"[...] and can that happen without the policy against militants going in further turmoil?"
--A "senior western diplomat" quoted below

'Further' turmoil? Pakistan is a country which has already handed over the NWF Provinces - almost a third of the country - entirely and completely to the militants and which has, as of today's date, shown no desire to reclaim them.

Already, there are attacks in the Home provinces and intelligent Pakistanis are transferring their wealth abroad and making ready to flee. Pakistan is a lost cause and will be a Taliban controlled entity within the next three to five years - mark my words - unless the West wakes up and sees things there for what they really are and takes the necessary steps.

Pakistan is a lost cause, but, much more dangerously for us, Pakistan is a lost cause with a nuclear capability and a Military which, for very dishonorable reasons, will side with the fundamentalists in order to protect its own wealth.

It is important to realise that the vast bulk of the Pakistani population actually support Al-Qaeda - that they see themselves, erroneously, as victims of Western Imperialism, with the USA as the pivotal imperial power. They do not attribute their own poverty to their own ineptitude, but, rather, to a fictional international conspiracy against muslims led by the USA and originating in Israel.

Most reporting about Pakistan is conducted by people who seldom venture beyond the confines of Islamabad and by people who are, by conditioning or nature, profoundly anti-Western and anti-Semitic. Those self-same reporters are also blinded by their pre-conceived notion that Pakistan, by virtue of being a country in this twenty-first century, cannot fall into militant Islamist hands.

Some people, obviously, simply don't understand what the example of Afghanistan demonstrates. Unless things change significantly, Pakistan will be Taliban Pakistan within the next three to five years.

Then we'll be playing in a completely different ball-park! One that goes 'boom, millions dead' very easily indeed!

Shota Rustaveli's The Knight in the Panther's Skin has featured in a number of posts at this site, notably one of Hugh's near impossible quizzes. Shota Rustaveli is a famous poet from Georgia, a wine-making, heart-warming country, where everyone's name ends in -ashvili, unless it ends-adze. The wine is delicious, and you can't really get it in England, except (as far as I know) from one Polish shop in Golders Green. In recent years relations between Georgia and Russia have been strained. Georgia wishes to join NATO, and Russia isn't pleased. A couple of years ago, Russia boycotted Georgian wine. Now it's sending in the tanks. From The Telegraph:  

Russian forces rolled into South Ossetia yesterday to repel a Georgian attack on rebels allied to Moscow. By this morning, it said it had taken full control of the territory's capital Tskhinvali.

Georgia claims to have shot down 10 Russian combat aircraft, but Moscow has only confirmed that two of its planes are missing.

There were reports of high casualties on both sides. Ossetian separatists said Georgian shelling had killed more than 1,600 people while Georgia said Russian air raids on its territory had killed many civilians.

"Hours ago Russia's Black Sea fleet started to move to Gerogia's territory in Abkhazia," said Mr Saakashvili, referring to a Georgian province that has suffered from ethnic tension. "Russian troops and heavy equipment are in upper Abkhazia."

He said Russia was conducting ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Ossetia and Abkhazia's Kodoro Gorge region. Moscow accused Tiblisi of the same crime when Georgian troops invaded South Ossetia on Thursday night.

Russia seems to be reverting to type. From the leading article:  

If anyone believes that war has been banished from European soil, the sight of Russian tanks rolling into the sovereign state of Georgia - albeit a breakaway region within this republic - provides a salutary reminder of the enduring power of territorial and ethnic hatreds.

The tanks and heavy artillery deployed by Russia, whose stark visual images summon memories of Moscow's previous adventures in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, also show the Kremlin's willingness to settle these disputes by naked force.

First things first: Russia has a case for its actions in South Ossetia. Perhaps two thirds of this tiny region's 70,000 people are ethnic Ossetians and most are believed to favour leaving Georgia and merging with their larger neighbour.

[...]

Yet South Ossetia's plight is unlikely to be the Kremlin's real concern. Ever since President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's youthful, impetuous leader, made clear his determination to join Nato and the European Union, Russia has done everything possible to subvert this ancient nation. Nothing can disguise the fact that Russia is now offending every canon of international behaviour by using overwhelming force against the sovereign territory of an independent state.

Make no mistake about the unequal nature of this struggle. Georgia has nine jet fighters, while Russia boasts 1,736. Georgia possesses 128 tanks - compared with Russia's 23,000. Imagine, for a moment, that Nato leaders had granted Mr Saakashvili's request for a "membership action plan" during their last summit in Bucharest. Would Russia have dared act in this way if Georgia had been firmly on the path to joining Nato?

Privately, Georgian officials warned that denying this request would give Russia a window of opportunity to sabotage their prospects of Nato membership. President George W. Bush was the only leader who publicly supported Georgia's position precisely because America feared that anything less would trigger Russian intervention. Sadly, his judgment has been vindicated.

I am off on my holidays shortly, two weeks at Littlesandcastle on Sea.  In case I can’t send you a postcard here is another sample of “what I did in the holidays”.
This is a 1940s Boeing Stearman biplane, of the type used on the original King Kong film, flying above the Star over London Zeppelin. Which while not quite as big as the Empire State building is pretty big, as you can see from comparing the two.
Boeing Stearmans were a US plane, used for pilot training during the war and crop spraying thereafter. 

Lawrence Auster combines a keen intelligence and admirable clarity of thought with a tendency to battiness. Today he is in full batty mode, as he rails against an "Orwellian" - or should that be "orwellian"? - spelling change:

Why, within a historic blink of the eye, within perhaps the last couple of years, has virtually everyone--including magazines, including book publishing houses, even including many right-wingers--stopped capitalizing the words "Communist" and "Communism"?

[...]

I can only suspect that the makers of these rules--liberals all--decided to start putting Communism in lower case so as to diminish the historic importance--and the vast totalitarian evil--of Communism, so that it would only seem like a tendency, a vague, general attitude, not an organized movement, party, and ideology that sought to control the world and for a long time did control a very large part of it, and that still controls China, although the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party has of course been changed in key respects allowing free business enterprise, though not other types of freedom.

At VFR, Communist and Communism will continue to be capitalized, as will "the West" and "Western civilization," which more and more people in this country--following the wimpy, apologetic British who don't even consider the name of their own civilization a proper name--have been spelling in lower case. Indeed, the way the Brits have been going, in another five years they'll be spelling British as british.

So "the British" spell West as west, do they? This one doesn't. Nor, a quick google (Google?) reveals, does The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun, The Spectator, The Daily Mail, or the BBC. The Guardian does, though, and as any fule kno, all the British think like Guardian readers. Why, even as they hit the shift key and type West, Times, Telegraph etc readers are practising taqiyya. Bring back capital punishment, I say.

What twaddle. lawrence auster must be short of something to worry about. Upper case, lower case, today he's a head case.

Not so much dumb as tone deaf. All must have musical prizes, even if they can't read a note. The Times reports on yet another example of the decline of educational standards:

Asked how he made his music more forceful than others, Keith Moon, The Who’s hellraising drummer, replied: “Hit the drums harder.” The advice would have stood him a strong chance of a GCSE in music.

To the consternation of musicians, tutors and critics, an inability to understand sheet music has now become no hindrance to success at GCSE. Students can achieve a Grade A without reading or writing a single note.

Research by BBC Music Magazine has revealed that none of the main examination boards awards more than 20 per cent of total marks for being able to read music.

Damon Albarn, the singer and songwriter for Blur and Gorillaz, whose debut opera was performed at the Royal Opera House last month, called the situation disgraceful and said that it could cut young people off from their musical heritage.

Julian Lloyd Webber, the cellist, said it was like “trying to study a language without studying the alphabet”.

Previous generations of 16-year-olds studying music as an academic subject at school were under much more pressure to demonstrate a proper understanding of written music. An O-level music paper for the Associated Examination Board in 1978, for example, asked students to set a verse of poetry to music on a page of empty staves, with credit given for good accentuation of the words and an appropriate melody.

Now the national curriculum does not mention staff notation until Key Stage 3 (ages 11 to 14) and pupils need only to “identify” it.

[...]

Lloyd Webber said that it was ridiculous to ignore “a system of notation that has been developed over hundreds and hundreds of years and has stood the test of time” just to make exams easier. “It’s leaving anyone who wants to do music in the future with a severe disadvantage — a handicap.”

There are signs of a change of heart at the QCA, however. From next month KS3 national curriculum stipulates that requirements should include “using traditional staff notation”.

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Aav_EXZ-E

so farewell, then
e. e.
cummings
e. e. "by gum" was
nearly your
catch phrase. god bless
our cummings. and our
goings

© e. j. throbb, aged 17¾

How do you pronounce Tbilisi?

Relax, put your feet up, pour yourself a cup of tea (or coffee) and simply enjoy ten minutes of bliss delivered by the Tradjazzmeister:

Huge hat-tip to Robert Spencer and Raymond over at jihadwatch for spotting this one:

From the Financial Times:

Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee who has endorsed John McCain, is being vetted as a potential running mate for the Republican presidential hopeful, according to an adviser to Mr McCain’s ­campaign.

Mr Lieberman, who has campaigned for the Arizona senator, has long been ­considered an unconventional but plausible choice for Mr McCain.

Although Democrats have rejected Mr McCain’s image as a maverick politician, Mr Lieberman’s support for the presumptive Republican nominee has, much to the chagrin of his former ­colleagues, helped to boost Mr McCain’s reputation as a bi-partisan legislator with friends on both sides of the aisle. Mr Lieberman, a staunch supporter of Israel, could also help Mr McCain win over Jewish voters.

“[McCain] loves Lieberman. And he is on the [short-]list because Lieberman has never embarrassed anyone, never misspoken. The first rule is, don’t take someone who costs you votes,” said one McCain adviser.

But not everyone would be enthusiastic about Mr Lieberman being added to the ticket. While Mr Lieberman has staunchly defended Mr McCain’s support of the surge, the escalation of US troops in Iraq, and the lawmakers have teamed up on legislative proposals to ­combat global warming, the registered independent is aligned with Democrats on most other issues.

“Conservatives would be pissed as hell – I think you would have a revolt, but sometimes John does what John wants to do,” the McCain adviser said.

Another McCain adviser said that it was unlikely that the Republican candidate would base his decision on “tactical considerations”.

“He can be pragmatic, but on the biggest decisions he tends to favour his instinct for the bigger picture,” the adviser said.

Mr Lieberman’s office declined to comment. But when the senator was asked recently whether he would decline a request by Mr McCain he said: “It’s not going to happen”.

Mr Lieberman has left open the possibility that he would speak at the Republican National Convention, a move that would probably ensure that Democrats would strip him of his chairmanship of the committee on homeland security. Democratic leaders allowed Mr Lieberman to caucus with them in the Senate even after he left the party to become an independent, because it gave the party control of the Senate. ­However, most analysts agree that if, as expected, Democrats win more seats in this year’s election, Mr Lieberman will be forced out of his coveted role on the ­committee...

 Weekend Treat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHy5v7ImuVU

For those who might wish to sing along I've transcribed the lyrics: 

"Désormais, l'intervention russe en Géorgie a pris le caractère d'une «agression militaire massive», et les espoirs d'obtenir un cessez-le-feu reposent sur l'Union européenne, estime Salomé Zourabichvili, ex-diplomate française et ancienne ministre des Affaires étrangères géorgienne.

En bombardant la ville de Gori, le «coeur stratégique de la Géorgie», que la population civile est «en train de quitter», et le terminal portuaire de Poti sur la mer Noire, la Russie est passée à «une agression militaire massive, comme (elle) n'en a porté contre aucun pays indépendant depuis qu'elle n'a plus l'empire soviétique», souligne Mme Zourabichvili.

«Il n'y a qu'une seule urgence, c'est d'arrêter les combats», et la «responsabilité» en incombe à «la communauté internationale, qui aujourd'hui s'incarne dans l'Union européenne», a-t-elle ajouté.

L'initiative doit venir «en particulier de la présidence française de l'UE», a ajouté cette ancienne ambassadrice de France à Tbilissi d'origine géorgienne, devenue début 2004 ministre des Affaires étrangères du nouveau gouvernement pro-occidental géorgien, et passée à l'opposition après son limogeage par le président Mikheïl Saakachvili en 2005."
 

On this day, August 9th, in 2004, the president of Mauritania ordered the arrest of several “Islamic extremists” and sympathizing military officers for plotting a coup against his government.

President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya had good reason to be vigilant.  In his former role as head of the military, he had been involved in plotting and carrying out the successful coups of 1978 and 1984. And after his ascent to the presidency in 1997 (amidst claims of massive voting fraud), there was a coup attempt in June 2003, financed and supported by Libya, that was put down only after two days of fighting in the capital city of Nouakchott.

In the alleged coup attempt of August 2004, critics claimed it was only a pretext for cracking down on political rivals.  But president Taya was vindicated a year later when, while he was on a trip to Saudi Arabia in August 2005, he was overthrown in a coup d’état.  This was followed by a coup d’état in August 2008.

Mauritania is on the northwest corner of Africa, and is over 99% Muslim, mostly Sunni.  Some of it’s neighbors are: Senegal, which had to cancel its famed Dakar Rally for the first time in 2008 due to fears of “Muslim extremist” attacks;  Algeria, which had to annul its elections in 1991 when “Muslim extremists” were about to be voted into power; and the failed state of Western Sahara.

Just as in Sudan, the Mauritanian government has a history of discrimination against blacks, both Muslim and non-Muslim, by the ruling Arab Muslims.  It has a per capita income of $2,400.
 

Previous Days in the "Religion of Peace™":

Aug 8: Fall of Mazar-i Sharif

Aug 7: Gallipoli: Chunuk Bair

Aug 6: Benazir Bhutto Resigns

Aug 5: Iran Rejects Nuclear Offer

Aug 4: Uganda Expels Asians