The US Navy has nabbed a group of pirates in the Gulf of Aden after receiving a distress call from the ship they were trying to commandeer. ‘Bout time we had some good news in that arena!
The Dutch MP I wrote about a couple weeks ago has been denied entrance to England because he purportedly poses a threat to public safety. Apparently taking a controversial, albeit legitimate, stand on Islamic terrorism constitutes such a threat. Per the UK’s Home Office:
“The government opposes extremism in all forms,” it said in a statement, adding that it had tightened up rules on excluding those engaging in “unacceptable behaviour” in October.
“It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred, and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.”
Left unexamined is the fact that the UK doesn’t have an official problem with the large number of extremist Muslim imams in England. Nor does it have the stones to bar entrance to more of their ilk. It increasingly appears that the US is fast becoming the last bastion of free speech.
In a rather surprising statement, an EU official lays the blame for the destruction in Gaza on Hamas rather than Israel. I really didn’t know they had it in them. The Europeans, I mean.
Humanitarian aid chief Louis Michel called the destruction left by Israel’s offensive “abominable”, but said Hamas bore “overwhelming responsibility”.
In a stronger and even more surprising follow-up:
He said there would be no dialogue with with the “terrorist” movement until it gave up violence and recognised Israel. […] “I intentionally say this here – Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such.”
We can’t even get our own government to use such honest language. Kudos would be in order, but the EU still hasn’t seen the light entirely.
Mr Michel said people in the EU were sick of paying for the same infrastructure being destroyed over and over again in Israeli military action.
Yes, but you’re still sending 60 million euros in aid. The only way to keep the money from being completely wasted is, simply, not to send it. Until Hamas, and the Palestinians, stop their senseless terrorism against Israeli civilians Israel will have no choice but to keep going back in and wreaking havoc.
Still, this Belgian sees things a lot more clearly than anyone in our new government I’m afraid.
The Dutch lawmaker how produced the movie Fitna, which is a tough critique of Islam using graphic images of Islamic terrorism in action overlayed with quotes from the Koran, will be tried in court for hate speech. Apparently free speech isn’t treasured as highly abroad as it is here. We must remain vigilant against the political correctness that’s creeping into our national thought or we may soon face a similar fate.
In a rather nasty, “Doh!” moment, one of the gremlins formerly housed in our prison at Guantanamo Bay has turned into an al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He even
passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
And still our new head honcho wants to close Gitmo within a year. Brilliant idea there, eh? This isn’t a new problem, though. We’ve known that quite a number of former Gitmo inmates have shown up on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. When, exactly, will the left learn? I fear they won’t.
Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — partly financed by the United States — similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.
Uh, yeah. That’s working out really well, now, isn’t it? Rehabilitation doesn’t work any better for Islamic terrorists than it does for our own domestic violent criminals. There really are only two effective solutions for them: imprisonment and death. The left’s messiah is shutting down the former. How long before the latter is cut off as well and we’re back at square one?
What happens when you disarm society…including your police? The cops flee from a rioting crowd they should be controlling. Watching the decline of England from a strong nation to one in which something like this can happen has been truly sad.
After days of fighting with Hamas in Gaza, we shouldn’t be surprised that the mainstream media and the United Nations are primarily critical of Israel, almost entirely ignoring the terrorists who started this latest round in the ongoing Palestinian saga. The focus is entirely on civilian casualties, the latest coming from a school which received Israeli mortar fire after terrorists fired rockets from its grounds. The rub is that the school is run by the U.N., which is crying foul since,
…all U.N. facilities are clearly marked with flags and that the Israeli military has been given precise Global Positioning System coordinates.
Yes, but what response is expected from the Israeli military when its soldiers come under rocket fire? The real problem, apparent to any rational observer, is that the terrorists are trying once again to use civilians as a shield. They hide like cowards among women and children then protest when the return fire kills the innocents around them.
Israel has indicated that they will not agree to another ceasefire until there is an international agreement which will effectively end the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. Hopefully they’ll stick to their rhetoric this time. If not, we’ll just see the same scenario reenacted within a short time.
Once more the U.N. proves its worthlessness.
It’s disheartening to see the foolishness we humans can’t seem to help perpetuating. India’s government is working on two new anti-terror laws.
One of them proposes setting up a National Investigation Agency with sweeping powers of investigation.
The second strengthens existing anti-terror laws to allow suspects to be detained without bail for up to six months on the orders of a judge.
Yep, I’m sure that if these had been passed a year ago, the (then) would-be terrorists would have chosen a different path. When you’re planning to take as many innocent lives as possible before your own death there’s nothing quite like the threat of a few months in jail to give you a sincere change of heart.
This is what happens when you have a liberal, more-government-is-better mindset. Instead of trusting the populace with their own protection (India has a virtual ban on civilian gun ownership) and fixing the problems with the existing law enforcement organizations (Mumbai police cowered outside while the attacks went on) you create a new government agency to deal with the problem. India already has a number of intelligence and security agencies…none of them were able to stop the Mumbai attacks in advance.
It will be argued that:
– We did the same thing by creating the Department of Homeland Security. That, too, was an unnecessary increase in the size of our government—not surprising since Bush has demonstrated through eight years of overspending and bloating government that he’s not a fiscal conservative except on taxes. We’ve been kept safe not by the DHS, but by our brave armed forces taking the fight overseas. Aargh! Love him and hate him in the same paragraph.
– Our existing agencies didn’t stop 9/11. True, but that’s because we didn’t learn anything (still haven’t, really) from the experience of Israel, which puts armed security on every El Al flight. If we’d had a functional Air Marshal program in place, 9/11 would likely have been averted. Since it would be prohibitively expensive to put AMs on every US flight, it should be noted that the same would be true if we simply allowed people with concealed carry licenses to take their weapons with them onboard. Terrorists simply wouldn’t know who (or how many) are armed and the potential success of such a hijacking would be extremely low.
The UN Secretary General says now isn’t the time to send a peacekeeping force to Somalia.
Mr Ban said the situation in Somalia was too risky and there was no peace to keep.
Of course even if there were, a UN force would do exactly what it has done elsewhere on the dark continent—nothing. UN “peacekeeping” forces have a proven track record of worthlessness all around the world. We wouldn’t really expect anything different in Somalia.
Of what use is an international organization like the UN when it shows such clear lack of spine and moral character? If the nations of the world were truly interested in peace they’d be willing to pony up the troops to not only keep real peace where it exists, but create it through force where it doesn’t. But, as we see, they aren’t.
What a useless body the UN continually proves itself to be. (And Obama wants us to give them more money. I just can’t wait for January 20.)
After the recent shoe-throwing incident, a few hundred Iraqis (including the brother of the journalist) demonstrated against Bush, America, and the Iraqi government for arresting the perp. These folks need to buy a clue. Just a few years ago that guy would never have had the courage to even look cross-eyed at a government leader or one of his guests. Under a real tyrant (e.g., the one we deposed and Iraq executed) he’d have been beaten, tortured, and probably fed his own feet for dinner. The prerequisite for this kind of childish display is freedom—something this particular Iraqi didn’t enjoy until the oh-so-evil Bush handed it to him. That irony is, I’m sure, lost on his ilk.