Georgians enthusiastically elected Mikheil Saakashvili president of Georgia on Sunday, Jan. 4. He is a the youthful, center-right leader of the Georgian opposition who overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze in the "Rose Revolution" last November. Mr. Saakashvili has received more than 80 percent of the vote in elections that were the most peaceful and transparent since Georgian independence.
The World Health Organization or WHO announced today that “the worst is over” regarding the SARS epidemic in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada. WHO pronounced Vietnam for being the first country to eradicate the disease, and praised it for doing so transparently, quickly, and efficiently.
One reason Vietnam was able to do so is because it closed its border with China. For notably absent in the WHO announcement was any praise for China. The worst is not over for China. The worst — far worse — is yet to come.
90% of SARS cases worldwide to this day are
Billed by the Government as nothing more than a toothless "declaration" at the Nice summit in December 2000, the Charter of Fundamental Rights is now to be enshrined as a legally-binding document in Part II of the new European Constitution, with profound effects on Britain's enterprise culture and legal system.
When penguins in Antarctica get hungry, they get nervous. Grouped together on an iceberg, none of them wants to be the first to jump in the water and go fishing — because there just might be a leopard seal waiting for them. There’s nothing in the sea a leopard seal finds more tasty to eat than fresh penguin.
So the waddle (on land or ice, a group of penguins is a waddle; in the water, it’s a raft) bunches together, the ones in the back pushing forward, the ones in the front backing up away from the ice edge. When
This is a very important article on a world-wide underground Islamofascist movement you never heard of, yet is a Trojan Horse for terror in America. I urge you to read it carefully and in full. ---JW
Every fall, over a million almost identically dressed, bearded Moslem men from around the world descend on the small Pakistani town of Raiwind for a three-day celebration of faith. Similar gatherings take place annually outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Bhopal, India.
These pilgrims are no ordinary Moslems though. They belong to a movement called Tablighi Jamaat (“proselytizing group”). They are trained missionaries who have dedicated much of their lives to spreading Islam across the globe. The largest group of religious proselytizers of any faith, they are part of the reason for the explosive growth of Islamic religious fervor and conversion.
Jack Wheeler
Strategic Investor, July 2001
The origin of the phrase “thinking out of the box” comes from an intelligence test called the Nine Dot Box. Imagine three rows of three dots, each equally spaced some distance apart on a regular piece of paper. The task is to connect the dots with a minimum number of lines drawn by a pen or pencil. The only rules are: you must draw a line through every dot once and only once, all lines must be straight (no curves), and your pen/pencil cannot leave the paper.
Most people cannot figure out how to do
Do We Really Seek Freedom?
The entire world is perplexed about us - the Arabs - and no longer knows whether we truly live on this planet or came from another planet. Are all the Arab peoples in need of psychological treatment, or are we a hopeless case for which psychological treatment will make no difference?
Early last October, a senior White House henchman, let’s call him Richard Head, paid Janet Reno a visit. The conversation went something like this.
Head: Ms. Reno, the president is very concerned that you do the right thing regarding criminal investigations of his administration.
Reno: That’s reassuring, Richard — may I call you Dick?
Head: Yes — so we at the White House would like you to prosecute Bill.
Reno (spilling her coffee): Prosecute the president? But I thought no matter how massive the evidence against him, I was to stonewall…
Head: No, Ms. Reno, that’s the wrong Bill —
(The following letter was sent to TTP by a Vietnam Veteran familiar with “Swift Boat” tactics in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. He is a Rear Admiral (Ret.) and a Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1959).
I was in the Delta shortly after Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command.
Here are my problems and suspicions:
The older you get, the more staying in shape is like being the Red Queen of Wonderland: You have keep running faster and faster to stay in the same place.
I want to wish you all a healthy and strong 2004. I can’t tell you how to achieve this, however, because I’m not you and we all have our individual differences and preferences. What I could do is tell you what works for me. This means I don’t have to insert any boilerplate blather about “consult your physician before doing any of this stuff.” You get to make up your own mind about that, and adapt for yourself whatever you think may be useful...
You first learned in The CIA in Deep Qaaqaa last October about a group of left-wing “Rogue Weasels” that incoming CIA Director Porter Goss was purging from Langley.
It’s important to understand that the CIA has been a left-wing outfit since the 1970s. The Watergate Scandal was pretty much a coup to oust Richard Nixon from the White House conducted in a cooperative effort by the CIA left-wingers, the Democrat Party, and the Media. This same cabal thinks it can conduct a similar coup against George Bush and Karl Rove over the ridiculous Plamegate nonsense.
Problem is, Bush is smarter than Nixon, the bloggers are smarter than Old Media, and Porter Goss is smarter than the Weasels. In fact, many of the Weasels are unbelievably stupid. Take ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson...
None of all the momentous events that occurred in 2003 -- the recovery of the US economy, the invasion of Iraq and military overthrow of Saddam’s regime, the capture of Saddam, the capitulation of Libya’s Kaddafi, you name it -- was the most important. The single most important event of 2003 is the one that didn’t occur: there was not one single successful terrorist attack in the United States.
This is the single greatest achievement of the year -- and note the identifier achievement. This is not a lucky accident -- although luck and chance played a role as in most everything else in life. But those who are truly wise know that to a very considerable extent, you make your own luck, and this is what George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft have done.
One of the most amusing sights of 2003 was to see so many people turn their brains into jello over John Ashcroft. Anyone who has personally known Ashcroft can testify to his decency and integrity. Yet he and his Patriot Act became the focal point of hate for both the Loony Left and the Loony Right -- the Hollywood Left and Dizzy Dean Democrats see eye-to-eye with Jane Fonda Libertarians like Lew Rockwell, Pro-Moslem Conservatives like Grover Norquist, and Hate-Israel Paleocons like Pat Buchanan…
As you are reading this, 300,000 Ethiopian fighters are pitched astride the border from 200,000 Eritrean soldiers, separated by less than 4,000 UN peacekeepers (a mission that incidentally costs taxpayers almost $200 million per year). Half a million heavily armed men facing each other with hate-filled eyes and itchy trigger fingers.
Even a minor incident could spark all-out war. And a number of State Department bureaucrats seem determined to do nothing to prevent it.
It wasn’t that long ago that a good many European Jews swore an oath: Never Again. Never Again will Nazi-like anti-Semitism be tolerated. Never Again will Jews be meekly herded down a path that leads to Zyklon-B showers.
So in response to the explosion of anti-Semitism in France, what is the advice of France’s chief rabbi, Joseph Sitruk? Replace yarmulkes with baseball caps.
"I ask young Jews to be alert, to avoid walking alone, to avoid wearing the yarmulke in the street or in the subway and consequently becoming targets for potential assailants," Rabbi Sitruk cautions. "I ask them to replace the yarmulke with the baseball cap.” This is the best way, he warns, “to protect our young people."
Au contraire, Monsieur Rabbi. The best way for your young people to protect themselves would be for them to learn how to beat the crap out of those who attack them. Someone needs to make Rabbi Sitruk write 500 times on a blackboard the French translation of: The Best defense Is A Good Offense…
Tony Blankley, the erudite editorial editor of The Washington Times, certainly knows his Toynbee. I can attest to this, with all 12 volumes of Arnold Toynbee’s masterwork, A Study of History, residing on my bookshelf.
Toynbee studied the rise and fall of entire civilizations rather than individual countries or ethnic groups. His model for the success and failure of civilizations was challenge-and-response. Those that rose to a challenge flourished, while those that didn’t failed.
Tony, however - who is both my neighbor and friend of long standing - focuses on one of the most fascinating yet little understood insights of Toynbee’s model: that without challenges, a successful civilization will stagnate and culturally implode.
In other words, Western Civilization will die unless there is a challenge to it. Islam, the whole civilization or culture of Islam with Jihadism as its most extreme manifestation, has become that challenge. “In the strangest possible irony,” writes Tony in his new book, Jihadism is giving the West a “chance to regain its faith in itself.”
