Fallujah Before Obama: Hope for Iraq’s Meanest City by Michael J. Totten, City Journal Spring 2008

Hope for Iraq’s Meanest City by Michael J. Totten, City Journal Spring 2008

By late 2006, Fallujans had had enough. Though they had little desire to be ruled, or even nurtured into self-rule, by Americans, the jihadist alternative was clearly worse. So Fallujah formed an alliance with its former enemies. The alliance is one of convenience, and possibly temporary, but it was forged in the crucible of the most wrenching catastrophe Fallujans have experienced in living memory.
“I feel the sincerity in the American support for the Iraqi civilians here,” one Fallujah resident tells me. “I am not going to say any bad words about Americans. I can feel that they really are eager to accomplish that mission.” Another Fallujan, who works as a money changer, says, “It will be a shame on all of us if the terrorists ever come back.” “Security is good now because the coalition, Iraqi army, and Iraqi police all work together,” says a third, the owner of a fruit stand. “One hand does not clap.”

▶ Henson Ong on gun control at Connecticut public hearing on gun violence - YouTube

▶ Asian immigrant schools americans on gun control at public hearing on gun violence - YouTube

Breaking: Identity of Pajama Boy revealed!

The Voice of Igbo Israel: What are responsible for Igbo and Jewish higher intelligence?

The Voice of Igbo Israel: What are responsible for Igbo and Jewish higher intelligence? Remy Ilona:

So we can say that Igbos have suffered more than their peers. But can suffering release the juice of intelligence? My mother ’Amaka Ilona, nee Nwosu; used to say that ‘afufu na eme ka mmadu mar’ ife’ (that suffering induces people to become sensible). Suffering can actually lead to innovativeness, to a bursting of the barriers. Certain types of suffering can lead to inventiveness. Here I will still rehash what I mentioned before. There are subtle suggestions that the Igbos were targeted. Why? The answer is that they were unique. Higher intelligence made them unique. The uniqueness aroused the ire of their neighbors, and antagonists. At the end of the day one may be wrong to just dismiss the argument that persecution, marginalization and oppression may release the juices that give rise to high intelligence. However one would in my opinion be on surer ground if one also looks at other variables that could give rise to higher intelligence. In my opinion ‘culture’ is one such variable. ...

Read the whole post at the link.

Colorado school shooter was hardcore leftist, 'Keynesian' | The Daily Caller

Colorado school shooter was hardcore leftist, 'Keynesian' | The Daily Caller 'In one Facebook post, for example, Pierson ridiculed Republicans. He wrote “you republicans are so cute” above an image saying: “The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ‘em Die, Climate Change: Let ‘em Die, Gun Violence: Let ‘em Die, Women’s Rights: Let ‘em Die, More War: Let ‘em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?” In another Facebook post, the scholarly senior attacked 18th-century classical economist Adam Smith. ...' Apparently our betters would rather we didn't know that he was described as a socialist.

Nobel Laureate: Torah is Key to Jewish Genius

Nobel Laureate: Bible is Key to Jewish Genius - Israel Today | Israel News '“Torah study is an intellectual pursuit, and honoring this ultimate value transfers to other pursuits as well,” Aumann told Israel’s Army Radio. ...' The original title says 'Bible' which isn't really the same thing. Torah is a much broader and more distinctively Jewish concept, referring to the study and exposition of the Bible and the Mishnah.

Are Tolkien's dwarves an allegory for the Jews? | The Times of Israel

Are Tolkien's dwarves an allegory for the Jews? | The Times of Israel

Israel Joins CERN

YNet:

'The CERN Council in Geneva accepted Israel as a full member state, it was announced Wednesday evening.

CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research, is the largest center for the study of particles, founded in 1954. The organization operates two particle accelerators, one of which is the world’s longest. ...'

Hate Hoaxes

Dayna Morales, the lesbian former Marine reservist and waitress who claimed to have been stiffed for being gay, is reportedly beginning to pay refunds to sympathetic donors who'd heard her story - a story that turned out to be short on credibility.

An ordinary person reports a shocking, sensational instance of bigotry or violence, gets national attention on the media and on the internet, possibly receives donations from kind-hearted people - and then is exposed as a fraud. How many times have we heard this before? And we'll hear it again.

I was taken in by one such story; when the accuser's story fell apart, though, I came clean. The sad truth is that while hate and prejudice still exist - in many forms - there is easy fame to be had in playing on the sympathies of people who are conditioned to react to certain types of prejudice from certain types of people.

Let's blogroll!

Baldilocks is posting at her new site. Go here to find out what she has in common - and more importantly, DOESN'T have in common - with a certain famous American. It's sort of like Spock, with and without the goatee.

What is the Republican opportunity in 2014? 'Republicans have a very good chance to unseat two Democrats and claim the seats in Congress for the Republican ticket! It is also a time when the Republican party can attract voters, younger voters in particular who see the animus toward Gay people as damaging to the party. They are correct. ...' Thus quoth Duane Buell of the Buell Review, and I agree. Go read the rest, and bookmark the Buell Review.

Neo recalls Pearl Harbor.

This idea of a government in cahoots with the enemy, willing to let innocent Americans die, keeps coming up again and again. A certain not insignificant segment of the population appears to favor such conspiracy theories, probably because we don’t like feeling vulnerable to sudden attack. We’d rather think Daddy in the White House could have stopped it but chose not to—that makes him powerful but amoral, rather than powerless to protect us.

Go read the rest.

Boko Haram Attacks Air Base in Borno, NE Nigeria

AllAfrica:

The outlawed Boko Haram sect on Monday morning attacked the international airport and various parts of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

The attack has forced the military to impose a 24 hour curfew on the Borno capital.

Unconfirmed reports say a plane was burnt down at the airport. Yakubu Datti, the aviation spokesperson, could not be reached to comment on the airport attack.

The attack is the first in recent months to be launched in Maiduguri by the sect ...

Long War Journal:

Boko Haram, a Nigerian terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda, launched a major attack on a Nigerian Air Force base in the insurgency-wracked city of Maiduguri. A number of security personnel were killed and several aircraft were destroyed during the nighttime attack that is said to have been executed by hundreds of Boko Haram fighters.

Hundreds of fighters assaulted the base on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, using trucks and even a stolen armored personnel carrier, beginning at 2:30 a.m. local time, according to The Associated Press. Boko Haram fighters yelled "Allahu akbar" as they attacked.

According to Brigadier General Chris Olukolade, the Ministry of Defense spokesman, at least 20 security personnel and 24 insurgents were killed, while two helicopters and three decommissioned military aircraft were "incapacitated." Boko Haram's use of explosives and RPGs has been confirmed. ...

Today's attack also takes place just one week after the Nigerian military claimed it cleared the terror group from bases in the Sambisa forest. The military said that more than 100 Boko Haram fighters were killed during the assault. ...

Armin Rosen on South Sudan

Via Michael J. Totten, Armin Rosen has an excellent piece on South Sudan from a year and a half ago.

The oldest building in Juba is its Mother Church, which was built by Anglican missionaries in the 1920s and sits at a confluence of shaded dirt roads, behind an expensive hotel that opened less than a year ago. It’s a red brick, open-air building with a roof made out of tin siding; the pews are also brick, and the floor is a lustrous concrete. It is cool and breezy, and on a boiling day—which is most days—the winds whipping through its partly-open ceiling evoke a sense of spiritual expansiveness, of being in a place quite a bit larger than mere physicality would suggest.

When we were here during the war, the pastor told me, all the South Sudanese that lived here were not allowed to go outside more than 15 kilometers. And if you want to go out you need to get a permit. For you just to get to your farm, you must get a permit to travel, and you must get no objection from internal security, public security or military intelligence. When you get no objections on your documents, you can go out. Sometimes you’re given a no objection document, but all of a sudden you find yourself kept in. You were treated as a foreigner in your own home.

And then the war itself—those years when the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the country’s eventual liberators, laid siege to the last major city it had been unable to capture, a northern garrison where the only cars were military vehicles, and the only permanent structures were government offices and mosques that hardly anyone uses anymore, even though they’re the largest and really most impressive buildings in the city—everything is centered on the war, he continued. Everything is actually portraying the image of war. ...

Go read it all.