Friday, 11 February 2011
News............
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Feb. 10th
This relates to the john f. kennedy assassination, and the "necessity" of the "grassy knoll" shooter ... slow motion bullet impacts ...
UN Roll Model is woman who murdered 13 children
Muslim Brotherhood fears Egypt's army staging coup
Mini-skirted Russians urge better snow removal
Penis-leash couple nabbed at shops
Reputed mobster found raising cows in Idaho
Obama's advisors split on when and how Mubarak should go
Thai airline recruits transgender flight attendants
Shop will swap guns for sex toys
Men of Britain choosing lingerie over flowers this Valentine's Day
Greenpeace co-founder talks biotech, nuclear and climate
First reports on XM-25 Judge Dredd smartgun in A'Stan
Impatient, Obama sharply questions Mubarak pledge
World's smallest engraving on the edge of a razor blade
How electronics boom is creating surge in demand for rare metals
Tunisian deposed leader dominated by 'Lady Macbeth'
Starving North Korea sends out SOS for food aid
China hackers break into five oil companies
and finally.........
Why are we so obsessed with meaningless performance figures? by little Jimmy May
BAE Systems Introduces a Navalized Typhoon Option
The 7 most common Valentine’s Day faux pas
Here again?..............from Rico
I wonder IF anyone even remembers the DJIA at 14,000....or what happened next?
Gee, the FED money-pumping has pushed the DJIA to 12,000 and everyone is hyping "happy days are here again"
..........well, at least the Banksters and Wall Street are cheering (not least because (a) they were 'bailed-out' with taxpayer money, (b) huge bonuses have just been announced, and (c) they want to hand-off their worthless paper to Mom & Pop investors by convincing them to "buy stocks" before this bubble bursts); but Main Street America with unemployment running 22-23% just isn't joining-in for the chorus.
After the middle class saw their "retirement funds" reduced by roughly one third, for some reason they aren't buying into the "invest now" hype....maybe it's also partly due to Soetoro's talk about 'investing' in America the other day [read: in DemSpeak 'investing' means with YOUR money. a.k.a. higher taxes]?
Oh yay! Happy days indeed.....if you're feeding at the taxpayer trough, that is!
Israeli EMS to use Segways
Magen David Adom, Israel's first responder EMS, is constantly trying find faster and better ways for its trauma teams to reach those in need of help and who are located in crowded urban areas or in mass casualty incidents with a large number of people present.
MDA will add the "segway" to its fleet of operational vehicles. The "segway", with just two wheels, has the ability to negotiate its way quickly through crowded areas or narrow spaces - for example, main roads in the big cities during rush-hour, large places of entertainment, narrow alleyways, etc. The time saved could very well be the difference between life and death for...
More at Israel EMS
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Thursday, 10 February 2011
Catechism For Neocons...........from Dan Friedman
“The Turkish people brought terrorist supporting Islamists to power. The overthrow of the Shah brought the Ayatollah Khomeni to power. Elections in the Palestinian Authority brought Hamas to power. Thanks to its elections, Hezbollah is now running the table in Lebanon.”
more at A Conversation with a Neo-Conservative about Egypt
News...........
Carbon pollution - the movie
Congress: Act or Fail
Blasphemy Sentence Sparks Riot
Iranian Ballistic Missile Scores a Direct Hit on a Target Ship
Homemade Revolving Shotgun
Starlings leave holiday park with £10,000 bill
Top 10 most-ordered hotel movies in 2010
What Turns Men On? The Smell of Pumpkin Pie
Congressman resigns amid Craigslist scandal
Are women over 40 really getting the best parts of their lives?
Saudi oil stock exaggerated by 40 percent
Consensus on global warming challenged
Malaysian states plan Valentine's Day crackdown
The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union
Not again! Icelandic volcano set to erupt dwarfing last year's devastation
Michael Buerk: presenters should not be recruited to fill quotas of lesbians or Asians
China in Africa at a glance
China in Zimbabwe: what does it mean for Robert Mugabe?
No Street, No Square, No Respect: What Does Berlin Have against Ronald Reagan?
Living on US dole, Pakistan builds fourth plutonium reactor
Indiana Officials Fear Building Will Be Late-Night Punchline if Named After Ex-Mayor
Watch video released by Detroit police showing police station gun battle
and finally......
LA cricket: Club helps tame Compton's mean streets
Seven-year-old boy buys fighter jet on eBay H/T JMH
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Short Attention Spans
By Alan Caruba
The American Revolution, from the day in 1773 when tea got dumped in Boston Bay to the day in 1781 when the British were defeated at Yorktown took eight years. If it had been on television, the ratings would have fallen off in about two weeks.
My point is that, by the end of the second week of the turmoil in Egypt, it mattered less and less to those in the West that a million Egyptians were showing up in Cairo and Alexandria to demand Mubarak’s resignation or that demands for real freedom, real liberty in the Middle East are a very big deal!
Mubarak says he intends to stay in office until the election in September. He appointed a vice president, gave a pay raise to government workers, and has patiently waited for the crowds to grow tired of singing, chanting, listening to speeches, and to get on with their lives.
These events are cultural in nature.
Despite common ties with England, the colonists had been quite distinctly “American” for a very long time and didn’t like being treated poorly by the British crown and parliament. “No taxation without representation” became their rallying call.
Egyptians have been around a lot longer than Americans; several millennia in fact.
They have been Muslims since the religion was “introduced” by its early zealots in the seventh century A.D. Designed to appeal to Arabs in particular, but proclaimed as a universal faith to which everyone would have to submit, Islam put its stamp on Egyptians, just as it would on Persians and others throughout the Middle East, northern Africa, and into India..
It wasn’t that long ago that Egyptians were ruled by a monarch, King Farouk, crowned at age 16 and ruling until 1952 when a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser forced him into exile in Monaco. The defeat Egypt had suffered in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war would lead to the end of the king’s reign. Until then, from around the 1800s, the British had been deeply involved in Egypt, eventually wresting control of the Suez Canal from the French while the monarchy increasingly became a figurehead.
The British literally modernized Egypt, but by the end of World War Two, depleted in wealth to maintain their empire, they watched it drift away into new, independent nations. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and continued to engage in wars with Israel. When Nasser died his successor, Anwar Sadat, made a cold peace with Israel and, shortly after, was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Seated beside him that day was Hosni Mubarak, an air force general and, when he came to power shortly thereafter, he clamped down on the Muslim Brotherhood who wanted to turn Egypt into the same kind of hellish regime that was later imposed on Iran in 1979. As in Turkey earlier, Egypt installed a secular government whose military ensured that it stayed that way.
Most of this is unknown history to Americans who have already tired of seeing Egyptians in Cairo’s main square and, if they have paid any attention to the White House, know that President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton have managed to say conflicting things about the uprising, looking and sounding clueless and foolish in the process.
Freedom, however, is not a joke and, thanks to the Internet, a lot of Egyptians, a lot of Iranians, a lot of Tunisians, a lot of Yemenis, and, in general, people through northern Africa, the Maghreb, and elsewhere in the Middle East would like to vote in legitimate elections where there are real choices among candidates and parties. They would like to live without secret police and other forms of oppression.
We tend to forget that George W. Bush’s aim when invading Iraq was to depose a dictator, to bring about democracy there, and to spread the message throughout the Middle East.
Mostly, the Egyptians would like to be rid of the endemic corruption that authoritarian regimes establish among a small, ruling elite that, in turn, discourages everything from owning a deed to one’s own home to being able to start a business without paying off several levels of bureaucracy and waiting a very long time.
The Egyptians want real opportunity, an energetic economy, and some form of actual democracy. Concessions are being made, but progress is likely to take a while.
The Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all the other Islamists are in a race to gain control over the nations of the Middle East before freedom breaks out everywhere.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
Who am I?...........from Rico
- I don't engage in accounting fraud.
- I don't 'miss' Quarterly earnings.
- I'm not affected by Obamacare.
- I don't lie about my balance sheet, or balance sheet problems.
- I don't chase stupid M&A deals.
- I don't go out of business.
- I don't need a bailout to stay in business.
- I don't need insider trading.
- I don't get front-run by HFT algorithm trading programs or in-house trading teams.
And I don't default.
I am bullion. Precious metals.
- Gold.
- Silver.
Hard-ons for "Democracy"...............by Dan Friedman
When someone whispers the word “democracy” into the ears of many neocons, their reaction brings to mind the mandatory yellow flag in Viagra ads:
“Priapism is an erection that continues hours beyond, or is unrelated to, sexual stimulation. Priapism is a medical emergency. So in the rare event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury.”
Judging by the current contretemps raging among conservatives, a lot of these stiffs arrived at the emergency room DOA. Recall, these were the same preppy pushovers who swooned over Israel’s exit from Gaza and pushed for – and got - free elections there. The unintended, though widely predicted, consequences are well known by now. Practically overnight, the Judenrein strip became Hamastan and led Israel into two costly indecisive wars. After that debacle, you’d think these “friends of Israel” would “whoa, down boy!” for a moment and entertain a few healthy second thoughts. But to my knowledge, they never have. In fact, their dean, Charles Krauthammer, still defends his support for disengagement and recently commended Obama for his handling of the “peace process” (a few days before it collapsed).
Now, the perpetually priapic crowd has heard the siren’s song again. They’re flogging the same formula for failure but want to apply it to Egypt, where the stakes couldn’t be higher for the region and the world. And as though to prove their fixations are bipartisan, this time around they have been lured into bed by a leftist Islamophiliac whose entire agenda (sans one item -“democracy”) is repugnant to each and every one of them. These are the symptoms of political nymphomania.
Nevertheless, the cooler heads among us should take a deep breath to remember that thanks to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and America’s largesse, the Egyptian armed forces are among the best-equipped and -trained fighters in the world. And when the ancien régime is history only a yellowing piece of paper will stand between Egypt, a shredder and a state of war with Israel. Those tanks in Tahiri Square look familiar, don’t they?
Finally, to bolster a paper-thin argument and assure us democratic stability is on the way to Cairo, much is made of the military’s Western leanings and the high regard the average Egyptian has for his army. But drill down one layer and you’ll find much of that esteem stems from the belief the Egyptian army won! the Yom Kippur War.
During this historic turning point, we simply can’t afford to fall into old traps or chase rabbits down a hole. Let’s think with our heads, not our nether regions. Neither America nor the Free World can afford blind passion to triumph over experience in the Middle East again.
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