Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/14/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Very interesting article. RTWT.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/14/2012 0:31 Comments ||
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#2
Now everyone knows that only white crackers can be slavers! Whitey went to Africa, kidnapped innocent Africans and transported them across the Atlantic ocean.
There may have been more prolific and/or worse slavery, but that doesn't make it right. It would be better to paint a more complete picture to help understand the various cultures involved, though.
#4
I didn't say it was right. I was pointing out that this is the only view which the Media, Hollywood, and the left shows. You never hear any discussion of the Islamic slavery (which is still occuring) or anything else.
But you are right that they did transport them across the atlantic - often in terrible conditions - but, as this article pointed out, the death rate across the Sahara and Indian ocean were much worse. But you wouldn't know that from the media or hollywood.
#7
Despite all the numbers going east, is there any place in the ME, or on the littoral of the Indian Ocean that looks like, say, Haiti, or Brazil, or even Alabama?
No? Whyever not.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
04/14/2012 10:48 Comments ||
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#8
Christians didn't invent slavery - but they did invent abolition. Yet another modern innovation Islam has yet to adopt.
#9
Despite all the numbers going east, is there any place in the ME, or on the littoral of the Indian Ocean that looks like, say, Haiti, or Brazil, or even Alabama?
No? Whyever not.
From the article:
"The Muslim slave trade typically dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves: eunuchs. Eunuchs were created by completely amputating the scrotum and penis of eight to twelve year old African boys. Hundreds of thousands of young boys bled to death during this gory procedure. The survival rate from this process ranged from 1 in 10 to 1 in 30."
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/14/2012 19:34 Comments ||
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#10
Free the white slaves, send them back to Africa.
That thought reveals exactly how nutty the whole idea is.
I don't know a single Black who doesn't think he's a wholr lot better off than the Africans.
Thre'd be a revolition.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/14/2012 20:33 Comments ||
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At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country's spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true.It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There is no free lunch.
Three years later, we are back to smoke and mirrors. This time it's not health care but the Buffett Rule, which would impose a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate on millionaires.Okay. Let's do the math. No, NO! No FAIR! Proles can't do MATH!
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new tax would yield between $4 billion and $5 billion a year. If we collect the Buffett tax for the next 250 years -- a span longer than the life of this republic -- it would not cover the Obama deficit for 2011 alone.
The Buffett Rule is nothing but a form of redistributionism that has vanishingly little to do with debt reduction and everything to do with reelection. As such, it's clever.
It perfectly pits the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Indeed, it is OWS translated into legislation, something the actual occupiers never had the wit to come up with. Clever politics, but in terms of economics, it's worse than useless. It's counterproductive.
The reason Buffett and Mitt Romney pay roughly 15 percent in taxes is that their income is principally capital gains. The Buffett Rule is, in fact, a disguised tax hike on capital gains. But Obama prefers to present it as just an alternative minimum tax because 50 years of economic history show that raising the capital gains tax backfires: It reduces federal revenue, while lowering the tax raises revenue.
No matter. Obama had famously said in 2008 that even if that's the case, he'd still raise the capital gains tax -- for the sake of fairness.
For Obama, fairness is the supreme social value. And fairness is what he is running on -- although he is not prepared to come clean on its price. Or even acknowledge that there is a price. Instead, Obama throws in a free economic lunch for all. "This is not just about fairness," he insisted on Wednesday. "This is also about growth." His lips moved. I saw them!
Growth? The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Now, in the middle of a historically weak recovery, Obama wants to raise our capital gains tax to the fourth highest. No better way to discourage investment -- and the jobs and growth that come with it. (Except, perhaps, for hyperregulation. But Obama is working on that too.)
Three years ago, Obama promised universal health care that saves money. Today, he offers a capital gains tax hike that spurs economic growth. This is free-lunch egalitarianism.
The Buffett Rule redistributes deck chairs on the Titanic, ostensibly to make more available for those in steerage. Nice idea, but the iceberg cometh. The enterprise is an exercise in misdirection -- a distraction not just from Obama's dismal record on growth and unemployment but, more important, from his dereliction of duty in failing to this day to address the utterly predictable and devastating debt crisis ahead.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/14/2012 15:17 ||
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#1
Why go for real change when you can half ass it to the same political effect. His voters are not very smart.
#1
The Turks have a reputation for being staunch fighters. Put them up in a defensive position and they will defend it to the last man, as they proved at Gallipoli and during their engagements with Chinese troops during the Korean War. The problem is that they have had serious difficulties with domestic Kurdish guerrillas who number in the thousands. How would they deal with Syrian guerrillas in the tens or hundreds of thousands? The prospects of Turkish body bags numbering in the thousands per year is why the Turks haven't intervened in Syria. Not to mention the prospect of Arab ingratitude after the expenditure of tens of thousands of dead Turks and the destruction of billions of dollars of Turkish military equipment at the hands of Syrian troops and guerrillas.
In addition, millions of Turkish Alawites are irate at Turkish government proclamations of solidarity with Syrian Sunni Arabs. They see the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria as the beginning of a program of physical annihilation against Alawites. If Erdogan invades Syria, he might have to add an Alawite insurgency in Turkey to the Kurdish insurgency that currently kills hundreds of Turkish soldiers a year. That, on top of the fact that secular elements of the Turkish military might take the opportunity to stage a coup and defenestrate him, should give Erdogan pause about any Turkish intervention.
#2
That, on top of the fact that secular elements of the Turkish military might take the opportunity to stage a coup and defenestrate him, should give Erdogan pause about any Turkish intervention.
This. I pray. I hope the have a good camera angle for his descent.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
04/14/2012 17:43 Comments ||
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[Dawn] DESPITE the virtual media blackout of Gilgit-Baltistan it is becoming increasingly clear that sectarian violence in the entire region is spiralling out of control.
Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter awoke groggily, his hand still stuck in the Ming vase... the systematic attacks on the Hazaras of Quetta continue unabated. It is hardly surprising then that Shias everywhere are talking conspiracy even as beturbanned goon Sunnis of all varieties are doing everything in their power to prove the conspiracy theorists right.
A conspiracy is that which is hidden from the public eye, a plan hatched by unknown elements hell-bent on causing maximum possible harm to the adversary. By this definition, organised attacks such as those that have been carried out in recent times are a conspiracy only in the sense that immeasurable harm has been caused to the community being targeted. Who is doing the killing is hardly a secret.
In Quetta, a couple of 'banned' and 'defunct' organizations have taken responsibility for most of the attacks. It scarcely matters that the killers have not been as forthcoming in Gilgit-Baltistan (or the media willing to break with the 'greater national interest' in its adhering to the terms of the blackout).
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... (LJ), after all, is just another name for a nexus of social forces and state institutions that has unapologetically transformed Pakistain's social and political landscape since the dark years of Ziaul Haq.
Madressahs, a retrogressive public educational curriculum, a pro-jihadi media discourse -- these and many other dimensions of Pakistain's love affair with millenarianism have been in and out of the news for years, in the English press at least.
Commentators, myself included, have emphasised the continuing refusal of our holy guardians to give up on hare-brained schemes such as strategic depth that have shredded the innards of this society.
But there has been, till now, not enough focus on arguably the most dangerous trend of all: that otherwise forward-thinking people spread out across the length and breadth of this country, almost despite themselves, are starting to conform to the exclusivist discourse that the gunnies on all sides are championing.
Beyond the alarmism that afflicts the chattering classes the objective evidence is relatively conclusive; most Paks are not bigots, even if many are cowed into silence by the issuers of the proverbial fatwas.
At best most of us are hypocrites who have imbibed the Ziaist imperative of demonstrating religiosity in public and otherwise engaging in distinctly 'un-Islamic' practices -- as far as the mullahs are concerned -- in the comfort of our own homes.
Minority communities that have been victimised consistently over a period of time -- some even before the 1980s -- have understandably looked within themselves to cope with the tyranny of the majority. This tendency has, however, not necessarily given rise to reaction. In fact, there have been many notable progressive outcomes, including a marked desire of more affluent members of the community to look after those endowed with much less.
Where some form of reaction has come to light, as in the case of Shia militancy in the 1990s, a significant part of the community has rejected it. Many young, educated Shia who have, for one reason or the other, been taken in by the appeal of Shia militancy, subsequently recanted and generally espouse a principled politics of non-violence and promote inter-faith harmony.
But it is now important to ask whether or not there may be countervailing trends emerging. Individuals hailing from minority communities active in the social media are starting to evince more alienation than might have been the case even a few years ago. Anger and resentment are becoming more common as the perception of perennial victimhood becomes more pronounced.
Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... is the best example of how systematic brutalisation can precipitate extremely dangerous social conflicts between relatively disempowered communities. Ethnic Baloch have long felt victimised by the Pak state, but xenophobic trends within the Baloch nationalist movement have historically remained relatively muted.
The Shia Hazara community settled mostly in Quetta has, for the most part, coexisted with Baloch and Pakhtuns and integrated itself into the wider society. Pakhtuns are probably the most upwardly mobile of the three major communities, but this is not to suggest that they constitute a dominant ethnic group per se.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that tensions between all three communities have intensified greatly in recent times. Hazaras and Baloch in particular have become less likely to express any measure of empathy for one another, and it is noticeable that otherwise eloquent progressives on both sides are now in the business of competing over which community faces more systematic and structural violence.
The situation in Gilgit-Baltistan has been on knife-edge for much longer. Sectarian festivities which were a minor speck on the social landscape before the Zia years erupt in all their fury at almost regular intervals, radicalising otherwise ordinary people and arousing suspicions that persist long after the particular phase of violence has passed.
Of course, it matters that those charged with protecting the public peace are heavily implicated in destroying it, and that our holy guardians and their sycophants jealously guard the ideological apparatuses that produce hate and violence.
But simply reiterating that the state is culpable will not force it to change its historical posture. The fact of the matter is that too many people in society are starting to believe they have to take sides in a manner that makes it more difficult in the long-term to build an alternative consensus. It is necessary to face up to this growing polarisation and then do something about it.
In particular, as many of us as possible need to speak up not only for our own but for all those who are victims of wanton violence and systematic exclusion. The biggest burden must be owned by majorities, especially religious and ethnic ones. But the sane voices within minority communities have a role to play too, as they have in the past.
If all those who believe that there is still something to be salvaged from the wreckage of sectarian and all other forms of organised violence do come together and say what needs to be said, there is hope yet that all the blood that has been spilt will not have been in vain.
#1
This court ruling is just the latest incident that appears to contradict the U.S. White House's positive spin that began with use of the term "Arab Spring"
In retrospect its almost comical the manner in which the O-Team managed the Egyptian coup d'état. The hook for Hosni and Son was inevitable. However, if there ever was a time to attempt the proverbial dictators soft landing Cairo was it. The Progressive/Marxist/Unionists never stood a chance to overwhelm the more established Islamists. Rather than exercising whatever leverage against the Egyptian military the Obama Whitehouse had instead it chose to focus all of its resources on developing a narrative. Arguably, this is an example of President Obamas greatest liability his predictability. He will always make a decision based on what (they think) will have the most favorable perception for the president himself.
#2
They beat them and their friends in a different war a long time ago when the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAD REAL LEADERS AND GHOULS WERE NOT IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING!
#2
No mention, not even speculation, about what sinking just a single oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz would mean for the world economy, renders the discussion moot. I suppose the US could render Iranian naval forces and artillery equivalents non-functional while leaving oil transport unimpeded. That seems unlikely to happen.
I still like the idea of airdropping a vast supply of pistols and ammo into Iran as a gift to those opposing the mullahs.
#3
I still like the idea of airdropping a vast supply of pistols and ammo into Iran as a gift to those opposing the mullahs.
RPGs, man. Don't forget the RPGs. :-)
But I'll bet they'd listen to reason if they truly feared for their lives. Decapitation strikes, a warning MOAB near a couple of key infrastructure points, families of mullahs threatened, napalm any place that might provide cover for a missile launch, laying waste to their entire navy in an afternoon (including their stupid subs), bombing the crap out if Republican Guard barracks and key logistics centers, a couple of fake cluster bomb alpha strikes in key population centers (maybe use yellow Nerf balls with the words "If this had been a cluster bomb, your child would be dead now, so don't do anything stupid to make us use them. Tell your neighbors." written on it), sonic booms all through the night, radio broadcasts promising $100,000 rewards for informantion leading to the hamburgerization of key government and military officials, etc., etc.. And of course tactical nukes to take out their precious nuke sites. No boots on the ground. And take out Syria and the Norks.
#4
As a first step: INVITE CHINA to make a military road from China across Afghanistan to the Iranian border.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
04/14/2012 5:47 Comments ||
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#5
Guerrilla tactics are somewhat ineffective against airborn targets. The US would be smart not to put boots on the ground, except perhaps advisors and contacts working with Iranian rebels.
#6
Anguper Hupomosing9418, a number of tankers were sunk during the Iran/Iraq tanker war. I'm sure they've modeled it out very well. The real fear is the speculators send the price up, but that can be controlled.
#9
I am sure there are plans to mine all Iranian harbors. Speedboats would be destroyed at their bases. If shtf, then action important. Getting inside MM OODA loop is paramount.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/14/2012 12:28 Comments ||
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#10
a number of tankers were sunk during the Iran/Iraq tanker war. I'm sure they've modeled it out very well
Like our economists modeled the housing bubble crash? If that is the case, we are already sunk. The world has changed a great deal since. If sovereign interest rates merely returned to the levels current during the last Iran/Iraq war, multiple national economies would collapse.
#11
The thing is, Iran is due to run out of oil it can pump in eight years, if I understand correctly. So nation destroying isn't necessary, except as a lesson to similarly ambitious nations. Likewise, Israel needn't utterly destroy Iran's nuclear industry, merely set it back enough, often enough, that weapons aren't accomplishable before economic melt-down is achieved. Afterward, Iranians of fighting age should be too busy caring for their grandparents and trying desperately to strive off starvation to trouble themselves about sending war beyond their borders.
#14
Like our economists modeled the housing bubble crash?
Actually the housing crash was modeled very nicely. Having worked in the mortgage banking industry for many years, I can tell you that people cringing as the tsunami approachedwaiting for it to hit.
Back to Iran: The Iranians probably want to repeat the Iraqi insurgency only 3 - 5x bigger. There are 3 problems with that strategy:
1) The US already has experience defeating a Muslim insurgency.
2) The Sunni Arabs are not about to help out a radical Shia insurgency (like they did in Iraq).
3) The Iranian insurgents will not have a foreign sanctuary next door.
Certainly a conflict with Iran would be messy, but I am convinced we would win.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/14/2012 19:07 Comments ||
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#15
DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > IRAN TELLS UAE: [We are Strong +] WE WILL CRUSH ANY AGGRESSION. UAE should NOT make a serious mistake + underestimate Iran like the Zionist US + Israel.
and
* SAME > SAUDI AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT THREATENS IRAN WID MILITARY ACTION.
* SAME > BAHRAINI FORCES [Govt-Security] ATTACK MOURNERS AT MANAMA, attending the funeral of slaim Jounalist Ahmed Ismail al-Samadi.
Also, SAME = [AL-Jazeera]PAKISTANI TROOPS AID [Saudi-backed?]BAHRAINI CRACKDOWN, agz local Shias.
FYI thats NUKE-WANNABE IRAN'S BFF NUCLEAR PAKISTAN doing that to Bahraini Shias.
YEMEN + UAE + BAHRAIN = ARISE, BASE-TOO-FAR QATAR, ARISE??? OMAN wants to feel the love.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] DESPITE the virtual media blackout of Gilgit-Baltistan it is becoming increasingly clear that sectarian violence in the entire region is spiralling out of control.
