Global News: December 2007 Archives
Unqualified Reservations: The secret of anti-Americanism
According to this writer, the secret is that the heart of anti-Americanism is... America. It's a very unusual and interesting way of looking at global conflict -- the Red Empire (the White House and the Pentagon) and the Blue Empire (the State Department, the UN, NGOs) battling it out worldwide via their client proxies. Found via the same author's idiosyncratic take on the Bhutto assassination and the three factions at war in Pakistan, in turn via American Digest.
The Corner on National Review Online: Benazir Bhutto [Mark Steyn]
Mark Steyn on his old next-door neighbor: "Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability.... She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes.... Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death."
YouTube - The Christmas Broadcast, 1957
A very young Queen Elizabeth II, in the first-ever televised Christmas broadcast by the monarch to the British people, reviews the events of the year, welcomes new nations to the Commonwealth, reads a brief excerpt from Pilgrim's Progress, and asks "how to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old."
the Daily Mail: Margaret Thatcher's grandson is rising star of American football
Highland Park, Tex., Scots running back Michael Thatcher has helped to lead his team to the state finals. (They lost to Lake Travis in Saturday's finals, 36-34.)
City Journal Spring 2007: Christopher Hitchens: Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates
The hero of the libertarians confronts Islamic extremism in America's first overseas war on the shores of Tripoli: "But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli's ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America's two foremost envoys were informed that 'it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.'"
OpinionJournal: James Schlesinger: Stupid Intelligence on Iran
James Schlesinger, former head of the U. S. Atomic Energy and the CIA, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy, who served under Nixon, Ford, and Carter, critiques the National Intelligence Estimate's report on Iran's nuclear program. The fact that Iran has halted clandestine work directly related to weapons production doesn't mean they've halted open work on uranium enrichment which would ultimately enable weapons production. "In brief, since the 'long pole in the tent' remains the production of fissile material, Iran likely decided that the prudent course of action was to pursue an open enrichment program ostensibly to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. It is a course that had been chartered by North Korea--and arguably was legitimate under the Nonproliferation Treaty. This central path to obtaining fissile material--the focus of international concern--has been treated in the NIE as quite distinct from the 'nuclear weapons program.' Still, the achievements of American arms and American policy during that period were undoubtedly noted in Tehran. Why not mention them in the NIE as possibly influencing Tehran's decision in 2003? "
Hot Air: Larry O'Donnell admits he's afraid to criticize Islam publicly
In an interview with Romney apologist Hugh Hewitt, O'Donnell acknowledges that, for some odd reason, he's more at ease with criticizing Mormonism than Mohammedanism: "HH: 'Would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?' LO'D: 'Oh, well, I'm afraid of what the...that's where I'm really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I'm afraid for my life if I do.'"
