http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576642963032597504.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop By JOHN YOO This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In his first two decades on the bench, Justice Thomas has established himself as the original Constitution’s greatest defender against elite efforts at social engineering. His stances for limited government and individual freedom make him the left’s […]
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7332873/the-end-of-a-delusion.thtml
The sight of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi blood-stained and bewildered, pulled around by a crowd in the final moments of his life is not a sight that will cause much pity. For more than four decades he had none for those Libyans whom he repressed and killed — anymore than he had for the victims on Pan Am Flight 103, his other multiple acts of terrorism, or his pointless and bloody interventions across Africa.
Yet there is something pitiful about it: perhaps most obviously because watching his end is to watch the end of a delusion. Even more than Saddam Hussein crawling out of a hole in the ground and saying that he wanted to negotiate, the sight of Gaddafi coming out of a soil-pipe armed with a golden gun seems the perfect example of reality catching up with the autocrat. And though it is undeniable that first and foremost Gaddafi was bad quite simply because he was bad, this is a good moment to consider whether there was anything which the international community, and countries like this one, could have done better.
Anyone who was curious about Gaddafi could learn most of what they needed to know by trying to read his near-unreadable Green Book. It includes an extended digression away from the subject of agriculture in which Gaddafi comes to the conclusion that men do not menstruate, nor do they breastfeed children, and that this is a difference between men and women.
The Green Book is useful for understanding Gaddafi because it contains the characteristic that always sat alongside his brutality: his silliness. Even up to the end, that silliness was forever in danger of dominating international attitudes towards him. Who could forget the impromptu press conference earlier this year in which he denied that he had fled the country: leaning out of a golf-buggy, umbrella in hand? Or the rambling speeches at the UN which on one recent occasion led to a translator breaking-down, complaining particularly that it was unclear which parts of the speech Gaddafi meant to address to the hall and which were him talking to himself?
The silliness was legendary. But behind it, and far more important than it, was a deadly delusion. And here was the problem for the international community. At any time, throughout his four decades of dictatorship, Gaddafi always managed to find some leader somewhere, and on occasion several, willing to hail him as the great leader of his time, a continent-wide King or a Caliph, destined alternately to unite Africa or revive the Caliphate. Across Africa, and as far away as Pakistan, there were those who would acclaim him and regard him in the manner he clearly felt to be his due. What they wanted of course was the cash.
For the same reason Gaddafi also found some receptive audiences in the West — and never more-so than in recent years. The bloodshed of the last year has at least reminded people that Gaddafi was not merely a clown. But the pandering to Gaddafi’s whims cannot but have helped prolong his view of himself and so prolong the misery through which he put his people.
When the Blair government decided to restore relations with Libya they did it for decent reasons. But the manner and extent of the un-freezing of relations — the sending of dignitaries to meet him and so on — went far too far. When the international community sat through his rambling multi-hour-long speeches at the UN, and world leaders allowed him to pitch his tent on their lawns, the misconception that there were different rules for him — that he was a case apart — can only have hardened.
Perhaps one occasion should particularly epitomise this. Only last December, Gaddafi made a live video appearance in London at the London School of Economics (LSE). Students and academics at that institution (incidentally a bastion of academic attempts to boycott Israel) had a chance to ask some questions of Gaddafi. They behaved miserably.
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/10/dhimmitude-jihad-that-imagined-secular.html
Dhimmitude, Jihad, & That Imagined “Secular, Democratic State”
During the early 1970s the celebrated Tunisian-born French Jewish author and essayist Albert Memmi – who, I seem to remember, remarked in one of his early books “It is a tragedy to be born a Jew, just as it is a tragedy to be born a woman or a negro” – attended a colloquium in Paris organised by the newspaper Le Monde. Muammar Gaddafi was the main attraction, and Memmi had no hesitation in laying into him, asking him, inter alia:
“Is it enough to have been born an Arab to be entitled to everything and to have been born a Jew to have a right to nothing, except to be condemned to remain eternally second-class citizens, exposed to humiliation and periodic massacres? And if you seriously wanted to avoid our gathering together in that corner of land we call Israeli to renew a most ancient tradition, why have you pursued and hunted us down throughout all the regions where your [Islamic] writ runs?”
I found this anecdote in an article in the Jewish Chronicle (7 November 1975) by Marc Tsiboni, who unfortunately does not tell us what the Libyan dictator (whose own halachic Jewish status was already known, by the way, since Maariv had reported in 1972 that his mother was a Jewish woman from Benghazi who converted to Islam on marriage) replied.
http://biggovernment.com/awrhawkins/2011/10/22/romneys-trouble-with-truth-extends-beyond-illegal-lawn-care-employees/ Mitt Romney is always quick to lambast other Republicans for being career politicians, as if this is his first rodeo and he is a political newcomer. However, the truth is he’s been in politics for over seventeen years, many of which have been spent appealing to liberals and moderates and fighting to keep from […]
Iraq: Immunity For US Troops Was The Deal Breaker For Presence In Iraq
http://bigpeace.com/stzu/2011/10/22/iraq-immunity-for-us-troops-was-the-deal-breaker-for-presence-in-iraq/#more-172164
Posted by Sun Tzu
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister said Saturday that U.S. troops are leaving Iraq after nearly nine years of war because Baghdad rejected American demands that any U.S. military forces to stay would have to be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits.
The comments by Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, made clear that it was Iraq who refused to let the U.S. military remain under the Americans’ terms.
A day earlier, President Obama hailed the troops’ withdrawal as the result of his commitment — promised shortly after taking office in 2009 — to end the war that he once described as “dumb.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/21/confronting-the-threat-from-iran/?page=all#pagebreak
PLEASE READ A review of Reza Kahlili’s book “A Time To Betray-The Astonishing Double Life Of A Cia Agent Inside The Revolutionary Guards Of Iran” and an interview with the author
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10609/pub_detail.asp
Iran panicked after the United States accused it of hatching a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, immediately denying the allegations, which included plans to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies and labeling the plot’s organizer an enemy of the state.
We should have seen it coming.
Iranian officials warned Saudi officials months ago of repercussions because of the Saudi monarchy’s intervention in Bahrain and Yemen, where Iran is pushing for the overthrow of U.S.-friendly governments to establish Shiite rule. Some Revolutionary Guard commanders and parliament deputies even called for a military response to the Saudis’ action in the region.
http://weaselzippers.us/2011/10/21/cair-turns-occupy-wall-street-into-an-outdoor-mosque/ CAIR Turns Occupy Wall Street Into An Outdoor Mosque… The Council on American Islamic Relations New York Chapter (CAIR-NY) led by Imam Aiyub Abdul Baki holds Friday prayers with Demonstrators with ‘Occupy Wall Street’ continue their protest at Zuccotti Park in New York on October 21, 2011. The encampment in the financial district of […]
Gaddafi Dead — So What? Posted By Raymond Ibrahim URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gaddafi-deadso-what/ What a myopic view the Western media and its array of “experts” have concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” — a myopia that naturally metastasizes among the general public. Consider the Libyan crisis. As usual, the focus is entirely on the individual, the […]
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/12/the-sky-isnt-falling
The American Spectator Online (www.spectator.org)
THE ENVIRONMENTAL SPECTATOR
The Sky Isn’t Falling
Henny-Penny’s call came as a surprise. I hadn’t heard from her in months. More surprising was what she had so say:
H-P: I’ve resigned as secretary of The Holy Order of The Sky Is Falling because I’ve learned that it was based on a faulty premise.
Me: That’s breathtaking. What’s happened to change your life?
H-P: Last spring I was promoted to production chief here at the egg ranch. I now oversee all the hens to make sure they meet their daily egg quotas, but I no longer have to meet one myself. That gave me some time to study. I read what skeptical scientists have to say about the long-range effects of the slight average warming of temperatures on Earth over the last century.
Me: What did you conclude?
H-P: That the global warming campaign is based on politics. Many of the delegates to those biennial International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) conferences are political appointees from governments that want to redistribute income and resources from industrialized countries to ones that aren’t.
http://www.theettingerreport.com www.TheEttingerReport.com Walking the (pro-Israel) walk supersedes talking the (anti-Israel) talk. The following data provides some background to Standard & Poor’s decision to upgrade Israel’s credit rating to A+: 1. ChemChina acquired Israel’s Agan Machteshim Chemicals for $2.4BN – $1.1BN in cash and $1.27BN in a non recourse loan (Globes, Oct. 18, 2011). Israel Electric […]
