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

Category: Terror War

  • John Murtha; the broad side of the barn

    I love taking shots at Jack Murtha – for one thing you can’t miss him no matter where you shoot. Physically or otherwise.

    There is still no answer from his office on his forthcoming apology to the Marines he publicly indicted as cold blooded murders. I still call every morning like clockwork – but oddly, Murtha hasn’t heard anything.

    Well, today the Washington Times editorial board took their shots at him in “John Murtha, venture capitalist“;

    Funny how attempts at congressional ethics reform keep running into roadblocks like Rep. Jack Murtha. The Pennsylvania Democrat and chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee is best known in this context as the man who once called the ethics package “total crap.” He represents an economically depressed corner of southwest Pennsylvania whose largest city, Johnstown, has lost 5 percent of its population since 1990. Not even considering the man’s unique personal qualities, one senses where this earmark story is headed.

    “Murtha has almost — but not quite — single-handedly created a new economy in his district,” concludes Roll Call this week in an overview of the lawmaker’s earmarking activities.

    […]

    The self-styled “most ethical and honest Congress in history” must get a grip on Mr. Murtha and friends if it is to make any headway whatsoever on ethics reforms. At this rate, Mr. Murtha just about torpedoes whatever chance House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to deliver on her campaign promises.

    The Pittsburgh Post Gazette calls Murtha “The King of Pork“;

    Are you the owner of business that is looking to get some big federal contracts? A move to Johnstown, hometown of Rep. John Murtha, might help, according to today’s Roll Call.

    […]

    “Murtha has almost – but not quite – single-handedly created a new economy in his district, with start-up companies getting Murtha earmarks, getting contracts from other companies that have gotten Murtha earmarks or getting trained on how to get government money by other institutions that have gotten Murtha earmarks.

    “A good guide to the patterns of Murtha’s largesse is the client list of KSA Consulting, a lobbying firm that employs a former Murtha staffer and used to employ Murtha’s brother, Kit Murtha.

    […]

    “The pattern that appears dominant is that the companies’ federal contract dollars expand shortly after they open an office in the 12th Congressional district – though it is not entirely clear how much of their work is actually conducted in the district.” 

    The Roll Call story (subscription required) goes into greater detail – here’s a sample;

    Kit Murtha, who says he retired from KSA a year ago, told Roll Call that he doesn’t believe there is any connection between the earmarks and the companies’ move to the Johnstown area. “You can’t really answer that … which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” he said. KSA represents “people that are in Johnstown, and some came to Johnstown, and which came first, and why, you can’t say.”

    But KSA’s client list indicates a pattern. Applied Ordnance Technologies was a Maryland-based firm that signed up with KSA in 2001, opened a Johnstown office in 2004 and saw the value of its government contracts jump from $12 million in 2003 to $21 million in 2004 and $24 million in 2005.

    Murtha’s office issued a press release declaring that “Congressman Murtha helped to attract AOT to Johnstown.” Murtha said in the release, “AOT represents the type of organization that is helping to revitalize our communities — small, technology-based companies with potential to grow.”  

    […]

    Rodney Ruddock, chairman of the Indiana County Commission, pointed out that local efforts are geared toward weaning these businesses off defense contracts and getting them to broaden into other work that is more sustainable. “We don’t want to put all of our eggs into the defense industry basket,” Ruddock said.

    Instead, companies are shifting into homeland security work, Ruddock noted, in part with the assistance of the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security at IUP.

    The institute itself grew out of Murtha earmarks. The university, in announcing the center in 2003, said that “Congressman Murtha has arranged for more than $20 million in funding to IUP for homeland security initiatives.”

    I think it’s totally laughable that there’s a John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. That’s like opening the Barney Fife Academy of Police Sciences.

    Now, much of this isn’t news – we’ve been hearing about KSA Consulting since last summer before the Congressional midterms. So why are we not hearing of Congressional investigations? If this was a Republican, we’d be reading everyday about it – Hell, we read every day about Republican scandals that haven’t ever happened.

    So I guess we now know why Murtha has positioned himself as the (ughh) darling of the anti-war Left – it makes him bulletproof. As long as he says the most outrageous things about the troops, Pelosi, et al. will leave him alone. It really tells something about the Left – they threw Joe Lieberman, probably the most ethical Democrat in Washington, out of the boat because of his pro-terror war stance, but they’ll cover for a crook like Murtha because of his pro-terrorist stance.

    I take some satisfaction that Roll Call gets the same reactions I get from Murtha’s office;

    Murtha’s office declined to provide comment for this article.

    The Influence Peddler and Don Surber have good summaries of the Roll Call Article. 

  • U.S. lifts Palestinian embargo

    Remember when the PA was a terrorist group?:

    Excerpt:
    U.S. lifts Palestinian embargo
    By Joseph Curl
    THE WASHINGTON TIMES
    June 19, 2007

    The Bush administration yesterday lifted economic sanctions and a diplomatic embargo against the Palestinian Authority after its expulsion of the Islamist group Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip last week.
    Seeking to strengthen President Mahmoud Abbas by resuming direct U.S. aid, the administration moved swiftly after Mr. Abbas ousted Hamas from his national security council, installed an emergency Cabinet and outlawed the terrorist militia, which calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews worldwide.
    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that she told new Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the decision to end the 15-month-old embargo in a telephone call.
    “I told him the United States would resume full assistance to the Palestinian government and normal government-to-government contacts,” she told reporters at the State Department.
    “We intend to lift our financial restrictions on the Palestinian government, which has accepted previous agreements with Israel and rejects the path of violence. This will enable the American people and American financial institutions to resume normal economic and commercial ties with the Palestinian government,” Miss Rice said.
    In another major boost to Mr. Abbas, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced yesterday in Luxembourg that the 27-nation bloc would resume direct financial aid — hundreds of millions of dollars — to the Palestinian Authority now that Hamas is no longer part of the government.
    Mr. Abbas’ Information Minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters after the new government met in the West Bank city of Ramallah that “the government will pursue its jurisdiction over all parts of the homeland, regardless of what happened in Gaza.”
    In the past week, Hamas has seized control of Gaza by force, winning a series of battles with Mr. Abbas’ Fatah movement and executing its members.

    http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20070619-121826-6342r”>http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20070619-121826-6342r

    The last time I checked, they still were.  When Israel relinquished control of the Gaza strip and hastily withdrew from Lebanon, warring terrorist factions duked it out.  In Gaza, the extremist bad guy with the most toys won– Hamas, that is–and Hezbollah promptly set up shop in Lebanon, thereby creating yet another threat to security. The icing on the cake is our re-newed diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority, because Mahmoud Abbas kicked out a political rival?  Any stability in the Middle East would be a welcome sight but the problem is, every inch given to extremist combatants, results in a mile.

    Look, the very idea of a “moderate Palestinian” is an oxymoron.  Every group over there has a long, bloody, brutal history with a reputation for being just as bad, if not worse than the ones they replace.   One way to look at it is as a survival mechanism, much like a gang.  Any one of them giving the appearance of cooperation with Israel or the U.S. is met with retaliation, both politically and militarily.  Even if they wanted to, the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have the clout to pull off a full-fledged independent state, capable of stability and prosperity.  Founded by the late Yasser Arafat, it still harbors and supports terrorist cells; only cracking down when it’s convenient.

    President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are backing Mahmoud Abbas in his fight against Hamas, pinning their hopes on “a reasonable voice amongst the extremists.”

    The last ‘reasonable voice’ among the Arabs was Anwar Sadat.  Remember what happened to him?

  • Plotting the coup

    The Democrats were pretty angry back in 1972 when their boy George McGovern couldn’t even score a yawn at the polls. I remember my hippie friends in those days had longer faces than John Kerry because their idealistic dreams of a socialist president had crashed down on their pointy heads and they’d suddenly had to get back to reality. It pretty much ended the Peace and Love generation – they cut their hair, got jobs and conformed to the “establishment”.

    So, to prove they still had teeth, the Congressional Democrats tried to stage a coup. The Watergate burglary gave them their ammunition – that and Spiro Agnew’s resignation. President Nixon then had to name a Vice President – which the Senate had to approve. John Conyers and some others tried to convince the Senate to delay their advice and consent hearings for Gerald Ford so that when they forced their impeachment of Nixon, there’d be no Republicans to take over the reins of government – Speaker of the House Democrat Carl Bert Albert would be the de facto president – completely overturning the 1972 election. Of course, in those days, even Democrats cared more about the country than they did politics and the coup never took place.

    Well, here we are again. The Washington Post ran a series of articles and photos this weekend about the Devil Incarnate (otherwise known as Dick Cheney) and now, they’ve sent their tiny-brained columnist morons out in force, drooling and licking their curled lips in anticipation, to advocate for Cheney’s dismissal. 

    Sally Quinn, wife of Bill Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate years, insists there’s a plot afoot by Republicans to replace Cheney – even though she names no sources, quotes no Republicans, or claims no special knowledge;

    Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents’ living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

    Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country’s plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

    For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn’t been an acceptable alternative to Cheney — nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

    Oh, yeah? Says who? Just because Barry Goldwater came to your house once before Watergate, Sally, that doesn’t make you the guardian of all Republican knowledge. I get the feeling she’s just tossing this out there to give Republicans an idea. Why? Well, my favorite turd among the WaPo’s idiots Eugene Robinson has his wettened lips up to the koolaid glass, to tell us why we should dump Cheney;

    I’m often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don’t at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.

    Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion — if he’s going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.

    Yeah, scary-assed Cheney who’s not accountable to the public – except that he’s been elected twice to his office by voters, just like the President, just like Al Gore. Robinson is a token on the editorial board – he can’t have been hired for his intellect. I swear he cuts and pastes his “opinions” from Democratic Underground posts.

    More red meat for the nutroots – once we get Cheney fired, we can impeach the President. For what, numbskull? What charges? For paying attention to the same intelligence on Iraq that Democrats used as justification for Operation Desert Fox?

    At least Richard Cohen (he of Wasted Lives fame) shows a little bit of common sense today, for a change. He insists that if Democrats don’t come up with a coherent stategy for the war (not necessarily ending it, but actually fighting it) they’re going to end up getting smoked at the polls in ’08;

    The polls tell you that with George Bush’s approval ratings abysmally low; with the war in Iraq becoming increasingly unpopular; with the GOP lacking a dominant candidate; and with the party divided over immigration, social issues and even religion ( Mitt Romney’s Mormonism), the next president is bound to be a Democrat. History begs to differ.

    The history I have in mind is 1972. By the end of that year, 56,844 Americans had been killed in Vietnam, a war that almost no one thought could still be won and that no one could quite figure out how to end. Nevertheless, the winner in that year’s presidential election was Richard M. Nixon. He won 49 of 50 states — and the war, of course, went on. Just as it is hard to understand how the British ousted Winston Churchill after he had led them to victory in Europe in World War II, so it may be hard now to appreciate how Nixon won such a landslide while presiding over such a dismal war. In the first place, he was the incumbent, with all its advantages and with enormous amounts of money at his disposal. In the second place, back then the Vietnam War was not as unpopular as you might think — or, for that matter, as the Iraq war is now. In 1972, almost 60 percent of Americans approved of the way Nixon was handling the war.

    Cohen goes on to point out that Democrats thought, in 1972, that the election was in the bag (probably because of the echo-chamber where the Left lives) because they hang their hats on polls. Cohen warns that the netroots could lose the election for the Democrats;

    Will history trump the polls? It will if, as in the past, the Democratic Party so wounds itself fighting the war against the war, it nominates a candidate beloved by a minority but mistrusted by a majority. It has happened before.

    And he’s probably right – Americans don’t stand with the anti-war Left like the candidates stand with them. You don’t see Republicans candidates running to get to the Left (or Right, whichever) of Ron Paul despite the massive poll fraud committed by Ron Paulists on the internet. Yet, the Democrats think that internet support for their anti-war agenda (whatever that is) is real.

    We’ll see.

  • Culture clash in Cologne

    Now I lived in Germany for nine years during the 80s and the early 90s, and I know this must really stick in most Germans’ collective craw. According to the Daily Telegraph (by way of the Washington Times);

    The construction of one of Europe’s biggest mosques near a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious dispute in Germany.

    Immigration and integration are extremely sensitive issues in Germany, which is home to a Turkish community of several million.

    But almost within the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, political correctness was replaced by bitter confrontation, as the city’s Muslims began building a 2,000-capacity mosque whose twin minarets will reach 170 feet.

    The German government has always been more accomodating to Turks than the German population. The West Germans, at first, were even wary of their East German neighbors when the Wall came down in ’89. I had a West German taxi driver tell me in 1990 that she’d wished the Wall had never come down. 

    After World War II, there was a serious shortage of manpower in Germany because the of allies’ (particularly the Soviet Union) meatgrinder into which the Nazis had sent their youths. So the Bonn government grudgingly accepted foreign workers, mostly Turks who settled together in their own communities within German communities. Most Germans did not like the fact that Turks lived among them, but accepted it as necessary. Now the need for foreign workers is gone – but the Turks are still there.

    Now, the Muslims want to remake this particular city’s skyline;

    “We don’t want to build a Turkish ghetto in Ehrenfeld. I know about ‘Londonistan,’ and I don’t want that here,” [Jorg Uckermann, the district’s deputy mayor] added, referring to a phrase used to describe the rising trend of radical Islam in England.

    […]

    Leading the charge is Ralph Giordano, a prominent Jewish author, who wrote recently that Germany is witnessing a “clash of two completely different cultures” and questioned whether they could ever be reconciled.

    Stating that he had received death threats for his opinions, he added: “What kind of a state are we in that I can face a fatwa in Germany?”

    Really, death threats against a Jew in Germany – one might think that would wake up the accomodating government just a little.

    “We live in a land of religious freedom,” said Prelate Johannes Bastgen, the [Cologne] cathedral’s dean. “But I would be very glad if the same principles existed in Muslim countries.”

    Well, what with fatwas and death threats being issued against German citizens, apparently there’s only one religion that gets religious freedom.

    And of course, Preeti Aroon of Foreign Policy magazine sees Nazis around every corner;

     The protest is driven by a fear of the Islamization of Europe. This anxiety, which Philip Jenkins argues is overblown in a recent web exclusive for FP, is a variant of what one sociologist has described as “cultural displacement” — “the fear that your children will grow up in a world different than the one you grew up in.” In the United States, it’s captured by those white Americans who, in the face of a rising Hispanic population, worry about a day when Spanish will be the language on the streets and there will be more Miguels than Michaels. In Europe, it’s captured by a woman in Cologne who says she wants to feel at home, not as if she’s in a foreign land.

    […]

    With the rise of the far right, let’s hope that Germany doesn’t end up going the way it did in 1933.

    Funny how it always ends that way, doesn’t it? When an intolerant group of people invade a country and refuse to integrate into the the previously successful culture, and the indigenous people protest, it’s always because they’re Nazis.

    Is that the education your parents wasted their money on, Preeti?

  • Chavez warns of US guerilla war (Updated)

     

    (Photo from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)

    Well, Chavez is acting like he plans on blaming the student protests against his dictatorship on the US. According to the AP;

    President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

    Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

    “We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

    Como no? The US is the boogeyman that hides in every dictator’s closet – especially in Latin America. No matter who is President, he is evil incarnate to those who rape and pillage their own communities for personal gain.

    I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with Chavez tossing out oil companies this weekend could it? I linked to this earlier from Reuters (by way of CNNMoney):

    Some major oil companies have rejected Venezuela’s terms for the takeover of their multi-billion dollar projects and can leave the OPEC nation, President Hugo Chavez said Friday, days before a deadline for them to strike nationalization deals.

    Exxon Mobil , ConocoPhillips , Chevron Corp . , Norway’s Statoil , Britain’s BP Plc and France’s Total are the targeted companies in projects valued above $30 billion and capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day.

    “It seems there are some transnational companies that do not want to accept (the terms),” said Chavez, who met his energy minister to review the progress in negotiations earlier Friday.

    “Well if they do not want (to accept the terms), I told the minister to tell them they can go, that they should leave, that we, in truth, do not need them,” he added during a political speech to swear in the government’s new “central planning committee.”

    Chavez, who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor and is on a drive to nationalize swathes of the economy this year, did not say which companies rejected the government’s terms.

    Or it couldn’t have anything to do with his anticipated purchase of Russian Subs, which I also mentioned earlier from Bloomberg;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government may buy a fleet of Russian-made submarines when he visits Moscow next week, continuing an arms buildup that has cost his nation more than $4.3 billion since 2005.

    “The only way Venezuela could totally discard the idea of not buying submarines is if we didn’t have a sea,” Chavez told cabinet members at a televised ceremony tonight in Caracas. “We have to protect that sea.”

    Chavez said he also is looking to strengthen the nation’s short-range air-defense system to counter supersonic and “invisible” radar-evading aircraft he claimed Venezuela would face in the event of a U.S. invasion. Most U.S. analysts deem such an offensive unlikely.

    And the LATimes is, of course, impressed with Chavez’ socialist tendencies;

    Last year, public spending leapt to one-third of Venezuela’s economic output of about $180 billion, up from the average of one-quarter of output in the 1990s, said Jose Manuel Puente, an economist with the Institute for Advanced Administrative Studies in Caracas.

    Chavez’s social engineering has taken his predecessors’ plans a step further in giving worker groups a piece of the enterprises and letting them manage the businesses in concert with networks of “community councils” that are local governing modules.

    But, the thing is; it all depends on the world maintaining the status quo. When Chavez’ business sense finally shows no result, the world finds its oil elsewhere  – or finds it doesn’t need his oil at all, Venezuela collapses and Chavez needs to blame someone – of course the best people to blame are Americans. 

    Afterall, we’re the ones that caused Cuba’s economy to collapse, right? Even though Cuba trades with the 160+ other countries in the world, because we refuse to trade with them, they’re destitute – according to the Left. And everything bad that happens in Cuba is blamed either on our policies or the Cuban “ex-patriots”.

    So that’s really all Chavez is doing – setting us up to take the blame for his anticipated failures. from the AP article;

    “It’s not just armed warfare,” said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. “I’m also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare.”

    Yeah, we’re going to be attacking them, but no one can tell because we’re so sneaky. Typical Latin American paranoia. probably more disturbing is;

    Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

    All the stuff needed to quell his own rebellions and control the inevitable “counter-revolution”. Bloomberg reports that Chavez is also aware of the fact that the military is the final arbiter in Latin American politics. He urged his troops to support his socialism;

    “The armed forces are an institution of the people, meant to promote our constitutionally mandated national project, and the national project we have is socialism,” Chavez told 3,000 troops gathered at a military ceremony in Caracas. “You can’t separate military thinking from political thinking.”

    “When a soldier says `Country, Socialism or Death,’ he’s giving the essence of the project we’re now involved in, and don’t be fooled, socialism is the road to nationhood,” he said at the event….

    It’s a pretty well known fact that if a Latin American leader can’t convince the military that what he’s doing is in the best interest of the country, they’re doomed. The military acts in the interests of the country and the people, not an ideology – that’s why there have already been attempts at a military coup against Chavez. His slogan “Fatherland (the article says ‘country’, but I know he used ‘patria‘ – which means ‘Fatherland’), Socialism or Death” doesn’t mention the pueblo – that means that Chavez wants his soldiers to defend socialism against their own people if they must.

    Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters writes that Chavez is building his military might to use against US interests, but I think it’s to use against his own people when war with the US doesn’t overtly materialize in the form of a shooting war. Then he can blame the Compania and start shooting his own folks as agents of the imperialist US. That seems more plausible. The chavistas appear willing to swallow any red meat Hugo throws them-kind of like Noreiga’s Dignity Battalions.

    Meanwhile, as I also mentioned earlier this weekend, Evo Morales, Chavez’ “Mini-Me” is having his own problems with a few thousand protesters according to The Lima Bean (by way of Gateway Pundit);

    Locals of an ecological reserve in Bolivia have held protests demanding that they be annexed by Peru. Waving Peruvian flags, as many as 4,000 people filled the local square and called on the mayor to extend an invitation to Peru to occupy the region.

    The small town of Apolo, located just 6 hours’ walk from the Peruvian border, marks the entrance to the Madidi National Park, an Amazon wildlife refuge that includes around 1.8 million hectares (4.5 million acres) of pristine rainforest.

    Officials opposing the protest claimed that the people were angered that the protected nature of the area prevents them from being legally allowed to log the forest or take advantage of oil reserves thought to exist in the region.

    Speaking from La Paz 200km away, Bolivian President Evo Morales referred to the protesters as “drug traffickers and wood smugglers”.

    Well, at least it’s only wood smugglers. A couple thousand of them.

    Oddly enough, the protest happened just after the documentary “Cocalero”, Morales’ political biography opened at the Sundance Film Festival according to Bloomberg;

    “Cocalero,” the directorial debut of 26-year-old Alejandro Landes, chronicles Morales’s rise to power with the backing of the coca growers, or cocaleros, who fought U.S.- supported efforts to cut Bolivian drug production. Coca leaves, chewed for religious and cultural purposes across the Andes, are the main ingredient in cocaine.

    “The cocaleros are the sons and daughters of the U.S. war on drugs,” the Brazilian-born Landes said. “Their defense of the coca leaf detonated a nationalist wave that drove Evo to power.”

    The evil US makes such a convenient foil for Latin American dictators. Because we’re interested in criminals who poison our people in our own country, somehow we’re responsible for the rise of socialist governments. Suddenly, “defense of the coca leaf” is noble. 

    If you want to read about what’s happening inside Venezuela, on recommendation of my new friend Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective, I’ve been rereading much of the posts by Julia at The end of Venezuela as I know it – an English language blog written by a student in the middle of the White Hands movement. Last week, she wrote about the class-struggle inuendos that being flung at the students from Chavistas as if “rich kids are not people“ 

    I’ve noticed an increase in my traffic from Venezuela, Chile and Peru everytime I type Chavez’ name, so I have to guess that the internet is becoming an important information pipeline in that direction. So if I repeat myself and links, I apologize. 

    UPDATE: Apparently there was more to this speech to the army than was reported by the press (unsurprisingly) and the truth about what the event was supposed to represent and how it was staged from Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

    Yesterday was yet another anniversary of the battle of Carabobo, our Yorktown (our Austerlitz?, our Waterloo?), that battle that made the independence of Venezuela irreversible.

    Usually at that date the armed forces hold a nice rally on the Carabobo field, in all regalia. The background is not bad, graced with the famous Carabobo arch, with lots of space for crowds to attend the festivities, a large tribune for officials, speeches and what not.

    Well, under Chavez things have started to change. First the governor of Carabobo was barred to attend the festivities…

    […]

    This year, Chavez is hurt by the student dissenting protest, a general animosity as per the closing of RCTV, and duly scalded by the failure of the intended pump and circumstances of the bridge reopening when crowds of neighboring shantytowns crashed the party. Thus Chavez did not take chances: Carabobo now was held in Caracas, as a private ceremony between Chavez and HIS army, the one he will use to stop the invasion of the Empire.

    There is much more at Daniel’s blog including screenshots Daniel took from his television. It appears that Chavez is getting a bit paranoid and not the guy he used to be among his “pueblo“. It appears more and more that yesterday’s speech was a plea to the military that they not toss his butt out of Venezuela.

    Daniel also tells of food and fuel shortages here.

  • How the inmates began running the asylum

    What a nutty week, huh? We have Palestinians from the Gaza Strip begging the Isralis to let them into Israel so they can get away from other Palestinians and human rights organizations demanding that Israelis treat injured and ill Palestinians. From the AP by way of the Wall Street Journal;

    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army on Wednesday to allow into Israel any of the hundreds of Gazans holed up at a fetid crossing who might desperately need medical treatment.

    A teenager with leukemia was on his way through shortly after, the military said. Additionally, Israeli officials allowed all foreign nationals in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to cross over to Israel.

    In related news, Israel’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition Wednesday by a human-rights group, demanding that Israeli authorities offer immediate medical treatment to 26 critically ill Palestinians hospitalized in Gaza.

    Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, fired missiles at two rocket launchers in northern Gaza, in the first aerial attack since Islamic Hamas militants took over the coastal strip late last week. No injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, Israeli tanks entered southern Gaza, and four people, including at least two militants, were killed in an exchange of fire, Palestinian hospital officials said.

    And of course, Jimmy Carter, being the dumbass country hick playing diplomat, blames the Bush Administration;

    Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”

    “Criminal”. And, of course, Carter doesn’t stop there. He claims that the murderous Hamas organization, a group of thugs masquerading as politicians (although that’s very thin line to begin with, I suppose) were elected fairly and democratically – by other terrorists;

    Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement.

    Except that Hamas has been terrorizing the Fatah government, and dragging it’s opponents into the street and gunning them down – I guess that’s a more effective way of winning the next election – would Jimmy call that fair? All of Hamas’ opposition in the graveyards?

    Here’s a story of Carter’s heroic Hamas from Conflict Botter;

    They surrendered. A Hamas gunman shot one of the 12 soldiers in the leg and told the rest to run away. As they fled, they opened fire, Iki said, shooting them all in the legs as they tried to run away. A Hamas gunman came up and executed each wounded soldier, continued Iki. Iki was lucky, the execution bullet hit him in the side of the neck and he didn’t die. He lay semi-conscious on the street for an hour and a half bleeding. The bus driver who had driven the Hamas militants to the fight checked his pulse at one point and found he was alive. He started to help him.

    “Leave him or we’ll shoot you,” a masked militant said.

    Ya hafta wonder what is going through Carter’s head (if anything at all). Everyone (and I mean everyone) agrees that Jimmy Carter was a walking abortion as President, but everyone always qualifies that with “but he’s a good man”. How does this statement fit into the category of “a good man”? He’s actually encouraging Hamas to continue their murderous rampage through the streets of Gaza – and he calls that “more organized than Abbas’ moderate Fatah”. I very rarely use the expression, but this warrants it – WTF? 

    Here’s the conflict that Carter is having with his own statements; if the US has no business interfering in Palestinian politics, why should what we give the Palestinian government have any impact? I mean, all we did was not give them money and weapons. If I don’t like Walmart, am I still required to give them my money? 

    It’s like Carter’s other idiot cause – Cuba. If communism is so great, if Cuba is such a paradise why does it need trade with the capitalist US in order to survive? It’s trading with the whole rest of the world – why should trade with one nation out of 170 impact it so?

    To quote Investors Business Daily’s editorial (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

    The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn’t honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an “orderly and fair” vote.

    When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn’t exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. 

    But everything Carter says conflicts with itself – I found this great article in the Jerusalem Post that calls Jimmy Carter “Father of the Iranian Revolution“;

    The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

    Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

    The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

    Who knew that Carter would still be unleashing his calamities on the world thirty years later? The JPost goes on;

    In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).

    Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

    Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

    What was holy about the murderous rampage that was carried out in Khomeini’s name throughout Iran? What was holy about the 444 days our citizens spent in captivity? And remember why the hostages were taken? Because Carter gave sanctuary to the shah and his family from being murdered by the Islamic Revolution.

    Remember why we propped up Saddam in the 80s? Because we were afraid of the murderous Islamic Revolution spreading – and so were the Gulf States which plowed money into Saddam’s war. Which is why Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 – he was deeply indebted to Kuwait and Gulf States and figured the Kuwaiti oil fields would give him some fiscal relief by eliminating one debtor and gave him cash to pay off the others.

    Now Carter has deepened the conflict by allowing Chavez, who rules by decree these days, to seize power in Venezuela with his petrodollars and form an alliance with Iran. And he still doesn’t get it;

    Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”

    I guess murdering the opposition in the street doesn’t have the effect of dividing the Palestinians into “two peoples” does it? Although, this Hamas government is a demonstration of how voters get the government they deserve. Palestinians voted for Hamas because Hamas hates Jews and thinks they have a mandate from God to kill Jews – so anything they do in the space of time before they get to kill all of the Jews should be OK with God, too. And with Jimmy Carter as well, apparently.

    In other related news, Aunt Agatha at Bloodthirsty Liberal mirrors my thoughts on Ahmed Yousef’s piece in the NYTimes explaining to us poor, ignorant Zionists and those guilt-ridden Leftists looking for an excuse to continue supporting the bloody Palestinians “What Hamas Wants“.

    Boker Tov, Boulder reports that the peaceful Palestinians fired off two more Kassam missiles into Israel.

    Israel Matzav tells us that the New Hamas “government” (for the want of a better word) warns that the new Sharia Law in Gaza is going to apply to the dhimmis still in Gaza. That should be a warning to dhimmi-wannabes here in the US, but, I guess it probably won’t.

    I figured that I’ve been spending too much time on that buck-toothed, shriveled up, has-been-that-never-was moron, Jimmy Carter, so instead of repeating myself over-and-over, I created a Jimmy Carter category and ya’all can just go click that link on your right and it’ll take you to all of my brilliant thoughts about that dull, little POS Jimmy Carter and I swear I’ll never type his name again. Cuz Don Surber and I share a common shame – we both voted for Carter once.

  • Haditha story wrapping up

    I’ve wanted to write about all of the good news coming out of the Haditha investigation, but there’s no way I could do as good a job at it as Robin, my bestest new buddy, at Chickenhawk Express (who recently added me to her Blogroll – thanks, Robin).

    Robin, who also writes at Newsbusters, has been churning out really good updates on the Haditha Article 32 investigation (equivalent to a grand jury) of Lance Corporal Justin Sharrat over the last week or so here, here and here.

    For my part, I’ve been diligently calling John Murtha’s office every morning to ask when Murtha is going to apologize for calling LCpl Sharrat and his fellow Marines cold-blooded murderers. Every morning, I get the same answer – Representative Murtha hasn’t heard anything about the investigation.

    I think that’s funny because he was so sure about the information he had before the investigation began;

    Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

    So, why doesn’t he have information that been publicly available? A year ago, he told ABC News;

    Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in an exclusive appearance that reports a group of U.S. Marines may have killed 24 Iraqi civilians following an IED explosion in Haditha, Iraq, was “worse than Abu Ghraib,” calling their actions war crimes committed “in cold blood.”

    Murtha, a Marine veteran who six months ago called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, added, “There has to have been a cover-up. There’s no question about it.”

    Wouldn’t a rational person, who staked their reputation on such an damning statement, want to keep up with the story? I guess we’re not talking about a rational person here, though, are we? We’re talking about a hateful little pussbag, fatass who gives not a moment’s thought to this nation’s security or the lives of the people who defend it. I think it’s time Murtha signed his Form 180, too. I have trouble believing that this coward spent even a minute in the Marine Corps.

    And where are the headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times admitting they were wrong in their initial accusations?

  • Gazans prefer Israelis

    I watched with some interest, after reading Little Green Footballs (here and here) this weekend how long it would take for the media to decide it was alright to tell us that Palestinians in Gaza would prefer to be in Israel than under Hamas. Well it finally happened this morning, not in any of the major news outlets, but from the AP;

    Fearing death or persecution, Gazans began flocking to the Erez passage after Hamas militants wrested control of the coastal strip from Fatah security forces late last week. Israel, which has no interest in letting masses of Gazans pass through its territory and possibly destabilize the quieter West Bank, has refused to let most of them in, saying their lives were not in danger.

    By Tuesday, about 600 people were holed up in the long, concrete tunnel that leads to the Israeli side of the crossing. Around 100 people belonged to Fatah security forces, but the rest were civilians, seeking a better life in the West Bank.

    And of course, the civilized Hamas fellows were more than happy to make their stay in the concrete tunnel as memorable as possible;

    On Monday, gunmen allied with Hamas disguised themselves as fleeing civilians and hurled hand grenades at Israeli soldiers and Palestinians at Erez, killing a relative of a slain Fatah warlord, and injuring 15 other Palestinians.

    In a move to maintain order, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rolled up to the Palestinian side of Erez on Tuesday, chasing away cars parked next to the tunnel, including vehicles belonging to journalists.

    Wait. Do you mean that AP is going to admit that the Israelis actually decided to protect Palestinians? Well, not completely;

    “There is a clear conflict between security needs and humanitarian considerations,” Peres said. “It’s clear that we don’t want to see in the West Bank (Fatah-allied) Al Aqsa militants who carried out attacks in the past.”

    Israel allowed about 50 senior Fatah officials and their families to cross into the West Bank from Gaza over the weekend, citing threats to their safety. Some 200 other Fatah officials are in Egypt, trying to travel to the West Bank via Jordan, Fatah officials said.

    And this from a MidEast News article from last week;

    “I’m afraid to say this out loud, they may execute me for it, but there are a lot of people, including myself, who think it would be better if Israel came back here. Things would be much better than they are now,” said Samara (alias), a graduate of the Islamic University living in the Gaza Strip.

    […]

    “The children are afraid all the time,” Samara says. “My nephews ask, ‘Why are the Israelis shooting at us?’, and we tell them it’s Palestinians. Then they ask, ‘Why are Palestinians shooting at us?’, and I have no answer for them.  

    Well, if I believed in kharma…. 

    Meanwhile Carl in Jerusalem at Israel Matzav reports that the Lebanese Army claims to have interferred with a Katyusha rocket attack on Israel. This after a 4-rocket attack on Sunday. Think there could be a link between last week’s Hamas action in Gaza and Hezbollah’s in Lebanon? Nah, Hezbollah says they’ve had nothing to do with the rocket attacks – we know we can trust them at their word, huh?

    Lady Vorzheva, the Spanish Pundit, writes and researches long and hard on the events in Gaza with constant updates. Especially interesting is the article she links to in Catholic World News which reports;

    On June 14, a school administered by the Sisters of the Holy Rosary was demolished in the Gaza Strip. In the chapel adjoining the sisters’ convent, the crucifix and a statue of Christ were broken and prayer books burned.

    Well, at least they didn’t draw unflattering cartoons of Jesus on the walls – that might have gotten those Catholics hopping mad and driven them to burning cars and buses in Europe.