Friday Afternoon Roundup - Politics, Politics and More Ticks

It's been a moderately short week yet an explosive one.

The Democratic and Republican races are both tangled up in confusion with two and four front runners respectively. Some Jews are getting excited over McCain's supposed plan to make Lieberman his VP. I find that to be a foolish mindset, as foolish as those planning to vote for Obama because he's black or for Hillary because she's a woman. You vote for the person or the policy, you don't vote for the race or religion. McCain is no more appealing to me simply because Lieberman is his V.P., nor would Lieberman as a Presidential candidate be any more appealing to me. As a matter of fact he would be less appealing to me. A certain amount of pride in the success of a fellow Jew, a fellow black man or a fellow woman is understandable, but not when it comes to voting who leads the country.

Meanwhile in Israel, Olmert is hanging on. Protests are going on over the Winograd Report as Israel bombs another empty building, a practice that began under Rabin, to appear tough. Shas has continued to keep its deal with the devil until the thin veil of claiming that Jerusalem will be given away last and only then will they supposedly quit. UTJ has a high asking price to join the government but if Olmert gives away Yerushalayim under a Haredi government, not all the Daf Yomi Shiurim in the world will be enough to wash away the blood they have so callously spilled with their greed.

The blood of their brothers cries out from the earth and they hear nothing but the clink of the shekel.

Front Page Magazine has some interesting articles this week including David Hornik's look at A Day in the Life of a Gaza-Belt Israeli Community that shows where the new frontier is the real cost of the Gaza Disengagement.

(Via Lemon Lime Moon) an interesting FPM article on the Putin-Osama connection, considering that Palestinian and modern Arab Marxist terrorism was born out of the halls of the KGB and the Soviet Ministries, this is not too far fetched, particularly when backed up by statements made by assassinated ex-KGB man Litvinenko, who one presumes knew enough to be worth killing in such a gruesome fashion.

Alexander Litvinenko revealed, in his articles and interviews included in the Allegations, that at least two notorious Al Qaeda terrorists are secret agents of the FSB – one of whom, Aiman al Zawahiri, is bin Laden’s second-in-command.

As the former leader of the terrorist organisation Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al Zawahiri was on international lists of most wanted terrorists for many years. In 1997, he suddenly re-surfaced in Russia, where he undertook a special training course at a secret FSB base in Dagestan. After that, he was sent to Afghanistan, and joined Al Qaeda as bin Laden’s number two. Meanwhile, the FSB officers who had supervised him in Dagestan were promoted and re-assigned to Moscow. It was from them that Alexander learned about al Zawahiri.

These and other facts of FSB involvement in international terrorism, revealed by Alexander, have tremendous implications. Contrary to the view of many in the US, Russia is anything but a reliable ally of yours in the ‘war on terror’. The Kremlin is playing a treacherous double game: while enjoying the West’s support as ally, it secretly supports and manipulates the Al Qaeda through FSB agents of influence.

As Alexander writes: “It is possible to destroy the whole international terrorism tomorrow, along with Russian Mafia. All you need to do is disband the Russian special services.”

FP: What interests does Putin have in helping Al Qaeda and other jihadi terror groups?

Stroilov: To stir up trouble, in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular. The most obvious consequence of that are sky-high oil prices, which are both the source of KGB junta’s wealth and the salvation for their regime.

Meanwhile paralleling the previous story on Israel's crackdown on Blogger, word that Gulag aka Google turned over the IP address of a blogger to the authorities at Israel Matzav. Considering Yahoo and Google's actions in China, this is not too surprising but for those looking for an exit, I would strongly recommend using a company that does not do business in Israel if you're an Israeli, that doesn't do business in the UK if you're British, etc... Companies are motivated to cooperate with foreign countries primarily if they do business there. Worldwide companies like Google or Yahoo are the least secure in this regard.

On a common note, At My Flander Fields there's a post on the new law, which is a topic I'll be covering next week too along with definitions of extremism.

The measures of repression being passed by them are aimed at those ordinary and patriotic people of our Western countries who are expressing those freedoms which are traditional to all Free People.

The forces and methods described are not only those of persons or organizations in the USA. They are not practiced only in the UK. The application of those methods and ideas are not limited to Europe.

Layers of bureaucracy have been added within our systems in order to make sure that an appearance of legality has been retained for the public. The maze of administrative layers allow the leftists to deny that an agenda is being undertaken by them while giving an appearance of unbroken traditional legality. The layers absolve any one identifiable person of responsibility or of charges of malfeasance. Responsibility and accountability are instead replaced with a bureaucratic irrationality and plausible deniability. Spread throughout our societies is a tangled web of leftist visions administered by an elusive loosely organized centralized system.

It's a quite good description of the totalitarian nature of the modern bureaucratic system that stifles and criminalizes free speech in the name of human rights, which are somehow now incompatible with freedom.

Lemon Lime Moon meanwhile writes on the analogy between abuse victims and the state of Western society in response to the Jihad in Europe, America and National Madness

"Whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad" is how the saying goes and we can see it in the works today with nations of the West giving themselves over to their enemies to be raped and abused with not a whimper or a word. Bomb the west and get free education, welfare, foreign aid and a place to live away from your own abusive governments. Leave your sharia run situation , leave Mexico with its corruption and come take from the nations you hate. Live off them and abuse them while doing it. It is like a big, fat ,slovenly, abusive man sitting in his underwear while his timid little half dead wife brings him more pork rinds and beer to stuff down his greedy gullet.

The west has become like a half mad, abused woman, taking the beatings and standing up for her abuser when the law comes to call. Europe and America have even given themselves over to sleep with the enemy, giving every concession. Like the abused woman the west wrings it's hands in self deprecation and thinks, 'if only we were better people this would not be happening to us'. This is madness.

For those interested in the continuing implosion of the Ron Paul campaign, Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican has all the coverage.

At Keli Ata, a note on how the AP wire services minimizes terrorist attacks against Israelis.

And at Mark Steyn via LGF, is an interesting story about what human rights investigators get up to.

Meanwhile for those following the case of the 7 imprisoned girls, my own reading of the non-english news suggests that contrary to english A7 reporters which people have picked up, they are not all being released after the police filed an appeal.