"About 2,000 protesters have surrounded the local government office," a resident, who declined to give her name, told the reporters by telephone. "They are holding the general secretary and another official." ..

In protest, they halted the work by occupying the building site and seizing construction equipment. Last week, they repelled more than 100 police who had been sent in to empty the site and arrest the ringleaders in a six-hour clash.

"The entire village is in a state of anarchy," Han Guowu, the district chief, told reporters. "Please trust the party and the government," he said. But such pleas are falling on deaf ears as more and more Chinese peasants take matters into their own hands.

The protest in Qianjin is at least the third since April in which locals have fought, and -- at least temporarily -- beaten public security forces.

In June, six peasants were killed in Shengyou, Hebei Province, during a battle with thugs employed by a power company to force them off their land. The government recognized the validity of their dispute, sacked the mayor and promised the villagers that they could keep their property.

Two months earlier, the residents of Huankantou, in Zhejiang Province, fought off more than 1,000 riot police during a protest over a chemical plant.

Det er stadig småting i et land som Kina, men det eskalerer.

Henrik

Saddam og al Qaeda

Heri Juni og August har The Daily Standard begået en serie af artikler om forbindelserne (beviste såvel som påståede) mellem Saddam Hussein og al Qaida. Links til dem:

- Another Link in the Chain - The role of Saddam and al Qaeda in the creation of Ansar al Islam
- The Pope of Terrorism, Part I - Hassan al-Turabi, ally of Saddam Hussein and bin Laden's long-time friend and benefactor, is freed from jail.
- The Pope of Terrorism, Part II - Hassan al-Turabi, Sudan, and the bin Laden-Iraq connection.
- The Algerian Connection - Why did Saddam financially support an al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria?

Læs det hele.

En af journalisterne bag artiklerne har også skrevet en bog om samme emne, nemlig "The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America" af Stephen F. Hayes. Anmeldelser kan læses, og bøgen købes, her.

Henrik

Iran bevæbner "oprørerne" i Irak

Iran - eller i hvert fald dele af magtapparatet i landet, der har adgang til sprængstoffer og viden om at konstruere sofistikerede sprængladninger - er blevet afsløret i at levere den slags sprængladninger der for en uges penge siden kostede 14 amerikanske marinesoldater livet. Iflg Iranmania:

Many of the new roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran and shipped in from there, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed military and intelligence officials, the newspaper said the deadlier bombs could become more common as insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons themselves in Iraq. ..

The paper said that unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles.

The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed.

Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran, The Times said.

Det er så hvad det er - det er "politics as usual" på de kanter, så det må bare være et spørgsmål om at amerikanerne giver sig til at bevæbne resterne af PKK og Mujahedeen Khalq og sender dem ind i Iran. Førstnævntes guerillaer er begyndt at sprede deres aktiviteter fra udelukkende at omfatte Tyrkiet til nu også at tage sigte på Iran. I søndags dræbte de fire Iranske politifolk ved byen Urmia i V-Iran.

Henrik

Hvorfor Taliban endnu ikke er blevet knust

Strategypage har en anmeldelse af bogen "Hunting Al Qaeda: A Take-No-Prisoners Account of Terror, Adventure, and Disillusionment"

..they discovered that the greatest obstacle they would face in Afghanistan would not be the heat, the difficult terrain, or the enemy, but the reluctance of their commanders to let them hunt the terrorists. Determined to make an impact, Beast 85 found ways to take the war to the enemy despite the choking bureaucracy that hindered them. If they failed, they risked death or capture. If they succeeded, they risked court martial.

Now the men of Beast 85, who came home in September of 2002, have published a memoir of their time in Afghanistan. Hunting Al Qaeda tells how Beast 85 was able to capture three senior Taliban leaders at a time when Task Force 11, the Pentagon’s super secret special operations task force in Afghanistan, could not manage to capture even one. Beast 85 also captured or destroyed 79,000 pounds of enemy weapons and munitions, which accounted for 80% of the material Coalition forces captured or destroyed during their time in Afghanistan. They might well have captured Mullah Omar, whose location they had learned of from a CIA agent, but could not get permission to launch a raid before their quarry had slipped away.

The liberation of Afghanistan was one of the most remarkable military campaigns in history. It was accomplished by highly trained teams of Special Forces operating in a difficult and dangerous country where they were forced to rely on their own initiative. But by May of 2002, when Beast 85 arrived on the scene, Afghanistan had become safe enough for a three star general and a vast horde of underemployed staff officers. This huge command apparatus, which oversaw only a few battalions of actual troops, busied itself with micromanaging Special Forces teams in the field. Every operation had to be approved by so many levels of bureaucracy that by the time it was launched, the target had moved on.

Things got even worse following Operation Full Throttle, a wretchedly planned raid that accomplished nothing and left scores of civilians dead when the Air Force mistakenly bombed a wedding party. Beast 85 participated in Full Throttle, and give a detailed account. (Including how Beast 85 was itself nearly annihilated by an overeager SEAL team.) After the public relations disaster of bombing civilians, the American command in Afghanistan became even more risk averse, and operations required such long approval times that their chance of success was virtually nil.

Det taler jo sådan set for sig selv.

Henrik

Kina-nyt

Kina er et STORT land. For et par år siden fangede jeg en lille notits om at en nylig kampagne mod kriminalitet havde ført til 200.000 arrestationer mens der var blevet konfiskeret intet mindre end 100.000 skydevåben og 1.000 tons sprængstof (ca-tal efter hukommelsen).

To små sætninger i en nyhedshistorie på BBC i mandags understreger det igen:

There were more than a thousand reported bombings last year.

Most go unreported by the country's tightly-controlled state media.

UPDATE:

Angantyr har links til en flok kinesiske blogs, der mener det var en muslimsk selvmordsbomber, der var tale om i BBC-historien (eksplosionen fandt sted i en bus, og officielt døde der ud over selvmordsbomberen kun én person). Personligt køber jeg den nu ikke - hvis en muslim havde villet sprænge sig i luften og tage nogle kinesere med sig er Fujian-provinsen ikke ligefrem det mest oplagte sted. Muslimske ekstremister har før foretaget terror-bombninger af busser, men det har været i Sinkiang-provinsen, hvor de lige og lige udgør et flertal, og i Kinas hovedstad Beijing.

Dertil kommer at der er meget let adgang til sprængstoffer (se de 1000 tons konfiskeret foroven), at der stort set intet er, der hedder forsigtig behandling af sprængstoffer, og at Kina for tiden har et ualmindeligt stort antal løse elektroner i form af de såkaldte "Bare Branches", jeg har nævnt før på bloggen

Selv i en tid, hvor Kina prøver at tørre så meget det kan af på muslimske separatister i Xinjiang-provinsen var der feks tvivl om hvad en eksplosion der kostede 11 mennesker livet i en minibus i provinsen i januar skulle tilskrives, og uforsigtig behandling af sprængstoffer var en af kandidaterne:

Sisci noted that blasts caused by the careless handling of explosives and other hazardous materials are common in China, despite laws against possessing or carrying them on public transport. "Explosions in China are fairly common because explosives are carried all over the place and used for a variety of reasons -- from mining to fireworks," he said. "They are quite commonly purchased, everywhere."

Hvis man følger lidt med i medierne vil man også engang i mellem se små notitser om, at nu er endnu en kinesisk skole sprunget i luften, og 20-40 flere kinesiske skolebørn er døde. I Marts 2001 var det tilfældet på en skole i Jiangxi-provinsen, hvor 37 skolebørn og 4 lærere døde fordi skolen, for at få budgettet til at hænge sammen, havde sat børnene til at lave fyrværkeri under uforsvarlige forhold. Og det var endda efter en serie af lignende uheld året forud - 33 dræbt i marts, 36 i Juli og 31 i august 2000.

Andre gange er det imidlertid vanvittige sataner, der er ude på hævn for reelle eller indbildte uretfærdigheder, og så lader det gå ud over uskyldige. Også i marts 2001 sprang en arbejdsløs kineser fire bomber i fire forskellige boligblokke i løbet af en time, og dræbte 108 mennesker.

Nu er problemet så, at man ikke altid kan stole på hvad de kinesiske medier siger. Den oprindelige officielle version af marts 2001-skole-eksplosionen var feks at en mand var gået ind i skolen med to sække sprængstoffer og havde detoneret dem. Og hvad angår serie-bombningen er der nogle der mener at en enkelt man ikke selv kunne få en sådan serie-bombning op at stå.

....hvilket bringer på banen at serie-bombninger ("koordinerede angreb" når medierne taler om al Qaeda og lignende) åbenbart er rimeligt almindelige i Kina. Følgende er også fra 2001:

China has seen a wave of bombings in recent months, though the vast majority have been blamed on disgruntled workers or jilted lovers.

On Friday, a series of blasts occurred in two cities in the southern province of Guangdong. Reuters quoted the Beijing Morning Post as saying that several bombs exploded in Zhangjiang city, in "Xiashan, Chikan, Kaifaqu and other areas of the city." Zhangjiang is about 350 kilometers west of Hong Kong. What the targets were was not mentioned.

On the same morning, three separate bombings occurred in residential districts in Jiangmen, some 220 kilometers northeast of Zhangjiang, the Beijing Youth Daily said. Two of the blasts occurred about 100 meters apart, blowing out windows in eighth-floor and third-floor residential apartments along the city's Shuinan Road, the paper said.

Police said the explosions in Jiangmen were the work of an individual bent on avenging himself on relatives and rival businessmen. At least two people were killed in these explosions, including the bomber, and six injured. It was unclear whether the explosions in Zhangjiang were related to the ones in Jiangmen.

Man skal heller ikke afvise, at de kinesiske muslimer faktisk har noget at hævne. I oktober sidste år var der således en reel pogrom mod Hui (kinesisktalende muslimer) i Henan-provinsen. Hvad der reelt udløste det står stadig hen i det uvisse - historierne er dog enige om at en Hui-mand ramte en Han-pige, men om hun kun blev strejfet eller døde af det står hen i det uvisse. Forskellige beskrivelser af hvad der fulgte - Taiwan Security Research:

An official at a local mosque, who declined to be identified, said the violence in the Henan countryside began Wednesday after a traffic dispute involving Hui truck drivers and Han villagers in Weitan, a corn- and wheat-growing hamlet located about 400 miles southwest of Beijing outside Kaifeng, the ancient Song Dynasty capital of China.

The fighting soon spread to several nearby villages, where witnesses reached by phone described mobs looting, burning down homes and beating people in alternating raids by members of the two ethnic groups. As many as 10,000 anti-riot and military police began pouring into the area beginning Friday, but villagers clashed with them too, swinging iron bars and throwing bricks and stones, witnesses said.

In these times:

Fighting between the two communities raged for hours, Ma says, leaving more than 100 dead, more than 400 injured, and several houses and vehicles burned.

Word of the riot spread quickly in the region, threatening to draw thousands more into the frenzy, thanks to the cell phones and computers proliferating even in rural China.
“Thousands of [Han] people surrounded [Nanren village] with bulldozers and tractors and wanted to smash all the Hui houses,” says Zhujian Jun, 32, a carpenter in Zhongmou, a town about 20 miles south of Nanren.

In Ji Yuan, about 80 miles to the west, “thousands of Hui people were getting into trucks to go join the fight,” says Yuan Peng, a Hui man in Ji Yuan. Rumors also spread about a planeload of Huis flying in from the northern province of Ningxia, an officially designated Hui autonomous region, where about 2 million of China’s 8.2 million Hui live.

Local authorities moved quickly to quell the violence, but it was so ferocious that at least 15 policemen were killed before officials called in special paramilitary troops, sources say.

Seattle Morning Herald:

The rival villagers failed to settle their dispute, which quickly grew to involve thousands of people in Zhongmou county between the cities of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, according to two accounts of the incident.

Local police failed to contain the unrest and authorities deployed the paramilitary People's Armed Police to restore order. Martial law was declared over the weekend, people in the area said, adding that the situation had since been stabilised.

One person briefed on the clashes said that the authorities may have been particularly alarmed after the police stopped a 17-truck convoy carrying Hui men to the area from other counties and provinces as it passed through Qi county, near Zhongmou. Blockades were set up on main roads in the area, and some bus services were halted.

That suggests that word of the violence may have spread through a network of Hui and perhaps other Muslim groups, and that mutual support among them is relatively strong. But details were sketchy and difficult to confirm.

Alt på baggrund at et biluheld. Der skal ikke meget til at udløse noget sådant, når folk allerede hader hinanden.

Update II

Lidt mere om bomber på busser i Kina i år:

An explosion March 17 on a double-decker bus in Jiangxi province, south of Fuzhou, killed up to 30 people. News reports said authorities could not rule out fireworks as a cause.

In mid-January, a disgruntled coal miner was accused of placing a bomb aboard a minibus in the northwestern Xinjiang region, killing 11 people.

Update III

Jeg synes selv, at tusind bombninger om året i Kina lyder af meget, men det viser sig at det er det faktisk ikke. Ifølge BATF var der således i USA (et land med en fjerdedel af Kinas befolkning) 391 alene i 2002 og 220 i 2003. Dertil kommer 114 forsøg på bombninger og 32 for tidlige eksplosioner i 2002 og hhv 43 og 25 i 2003. Uden tvivl er en del knægte der leger med kemikalier, eller venstreradikale der er ude på at sprænge ting i luften, for i 2002 var det samlede antal ofre (inlusive brandbomber) "kun"13 dræbte og 80 sårede. I 2003 var det tilsvarende tal 7 og 55.

Henrik

Seneste torturmetode på Guantanamo: Hary Potter

Vi har i et par år efterhånden hørt historie efter historie om, hvordan de indsatte krigsfanger i Guantanamo-lejren er blevet "mishandlet". Efter at have været udsat for noget så grusomt som afhørersker i hotpants og lytning til Christina Aguilera har de ondeondeonde amerikanere nu fundet på et endnu ondere tortur-instrument:

Harry Potter.

Ja, jeg ved. Iflg Yahoo News:

Harry Potter has bewitched detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where tales of the young wizard and mysteries by Agatha Christie top the list of most popular books, a prison librarian said on Tuesday.

"Harry Potter is a popular title among some of the detainee population," said the librarian, a civilian contractor identified only as "Lorie" who works at the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Lorie said the popularity of the best-selling Harry Potter books, which recount the adventures of a boy wizard as he triumphs over the powers of evil, was matched only by the prisoners' passion for Agatha Christie, some of whose murder mysteries are set in the Middle East....

Asked what other books were among the prisoners' favourites, Lorie said, "We have 12 different Agatha Christie titles in Arabic that are very popular. Also 1001 Arabian Nights."
Overall, the library contains 1,200 books, 164 magazines and 40 videos.

Ej hvor ondt, hva´?

Henrik

Fra Jeckyll til Hyde

BBC har en historie, der for den sags skyld også har nået de danske medier, hvor USA´s præsident Bush bare ikke kan vinde. Allerede overskriften siger det hele:

Bush rejects mother's Iraq plea

Nej, hvor er han ond, hvad? Sådan bare at nægte at opfylde en mors krav om at han skal trække de 120.000 amerikanske soldater ud af Irak, så irakerne rigtig kan komme igang med at massakrere hinanden.

Drudge Report har for den sags skyld en artikel om hvordan Fru Sheehan er vendt på en tallerken:

CINDY 2004

THE REPORTER of Vacaville, CA published an account of Cindy Sheehan's visit with the president at Fort Lewis near Seattle on June 24, 2004:

"'I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.'

"The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

"The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

"For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again."

'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said."

CINDY 2005

Sheehan's current comments are a striking departure.

She vowed on Sunday to continue her protest until she can personally ask Bush: "Why did you kill my son?"

In an interview on CNN, she claimed Bush "acted like it was party" when she met him last year."

It was -- you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey."

He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, 'So who are we honoring here?' He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him 'him' or 'he.' He called him 'your loved one.'

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party.

BLITZER: Like a party? I mean...

SHEEHAN: Yes, he came in very jovial, and like we should be happy that he, our son, died for his misguided policies. He didn't even pretend like somebody...

END

On her current media tour, Sheehan has not been asked to explain her twist on Bush; from praise to damnation!

Ja, man undres

Henrik

Jamen, det er jo kun civile når amerikanerne slår dem ihjel....

Afghanistan på BBC mellem onsdag og fredag:

US bomb "kills Afghan civilians" - skidt med de 22 Talibanere der også blev dræbt
Militants kill Afghan woman "spy" - når Taleban siger det er hun jo ikke civil...
Explosion rocks Kandahar market - den dræbte er ikke civil, hun er bare en "person"

For de britiske skatteyderes penge.

Henrik

Det vellønnede venstre går amok

...godt hjulpet af IFF. Efter vi har hjulpet forherligelsen af en massemorder i Ålborg til lidt åbenbart uvelkommen medie-opmærksomhed er det slået klik for ophavsmanden, Marco Evaristti. I fredagens Berlinger vil han - i bedste "Hvis det er fakta, så benægter jeg fakta"-stil at se virkeligheden i øjnene:

Han siger for det første, at han selv arbejder på en helt ny biografi, som skal med i kataloget. Og for det andet, at han aldrig kunne finde på at omtale Che Guevaras ansvar for fængsling og henrettelse af politiske modstandere

Det er jo sådan set fint nok at han lyver for sig selv, men når han gør det for offentligheden, og oven i købet får 300.000 kroner af skatteydernes penge bør der være nogen der brokker sig. At Marco-drengen så siden går både amok i venstrereligiøs fanatisme og går i barndom gør bare sagen så meget desto mere underholdende:

"Hvordan skulle jeg kunne tillade mig at gøre det, når jeg har fået lov til at vise noget, som er helligt. Skulle jeg kunne tillade mig at pisse og skide på denne helligdom, som de giver mig. Det handler om humanisme og respekt for sine med-mennesker, og det har jeg i hvert fald."

Ja du har så, har du - på den vellønnede venstrefløj har man nemlig humanisme og respekt for sine medmennesker når man svinebinder og henretter dem med nakkeskud. Fy for fanden. Her har du en femmer til guldfisk og en blender, og så gider vi ikke høre mere på dit bræk, Marco.

Her på bloggen venter jeg forøvrigt spændt på at Svend Auken fordømmer den venstrereligiøse Che-dyrkning.

Henrik

Vanvittig Venstrefløj i Danmark

Fundet på Frit Forums debatforum, hvor det er postet af Sikandar Siddique:

11/9 katastrofen har ikke kun omformet vores hverdag, vores måde at færdes på, men også hele verdenssystemet. Uanset hvem der er ansvarlig for denne uhyrlige og umenneskelige handling, har den gjort noget uhyrligt. Den Amerikanske regering kastede straks skylden på al – qaeda, men har dog stadig den dag i dag ikke formået at kunne fremvise konkrete beviser.

Ikke for noget, men er det kun mig der kan huske optagelserne af Osama bin Laden, der praler af hvordan hans ingeniør-viden var grundlaget da de planlagde 11. September?

Inlægget fortsætter så med den sædvanlige offerretorik (vesten er jo ond), og ender med den sædvanlige venstrefløjs-brægen om at vi da endelig ikke skal forsvare os, men istedet skal finde "årsagerne" og "roden af problemet".

Hvad er så "årsagen"? Jo, den er følgende:

Hvordan kan man forvente af en far, som har set sin søn blive tortureret og derefter myrdet, at han ikke tager loven i egen hånd hvis ikke han får retfærdighed.

Hr. Siddique formår ikke at fortælle os hvordan i alverden det at slagte utallige uskyldige nogensinde kan udgøre "retfærdighed". Eller for den sags skyld hvordan hele verden - inklusive terroristerne selv - har overset at de "har set sin søn blive tortureret og derefter myrdet". Det værste de har været ude for er at blive tilbudt alkohol og villige damer.

Hvad der ikke gør sagen bedre er, at Hr. Siddique er opstillet som kandidat til borgerrepræsentationen i København for Socialdemokratiet.

Henrik

Anglosfæren

National Review har en anmeldelse af James Bennet´s "The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century" online. Anmelderen er ikke enig i Bennet´s hypotese, men derfor kan man jo godt lære noget af den alligevel:

Bennett has constructed his own thesis of the Anglosphere out of this Anglo-Protestant historical inheritance. "It is our core values and characteristics that have made us dynamic," he writes, "and it is to those values that we must return": individualism, rule of law, the honoring of covenants, and an emphasis on freedom. The core of Bennett's Anglosphere comprises the countries where these values are dominant: the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, English-speaking Canada, and the English-speaking Caribbean. He also includes the educated English-speaking populations of South Africa and India as important "nodes." He describes some other former colonies, including Zimbabwe and the Philippines, as outside the inner circle but still closer to the center than to the periphery.

Bennett wants to distinguish the Anglosphere from other models of international alliance that he believes have outlived their usefulness. The principal one is the concept of "the West": the European-descended countries that constituted Western civilization. The widening gulf between continental Europe and the U.S. shows that the concept of the West is already anachronistic. It was artificially prolonged anyway, Bennett argues, by the need for an identity to tie NATO together during the Cold War. In the post-Soviet era, there is nothing to inhibit the development of a separate identity for the English-descended civilizations.

Læs selv resten, men spekuler på hvilken del af "Vesten" du selv synes Danmark burde alliere sig med.

Henrik

Ægteskab

Vi har i Danmark haft vores hyr med striden om homoseksuelle skal have lov til at blive gift i kirken. I Canada er de nået et skridt videre:

Bill Dalrymple, 56, and best friend Bryan Pinn, 65, have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation with a twist -- they're straight men.

"I think it's a hoot," Pinn said.

The proposal came last Monday on the patio of a Toronto bar amid shock and laughter from their friends. But the two -- both of whom were previously married and both of whom are still looking for a good woman to love -- insist that after the humour subsided, a real issue lies at the heart of it all.

"There are significant tax implications that we don't think the government has thought through," Pinn said.

Det er så hvad det er - personligt kan jeg ikke se hvorfor man skal have skattebegunstigelser bare fordi man bliver gift. Det skægge ved denne historie er imidlertid, at dem der er mest forargede over den er lige præcis den gruppe der har fået presset loven om registreret partnerskab igennem i Canada: de homoseksuelle.

Læs selv resten.

Henrik

Terrorisme kan ikke vinde

Siden 11. September, og igen efter terrorangrebene i London, har der været en del kværuleren om at vi ikke skal fokusere på at nogle galninge slår uskyldige ihjel, men på hvad årsagen er. I Asharq alawshat har Amir Taheri begået en sublim artikel, der kommer med et meget interessant bud på hvad den reelt er:

All this shows that, in the long-run, terrorism does not work.

Terrorism is, in fact, the tool of the intellectually lazy politicians.

Khomeini knew that neither he nor any of his acolytes would be able to challenge Kasravi in the realm of law, history and literature. Khomeini could not write a book as good as any of Kasravi’s. Nor could he compete with Kasravi’s knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence and Iranian history. To be able to do that Khomeini would have needed years of serious study, then unavailable in Qom, and an intellectual discipline that he never acquired. ..

With the advent of globalisation, Islamist terrorism is now able to strike beyond the frontiers of the Muslim world. But the same lazy mentality is at work. The terrorist knows that he is incapable of building an alternative civilisation capable of competing with the one he despises. So he tries to destroy what becomes the cause of his humiliation.

Politics is a serious business which requires hard work. It needs to find ways of keeping society in harmony while meeting its basic needs and creating conditions for economic, social and cultural development. Writing a poem, erecting a building, composing a symphony, painting a miniature, compiling a theological study, and making a film are not easy. But making a car-bomb is. The Taliban Mullah Muhammad Omar’s total work of “scholarship” consists of 30 pages of his ranting against “ the infidel”. But the terrorist operations he has organised and taken part in since 1992, when the Pakistani military intelligence recruited him, run into hundreds.

Terrorists always remind me of a short story by Voltaire in which a bug is angered by the ticktack of a clock on the wall and decides to destroy “ the monster”. It has no time to find out how the clock is made, why it is there, and whether there might not be other ways of attenuating the sound of its ticktack. The bug is a terrorist; it wants instant result from a single effort. So it decides to rush headlong into the clock like one of our suicide-bombers these days.

The hands of the clock stop of a tiny fraction of a second but then continue their relentless counting of time, ticking and tacking as loud as ever. Our martyrdom-seeking bug, however, falls to the floor, crushed and lifeless. A few moments later the cleaning lady sweeps the corpse of the suicide-martyr bug into the dustbin.

Terrorism can never win. It may generate much heat but never produces any light.

Taget i betragtning at islamisterne ikke engang kan samle intellektuel tankekraft til at komme op med egne argumenter for hvorfor de er retfærdige, men bare genbruger argt anti-vestligt venstrefløjsbavl fra de sidste tre årtier lyder den forklaring ikke helt så skeløjet.

Henrik