Tim Blair’s Thought For The Day:
IF JAYSON BLAIR is charged with fraud, will Howell Raines be tried as an accessory?
This post is in: Media
Tim Blair’s Thought For The Day:
IF JAYSON BLAIR is charged with fraud, will Howell Raines be tried as an accessory?
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Apparently the chatter was real and terrorists have struck in Saudi Arabia. I will post more details when I can sift through them and make some sense. This quote from the news story is interesting:
On May 7 police said they were hunting 19 suspected militants, mainly Saudis, believed to be hiding in Riyadh after a shoot-out with security forces the previous day.
The Interior Ministry said police had also found a huge cache of explosives, hand grenades, ammunition and machineguns after storming what they said was the “terrorists’ lair.”
I don’t remember where I saw it (it was somewhere in the blogosphere), but I remember someone asking what the significance of the number 19 was to the terrorists (19 terrorists committed the 9/11 atrocities). Last night, while reading the Age of Sacred Terror, I came across this Sura from the Quran:
Over it are Nineteen.
And We have set none but angels as Guardians of the Fire; and We have fixed their number only as a trial for Unbelievers,- in order that the People of the Book may arrive at certainty, and the Believers may increase in Faith,- and that no doubts may be left for the People of the Book and the Believers, and that those in whose hearts is a disease and the Unbelievers may say, “What symbol doth Allah intend by this ?” Thus doth Allah leave to stray whom He pleaseth, and guide whom He pleaseth: and none can know the forces of thy Lord, except He and this is no other than a warning to mankind.
The translation I have posted is slightly different from the one in The Age of Sacred Terror, so here is another translation:
Above it are nineteen.
We have appointed only angels to be wardens of the Fire, and their number have We made to be a stumbling-block for those who disbelieve; that those to whom the Scripture hath been given may have certainty, and that believers may increase in faith; and that those to whom the Scripture hath been given and believers may not doubt; and that those in whose hearts there is disease, and disbelievers, may say: What meaneth Allah by this similitude ? Thus Allah sendeth astray whom He will, and whom He will He guideth. None knoweth the hosts of thy Lord save Him. This is naught else than a Reminder unto mortals.
You have to read the whole Sura to really get the gist of it- essentially it is a threat to unbelievers. They will be thrown into the ‘burning’ or what is alternately called the ‘Hell-Fire,’ and the nineteen are there to be the “Wardens of the Fire.” At anyrate, that is the only significance of the number nineteen that I have stumbled across.
by John Cole| 9 Comments
This post is in: Media
I think the thing that is being missed the most in the coverage about Jayson Blair is the personal aspect of it. I am not apologizing for his behavior- he will and should have to pay the price for his misdeeds- but am I the only person who looks at this young guy and thinks “What is he going to do with the rest of his life?”
The NY Times will recover- in fact it already has. I expect there will be four op-eds penned tomorrow bashing something or another about the current administration. What will happen to Jayson Blair – he is simply ruined, done, finished. Even if he brought in on himself, it is nothing to be gleeful about. It really is kind of sad.
*** Update ***
Apparently Blair did this at the Boston Globe, as well.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Media
One of the more damning assertions regarding the obviousness of Jayson Blair’s guilt prior to his recent discovery is the fact that the NY Times was forced to print 50 corrections over the past four years for Blair alone. This is surprising, particularly because the NY Times seems to HATE to issue corrections (you remember them misreporting the temperature increase and then dong everything they could to fudge the truth when it came time to print a correction).
In fact, they hate issuing corrections so much that some intrepid individuals decided to start another paper in the NY Region. I am sure my wise Balloon Juice readers have heard of the NY Sun and remember who started it and why…
This post is in: Politics
Via The Blogs of War, this interesting passage in Time:
There are futility metaphors aplenty here: The contrast between the swaggering President and the squabbling Dems. The nonargument over periphera. The absence of an audience. But then, the Democrats have excelled at futility for more than 30 years. They have elected two Presidents during that time, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Both were Governors of Southern states. Neither was a well-known party leader. Neither ran on what many Democrats would consider a traditional
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®
– I saw 60 Minutes frightening piece on Chem/Bio weapons in the former Soviet Union, and I realized half-way through it that someone, by tomorrow, will make the bad argument that we really shouldn’t have worried about Iraq, but we should be worrying about those old weapons labs in the former U.S.S.R. I am not sure who will make the argument first, but it is what is known as a false dichotomy. Personally, both situations scare the bejeesus out of me. At any rate, if we learned anything from the U.S.S.R., it was that treaties about this sort of stuff are worthless- Nixon negotiated and signed one with the Kremlin, they simply ignored the treaty and built the largest covert biological weapons program ever. Totalitarian regimes don’t negotiate in good faith- whether it be the North Koreans, Saddam Hussein, or the Soviets. That is a lesson we need to remember- these people lie more than our politicians, if that is fathomable.
– I am reading The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon. This was actually recommended to me several months ago by Dave Neiwart, and he was right, it is a fascinating read. At any rate, one passage struck me as something that everyone who is bitching and moaning that “There have been no direct connections found between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” should be forced to read. The statement is annoying for several reasons, first because it is demonstrably false. Second, this passage in The Age of Sacred Terror makes clear that these connections aren’t as direct and clear-cut as many want (demand) them to be:
“There are two enduring misconceptions about Ramzi Yousef. The first is that he was a lone wolf, a solo operator who got a contract to do a job, or propelled by his own ambitions, simply set out to do it himself. True, he was not a card-carrying member of any renowned terrorist organization. But from the time he landed in the United States to the time he left, he was part of a constant triangular conversation. The phone in his apartment and the one in the home of the Blind Sheikh were frequently connected. And both of them regulalry called Pakistan: 810604, the number Rahman had dialed before Yousef’s arrival.” – The Age of Sacred terror, p. 8.
Terrorists don’t have business cards. They don’t have organizational flowcharts that they give to the public. Demanding direct connections that stand up to the strictes rules of evidence in a court of law in the United States will often be hard to get. I distrust the government as much as the next guy, and if you have read my ranting and raving on a number of issues, you will probably agree that I distrust the government more than your average joe. Some things, though, you have to just trust em, even if they often don’t deserve that trust. Terrorism is one area where I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Randy Barnett hammers Bennett. And he is right. I can’t even decide what to quote. Go read the whole thing.