Posts Tagged ‘reality’

Nordlinger’s 6th and final report from Davos went up today. (I keep wanting to type Davros, that would be an interesting Nordlinger interview). He is relating a question and answer session with Václav Klaus and part of it is almost as required as the Yon story today:

Klaus has published a book called Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? He tells us that the answer is freedom—freedom is endangered—adding, “I imagine National Review would understand what I mean.” I reply, “Actually, there are differing views about global warming at National Review.”

A different journalist says, “What freedom do you mean? What freedom is endangered?” Klaus points to her and says, “Yours, mine, [turning to the WEF representative] the moderator’s. The freedom of publications like National Review.”

Still another journalist, with high-pitched indignation, says, “Are you saying that Al Gore is threatening freedom?” Klaus answers, “More or less. Environmentalism and the global-warming alarmism are challenging our freedom; Al Gore is an important person in this movement.”

About the financial crisis, Klaus says, “I am more afraid of the ‘reforms’ that will result from the crisis than I am of the crisis itself. I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economies all around the world. I’m afraid of the potential consequences of overactivity by politicians,” as those politicians “try to win votes by pretending that they are coming to the rescue.”

Bingo!

…the New Minutemen

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks.

Hot air reports and comments:

It’s a particularly despicable scam. Jassam didn’t just step in as some sort of Islamist rape counselor to advise suicide as an answer to shame. She arranged the rapes of dozens of women, and then presented herself as an advisor to the victims to recruit them for suicide missions. It’s one of the most ghoulish plots I’ve ever known, and a stunning betrayal of her own gender.

I’m reminded of what Lincoln said concerning the bill passed in the south at the end of the war authorizing Negro troops. He said we have to get to the bottom of the manpower well of the foe. I guess they are getting there.

This would never get reported while Bush was still there.

I know this is an over used term…

Posted: February 5, 2009 by datechguy in Hiwired, opinion/news
Tags: ,

…but if you read only one thing today read Michael Yon’s letter exclusively on Instapundit. Key Excerpt:

The idea of a two-state solution, once popular with many Israelis, is evaporating. More and more Israelis are coming to believe that any appeasement with the Palestinians is merely a reward for terrorism. And so it is. The Palestinians have become prisoners by their own hand. The hand that builds the bombs, wields the guns, and welds the rockets, has caused a fence to be built around them.

They are isolated and imprisoned. But it’s not only Israel who’s done this. The Gaza Strip borders Egypt, and Egypt has done the same. The terrorists are tunneling like rats and the Egyptians and Israelis are trying to locate and destroy the tunnels under their respective fence lines. Who wants the Palestinians? If the Palestinians truly were a peaceful lot, victims only of Israel, one might think that they would have free entry into Egypt. But they do not.

Yon is the best single reporter in the world on the war on terror.

UPDATE: His bottom line is unfortunately correct at least at this time.

It simply does not make sense for us to support a Palestinian state, when at every turn they demonstrate that they will simply become more powerful, richer terrorists, with longer range rockets.

My greatest regret with HiWired is we were unable to pull off the podcast with Yon. We traded e-mails kept missing each other. It was before he was well known and would have been a solid exclusive.

Who woulda thunk it?

Posted: February 5, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , ,

Promoted from today’s Morning Joe. One of the starting headlines is that one of the most wanted Nazi War Criminals still left alive from WWII apparently died in Egypt where he hid under a false name for decades.

One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim or ‘Doctor Death’, lived for years as a quiet, pious Muslim in a small hotel on the edge of Islamic Cairo, where he was known as Doctor Tarek.

Concealed in the labyrinthine streets of the largest city in Africa and the Middle East, the man wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with horrific medical experiments found refuge until his death in 1992.

The next paragraph is almost stereotypical of killers in hiding:

“He was like a giant, not very chatty but he never missed a prayer at the mosque,” remembers Gamal Abu Ahmed, who today lives in Dr Death’s former room on the sixth floor of the Qasr el-Medina hotel.

He was a very quiet man…Never missed a prayer at the mosque. No!

A genocidal war criminal involved in the death of Jews hiding in an Arab country as a Muslim. I can’t handle the shock. How did he ever manage to blend in?

Update: Israellycool covered this yesterday, see what happens when you miss a day of your favorite blogs.