Families Return to Chalabi Village

MNF-Iraq – Approximately 120 men of the Chalabi tribe returned to their homes recently in the Sayafiyah region, about 25 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, more than a year after being driven out by al-Qaeda in Iraq extremists. Escorted by Sons of Iraq leader Jumah al-Kazarji and Soldiers of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), a large convoy of cars and trucks ushered the Chalabi men back to their abandoned village.

Our tough gun-control laws at work

May 19 2008, Daily Telegraph – A spray of bullets was fired into the Ocean Blue fish and chip shop in Sammit Ave, Condell Park, about 12.20pm. The popular lunchtime diner was packed with customers at the time the two to three shots were fired into the shop by a gunman in a white Subaru. Eight customers and seven staff were inside during the attack, witnesses said. Two bullets went through the shop’s front glass window. Police said it was “amazing” no one was hit.

Amazing, yes, I just wonder how many more times we need to get lucky before the stupidity of gun control dawns upon us? Do people have to be actually shot and killed before this? If so, then does anyone know how many need to be shot and killed, 10, 20, 50, 100?

August 2006, SMH – SEVEN people were enjoying a smoke in the street outside the Gas Nightclub when a sedan pulled up and three balaclava-masked men dressed in black got out waving guns. “Stand away!” one shouted, before opening fire about 1am yesterday. About 50 shots were fired by the gunmen, one from a pump-action shotgun, others from a rifle and a pistol.

March 2007, ABC News – New South Wales police say two men are being questioned after shots were fired inside a Sydney night club last night. Several bullets were fired into the ceiling at the Goodbar in Paddington in east Sydney.

March 2008, LiveNews – Police today said it was a miracle no bystanders were injured when a lone gunman opened fire on officers, prompting a shoot-out just metres from a busy Sydney shopping strip.

Does every gun-grabbing moron in this country have to be shot before they’ll see the light on this issue? Do they all have to be shot before they realize, hey you know what this shit ain’t workin’ folks!

Abortion – Time to choose, down the slope or back up

Daily Mail – Thousands of women have had at least four abortions, and scores of teenagers have notched up their third, official figures show. Nearly 4,000 women have had four or more terminations – and dozens have had eight or more. [snip] Campaign leader Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP and former nurse, has tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Attacking the high number of repeat abortions, she said: ‘Abortion has moved from a resource that women turn to in an emergency and a point of crisis to becoming a form of contraception.

[snip] The Department of Health figures show that in 2006, 947 women had their fifth abortion, 192 were on their sixth, 110 had their seventh abortion, while 54 had their eight, ninth or tenth abortion. In total, more than 3,800 women had at least their fourth termination. There were also 82 teenagers who had their third abortion. Overall, the number of women having repeat abortions has reached record levels. In 2006, 59,687 abortions were carried out in England on women who had already had one in the past. [snip]

The way I see it if you want to make a personal judgment on the number of abortions, whether you accept that a fetus is a clump of cells or, like I believe, an unborn baby, you’re stuffed either way. If you think that it’s just cells or whatever, then you can’t say that 1 through 4 is alright, but 5 to 10 is a big no-no. What makes the fifth and seventh clump of cells more equal than the first? If you want to say it’s a matter of promiscuity, then you’re making a judgment on how many casual-sex relationships a person should have. Who are you to decide that a woman who sleeps with 10 different men is just “popular” and one who had 11 is a slut.

If you believe that abortion is killing an unborn baby, then the first cannot be alright but the fifth not. If you think the first was justified in some way, and you start frowning upon the third and fourth, what will you do if the fifth is for the same justifiable reason as the first. Then comes the matter of policing and enforcing all this, if a woman has had 4 abortions are we going to put her on some special list or something, send the cops around to make sure she keeps her legs closed or the guy uses a condom? And if she keeps doing it, then refuse an abortion, make her have the baby she doesn’t want, fines, jail time?

Forced sterilization, good heavens, what if she changes her life around, will she get to appeal this, isn’t this the state meddling in her personal affairs [excuse the pun], what about her freedom to fornicate freely, privacy, sexism, liberty and all that. I probably don’t know the right words for it, but which ever way you look at it, it’s a legal & moral quagmire, a right mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

From the state’s perspective, you either allow it to carry on and end up with women having their eighth, twelfth abortion and so on and just suck it up OR you roll it back bit by bit until you don’t allow abortion at all or only for reasons that are unacceptable for the abortion crowd. I don’t believe that holding the current position is possible for much longer. As an analogy, the current position is basically this strong gate that keeps the enemy out of the fort but the walls connecting it have eroded away, so it’s basically useless. Image thanks to Genethique.

Gitmo in Perspective

Lifted from ANDREW C. McCARTHY’s “After Gitmo” in the May 19 edition of NRO – Of course, our standard mechanism for resolving doubt is the judicial trial. Gitmo critics argue that we successfully tried terrorists in the federal courts throughout the 1990s and should do so again. It’s a proven formula to which, they maintain, we should return. Despite its surface appeal, this contention is a hanging curveball that by now should have been slammed out of the park. While I am very proud to have prosecuted terrorists in the 1990s, the strategy can be considered a success only if one’s chief preoccupation is due process. Viewed through the prism of national security, the effort was an abysmal failure.

Yes, every apprehended terrorist was convicted. In eight years, however, only 29 operatives, most of them low-level, were captured and tried. Between the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and its destruction on 9/11, American targets were plotted against and attacked with increasing audacity by an enemy that was growing ever larger. But because of the criminal justice system’s high evidentiary hurdles and procedural rigor, it could not have handled many more cases than the paltry number it processed — cases that invariably took years to complete, at a cost of untold millions (including the expense of securing courthouses, holding facilities, and trial participants). When one considers that we’ve frequently taken out more than 29 terrorists in a single day of combat since 9/11, it becomes easier to see the weaknesses of the justice system as a counterterrorism tool — and to understand how we’ve avoided a reprise of 9/11.

Now you understand why leftists will never rest until Gitmo is shut down.

That’s what you call xenophobia!

FOX News – Mobs rampaged through poor suburbs of Johannesburg in a frenzy of anti-foreigner violence over the weekend, killing at least seven people, injuring dozens and forcing hundreds to seek refuge at police stations. The attacks capped a week of mounting violence that started in the sprawling township of Alexandra. Angry residents there accused foreigners — many of them Zimbabweans who fled their own country’s economic collapse — of taking scarce jobs and housing. [snip] “It’s spreading like a wildfire and the police and the army can’t control it,” said Emmerson Zifo, a Zimbabwean teacher. [snip]

There has been sporadic anti-foreigner violence for months, mainly aimed at stores run by Somalis accused of undercutting local storeowners, but nothing to compare with the current scale. [snip] Another person was shot dead and two more wounded in similar attacks on Saturday in Tembisa in another part of greater Johannesburg after residents went on a rampage, destroying property that belonged to foreign nationals. [snip] Eric Goemaere, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres in South Africa, said his staff was helping to treat people with bullet wounds and back injuries from being thrown out of windows. [snip]

Edgar Gweru, from Zimbabwe, said he was robbed of cash, his passport and DVD player. He managed to escape by climbing onto his roof and hiding there until 2 a.m., but he does not know what happened to the three people sharing his accommodation. He said the gangs were combing the Cleveland suburb street by street, apartment by apartment. [snip] A crowd of dozens of stick-wielding people, many visibly drunk, sang and danced. One held a crude sign saying “hamba kwerekwere,” or “foreigners, get out.” One poster said “they (foreigners) steal our jobs and everything that belongs to us.”

Michael Khondwane said foreigners were to blame for South Africa’s drug and crime scourge. He said the ransacking of stores run by foreigners would send them “the message that they must go.” About 500 people sought refuge at Cleveland police station — a pattern repeated throughout the city. Red Cross volunteers scrambled to provide them with blankets and food. Zifo said the vast majority were, like him, Zimbabwean. He said he fled Zimbabwe at the start of this year because he felt he would be victimized for taking part in a teachers’ strike last year. “Even now, I would rather be in Zimbabwe,” he said.

See lefties, that’s what you call real xenophobia, we supposed xenophobes here in the west have nothing on these bloody savages.