Sunday, July 12, 2009
http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/The Monster is Dying
The Stalinist criminal Kim Jong-il has pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean and Chinese sources. Click here for the story.Pakistan Pushing US to Appease Taliban
China Confidential has learned that Pakistan's pro-Taliban intelligence services are promoting a truce between the Al Qaeda-associated Islamist movement and the United States.
And the Obama administration, according to China Confidential analysts, is likely to consider a deal with the Taliban--as soon as Washington feels it can pull off a pact with the devil without appearing to be bowing or caving into the medieval monsters.
Fact is, the Obama administration is prepared to negotiate with any and all so-called reconcilable Taliban elements, even if they practice stoning and enslaving women, amputating hands, torturing and hanging homosexuals, and other barbaric Islamic practices.
Only a Matter of Time ...
It is only a matter of months before Al Qaeda, alone, is beyond the pale of the administration's "engagement" policy, and a few years, at most, before the insane idea of reconcilable Al Qaeda elements is floated (with the support of an adoring liberal media).
The administration is bent on trying to ride the Islamist tiger without being eaten by it. America's first Muslim-born President (according to Islamic religious law, which traces religion through one's father) entered the White House with the intention of appeasing and aligning with Islamism in general--and Islamist Iran in particular--in a throwback to the Great Game of imperial rivalry between Britain and Czarist Russia.
Under cover of dialogue and diplomacy--sacred concepts to dumbbell Democrats and otherUseful Idiots of the West--Obama aims to use Islam to counter China's rise and Russia's resurgence. Hence, the lack of cooperation by Beijing and Moscow on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues.Forgotten Masterpiece: Iran by Claude Lelouch
There was a time--before The Great Betrayal by the catastrophic Carter administration--when Iran was an American ally led by a modernizing monarch, His Imperial Majesty Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (may his soul rest in peace).
The legendary Claude Lelouch made this little-known, 1971 film as a gift to the Shah's wife, Her Imperial Majesty Empress Farah, whom this reporter was privileged to interview in 1976 for a cover article in a national American magazine. This reporter went on to produce a half-hour documentary about Iran--as seen through Her Imperial Majesty's eyes--which was shown on television stations across the United States.
But Iran at the Crossroads, which this reporter produced, cannot compare in any way withIran, which won six international awards shortly after its release. Iran consists of spectacular geographical and archaeological footage interspersed with slice-of-life shots, exhibiting some of the best juxtapositional editing ever accomplished in the history of motion pictures.
Iran is a politically suppressed masterpiece--an example of hidden cinema--from the director of A Man and a Woman, Happy New Year, and And Now My Love. Lelouch shot a staggering six miles of footage to make Iran--a visual poem that transcends time and space. The musical score by Francis Lai is priceless.Inconvenient Data: Earth Cooled as Carbon Rose
"It's getting cold out there," writes Deborah Saunders. No wonder skeptics consider the left's belief in man-made global warming as akin to a fad religion -- last week in Italy, G8 leaders pledged to not allow the Earth's temperature to rise more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
For its next act, the G8 can part the Red Sea. The worst part is: These are the brainy swells who think of themselves as -- all bow -- Men of Science.
The funny part is: G8 leaders can't even decide the year from which emissions must be reduced. 1990? 2005? "This question is a mystery for everyone," an aide to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.
And while President Obama led the charge for the G8 nations to agree to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in industrial nations by 2050, the same Russian aide dissed the standard as "likely unattainable."
No worries, the language was non-binding. Global-warming believers say that they are all about science, but their emphasis is not on results so much as declarations of belief.
Continue here.Al Qaeda-Supported, Saudi-Inspired Islamists Behead Seven Somalis; Innocent Victims Got No Trial, Were Accused of Being Christians and Spies
Al-Shabab terrorists in the south-central Somali town of Baidoa have beheaded seven people in what is believed to the largest mass execution carried out in Somalia by the Al Qaeda-linked group since 2006.
According to relatives of the victims, the charges against the seven Somalis ranged from being Christians to spying for the Transitional Federal Government.
The victims were not tried before the executions were carried out on Friday.
The executions have shocked the people of Baidoa, which was once the base of Somalia's transitional parliament. The town fell to al-Shabab insurgents in January, following the pull-out of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.
Al-Shabab follows the Saudi Arabian Wahabi tenet of Islam. Its terrorists have backed and benefitted from piracy, and imposed barbaric Islamic laws in areas they control. They have forced women to cover their faces, segregated men and women in public places, and have banned music and all forms of entertainment.
Stoning Women
They have also punished thieves by cutting off limbs and have stoned women accused of adultery. Beheadings have been relatively rare, but their numbers have been increasing. Last month, al-Shabab beheaded three people in the same region.
On Friday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said carrying out such punishments without due process violated Somali and international laws and could be considered as war crimes.
Al-Shabab and an allied opposition group called Hisbul Islam already control large areas of southern Somalia and parts of the capital Mogadishu. In a bid to topple the U.N.-backed government, the insurgents launched an attack on government forces in early May. Two months of fighting in Mogadishu has killed hundreds of people and uprooted more than 200,000 others from their homes.
The Somali government says it needs international help to ensure the government does not collapse. Earlier this week, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told local reporters that al-Shabab is a transnational jihadist group, determined to wipe Somalia off the map.
The al-Shabab-led insurgency has attracted hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia in recent months. Many of them have been seen fighting alongside al-Shabab in Mogadishu streets. Al-Shabab's ranks are also believed to be growing from new recruits trained at various camps set up by al-Shabab in southern Somalia.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Al Qaeda and the Taliban, except for so-called reconcilable Taliban elments, are still beyond the pale of the Obama administrations direct diplomacy drive.
Monday, 13 July 2009
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