Ronald Reagan saw this coming, and Barack Obama is making his prediction come true.
Moammar Gaddafi got what was coming to him. Of course, the concern now is the jihadist and al-Qaeda elements that are positioned to replace him. Years ago, Ronald Reagan called Gaddafi the “mad dog of the Middle East” and said that his goal was a worldwide “Muslim fundamentalist revolution.”
Many others besides Gaddafi shared that goal, including those who opposed him, and with Gaddafi’s death, that goal is closer than ever to being realized. Here we are, thirty years after Reagan made these remarks, in the throes of a worldwide Muslim fundamentalist revolution.
Reagan said that those who wanted this “Muslim fundamentalist revolution” were enemies of the United States — for them it was “like climbing Mount Everest, because we are here.” And in a sense, that is exactly the reason why. I don’t know if Reagan ever read the Qur’an, but his remark indicates that he knew the larger reason why they were targeting the kafir, the great infidel nation. It was “because we are here” — i.e., because we constitute the foremost obstacle to the overriding goal of Islam: we stand in the way of a world living under Islamic law.
Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is 9/11, the day of horror caught by chance by a French film crew documenting the 9-month rite of passage of a newbie firefighter. Instead, we witness firsthand the actions the heroes who gave their lives to save their countrymen in the worst-ever attack on American soil in our nation’s history. Jihad had come to America. This is a searing historical document. I have seen it many times. It shakes me still and reminds me how monstrous and evil the enemy is.
Hat Tip: Pamela Geller, Read the rest.
Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. speaks during a march and rally in Los Angeles March 26. -- Reuters
Cranking up the anti-Tea Party rhetoric, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa called on workers to “take these son-of-a-bitches out” as he warmed up a crowd Monday in Detroit ahead of President Obama’s Labor Day speech.
The rhetoric coming from speakers at the event was already heated before Hoffa took the stage. Hoffa then declared there’s a “war on workers” and vowed that organized labor would “remember in November” which lawmakers were opposing the president’s agenda.
“We’ve got to keep an eye on the battle that we face — a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party,” he said. “And there’s only one way to beat and win that war — the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.”
Watch the President’s statement here.
An American official says Osama bin Laden was killed in a mansion close to the Pakistani capital.
A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that the al-Qaida leader had been killed in Pakistan.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Story …
Bruce Thornton is a professor of classics and humanities at California State University, Fresno, and a national fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich and Obama’s America.
According to Bruce Thornton, “Appeasement is an eternal temptation for all people.” Why? And what has appeasement got to do with Obama’s America? Drawing on the lessons of the Greek city-states in their confrontations with Phillip II of Macedon and England in the 1920s and 1930s as it faced the threat of Hitler’s Germany, Thornton points out the inherent weakness of democracies as they deal with enemies. He draws a straight line of appeasement that began in Saigon in 1975 and then proceeded through Teheran in 1979 to New York in 2001. Finally he offers his thoughts on how we can break free of this dangerous trajectory.
For several years now, STRATFOR has been closely watching developments in Mexico that relate to what we consider the three wars being waged there. Those three wars are the war between the various drug cartels, the war between the government and the cartels and the war being waged against citizens and businesses by criminals.
In addition to watching tactical developments of the cartel wars on the ground and studying the dynamics of the conflict among the various warring factions, we have also been paying close attention to the ways that both the Mexican and U.S. governments have reacted to these developments. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects to watch has been the way in which the Mexican government has tried to deflect responsibility for the cartel wars away from itself and onto the United States.
According to the Mexican government, the cartel wars are not a result of corruption in Mexico or of economic and societal dynamics that leave many Mexicans marginalized and desperate to find a way to make a living. Instead, the cartel wars are due to the insatiable American appetite for narcotics and the endless stream of guns that flows from the United States into Mexico and that results in Mexican violence.
Dec. 9, 2010: Vehicles burn on a road leading to the city of Morelia, Mexico, after gunmen arrived at all five roads leading into the city, fired into the air and forced people from their vehicles.
MORELIA, Mexico – Gunmen blockaded a western Mexican city Thursday with vehicles they stole from motorists and then torched in a second day of violence for the region that has left at least five people dead, including an 8-month-old baby.
The gunmen arrived at all five roads leading into Morelia and fired into the air to force drivers and passengers from their vehicles, said Jonathan Arrendondo, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office of Michoacan state, where the city is located.
An Associated Press reporter saw a 75-year-old man being treated for a bullet wound to the leg at one of the entry points. Witnesses said the man had been a passenger on a bus and was struck by the bullet as he tried to flee.
Such blockades have become a common cartel tactic in Mexico’s raging drug war.
The practice started earlier this year in northeastern Mexico, where the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs are locked in a fierce turf war, and recently spread to Michoacan, home state of President Felipe Calderon.
Attorney General Eric Holder wrote to the Senate majority and minority leaders Thursday opposing language in a House-passed spending bill that would effectively prevent the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The provision in the $1.1 trillion continuing resolution, which passed Wednesday, would prevent any funds from being used to transfer detainees, including suspected terrorists, from the prison to the United States. It would thus make trials other than military tribunals impossible.
Holder told Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the provision is an unprecedented grab of executive authority by the Congress.
“We have been unable to identify any parallel ? in the history of our nation in which Congress has intervened to prohibit the prosecution of particular persons or crimes,” he wrote.
“The provision goes well beyond existing law and would unwisely restrict the ability of the executive branch to prosecute alleged terrorists in Federal courts or military commission in the United States as well as its ability to incarcerate those convicted in such tribunals,” Holder wrote.
Read the rest.
