Free Britannia

A Counterinsurgency Grows in Khost: An unheralded U.S. success in Afghanistan.

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:56:33 GMT

While news reports like to speak of a "resurgent Taliban" in Afghanistan, in the 14 provinces that make up Regional Command East in Afghanistan they are a defeated military force. Not only do the Taliban refuse to engage American forces directly, they have not won an engagement with the Afghan National Army in a year. Even the unimpressive Afghan National Police have lately been winning battles with the insurgents.

RC-East is one of five regional commands in the NATO-led military and development mission in Afghanistan, and the only one under U.S. command. Colonel Marty Schweitzer of the 82nd Airborne Division has just finished a 15-month deployment commanding coalition forces in six provinces in eastern Afghanistan. Here on the eastern border and in the north of the country, the insurgency is largely a matter of IEDs and VBIEDs (Vehicle Born Improvised Explosion Devices), with the occasional suicide bomber. The counterinsurgency is what's resurgent. The rugged terrain Schweitzer was responsible for shares a long border with Pakistan and is inhabited by 4.9 million Afghans, mostly poor and illiterate Pashtuns. But U.S. forces have made great progress in these six provinces. While only 22 of the 86 districts supported the government in early 2007 when Schweitzer took command and 58 at the end of 2007, 72 support it today. In the six eastern provinces, there were 3,400 Afghan National Security Forces in the beginning of 2007; there are now 12,450. And all of this has been at the cost of only 11 civilian casualties in Schweitzer's six provinces.

The crown jewel in the American counterinsurgency is Khost province. Here Lieutenant Colonel Scottie D. Custer pioneered an innovative strategy that Schweitzer quickly copied in other provinces. Custer was Khost's maneuver commander. Each province under American protection has a maneuver commander and a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) commander. Maneuver commanders are in charge of making war, while PRT commanders do development work though the maneuver commanders have special funds for their own development projects.

Khost province is about the size of the Bay Area and has a similar population, around one million. The province was created when the Communist Afghan government tried to rationalize its territory. In 1979 Paktika was carved out of what had been parts of Ghazni and Paktia; six years later the easternmost section of Paktika became Khost. The new province's borders followed the tribal boundaries, and there's no sense that it's an artificial entity.

Khost was in most ways unpromising terrain for developing a successful counterinsurgency. The province had never seen the benefits of what few government services Afghanistan offered before the civil war, and as many as 200,000 Khostis have voted with their feet, emigrating to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and other emirates. They send $6 to $12 million a year back to their families. This is the major source of income for the province, along with agriculture and the logging of the once-plentiful mountain forests. (Opium isn't grown here.)

Khost has a backwoods, archaic flavor. There is no municipal power supply in the province. This isn't unusual in Afghanistan, but while people in more prosperous areas have diesel generators, few Khostis do. Televisions are rare, and American soldiers have distributed thousands of hand-cranked radios in the province. Education was limited to the rote memorization of prayers in rural villages until the last year or so. A five-year plan that aims for 60 percent literacy in the province is very ambitious.

It's hard to overestimate the isolation of the rural people here. Some Khostis living in remote upland villages are only now encountering Americans for the first time. I saw kids who had never learned to play catch, and heard of families of midgets, some of whom are police officers. So it is doubly impressive that Khost has made great civil and economic strides in the last couple of years.

"I am convinced that the cause of instability in Afghanistan is poor governance," says Colonel Schweitzer. "Everything else is a symptom. A year ago, Khost was the most unstable of my six provinces. Today it is the most stable. Why? The governor, Arsala Jamal, and the 10 of the 12 subgovernors who get it." But it also wouldn't have been possible without Scottie Custer.

-snip-

(Ann Marlowe in The Weekly Standard, May 19, 2008)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/080inxsb.asp

Forum: The military forum

The Tale of the Arab Flight Crew

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:35:30 GMT

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime. Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. The date was November 15, 2007.

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.

The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.

This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on.

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $80 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.

The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere. Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.

(Unattributed in To The Point News, May 16, 2008)
http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3207/85/

http://www.tothepointnews.com/images/stories/arabairbus1.jpg

Forum: News from the rest of the world

Lebanon's Future: However strong Hezbollah may be, it won't be able to subjugate and administer Lebanon.

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:11:38 GMT

And the country's future is starting to look a lot like its past.

Lebanon will not become the next Gaza.

Commenters both inside and outside the country compared Hezbollah's invasion of West Beirut last week to the Hamas takeover of Gaza last year, which is perhaps understandable: that's what it looked like. If Lebanon's mainstream Sunni-dominated party Saad Hariri's Future Movement has a militia that is able and willing to fight, it didn't make much of an appearance. Hezbollah seized the western half of the city in a walk. Most journalists focused on this portion of the conflict because West Beirut is where almost every journalist in Lebanon lives and where almost every hotel for visiting journalists is located.

Far less attention has been paid to Hezbollah's military and strategic failure in the Chouf mountains southeast of Beirut where Lebanon's Druze community lives. Hezbollah picked a major fight there and lost. After three days of pitched battles, its gunmen were unable to conquer a single village even when they brought out mortars and heavy artillery.

The Druze are among the fiercest of warriors, and everyone in Lebanon knows it. They are well-known in Israel, too, where they often serve in elite units of the Israel Defense Forces and suffer lower-than-average casualty rates in battles with Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups. Most of Israel's Sunni Arabs abstain from military service, but Druze Arabs are as loyal to the Israeli state, and are as willing and able to fight for it, as their Lebanese counterparts are in their own country. There's a reason two of the Middle East's religious minorities Maronite Christians and Druze live in Lebanon's mountains in significant numbers: attempts to invade and subjugate them are ill-advised, very likely to fail, and therefore rarely attempted by even large armies.

It's debatable whether or not Lebanon's Sunnis are organized and well-armed or not. Certainly they are not compared to Hezbollah. No one in Lebanon is. But Druze chief Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party proved they have no shortage of weapons, and they fought off Hezbollah's invasion even though he told them not to. A tiny percentage of Druze are partially loyal to Talal Arslan, Hezbollah's only Druze ally, but they defected in large numbers when Hezbollah launched its attack. They fought on the same side as the rest of their community. Political alliances have their limits, and Arslan's people and Hezbollah discovered theirs. It is now almost safe to say that Hezbollah has no friends at all in the mountains overlooking the dahiyeh, their capital and command and control center in the suburbs south of Beirut.

Lebanon's mainstream Sunnis in relatively liberal and cosmopolitan West Beirut basically threw up their hands and let Hezbollah take over, in part because they were ill-prepared to do much about it, and in part to make their Hezbollah enemies look like the aggressors and thugs that they are. Don't expect that dynamic to last very long if the violence resumes, however. The Sunnis, as a community, are likely to follow the Druze example even if their leaders Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and Future Movement MP Saad Hariri instruct them not to. Former Prime Minister Omar Karami is one of Hezbollah's few Sunni allies. But as Lee Smith pointed out, he told Hezbollah that if this becomes a sectarian fight, then we have two choices: to either stay home, or fight with our sect.

-snip-

(Michael J. Totten in Commentary, May 16, 2008)
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/lebanon-s-future-11376

Forum: The military forum

Victory Solutions Are Never Timid

Oklahoma — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:12:18 GMT

In the First Gulf War many references were made about avoiding Vietnam. As I recall, Colin Powell, The President, the Generals all in various forums and manners maintained over and over-NO VIETNAM.

They used words like "overwhelming force"and "maximum effort" to ensure that everyone understood from top down and bottom up that victory was not to be denied. No half measures. No war by inches. No bombing half a bridge. In fact, all the gloves came off. We deployed B52's to B1B's, 16"Gun Battleships to SSN's, Armoured Divisions to Airborne Divisions. We used precision guided munitions and carpet bombed as well. We culminated this effort into a no holding back massacre on the retreating columns leaving Basra. It was only when it became just plain embarrassing to continue did we stop.

But then the timid, the committees of decision, the pollsters and Vietnam raised its head. We did not finish. In reality, it is hard to really blame them. They had no mandate and it looked as if Saddam would topple. He should have. But he beat the odds and our gamble. Our bet was hedged. We bet he would fall and we wanted no more Vietnams, so why risk it?

We had learned much from Vietnam as evidenced by our doctrine. We would it seems never forget....

Iraq.  In my opinion, a strategic move on par with Lee moving Jackson at Chancellorville we have taken a position in the Middle East that the enemy cannot let us have or they lose. By liberating Iraq, we can plant a second democracy in the region, get rid of Saddam, destabilize Iran and Saudi with freedom, and have position on all of them. It was a tough and difficult strategy- no doubt. Difficult diplomacy, the tribal element and the WMD deal but the only real chance for real victory- the defeat of Islam.

We still remembered Vietnam. No search, destroy and leave. We were not going to chase a wisp of smoke through the "jungles" of the whole world. That chase would involve borders, sanctuaries, sovereignty, and delays such as: Can we strike? Can we enter? Never mind they're gone. So we took the high ground and brought them to battle.

But after having made such credible decisions involving resolve and fortitude.  We find that the old politics of Vietnam rising up. The minimization of effect.  The dilemma political and diplomatic damage control. How does one salvage public relations when those you wish to impress are in total odds with your policy? Will bombing half the bridge bring only half the reaction or derision? Will 165,000 troops be more palatable to the American Public and Congress than 300,000. Will a slower operations tempo produce lower weekly casualties even if the end total is more, being longer?   If we don't blow up this mosque, will the Muslims respect us?

Iraq 2007- Vietnam looms larger than ever. And we must remember or we will pay for it.  The surge has worked just as everyone knew it would and should have three years ago. If most people would really study Vietnam, they would cry. Those 58,000 names on the wall could have been a part of a winning war-not a loss. Nixon and Kissinger formulated an exit strategy from Vietnam that was so powerful that if there had been any stomach left we would have won.

When Kissinger began meeting Lu Duc Tho in the Paris secret meetings the Vietnamese would not agree to any conditions or formulas for peace. Their position was total and immediate withdrawal and surrender in Saigon. They held that position without deviation of even the slightest detail for two years. They often quoted the polls and the protesters and the opposition to the war.

When Nixon authorized the destruction of the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos all North Vietnamese offensive pressure in the South ground to a halt. The unrestricted bombing of the North and mining of the Ports decimated the Northern War Effort. When they realized that Nixon and Kissinger had triangulated the Chinese and Russians diplomatically they were in no position to continue the war. They were suffering murderously.  They could see no effective Chinese or Russian pressure to undermine the US.

At this point, the United States was psychologically exhausted and divided and could not have leveraged that position into victory. As it were we could only demand our orderly withdrawal, the recognition of the South and the suspension of hostilities. What if the gloves were off in 1967? Maybe a win?

What now in Iraq? Do we allow the surge to be too little too late?  Or do we parley it into a victory?  I for one believe IF we can remember the details of Vietnam and can keep Hillary and Obama out of the White House it might break the back of the enemy in Iraq.

Forum: The military forum

America Is Weary of Black Resentment

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:06:09 GMT

Wouldn't it be something if Michelle Obama, not the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or John McCain, were the reason Barrack Obama looses the presidency? Instead of "change," the First Lady-in-waiting is sticking with old hurts held closely by certain black communities.

They are those who relish the pain suffered by their slave forefathers and mothers. They revisit, over and over, what was; hurts, carefully protected and harbored as badges of honor.

None of us on this land are responsible for what happened to their kin, but they don't care. They marinate in crippling history.

Why?

The reasons reek of the psychology of it all. As long as struggle is someone else's fault, change is not a consideration.

Very few pioneers, who wove the early foundations of this country, missed out on suffering caused by prejudice. Either they were the wrong culture, sex, skill or religion. None, however, endured the evil suffered by the Native American.

Surely, every one of us, who cannot claim Native American blood, should leave this land forever, if justice is to be granted a wounded race. When that is done, let the next victims speak their claims against a nation so grand that during the past century it astoundingly righted major civil wrongs.

Where will it end?

Time for healing is long passed. Resentments and victimhood are now simply an excuse.

Despite her education, Michelle doesn't seem to compute the reality of the struggle of all humanity, everywhere. Behind the scenes, I imagine the Obama campaign handlers are choking on their pizza.

"They just keep raising the bar on Barrack," Michelle complained.

And, we all know what that means. If it's hard to be elected president, it's about discrimination. No mention of black Americans who've broken the attitude chains of helplessness.

-snip-

(Linda Turley-Hansen in the Ahwatukee Foothills News , May 15, 2008)
http://www.ahwatukee.com/articles/black_3203___article.html/michelle_change.html

Forum: News from the USA

American Public Opinion on Islamist Issues

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:34:01 GMT

What do Americans think about demands for Sharia courts, or Muslim taxi drivers who refuse to carry dogs or passengers carrying alcohol? These and other questions relating to Islamist demands were the subject of a poll sponsored by Act for America and conducted by Moore Information. With permission, we publish the summary of those results from their website:

1. Seven out of ten respondents (69%) disagreed with FBI translator hiring practices favoring Muslims over qualified Christians, Jews and other qualified linguist/analysts.

2. Seven out ten respondents (71%) disagreed with employers giving Muslim workers time off for daily and weekly prayer.

3. Nine out of ten respondents (89%) disagreed that separate Sharia law courts should be permitted in legal systems in the West.

4. Eight out of ten respondents (79%) disagreed that Muslim cab drivers can reject fares whose actions may violate their Islamic beliefs.

5. Three out of four respondents (74%) disagreed that criticizing or mocking the Prophet Mohammed or Islam constitutes hate speech.

6. Nearly nine out of ten respondents (89%) disapproved of the practice of Banks engaging in Shariah Compliant Financing, which would require the banks to devote 2.5% or more of earnings to questionable Islamic charitable contributions with direct or indirect ties to terrorist organizations.

7. Over three-fifths of respondents (61%) disagreed that Muslim chaplains in our prison systems have the right to indoctrinate inmates in hate and violence under Freedom of Religion.

8. Two thirds of respondents (67%) indicated the increase in Islamic terrorism around the world was due to Militant Muslims because of their aggressive and violent actions toward non-Muslims.

-snip-

(Thomas Lifson in the American Thinker, May 16, 2008)
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/american_public_opinion_on_isl.html

Forum: News from the USA

VDH: The Problem Is Not Conservatism, But Conservatives Who Arent Conservative

quidnunc — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:44:17 GMT

A Simple Conservative Message

There is a lot of anguish among Republicans as they look at the dismal polls and the even more depressing performance of their candidates in various preliminary House races. New books and prophets forecast an end to conservatism, and a need to formulate a new sort of muscular liberalism to meet new challenges. Expect more such nostrums if Barack Obama wins in the fall.

What mystifies is the paralysis of Republicans and their impotent protestations that Bush did it. The truth is that Congressional Republicans, responsible for turning principles into governance, deserve to lose unless they craft clear positions that wont be compromised and then offer them as alternative choices to the voters this fall. Here are some examples:

Spending: a balanced budget, no exceptions. Voters are tired of hearing that this or that projection assures a balanced budget in 2, 3, or 5 years. Revenues continue to soar after the tax cuts, so the problem is too much going out, not too little coming in. Surpluses are preferable to deficits, since we want to retire, not add to out foreign debt. Just say no or better yet Please pay for it the next time a new entitlement is introduced.

The War: Afghanistan and Iraq have radically improved. Anti-war hype and slurs are a year out of date. We are finally on the edge of having done the impossible: removed the most odious regimes in the Middle East and fostered constitutional governments in their places. Spending on general defense and the war still run at only 4% of GDP, not high by historical levels. The reforming Petraeus army is stronger and wiser, despite the toll of war, for our ordeals in the Middle East. As troops slowly begin to come home next year, let everyone take credit for it.

Energy: Drill, explore, conserve. The answer does not lie in any one area, but in the willingness to produce more energy in all of them. We must ensure more oil, coal, and nuclear power, conserve more energy as we produce more to prevent going broke while we transition to next-generation fuels.

Why should others abroad, who are far less careful, extract oil for us in areas of the world more fragile than our own? We must end the notion that ANWR only yields a million barrels a day, or the coasts only 2 million, or tar sands or shale only a million, or nuclear power and coal only so many megawatts of power. To paraphrase, Sen. Dirksen a million barrels a day here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real production.

-snip-

(Victor Davis Hanson in the Pajamas Media, May 16, 2008)
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-problem-is-not-conservatism-but-conservatives-who-arent-conservative/

Forum: Conservatism

The Real Iraq: Michael Yon sees the country, and the war, without ideological blinders.

quidnunc — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:42:30 GMT

Moment of Truth in Iraq , by Michael Yon (Richard Vigilante Books, 227 pp.)

Iraq is where ideologies go to die. Arab nationalism, Baathism, anti-Americanism, al-Qaidism, Donald Rumsfeldism, and Moqtada al-Sadrism have either died there or are dying. Conventional liberal opinion, more or less correct about the foundering American war effort from 2004 to 2006, has been severely bloodied along with Iraqs worst insurgent groups and militias by General David Petraeuss leadership of the American troop surge. Even post-9/11 fear of Islam has proven unsustainable for those who regularly interact with ordinary Iraqis. Independent journalist Michael Yon, who has spent more time embedded with combat soldiers in Iraq than any other reporter, is a refreshingly unideological analyst of the war. His self-published dispatches have earned him a loyal following around the world, and he has set out to reach even more people with the publication of a terrific new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq.

Yon begins his story in medias res. We are in trouble, but we have a great general, he writes on the eve of Arrowhead Ripper, the major battle last summer against al-Qaidas terrorist army in Baqubah, just north of Baghdad. Iraq was all but lost before the battle, when American forces under Petraeus surged into the capital and beyond. Yon then takes us back in time and to the northern city of Mosul, where Petraeus first proved that he knew how to counter an insurgency by working with the local population and protecting it from killers. Yon spent many months in Mosul embedded with the 1-24th Infantry Regiment, or Deuce Four, and his first-person narrative of firefights in the citys streets and alleys is relentless and gripping.

Despite Petraeuss early successes in Mosul, the city is now perhaps Iraqs most violent. It slid back into chaos when the generals strategy was discontinued after he completed his tour there and before he was appointed the commander of American forces in Iraq. There are no final battles in counterinsurgency warfare, as Yon makes clear, but if there were to be one in Iraq, it most likely would take place in Mosul. Much of Iraq has now been pacified most famously and astonishingly in the formerly convulsive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, as well as in Baqubah, most of Baghdad, and regions further south.

Moment of Truth in Iraq isnt the journalistic equivalent of a war movie, but parts of it could surely be used as the starting point for a screenplay. (Such a film might easily perform better at the box office than Hollywoods string of gloomy, axe-grinding Iraq flicks have.) Still, Yons book isnt just about explosions and carnage. Its also about the new counterinsurgency strategy and, more important, the Americans and Iraqis who risk their lives to make it work. When Iraq was degenerating into its worst levels of violence, American soldiers spent too much time behind their bases walls, hoping to keep casualties to a minimum and to avoid being seen as occupiers by the Iraqis. Today, they live and work inside Iraqs cities and neighborhoods, where they tend to be welcomed, if not as liberators then as protectors. Counterinsurgency is as much about nation building and community policing as it is about war making.

The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world, Yon writes, and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention. Images of the despicable abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib have become iconic for many around the world. But anyone who has spent significant time with American troops in Iraq, as I have, will recognize the truth in Yons descriptions of U.S. soldiers as usually decent and caring. There are lots of kitchen accidents in Iraq, he points out. Kids get burned. American soldiers cant take it when they see a kid get burned. If they are in the neighborhood on a mission and they see a burned kid, they will cancel the mission to get the kid to an American aid station, which, technically they shouldnt be doing.

-snip-

(Michael J. Totten in the City Journal, May 16, 2008)
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/bc0516mt.html

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Forum: The military forum

Bush, Obama and Terror

quidnunc — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:52:23 GMT

President Bush touched a nerve yesterday when he went before the Israeli Knesset and criticized those who "believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals" as engaging in a "foolish delusion."

Judging by the outrage from Barack Obama, and many other major Democrats, it looks like Bush's barb hit the mark.

Obama, not surprisingly, immediately declared the president's remarks to have been aimed directly at him and branded them "a false political attack."

The White House insists otherwise and, of course, his words are entirely consistent with the principled position that Bush long ago staked out.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along," said Bush.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.'

"We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement," Bush declared.

Well said. And entirely correct.

What exactly is it about those sentiments with which Obama takes issue?

It must be his willingness to sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a man who, as presumptive GOP nominee John McCain put it yesterday, "is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for killing brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map who denies the Holocaust."

Because while Obama insists that he has "never supported engagement with terrorists" specifically citing Hamas he has no problem meeting with those who pull the strings of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

There's no disagreement about that.

-snip-

(The New York Post editorial, May 16, 2008)
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05162008/postopinion/editorials/bush__obama_and_terror_111119.htm

Is Obama so convinced of his powers of persuasion that he thinks he can personally turn Ahmadinejad from Hamas' banker into a flag-waving Zionist?

Or does he not understand that to treat with terror is to send the message that bloody-handed murder is a potential path to political success?

Forum: News from the USA

Murdoch: Media Hostility Has Anti-Semitic Roots

quidnunc — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:43:57 GMT

A "pretty strong degree of anti-Semitism" in Europe is at the root of the hostile coverage Israel receives in parts of the European media, Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation global media chief, charged on Thursday.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post following his appearance at Jerusalem's "Facing Tomorrow" presidential conference, Murdoch (pictured) said it was hard for Israel to obtain fair media coverage in Europe because it was forced to "start off behind."

Elaborating, Murdoch said: "If you go to the BBC, the French press, places like that they start as hostile, and it's very difficult to overcome. But you've just got to press on and do what you can."

In a series of characteristically striking assessments, Murdoch went on to say that "the whole of Europe has gone soft. You've got a degree of disintegration though that's too strong a word of society."

Where Britain was concerned, he said, "maybe it's a lack of leadership, too."

In an implied critique of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he added, "You didn't have lack of leadership with Tony Blair."

Murdoch owns a considerable proportion of the British print media, including The Sun and Times dailies, and the SKY satellite network. His newspapers' support was critical to the electoral successes of prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Blair, so his comment about a current lack of leadership is potentially significant for Brown and his would-be replacement, Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

-snip-

(David Horovitz in The Jerusalem Post, May. 16, 2008)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668650253&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

He suggested countering the extremists by doing "everything you can to encourage prosperity in the world of Islam and education to keep people away and ensure they're not tempted by this.

Having said that, however, Murdoch, who sat down with the Post after a lengthy meeting with Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, acknowledged that he was at a loss to explain the viciousness of Islamic extremism, as exemplified by the July 7, 2005, public transport bombings in London, carried out by four British-raised Muslims. "I don't understand how prosperous British-born Muslims would ," he said.

Forum: News from the rest of the world

Leo McKinstry: It's the Same Old Blueprint More Taxes, Waste and State Control

quidnunc — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:08:54 GMT

The disasterous bankruptcy of the Labour Government has been on full display this week.

On Tuesday we had the financial bankruptcy as Chancellor Alistair Darling announced he would borrow 2.7billion to pay for the shambles created by Gordon Browns abolition of the 10p tax band.

Then on Wednesday we had a graphic demonstration of Labours political bankruptcy with Browns launch in Parliament of his forthcoming legislative programme. It was a pathetic ragbag of gimmicks and hollow verbiage. Just as the Treasury has no money, Downing Street has no ideas.

The aim of this raft of proposals was to give the illusion that the Government has a sense of purpose. Yet it only reinforced the feeling that our rulers have lost all direction and are scrambling around in their panic for any scheme, no matter how half-baked, that might appear to justify their continuation in office.

The proposed legislation, to be set out in 18 new Bills, shows Labour at its worst, indulging in gesture politics. There is already enough legislation in this country. Britain has been deluged by regulations and bureaucracy during the past 11 years.

What we need are fewer laws and more competence. But we are not going to get that from a Labour Cabinet addicted to perpetual revolution, where endless legislative change has become a substitute for solid governance and where the law is cynically used as an instrument of political propaganda.

Underlying Labours programme is the continuing belief in the remorseless expansion of the State. If enacted, the proposals will strengthen the power of official bodies to interfere in our lives, swallowing more of our cash, restricting more of our freedom, destroying more of our democracy and undermining more of our wealth creation.

For all Browns shallow rhetoric about devolved power, his plan amounts in practice to a charter for yet more bureaucratic intervention.

-snip-

(Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, May 16,2008)
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/44666

Forum: News from the UK: Britain and the world

U.N. racism investigator to visit USA

Basti — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:45:04 GMT

U.N. racism investigator to visit USA

Quote: GENEVA (Reuters) - A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Partys presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

The special rapporteur willgather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, a U.N. statement said on Friday.

Excuse me! Any racism in the US is an internal US matter and the UN holds no bailiwick here! Stop this UN Commie at port of entry and send him back where he came from! We dont need UN Commies meddling in US internal affairs for any reason!

Forum: News from the rest of the world

UPDATE: Jesse Ventura may run vs. Al Franken for senate seat

Basti — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:44:30 GMT

UPDATE: Jesse Ventura may run vs. Al Franken for senate seat

Youve heard of battle of the bands, this would be the battle of the nitwits.

Forum: Oddities, witticisms and jokes

U.S. citizenship to be checked during hurricane evacuations

Basti — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:43:52 GMT

U.S. citizenship to be checked during hurricane evacuations

If youre here illegally you should be left behind for the hurricane to deal with!

Forum: Victories!

Bush in Saudi Arabia King sees no reason to raise oil production

Basti — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:43:12 GMT

Bush in Saudi Arabia King sees no reason to raise oil production

Translation: Weve got you bloody infidels right where we want you so why would we want to raise production?

Forum: Lifestyle