Saturday, July 16, 2005
Friday, July 15, 2005
Is this a hidden potential problem? Are our nations gas stations, and our national gasoline distribution system network a prime target for jihadoterrorist attack? Here's why I think it might be:
Now, there are, by some estimates, around 140,000 gas stations in the USA. Many of them (if my experience is any indicator) might be owned and operated by Pakistanis - or other Muslims from other countries which are terrorist havens. Even if it is only 10% - well, that would be 1400 gas stations - and most of them might be in major cities or by major highways. Now, even though most of these gas stations might be owned by Pakistanis who are law-abiding, some might be owned by Pakstanis who are NOT, or who are as law-abinding as the fish&chip store owner who was the father of one of the 7/7 perps; therefore, a relative or employee of an honest law-abiding owner might be a terrorist plotter.
"But those that are in the border belt and on the mountains along the foreign borders... it is very difficult because these are neither registered, nor declared," he told the World Today programme. "And it is quite possible that there may be some madrassas which are still around about which we do not really have much knowledge," he said.
NAZI V2 FACTORIES : WW2 :: MADRASSAS : GWOT.
An Egyptian chemistry expert sought by police over last week's London bombings has been arrested in Cairo, Egypt. Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, 33, had not been seen by colleagues in Leeds since early July. British police are searching a house in Leeds linked to Mr al-Nashar, although he was not formally named as a suspect. Earlier, police said they were hunting the financiers, supporters and chemists who assembled the bomb used in the attacks last week. British police had said they wanted to question Mr al-Nashar, who completed a PhD in chemistry at Leeds University.
AP headline: Source: Rove Got CIA Agent ID From MediaIf this is true, then Rove CANNOT be indicted. (There are other reasons he cannot be indicted, too - not for violating IIPA.) I speculated that this was the case BEFORE anyone else. SEE HERE (below.) And check out MICHELE for a great link-filled round up.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
A fifth member of the terrorist cell behind the London bombings may still be at large, detectives revealed last night. According to intelligence sources, an 'accomplice' was spotted on CCTV at Luton with the four suicide bombers on the morning of the attack.
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - An Islamic scholar who exhorted his followers after the Sept. 11 attacks to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison. Ali al-Timimi of Fairfax, Virginia, was convicted in April of soliciting others to wage war against the United States, inducing others to aid the Taliban and to use firearms in violations of federal law.
The Timimi case culminated an investigation in which 11 Muslim men, all but one from the Washington area, were charged with participating in paramilitary training -- including playing paintball -- to prepare for "holy war" abroad. Timimi was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the earlier case, in which nine men were convicted in 2003 and 2004. Timimi... was charged last year with 10 counts, including soliciting others to levy war against the United States. ... Timimi told his followers that "the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad.
It's about damn time! And the rest of Europe and the USA should take the same approach. Even if it means deportations en masse. Of course, if ISRAEL ever tried it, the UN would condemn them! MORE HERE.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
This report implies that socialized medicine KILLS 500 babies per year. That's not good. In fact, it sucks.
France has reimposed border controls with its European Union neighbours in response to the threat of attacks after the London bombings. The move activates a safety clause of the Schengen open-border agreement between many EU countries. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced the measure after meeting EU counterparts in Brussels. "If we don't reinforce border controls when around 50 people die in London, I don't know when I would," he said.
BBC: "The uncle of one of the suspected London suicide bombers said his family had been "left shattered" by the news. Bashir Ahmed, 65, said the family of Shehzad Tanweer, who recently studied religion in Pakistan, could not accept he was capable of the bombings. "It wasn't him. It must have been forces behind him," he said. Police are now focusing on finding those who masterminded the suspected suicide attacks that killed at least 52 people in London last Thursday."
"Hundreds of Iraqis have died in attacks by militants opposed to the US presence and to a Shia-led government that took charge in Baghdad earlier this year. "
At least 26 Iraqis, almost all of them children, have been killed by a car bomb in south-eastern Baghdad. A US soldier is also said to have died in the blast. Another three US soldiers are reported to have been injured. A car laden with explosives drove past a US army vehicle and blew up as troops handed out sweets, a witness said.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
A senior Palestinian official has been seriously injured in an assault by a gang of masked gunmen. Ibrahim Salama was driving in the West Bank city of Ramallah when gunmen fired at his car to force him to stop, an interior ministry statement said. Mr Salama was severely beaten "with a sharp object" and taken to hospital. It is the latest in a series of incidents believed to be part of a power struggle within the mainstream Fatah movement.
Monday, July 11, 2005
"I sometimes feel that Alfred E Newman is in charge in Washington," Clinton said, referring to the freckle-faced character in the satirical Mad magazine.She drew a laugh from the crowd when she described Bush's attitude toward tough issues with Newman's catchphrase: "What, me worry?"Clinton, who was speaking during the inaugural Aspen Ideas Festival, organised by the Aspen Institute nonpartisan thinktank, didn't mention the presidential election in 2008.
Yet Hillary says Bush is like Mad Magazine's "WHAT ME WORRY?" Newman. I think Hellary and the Dems are more like Newman.
Yet Hillary says Bush is like Mad Magazine's "WHAT ME WORRY?" Newman. I think Hillary and the Dems are more Like Newman.
Yet Hillary says Bush is like Mad Magazine's "WHAT ME WORRY?" Newman. I think she and the Dems are more like Newman.
HEADLINES SCREAM: "CHINA/USA TRADE DEFICIT SOARS!" BUT IT'S ALL MEANINGLESS BUNK AND IDIOTIC HYPERBOLE!
It's the latter - according to economist WALTER WILLIAMS. I report, you decide:
I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me, and I bet it's the same with you and your grocer.That means we have a trade deficit with our grocers.Does our perpetual grocer trade deficit portend doom?If we heeded some pundits and politicians who are talking about our national trade deficit, we might think so. But do we have a trade deficit in the first place? Let's look at it.
Insofar as the grocer example, there are two accounts that I hold. One is my "goods" account, which consists of groceries. The other is my "capital" account, which consists of money. Let's look at what happens when I purchase groceries. Say I purchase $100 worth of groceries. The value of my goods account rises by $100. That rise is matched by an equal $100 decline in my capital account. Adding a plus $100 to a minus $100 yields a perfect trade balance. That transaction, from my grocer's point of view, results in his goods account falling by $100, but when he accepts my cash, his capital account rises by $100, again a trade balance.
The principle here differs not one iota if my grocer was located in another country as opposed to down the street. There'd still be a trade balance when both the goods account and the capital account are considered.Imbalances in goods accounts are all over the place. For example, my grocer buys more from his wholesaler than his wholesaler buys from him.The wholesaler buys more from the manufacturer than the manufacturer buys from him, but when we put capital accounts into the mix, in each case, trade is balanced.International trade operates under the identical principle.When we as consumers purchase goods from China, and the Chinese don't purchase a like amount of goods from us, it is said that there's a trade deficit.But instead of purchasing goods, the Chinese might purchase corporate stocks, bonds or U.S. Treasury debt instruments.Just as in my grocer example, there is a balance of trade. The deficit in our nation's goods and services account, sometimes called current account, is matched by a surplus of equal magnitude in our capital account.A large portion of surpluses in our capital account consists of U.S. Treasury debt instruments held by foreigners. As of June 2004, China held nearly $200 billion, Japan over $1 trillion, and Europe combined held over $2 trillion.Some politicians gripe about all the U.S. debt held by foreigners. Only a politician can have that kind of audacity. Guess who's creating the debt instruments that foreigners hold? If you said it's our profligate Congress, go to the head of the class. If foreigners didn't purchase so much of our debt, we'd be worse off in terms of higher inflation and interest rates. What about the possibility of foreigners dumping our debt? Foreigners aren't stupid. Dumping large amounts of Treasury bonds would drive down their value. Foreigners as well as we would take a hit.
The fact that foreigners are willing to exchange massive amounts of goods in exchange for slips of paper in the forms of currency, stocks and bonds should be a source of pride. It means America, with its wealth, rule of law and the sanctity of contracts, inspires foreigners to hold large amounts of their wealth in U.S. obligations. Their willingness to do so means something else: Trade increases competition. Ultimately it's competition, many producers competing for his dollar, that truly protects the consumer. What protects producers, at the expense of consumers, are restrictions on competition.The quest to restrict competition is what lies at the heart of the trade deficit demagoguery.When's the last time you heard a consumer complaining about his buying more from a Chinese or Japanese producer than that producer buys from him?
The terrorists cannot defeat us on the battlefield. The only way we can lose is if we lose our nerve. This will not happen on my watch."APPLAUSE!
"Javier Solana has once again spent his energy criticizing a wall for damaging peace efforts while ignoring the reason why the wall has to be built in the first place:European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana criticized Israel on Monday for a barrier it is building around Jerusalem, and the Palestinian prime minister said it made a farce of efforts to restart the peace process.
Israel needs the wall in order to protect itself from the lunatics which the Palestinian Authority refuses to disarm. President Abbas has stated over and over again that he will not disarm Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or his own Fatah nutcases in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. As long as the PA refuses to control terrorists in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, then Israel needs to take whatever measures that assists in keeping its civilians alive. ... [If] Solana feels that a wall is the main hurdle to peace in the Middle East ... then the Islamists will have no trouble reconquering Andalusia and the rest of the Continent. Drawing a moral equivalence between building a security wall and deliberately blowing up women and children demonstrates a surrender of the sense of moral outrage necessary to identify between good and evil.
Therefore, to blame Israeli "occupation" of the disputed territories for the GWOT - or for any increase in recent activity of our enemy in the GWOT, (as many on the Left, many Euroweenies and many Arabs have done) - is effing absurd. To blame Israel is to fall into the trap of anti-Semitic Jihadist propaganda which has been aimed mostly at Europe and Arabia, and which was meant to exploit their predisposition for anti-Semitism.
Unlike the above counter-examples, the Jihadoterrorists have control of the "disputed territories - a feat they accomplished through a campaign of internecine terror which began only after Rabin and Peres mistakenly allowed Arafat to return as part of the failed Oslo Peace process. Arafat merely did in the disputed territories what he had done in Jordan and in Lebanon. It is NOT unlike what the Jihadoterorists did in Somalia, and Afghanistan and are trying to do in Iraq - and Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kasmir, AND SPAIN AND GREAT BRITAIN AND HIOLLAND - to name just a few places they are trying to take over by using terror.
The Israeli conflict with Palestinian Arabs is but one front in the GWOT, and it is far from the most contentitous or out-of-control, nor is it the most deadly.
It is long-passed time the chateratti of the Left, the Europeans, the MSM, and the so-called "moderate Arabs" stopped their Israel-bashing and gave Israel the same rights - and judged them by the same standards - as they do other nations in the GWOT.
Pressuring Israel to accept a Palestinian state - which refuses to disarm its Jihadoterrorists, (as the Roadmap demands they do) - is as absurd as demanding the Iraqi Interim Government cede al Anbar to Zarqawi or India cede Kashmir or Russia cede Chechnya or the Philipines cede the Moros.