This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Gitmo alum get promotions after release

    The Australian ABC News is reporting that two Gitmo alum have started their climb up the al Qaeda corporate ladder;

    One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official said.

    Three other men appear in the video, including Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, identified as an Al Qaeda field commander. SITE later said he was prisoner number 333.

    Of course, taking their talking points from Amnesty International, they blame their detainment for their life of crime;

    “By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for,” al-Shihri was quoted as saying.

    Al-Shiri was transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007, the US counter-terrorism official said.

    I wonder if our buddy Chris Arendt, of the Emo Brotherhood wing of the Iraq Veterans Against the War was BFF with these two while he was handing out toilet paper in Gitmo.

  • Hamas belatedly announces ceasefire

    Last night I wrote that the Israelis announced their intention to enact a unilateral ceasefire dependent upon Hamas’ ability to keep their rockets on the ground. Well, Hamas announced their own ceasefire this morning (from BBC);

    “We… announce a ceasefire of our factions in the Gaza Strip and we stress that our demand is the withdrawal of the enemy forces from the Gaza Strip within a week, along with the opening of all the crossings for the entry of humanitarian aid, food and other necessities for our people in the Gaza Strip.”

    After losing about a thousand of their jihadists, they sound like they’re in a position to make demands, don’t they? Here’s the full text of the statement. BBC adds this comment;

    Many people are hoping that a ceasefire will last, but no-one on either side of the border will be surprised if the fighting starts up again, our correspondent adds.

    Yeah, no kidding. We can probably expect lots of Hamas rocket rangers to not get the word, or even care that there’s a ceasefire. After all they fired off 3000 rockets during the last six-month ceasefire. In fact, Times Online reports that Hamas fired off five rockets into Israel after the Israelis announced their unilateral ceasefire;

    The strategy appeared to be working when Hamas sent at least five rockets towards Sderot and said that it would not stop fighting until all Israeli troops had left Gaza. Israeli aircraft swiftly destroyed the rocket-launching site.

    AFP reports that a summit hosted by Egypt is scheduled to begin this week;

    Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Jordan will be represented at the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian government official, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

    In Paris, the office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he will co-chair the summit along with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak, who has sought to broker an end to the fighting under a truce plan.

    It’s nice that they’re all going through the motions, but actually, by killing 1200 Hamas fighters, Israel has done more for peace in the region than all of the governments of the world.

  • Israel vows ceasefire; Hamas not so much

    The Washington Post reports that Israel may declare a unilateral ceasfire in Gaza;

    Olmert said Israeli troops would hold their fire starting at 2 a.m. local time Sunday but would remain in Gaza indefinitely. He said a withdrawal would depend on whether Hamas would also stop fighting and launching rockets into southern Israel.

    “If they stop firing, we will consider leaving Gaza at a time that is suitable to us,” he said in a televised address to the Israeli public.

    Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? All Hamas has to do is stop firing missiles like the 3000 they fired during the 6-month ceasefire. So Hamas, after being battered and bloodied for the last few weeks should jump at it, right? Well, those fun-loving, cazy dudes at Hamas don’t;

    Prior to the cease-fire announcement, Hamas leaders said the Islamist movement would continue to fight until Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza and ended its 18-month economic blockade of the Palestinian territory.

    Hamas sounds like they have the upper hand, don’t they? Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ representative to Syria, from his suite in the Damascus Ramada, moving aside the veils of the 72 virgins in his bed (OK, I made that up) was characteristically (for a coward not anywhere near the fighting) defiant (Times Online).

    Israeli sources said the ceasefire would make Hamas responsible for any fresh clashes. But Hamas was not a party to the deal and Osama Hamdan, a top official based in Lebanon, said after Mr Olmert’s announcement that the group would continue to attack Israeli forces.

    So, let’s see how long Hamas can keep their rockets in their collective pocket. Odds are they’ll provoke another offensive by Israel and given a complete pass from the “industrialized” countries because Hamas wasn’t “a party to the deal”.

    Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ quotes Juan Cole threatening that Israel shouldn’t cause the media to show dead Palestinian children during the Inauguration and ruin it for everyone. Don Surber writes that Isreal just ran out of targets.

  • Pro-Hamas theater meets Free Republic [Jonn]

    Lafayette Gaza 079

    This afternoon in DC, at Lafayette Park, across from the White House amidst preparations for the Inauguaration, several thousand protesters gathered ostensibly to show their support for Gazans, but as you can see by the flag above, it was more an Israel Hate Fest than support for anyone.

    About three blocks from Lafayette Park, in Farragut Park, I ran into a prayer session;

    Lafayette Gaza 010

    Lafayette Gaza 009

    Inside Lafayette Park, it was interesting to see who was behind the protest;

    (more…)

  • Putin and Chavez shut off heat

    Does anyone else think it’s odd that Putin shuts off gas shipments to Europe the same week that Hugo Chavez shuts down the Joe-4-Oil program shipments to the US. and it all happens in January, just a week after Russian warships made a call to Venezuelan port?

    Let me be clear; I’m glad Chavez shut down the free or cheaper heating oil program – not only was it taking food from the mouths of poor Venezuelans, it was a huge propaganda ploy for the pudgy little red-shirted cholito. And it gets that mouthful of teeth, Joe Kennedy, off of my television. I guess no one thinks it’s funny that the program ends just as the Bush presidency ends, too.

    While the Russian Navy conducted exercises in our hemisphere, they’re reminding Europe who keeps them warm at night. All of this in the middle of a global economic “crisis”.  I’m pretty sure it all has something to do with Obama beginning his term and the little fellas are trying to put their own strengths on display for the world to see.

    It looks like Joe Biden’s prediction that the world will test Obama will come to pass a lot sooner than Biden thought. We’ll see how all of that bi-partisan feel good bluster and flourishes play in a theater production orchestrated by Russia, Venezuela and China.

    Updated: Kate tells me that Citgo started the cheap oil program back up. I guess I missed the news.

  • Nazi Imagery in Arab Press

    The Jewish Defense League has assembled some of the editorial cartoons from the Arab media that are using Nazi imagery to condemn Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza and put them in a slide show. Here’s a few;

    I’ve looked for Arab-hatred in the Israeli press and I’ve yet to find any. A statement from the JDL;

    “The Arab press serves both as a powerful influencer of opinion and as mirror of the larger society, and as the conflict between Israel and Hamas plays out in the daily newspapers, anti-Semitism and Nazi comparisons have reached a fever pitch,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. “In this incendiary environment, where anger at Israel already seethes in the Arab street, cartoonists and editors are doing more than heaping invective on Israel. They are fueling a toxic mix of hatred — for Israel, for America, for Jews, for the West — by dredging up anti-Semitism in its most lethal and virulent form.”

    Yeah, I’m just waiting for angry Jews to take to streets of Europe and burn innocent people’s cars and demand that the cartoonists get beheaded.

  • Iran and Jimmy Carter open up second front against Israel [Jonn]

    The first thing I read this morning while perusing last night’s news on the Moronosphere BlogNetNews was a post at The Jawa Report about rockets striking Israel from Lebanon.

    The Washington Times confirms the attack from Lebanon;

    Lebanese militants fired barrages of rockets into northern Israel early Thursday, striking a nursing home and threatening to open a second front for the Jewish state as it pushed forward with its offensive in the Gaza Strip.

    Two people were injured, and the rockets on Israel’s north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza.

    A nursing home? Shouldn’t that piss of the international community? I mean, really. Well, in the Washington Post, Jimmy Carter is explaining how easily Israel could’ve avoided the whole Gaza thing;

    Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

    […]

    After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

    […]

    And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

    A “defensive tunnel”? The tunnel was dug so Hamas could kidnap Israeli soldiers and that’s a defensive tunnel? Good old Jimmy Carter the world’s most famous anti-Semite. On the up-side, as long as he’s writing for the Post, he’s not building death-traps for Habitat for Humanity.

    In another article in the Post, the Red Cross accuses Israel of starving children;

    The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children — emaciated but alive — in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.

    Emaciated? After four days? I think if anyone was emaciated, their starvation started long before the response by Israel. Well, Michelle Malkin writes that Joe the Plumber is enroute to Gaza, so maybe he can us the straight answer.

  • Muslim grievance theater [Jonn]

    We’ve watched, over the last several days as Muslims in the US have protested the Israeli response to blatant attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians. Last night, protesters in London and Paris turned violent. In London, they scuffled with police, in Paris they torched private property.

    I wrote the other night about a Muslim man who attacked a Jewish immigrant, injured a police officer and walked away from the incident scot-free, apparently. Can the violence we’ve seen in Europe be far away in this country as well? Well, here’s my question to all of the Muslims who think they have a legitimate complaint. Leaving aside the specifics of your allegations against Israel, and considering only your passion and commitment, why are you still here?

    If you feel so impassioned about the plight of Palestinians, why aren’t you sneaking into the Gaza Strip to fight the Israelis? Sure the Israelis and Egyptians have a blockade in place but that didn’t stop al Qaeda from infiltrating into Iraq from Syria and Iran, did it? The West Bank shares a border with Jordan – there’s a way to get into the fight.

    Why isn’t Iran sponsoring arms shipments into Gaza like they did to Hezbollah in Lebanon? Why haven’t they airdropped weapons and troops into Gaza? They have the inclinations and the means. They haven’t even offered to supply Palestinians with medical supplies.

    But most importantly, why aren’t these youths in Europe and the US streaming back into Gaza to help Hamas? The simple answer is; they’re cowards. Just like Hamas is cowardly and prefers to fire missiles at civilians randomly than to face an army of legitimate combatants in a head-to-head battle.

    And that’s why they riot; they’re cowards. They know that no matter what they do in the West, at the end of the day, they’ll still be alive and they go home to watch TV and decompress from their antics. few will end up in jail over night and released the next day, no matter who and how many they’ve injured, no matter how much private property they’ve destroyed. There’s no downside for them.

    If they go to Gaza, they might get shot by Israelis, or Hell, they might be shot by Hamas (like 75 members of Fatah were shot by Hamas just before the Israeli incursion). Besides, in the West, they’ve got ANSWER thugs telling them how brave they are to march a few hundred yards in the cold. No downside.

    In other words, the Muslims in the West are too lazy, too cowardly, too selfish to actually act on what they claim they believe in. It’s much easier to engage in theater than to engage youself in the process. Muslims in the West are giant pussies.