This and That...

[Warph]

 

Osama bin Laden, Mohammed al Zawahiri, and Sheikh Tawfiq Al 'Afani, as seen in the Al Faroq video on the protest at the US embassy in Cairo on Sept. 11, 2012. Courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group.

The Long War Journal: Zawahiri says raids on diplomatic facilities were 'defeats' for US

by Thomas Joscelyn on November 7, 2012

In a new audio message addressed to Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, Ayman al Zawahiri cites the raids on US diplomatic facilities in September as evidence of American weakness.

Shabaab has suffered setbacks in recent months, including the loss of its stronghold in the port city of Kismayo. But in what amounts to a pep talk, Zawahiri says Shabaab's spirits should be buoyed by the supposed losses suffered by America and its allies elsewhere.

"They were defeated in Iraq and they are withdrawing from Afghanistan, and their ambassador in Benghazi was killed and the flags of their embassies were lowered in Cairo and Sana'a, and in their places were raised the flags of tawhid [monotheism] and jihad," Zawahiri says, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group.

"After their consecutive defeats, they are working from behind agents and traitors," Zawahiri continues. "Their awe is lost and their might is gone and they don't dare to carry out a new campaign like their past ones in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Al Qaeda-linked extremists have been tied to the three assaults on US diplomatic facilities Zawahiri mentions.

Press reports have identified several al Qaeda-affiliated parties as being responsible for the Sept. 11 assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Members of a local militia named Ansar al Sharia participated in the assault. As first reported by the Daily Beast, members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were in contact with some of the Ansar al Sharia assailants. CNN has reported that members of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) are suspected of taking part in the assault.

Still another al Qaeda-linked network reportedly provided fighters for the Benghazi assault. Terrorists trained in Libyan camps set up by an Egyptian named Muhammad Jamal were among the attackers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Jamal "petitioned" Ayman al Zawahiri to establish a new al Qaeda affiliate and has also received funding from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Jamal (a.k.a. Abu Ahmed), a longtime military commander in Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), has long-established ties to several al Qaeda-linked jihadists who helped incite protesters in Cairo on Sept. 11.

The jihadists who instigated the US embassy protest in Cairo include Mohammed al Zawahiri, Ayman al Zawahiri's younger brother. Mohammed al Zawahiri admittedly helped organize the protest. According to The Wall Street Journal, Mohammed al Zawahiri acted as a liaison between Jamal and Ayman al Zawahiri.

Two other EIJ leaders, Sheikh 'Adel Shehato and Sheikh Tawfiq al Afni, also incited the Cairo protesters. Both Shehato and al Afni have openly proclaimed their allegiance to al Qaeda's ideology.

Shehato was subsequently arrested by Egyptian authorities and charged with founding a terrorist cell in Nasr City, Cairo. That same cell has ties to Jamal, the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, and al Qaeda, according to Egyptian officials.

Another pro-al Qaeda ideologue who helped instigate protests in Cairo is Ahmed 'Ashoush, who has been heavily featured in Ayman al Zawahiri's recent videos.

Ayman al Zawahiri's Sept. 10 video includes a clip of 'Ashoush, Shehato, and Mohammed al Zawahiri. 'Ashoush proclaims Osama bin Laden a martyr during the clip, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group. Shehato and Mohammed al Zawahiri are sitting nearby.

On Sept. 16, 'Ashoush issued a fatwa calling for the makers of the film "Innocence of Muslims" to be killed.

'Ashoush is shown in nine video clips that were included in a more recent Ayman al Zawahiri video, which was released on Oct. 24. 'Ashoush has released statements in the name of Ansar al Sharia, a nascent jihadist organization in Egypt. That same brand, Ansar al Sharia, is used by al Qaeda-affiliated parties elsewhere.

Still another al Qaeda-linked jihadist played a role in the anti-American protest in Sana'a, Yemen on Sept. 13. The US embassy there was stormed after Sheikh Abdul Majeed al Zindani called for protests, according to The New York Times. Zindani is a known al Qaeda supporter.

In 2004, the US Treasury Department added Zindani to its list of designated terrorist supporters, calling him an Osama bin Laden "loyalist." Zindani "has a long history of working with bin Laden, notably serving as one of his spiritual leaders," Treasury explained. Zindani "has been able to influence and support many terrorist causes, including actively recruiting for al Qaeda training camps" and "played a key role in the purchase of weapons on behalf of al Qaeda and other terrorists."

The al Qaeda network, therefore, has significant ties to the three assaults on US diplomatic facilities mentioned by Ayman al Zawahiri.

[larryJ]

Are you sitting down?  Larryj is going to post something in Politics! 

This was in my paper today and I wanted to share it.

It is entitled............OUR TWO COUNTRIES......

We are a nation divided, don't believe any politician who tells you anything different.

It's beyond red state and blue states, it's suburbs and rural towns versus cities.

Our division is beyond politics, it's cultural and philosophical.

Political bifurcation in America is as old as the Republic.  Manufacturing interests battled farmers for control of the young nation; abolitionists in the cities battled pro-slavery agricultural interests in the Civil War; labor battled industrialists at the turn of the 20th century and integrationists battled segragationists in the 1960s.

Our new divide is demographic, driven by reliable cars, freeways and cheap homes, all of which aided the white flight to the suburbs in the 1950s.

President Barrack Obams's coalition represents urban Americans, or at least an America with urban sensibilities.  Obama lost white men, lost in rural America, won white women, won in the cities and won minorities.  In short, Obama would poll well in a coffee house and at an NBA game, while Mitt Romney's audience likes NASCAR, golf and dirt bikes.

I know this is painting with a broad brush.  Yes, there are Obama voters among the evangelicals; there are Romney voters who don't believe in God, but the point here is to say our country's political divisions simply reflect our cultural divisions.  We live in political cultural and demographic ghettos.

In Silver Lake in Los Angeles, Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Hyde Park in Chicago (Obama's 'hood), college educated professional class blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians buy brownstones, send their children to charter and magnet schools and read "50 Shades of Grey."  These are Obama voters.

In Lake Forest, California; Big Bear Lake, California; and Branson, Missouri, mostly white Americans, some with college educations send their children to public schools, pick floor plans, take vacations in the their motor homes and read "Same Kind of Different As Me."  These are Mitt Romney voters.

The Obama folks live in the tightly packed urban communities.  They buy into the collective responsibility, which likely explains their support for health-care reform.  In cities, what happens to your neighbor often affects you.

The Romney folks often live in rural communities where the Post Office doesn't deliver mail to their homes and it's 70 miles to the closest Department of Motor Vehicles.  Even in the suburbs, the kings and queens of their single-family castles shun public transportation for their personal chariots.  Collectivism in these parts is anathema.

During a 2009 health care town hall meeting held by Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, CA, a woman said Obamacare should extend to undocumented immigrants.  Her rationale:  "If someone walked into a school with smallpox we could all end up dead."

She was booed by the conservative suburban crowd and told to "move to Canada."

Our political gridlock is a reflection of us.  Our leaders can't find common ground because we live, work and play in cultural and ideological ghettos where our friends, our cultural institutions, and even our media outlets often echo our world view.

And as far as the people who are not like us, well, we have names for them.

We call them hipsters, yuppies, elites, rednecks, hillbillies and trailer trash.  Maybe one day we can just call them Americans.  Before we ask our politicians to reach across the aisle, we should reach out to people beyond our neighborhoods.

Brian Charles.

________________________________

Larryj

[Diane Amberg]

Thanks for posting that Larry.

[Warph]

I have posted about this many times if Obuma won re-election.

God help us!

...Warph





A Return to Judicial Activism
by ADAM FREEDMAN
8 November 2012

Tuesday's election victory means that President Obama will have four more years to reshape the federal judiciary. While it remains to be seen whether he can achieve any legislative victories in the face of Republican opposition, there is little doubt that he will, for the most part, get to appoint the judges of his choice.

Four justices on the Supreme Court are in their mid- to late seventies now: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer. With past as prelude, we can expect any Obama nominees to be reliably liberal in the mold of his two appointments from the first term, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. At a minimum, the president will likely replace the aging liberals Ginsburg and Breyer with younger models. But it's also possible that Kennedy or Scalia, or both, could leave the bench during the next four years, presenting Obama with an opportunity to forge a liberal majority on the Court.

An invigorated and expanded liberal bloc on the Court could undo many important precedents. The Court's decisions, for example, protecting speech rights of corporations (Citizens United v. FEC), school choice (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris), and the right to bear arms (District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago) were all decided on 5–4 votes. Challenges to Obamacare and other recent regulations are likely to present the Court with major decisions on religious liberty and federalism over the next few years.

The president's reelection also has profound implications for the lower courts. Obama will begin his second term with about 90 vacancies to fill among 874 federal judgeships; he has already appointed 126 judges. By the time his second term is over, Obama will probably have appointed over 300 judges and may approach the 379 appointed by Bill Clinton. Notably, this includes at least three judges of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit—the court that hears most appeals of the decisions of federal agencies and, thus, one of the few institutions that can limit or block the administration's regulatory overreach. But with Obama poised to fill three vacancies on this important court, its liberal wing will be greatly strengthened.

Unlike Supreme Court nominees, who receive intense media scrutiny, lower-court picks often fly under the radar. Obama's true inclinations can be seen in nominees like Goodwin Liu, an outspoken proponent of using the "living Constitution" to create fundamental rights to welfare benefits; or Louis Butler, who, as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, "offered ill-reasoned, liability-expanding decisions in cases involving medical damage caps and 'collective liability' for lead paint manufacturers," as Carter Wood reported at Point of Law.

To be fair, Liu and Butler were not confirmed. They demonstrate, however, Obama's inclination to appoint liberal activists—the kind of judges who can advance progressive goals without the bother of legislation. Now, freed from any concerns about reelection, Obama has little reason not to put forward aggressively liberal judges in the hope that some of them will get through. And no doubt some will.

[Warph]

When nations change their populations, religion, etc., attitudes can change as well.  A sampling of headlines shows the state of things today as attitudes and mind sets change.  Like in this past election:


UN poll-watchers 'amazed' US doesn't require ID's to vote...

Obama Mural in Philadelphia Polling Place...

Obama Poster Hanging in Florida Polling Station...

Exit poll data will be examined in 'quarantine room'...

Thousands of dead Californians remain eligible to vote...

Video Shows Electronic Voting Machine Changing Vote...

FL Robocall Tells Thousands They Have Until Wednesday Evening To Vote...

Woman Wearing 'MIT' Shirt Barred from Voting in Florida...

Man in gorilla suit allowed to vote...

Poll watcher in Detroit threatened with gun, 911 call rejected...

Election Judge Wears Obama Cap While Checking in Voters in Chicago Ward...

Black Panthers Return to Philly Polling Site...

GOP poll inspectors being forcibly removed -- replaced by Democrats


And from a nation dying economically, government making a buck off the people to pay their bills:
 

Business fined $4,000 over missing trashcan lid...

Boy, 3, Gets $2,500 Ticket For Micturating In Own Front Yard...

[Warph]

       Toughest Bridge in th World



The Durham train trestle has stood its ground for the last 100 years.  This fact
doesn't deter some drivers from challanging the bridge about once a month...
all of them fail!


             

[/font][/size][/b]

[Warph]

The Needle and the Damage Done

By Mike Adams

Last semester, I was giving a lecture on the history of the Supreme Court from 1953 to present. Toward the end of the lecture, I asked my students if they could name the current Chief Justice. None were able to do so. There were thirty students in the class. This was in a college classroom, mind you.

I was annoyed by the failure of a single student to know the name of one of the three most powerful men in America. But, whenever annoyed, I have a tendency to make jokes to lighten the atmosphere. So I told my students to go to the SCOTUS website next time they were in the tattoo parlor and had a couple of spare hours to surf the internet on their iPhone. They laughed and then I casually asked "How many of you have tattoos?" About twenty students raised their hands, which was far more than I expected.

Asking that question was a big mistake. The next time I walked into class, a young man was asking a sorority girl where her tattoo was located. She lifted up the back of her shirt and showed him a giant tramp stamp across her lower back. It was as sad as it was surprising. Apparently blond hair, blue eyes, and natural beauty aren't enough to attract college boys these days. She needs a tattoo to let him know that his chances of getting sex on the first date are close to 100%.

Over the last few years, tattoo parlors have been popping up like weeds here in Wilmington. I have always assumed that their popularity was easily explained: Young people just want to draw attention and tattoos give them something to show off. They are just another way of helping young people feel different. Even if most kids have them, theirs can be unique. They can even tell a story.

But the narcissistic and short-sighted component of tattoo accumulation is just half the story. I had an epiphany about the other half of the story as I was talking to a woman we will call Brooke. We're going to call her Brooke because that really is her name. Brooke was complaining to two of her friends (who are also my friends). She was complaining about the thing single women complain about most often: the boyfriend who won't respect her even though (maybe because?) she is sleeping with him regularly.

Brooke's complaint with her boyfriend was that he desired to stay in her bed after they were finished having "fun." This TMI moment was topped off by a deep philosophical argument: "My bed is an intimate place. Until we're married, he's not welcomed there overnight. That's just too presumptuous. It's too intrusive."

Translation: You can have my body but not my bed. The former is of less value to me. Some will say it's just one anecdote. Of course, it is. But it is part of a larger pattern I am seeing among younger adults. Like virtually all other unhealthy aspects of our culture, it is being nurtured in the university setting. Thinking about these three campus cultural trends will add some perspective:

*Sexual experimentation is encouraged by the administration. Free condoms are available, free birth control is often available. Students are taught to give themselves away and that the only concern is that they remain physically healthy enough to continue to do so.

*Abortion is strongly encouraged on campuses - often to the unconstitutional exclusion of competing ideas. Use of RU 486, which is a dangerous toxin causing the death (and then expulsion) of the unborn, is encouraged. Rarely is there an intelligent discussion of the drug's harmful side effects.

*Genital mutilation is promoted as a means of increasing diversity. College students – even as young as 18 - are encouraged to resolve sexual confusion with the blade of a knife. This permanent disfigurement of their genitalia is simply another form of sexual expression. It's no longer stigmatized. It's celebrated!

There is a dangerous undercurrent here. It is obvious that immediate gratification appeals to young people. But it is compounded by something that is lacking. And what is lacking here is any sense that we as humans are made in the image of God – and that our bodies, therefore, have some intrinsic value. If we were still willing to nurture that idea in our culture – and allowed to do so by the Supreme Court - these trends would not be engulfing us and destroying our children.

Tattoos are a lot like guns. Soon after you get one, you want another. But unlike guns the tattoo always leaves a permanent mark. Whenever the desire to cover one's body with ink sets in, one thing is clear: there is a void in one's soul that desperately needs filling. Like all such voids it is of a spiritual nature and cannot be filled by physical things. At its core, every desire we experience is really a longing for God.

I should not be surprised that so many of our children are covering themselves with ink. They have been separated from transcendent meaning. Now they must create meaning for themselves in order to fill that void. Too often, they try to recreate themselves altogether. And they mask their God-given beauty in the process.

[Warph]

[Warph]

Pelosi: 'Is it the 11th Amendment? 14th? Whatever ...
I'm With the Constitution' and other ding-a-ling tripe

         

[Warph]

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) killed Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari in an airstrike on his car in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.  Israel's TV Channel 2 says Jabari's son also died in the missile attack.