Latvia supports Denmark and Freedom - PM

Latvian PM Kalvītis has stated in an interview on state radio that :

We are in solidarity with Denmark and the other countries of Europe, because Europe will not step back from freedom of expression and the press, regardless of the fact that other countries have expressed condemnation

Yehaa. Only took several weeks to take a moral stand, and a mere three days after our peacekeepers were besieged in Maymana. [sarcasm] My heart runs over at the bravery of the government [/sarcasm]. The Latvian newspapers are yet to run the offending cartoons (as opposed to Respublika in Lithuania, which has done so).

PRT Maymana

Of course the PRT that operates from Maymana has also Finns, Brits and Latvians. There is also some kind of Swedish prescence. Most of the MSM (hack, spit) is running stories along the lines of :

About 250 protesters armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the NATO base in the northwestern town of Maymana, burning an armored vehicle, a U.N. car and guard posts, said a Maymana Hospital doctor.

Some in the crowd fired light weapons and threw stones and hand grenades, and the Norwegian troops responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and warning shots....

"Protestors" .... as if they were students at campus rally or pensioners protesting heating prices. OK, whatever. Some protests are more violent than others. But some fucking Canadian newspaper is covering the same story with the headline "Norwegian troops fire on Afghan cartoon protesters". Thats the sort of cheap and misleading sensationalist journalism we might expect from less than impartial muslim countries ..... but from Canada?

Islamic madness as an Iranian puppet

Its getting sillier and sillier - attack on the Danish battalion in Iraq, attacks on Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon, Indonesia and Iran and now a crowd has attempted to storm the base for the Norwegian led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Maymana, Afghanistan. Considering that the PRT are very much in civil help mode, and only benefit local communities, that is a rather worrying incident.

I wonder how anyone can sanction Iran without causing a total conflagration, let alone attack (as William Lind is predicting)? Cui bono - is this Iran fomenting a brushfire, making for a smokescreen that will allow them to consumate their nuke program without intervention?

Arab-Persian relations have been iffy at times. How hard is it to see Iranian hands in at least the troubles in Afghanistan (teh trouble was at Maymana is in the north-west and NOT Kabul or the usually volatile pashtun South) and southern Iraq (shiitie, where the hand of Iran is well noted), or the knwon Iranian catpaws in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (Hamas and Islamic Jihad). The current big Islamic ummah convention of muslim love and togetherness and hating the west would play directly in their hands come action against their nuclear facilities.

And if we are nervous, how is Israel? Rampaging muslims and nuclear Iran. A blog called The Officers' Club even provides interesting Tom Clancy-esque guesses as to the directions an Israeli intervention may take in Meanwhile Back in Iran . Personally it sounds a little far-fetched, the straight diplomatic nudge and wink and blinking duirng overflights is much much more likely.

And where is Al-Qaida? William Lind also warns that a big attack may be in the offing after Osama's peace offer.

May you live in interesting times. 2006 is getting rather interesting.

Islam and nazism

I can't believe the number of nazi - sypathetic references from the Islamists. Certain pro-Israeli articles claim the Islamists are direct descendents of the nazis (based on rather tenous links), while some Islamists appear to express pro-nazi sypathies on the strength of the enemy-of-my-enemy. Do they really understand much of any history?

If they ever really really hurt Europe (the nightmare scenario WMD attack, and economic chaos, mass uprisings), soft and fuzzy feel-good be-good euro policies will evaporate. It won't be openly revisionist, not sigrunen or hakenkreutz ressurected, nor bad mustaches nor skinheads (oooh white supremisists - the supreme liberal/marxist bugbear) - it would be something entirely new. New style then, but same old substance.

From the Kaiser to Kristalnacht took less than 20 years.The Islamists can either only lose now, but if they win now .... then they will bring the spirit of him back?

Dr. Michael Scheuer - Missing Zawahiri

Dr. Michael Scheuer - the CIA guy who wrote "Imperial Hubris" - has written a fine tract on the US should be playing realpolitik Missing Zawahiri - A Portent of America’s Defeat, in the US Cavalry site "On Point" :

In a rational, historically aware country, U.S. leaders would have told Americans that the attack on Zawahiri was facilitated by U.S. intelligence officers and Special Forces who risked their lives to gather intelligence that seemed to fix Zawahiri in a specific place at a specific time. Because Washington’s most important duty is to protect Americans, they would have said, we acted on the best information available and, so to speak, let 'er rip. Unfortunately, we missed Zawahiri, but we killed four of his fighters and will keep trying to get him and bin Laden. As for the dead Pakistanis, they are foreigners not Americans and we have no responsibility to protect them. And, in any event, they were about to serve up sautéed goat steaks and curry to one of America’s most dangerous enemies. The lesson all Pakistanis should take from the incident is that we are not concerned with the lives of Zawahiri’s abettors, that they were lucky the village was not hit by B-52s, and that next time they may not be so fortunate.

Of course the indiscriminate use of airpower in counterinsurgency inevitably backfires, but straight hard talk like suggested would be better than the squirming denials and excuses. But they can't, becuase that might be insensitive.

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