Segacs's World I Know

Archive for the ‘Terrorist bastards’ Category

Under Republican control, the House Intelligence committee may have been stubbornly ignorant. But under Democratic control, it appears that they will be just plain ignorant:

Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

[ . . . ]

While Stein said Reyes is “not a stupid guy,” his lack of knowledge said it could hamper Reyes’ ability to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community, Stein believes.

“If you don’t have the basics, how do you effectively question the administration?” he asked. “You don’t know who is on first.”

Aside from not knowing the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite, there’s no evidence that Reyes is a bad guy or anything . . . but I’m tempted to apply my basic Bush-rule here: if you can’t pronounce nuclear, you shouldn’t be allowed to have your finger on the button.

The intelligence level of elected members of government – from both parties – is frighteningly low. Is anyone else more than a little scared that these are the people making the big decisions?

Looks like it. A limited one, anyway. Or, as Meryl would say, another “shudna”.

Noteworthy: this would apply only to rockets, not “other” forms of attack, such as suicide bombing… which is now apparently a favoured activity among the geriatric set, too. What, knitting needles were too boring?

Anyway, we’ve all seen this song-and-dance a zillion times before. The Palestinians call for a limited truce but continue to openly and brazenly defy it. Israel is finally provoked into reacting, and the whole world condemns Israel for “breaking” the truce.

Here we go again…

Has it really been five years? It seems like just yesterday when I was waking up to the news that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

How could any of us have known, at that moment, that life would forever be defined as “before” and “after” that moment? How could we have realized the impact that this event would have?

Now, five years later, the world certainly isn’t any safer. Maybe we’ve opened our eyes to what we were willfully ignoring before. Maybe things have really gotten a whole lot worse. Maybe it’s both. In any case, terrorism has become part of our collective language, part of the daily discourse, an almost-expected part of the news cycle. And I look around and see a war that has no end in sight and no marked progress being made.

This is the world we live in now. A world that is much less innocent, much less naive. A world filled with scary things. Will Iran get nuclear weapons and launch them at Israel or the West? Will North Korea go renegade? Where in the world will Al-Qua’eda strike next? What major disaster will befall us next?

But I also see a world with so much potential, a world where extraordinary people are accomplishing amazing things every day. A world worth fighting for.

After five years, maybe it is finally appropriate to put aside this chapter of mourning and focus on our collective potential?

Hezbollah’s latest cheerleader? None other than George Galloway:

Who’s surprised? (Hat tip: Eric).

Could it be? Is this actually a voice of reason – a litany of hard truth – a call for self-examination… coming from Hamas?

“When you walk in the streets of Gaza City, you cannot but close your eyes because of what you see there: unimaginable chaos, careless policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride and families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the street.”

This is how Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority government and a former newspaper editor, described the situation in the Gaza Strip in an article he published on Sunday on some Palestinian news Web sites.

The article, the first of its kind by a senior Hamas official, also questioned the effectiveness of the Kassam rocket attacks and noted that since Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip, the situation there has deteriorated on all levels. It holds the armed groups responsible for the crisis and calls on them to reconsider their tactics and to stop blaming Israel for their mistakes.

“Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs,” Hamad wrote. “I remember the day when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and closed the gates behind. Then, Palestinians across the political spectrum took to the streets to celebrate what many of us regarded as the Israeli defeat or retreat. We heard a lot about a promising future in the Gaza Strip and about turning the area into a trade and industrial zone.”

Hamad said the “culture of life” that prevailed in the Strip has since been replaced with a nightmare. “Life became a nightmare and an intolerable burden,” he said. “Today I ask myself a daring and frightening question: ‘Why did the occupation return to Gaza?’ The normal reply: ‘The occupation is the reason.’”

Dismissing Israel’s responsibility for the growing state of anarchy and lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, Hamad said it was time for the Palestinians to embark on a soul-searching process to see where they erred.

“We’re always afraid to talk about our mistakes,” he added. “We’re used to blaming our mistakes on others. What is the relationship between the chaos, anarchy, lawlessness, indiscriminate murders, theft of land, family rivalries, transgression on public lands and unorganized traffic and the occupation? We are still trapped by the mentality of conspiracy theories – one that has limited our capability to think.”

Unusually frank words from any Palestinian official. But considering the source, this is pretty astounding stuff.

Some are taking this at face value, calling it a “flying pigs moment”.

But I’m a natural born cynic, and when something seems suspicious, it’s usually because it is. Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something tells me that this is going to turn out to be a part of a new powerplay game between Hamas and Fatah, and that, as many suspect, Hamas is looking to throw a monkey wrench into the U.S.’s policy of backing Fatah by confounding Bush’s view that Fatah are the guys in the white hats and Hamas are the guys in the black hats.

If, however, Hamad was really being candid here, I hope for his sake that he has a lot of bodyguards.

Four apparently coordinated attacks rocked the resort town of Marmaris and the city centre of Istanbul today. So far, 22 people have been reported injured.

Of course it’s good news that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were released unharmed. But Lynn B. is essential reading on the larger context here:

My elation at Steve and Olaf’s release was quickly replaced by outrage when I heard about their forced conversion. The video turned my stomach. It should turn the stomach of every American and every person of whatever nationality who believes that the concepts of liberty and freedom have any value and any meaning. What sort of religion, in this day and age, would demand converts at the point of a gun or the blade of a sword? What sort of religion would even want such “converts?”

In any event, as has been pointed out elsewhere (and it was my first thought after hearing about this “forced” conversion), Centanni and Wiig are now marked men if they retract their coerced statement of faith. That would make them apostates under Islamic doctrine, subject to the death penalty at the hand of any devout Muslim who wishes to glorify Allah by carrying out the sentence. So it isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Read the rest. Now.

Al-Qaeda is whining because it thinks that the Shiite groups are getting to have all the fun:

The statement does, however, represent the seething resentment of Sunni al-Qaeda, directed at what it sees as an attempted Shiite takeover of the jihad campaign in the Middle East.

In the speech, Rahman espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories inspired by the Russian forgery, the protocols of the elders of Zion: “We know very well from our history that the Jews target to occupy Lebanon, Syria and even the north of the Arabian peninsula even up to Iraq to the river of Furaat (Euphrates).”

However, he then turns his wrath to Hizbullah, Iran, and Syria, calling them “infidel entities,” and arguing that they are preventing Sunni jihadis from attacking Israel.

This pissing contest between Sunni and Shiite extremist groups is nothing new. It’s a battle of one-upmanship, with the barometer being which side can attack Israel the most. Which really makes me wish they’d cut out the middleman and just start attacking each other already.

It’s hard to say whether the family of Olaf Wiig, one of the journalists kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, is just saying whatever they think might secure his release, or if they’re telling the truth. But this is the sort of thing that would have mystified me a few years ago but now just makes me roll my eyes:

“He is a person who would understand them and would want then to tell their story to the world. He is a man who understands the struggle for justice, and that peace depends upon justice,” Wiig told local media.

Olaf Wiig objected to Israeli action in the Palestinian territories and probably understood the desperation of his unknown captors, Wiig said shortly after the August 14 abduction.

“He’s the kind of person who understands the need for justice and would understand the kind of fear and trauma they’re going through,” he said.

I hope that Fiig and the other kidnapped journalist, Steve Centanni, are released and returned safely to their homes and families. But I also think that a Fiskie nomination might be in order.

Update on the stories below:

Stephen Harper backed Jason Kenney on his comparison of Hezbollah to the Nazis, claiming it was “fair”:

“Like all comparisons, it’s true in some ways, and not in others,” he said, “but as near as I can tell, both Hezbollah and the Nazi party stand for the elimination of the Jewish nation. So I think that’s pretty fundamental and, in that sense, I don’t think it’s unfair.”

Though Kenney and Harper both have a point, they ought to realize that Nazi comparisons, even when justifiable, tend to obscure the original argument.

Meanwhile, one of the three MPs who originally called for Hezbollah’s legitimization, Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj, has resigned as foreign affairs critic (hat tip: Puck):

All 10 leadership hopefuls condemned the remarks. Scott Brison and Carolyn Bennett said Wrzesnewskyj should no longer retain his post as a foreign affairs spokesman.

The Liberal party has been floundering lately, with no clear voices emerging in this conflict. Wrzesnewskyj’s resignation, and the condemnation of his remarks by the leadership candidates, is the first hopeful sign in a while that perhaps the Liberals might find their moral compass that has been missing now for quite some time.

It seems to me that the problem is one of perception, and of which historical comparison is the most apt. Some, like Kenney and Harper, see Hezbollah as the new Nazi party, and view appeasement as dangerous and ultimately more destructive. Others, like Boris Wrzesnewskyj, Peggy Nash and Maria Mourani, see Hezbollah as the new IRA:

“You want to encourage the politicians of this military organization, you want to encourage the political wing, so that the centre of gravity shifts to them.”

Wrzesnewskyj compared the situation in Lebanon to the decades of sectarian violence by the Irish Republican Army.

“If there wasn’t a possibility for London to negotiate with Sinn Fein [the IRA's political party], we’d still have bombings in Northern Ireland,” he said.

Certainly, Hezbollah (and Hamas, and other groups that employ a political/social/terrorist combination strategy) would like to encourage the IRA comparisons. But there’s one key difference, that the Canadian MPs on their “fact-finding mission” seem to have missed: The IRA had, as its goal, the establishment of an independent Irish state. Say what you will about their methods – and I will condemn terrorism unequivocally – they did have a goal that could be pursued politically, and that would be legitimate if pursued politically. Hezbollah has no such goal. They aren’t vying for statehood or independence of freedom. Their goal is the destruction of Israel. And no matter what means they choose to pursue this goal, it cannot be legitimatized.