Mo.
Is the Nairobi mall standoff over?
I hope so.
Kenyan President Kenyatta says so:
Kenya’s president said on Tuesday that his forces had “defeated” Islamists from Somalia’s al Shabaab, had shot five of them dead and detained 11 others suspected of killing 67 people after storming a Nairobi shopping mall.
It remained unclear after Uhuru Kenyatta addressed the nation on television whether the four-day security operation at the upmarket Westgate centre was completely over, or whether any militants were still at large or hostages unaccounted for.
“We have ashamed and defeated our attackers,” Kenyatta said, adding that bodies were still trapped under rubble following the collapse of part of the building late in the operation. A fire began on Monday which officials said was started by the gunmen.
Many mysteries abound. We may learn the answers to at least some of them in the fullness of time. Who were/are the terrorists? Were Americans among them? Who are the victims (here are two—actually, three, if you count the unborn viable child)? How did the incident finally end? Were some or all of the hostages freed (note that Kenyatta doesn’t seem to mention this)? What will happen to the terrorists now in custody? Did any escape and, if so, do we know their identities?
Obamacare: bait…
And the public never even took the bait in the first place.
More here.
The gist of the message is that from the outset the calculations to sell Obamacare to the American public were slipshod and/or naive and/or mistaken and/or simplistic and/or lies.
And this is news to exactly whom?
Of course, large federal government programs are like that; that’s why many people are distrustful of them in the first place. Small pilot programs are the way to experiment with things. Local and state programs are the way to experiment with things. And then keep, or expand, the ones that seem to work. Redesigning the health care insurance system of the entire US at one fell swoop is inherently risky, and the promises that this would constitute an improvement should always have been taken with a grain of salt.
Actually, when Obama assured the American people that their health insurance premiums would be lowered by “up to $2,500 for a typical family per year” he was saying absolutely nothing on the face of it, although he was counting on his listeners to hear something and like what they heard. But a statement such as his merely means that a “typical” family (whatever that is; a family of four? living in what state?) would face a ceiling of $2,500 for the amount its premiums might be lowered per year. He’d be technically correct if a single “typical” family had its premiums lowered $2,500, and all the other families of that type had theirs lowered by a dollar. Or even had them raised.
In other words, it was a meaningless statement.
What will actually happen is anyone’s guess, including the author of the Forbes piece critical of Obama. One reason is that there is no “typical” family, because (a) the present state-to-state variation among what families of the same size are paying is vast; and (b) since poorer families will be subsidized by less-poor ones, families of the same size will end up paying very different premiums depending on income. So even an average premium would tell us very little.
What’s more, Obamacare is supposed to be financed in part by the famous individual mandate. But the penalty for not enrolling is far less than the yearly premium would be for most people and families, and since a person or family can enroll in Obamacare without increased penalty as soon as he/she experiences a decline in health, many people will probably wait to enroll. How will that affect the premiums of the others? Let’s just say it’s unlikely to make them go down.
Simon Jenkins: extremely useful and extremely idiotic
British journalist Simon Jenkins writes up a perfect storm of useful idiocy:
There is nothing anyone can do to prevent suicide bombers hitting civilian populations. The slaughter of Christians in Peshawar this weekend showed that wherever crowds gather they are vulnerable to any group with a brainwashed youth and a bomb. It might be sensible to discourage like-minded crowds from gathering in one place, be they co-religionists or party faithful or merely the wealthy.
The modern urban obsession with celebrity buildings and high-profile events offers too many publicity-rich targets. A World Trade Centre, a Mumbai hotel, a Boston marathon, a Nairobi shopping mall are all enticing to extremists. Defending them is near impossible. Better at least not to create them. A shopping mall not only wipes out shopping streets, it makes a perfect terrorist fortress, near impossible to assault…
By deploying violence against a succession of Muslim states, the world’s leading powers have made their business its business and invited retaliation. They have not crushed al-Qaida any more than they have suppressed extreme Islamism. They have refreshed rather than diminished that extremism, and made the world less safe as a result.
Where do they get these people? Well, in Jenkins’ case (that’s Sir Simon to you; Jenkins received a knighthood for his journalistic savvy in 2004): Oxford, The Economist, The Times, the Evening Standard, and the National Trust.
Impeccable credentials. Flaming idiot.
Something tells me that Sir Simon’s real objection to malls might be an esthetic one; only philistines go to malls, don’t you know? Although what the man’s got against the Boston Marathon I can’t quite imagine.
And churches? Sir Simon wrote a book entitled England’s Thousand Best Churches. It’s possible that he thinks churches should merely be toured and studied as architectural wonders (that seems to be the focus of his book) rather than actually, you know, worshiped in.
Because those Christians who were killed in Peshawar recently—the incident Jenkins specifically mentions—who had the gall to be “gathering in one place,” as he puts it, were actually assembled in a church with their “co-religionists.” Perhaps Jenkins is implying that churches in England are acceptable, but in Pakistan people should know better than to present an environment so target-rich in Christian blood.
[NOTE: By the way, although it’s quite irrelevant to this post, Jenkins was married to actress Gayle Hunnicutt (previous husband David Hemmings) for thirty years. They divorced in 2008.]
[NOTE II: Something about Jenkins had a familiar ring, and I began to wonder whether I’d written about him before. And sure enough, I have, here. Turns out this sort of swill is his meat and potatoes.
And please read this piece on the Peshawar bombing, which has somehow been overshadowed in the news by the Nairobi mall attack, but which has taken an even greater toll of human life.]
Remembering the Lod Airport massacre
The Nairobi mall attack has conjured up memories of the first terrorist attack I ever remember: the Lod airport massacre.
You may never have heard of it—or of Lod airport, for that matter, which is in Tel Aviv and was later renamed Ben Gurion Airport after Israel’s founder and first prime minister. But the Lod massacre remains one of the most terrifying in the long list of terrorist attacks that have followed, and at the time it was perpetrated (1972) it was especially horrific. Masterminded by the PLO (specifically, its hard left wing the PLFP), it was also a prelude to the much-more-famous Munich Olympics massacre that gripped the world just a few short months later.
The PLO was involved in both, but the Lod massacre featured unusual perpetrators for that organization, and that was part of its shock value: leftist Japanese gunmen. This is the way it went down:
…[T]hree inconspicuous Japanese men dressed in business suits disembarked Air France Flight 132 from Rome and strolled into the baggage claim area. After retrieving what appeared to be violin cases, the men pulled out machine guns, opened fire and threw grenades indiscriminately at the crowds of people…
The gunmen killed 26 people: 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, one Canadian citizen, and eight Israelis, and 80 people were injured…Gunman Yasuyuki Yasuda was also shot dead during the attack – it is unclear whether by his own weapon or that of his partners or security forces. The lone surviving gunman, Kozo Okomato, was injured, arrested by security forces and given a life sentence. He was later freed in the 1985 prisoner swap known as the Gibril Deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
This attack had a number of characteristics that seemed new at the time, but with which we’ve become more familiar in the ensuing years. The Japanese killers represented a fusion between leftists and Islamists that became very important later on during the Iranian revolution, and which continues to this day for the many leftists who support and make excuses for Islamist terrorism. The Lod massacre was an eye-opener that led Israeli security forces to realize a new approach was needed, one that profiled not just on nationality but also on demeanor, and that expanded its sweep to include the airport in general rather than just the airplanes.
The fact that Okamoto is still alive and well and living in Lebanon is perhaps the most shocking of all. Despite its emphasis on security, that Israel allowed a perpetrator of that magnitude to be released in a prisoner swap (details here) seems suicidal.
Some insight into the mindset of someone like Okamoto is provided by a 1976 prison interview with him that was conducted by Patricia G. Steinhoff, who was an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Hawaii. Take it with a hefty grain of salt, because who knows whether Okamoto was being truthful or not. But here’s what he said at the time about his motives:
One of the ambiguities of Okamoto’s revolutionary conception is that the enemy is not clearly defined. Sometimes the ordinary person living in bourgeois society is regarded as part of the enemy bourgeoisie. Yet at other times, he counts the same people as potential supporters of the revolution because they are victims of such things as pollution”¦Because he foresees total overthrow of the existing arrangements of society, he does not feel bound in any way by the moral values of the present world”¦On the other hand, he is not really certain of what society will be like after the revolution has occurred. When I asked him what kind of a world he envisioned after the revolution, he smiled and said, “That is the most difficult question for revolutionaries. We really do not know what it will be like.”
Revolution and violence for its own sake as well as to fulfill the goal of feeling personally powerful. Such a person is a useful tool for those such as the PLO, who know quite well what kind of a world they envision.
More historical ignorance…
…on the part of the American public.
We keep reading polls such as this one about how few Americans know the basic facts of American history.
So we shouldn’t be surprised to read another. But oh, how very depressing it remains (and how well it explains certain recent events):
Only 27% of Americans knew which country we fought in the Cold War ”“ the Soviet Union — and even fewer, 25%, knew the name of the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which is John Roberts.
And this makes no sense:
Scholars agree that one reason for the poor results is that America has a complex political system, which can take years to fully understand.
Poppycock. And what’s that got to do with learning what country we fought in the Cold War? How complex can that be?
Of course, if you keep people in ignorance of history, they are much easier to manipulate.
Nairobi standoff continues
Islamist terrorists continue to hold hostages at the upscale Nairobi mall that was the scene of carnage Saturday.
No one knows how many people are being held by the terrorists, but one estimate of the missing is 63. Information is sketchy, but a few more of the attackers may have been killed.
These things are becoming more clear: the attack was spearheaded by a Somalian terrorist group but the perpetrators are at least somewhat international. Israel seems to be involved in advising the government on how to deal with the standoff. The president of Kenya is holding firm about his country’s refusal to back down in Somalia (by the way, the current president is Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founder Jomo Kenyatta, whose presidency was also marked by conflict with Somalia).
Kenya is a predominantly Christian nation. Compared to other African countries it’s been doing relatively well: relatively stable and relatively uncorrupt.
By the way, in the Reuters article I linked to in the first paragraph of this post, the authors and editors stepped up to the plate and called the terrorists “Islamists” in the lede. Although the word “terrorists” is never used in the article except in a direct quote (instead we have “gunmen,” “militants,” “attackers.” and “assailants”), at least that’s a step in the right direction towards truth in nomenclature.
The Palinization of Ted Cruz continues apace
It was inevitable that there would be a serious and concentrated attempt to Palinize Cruz no matter what he did. But Cruz’s current stance on Obamacare, which is exposing the deep rifts within the Republican Party, makes the Palinization process easier because many Republicans are participating in that process of destruction—as they also did with Palin.
Cruz is a very intelligent and well-educated man with impeccable credentials and prize-winning debating skills. Therefore the approach can’t be “he’s a stupidhead,” as it was with Palin. It’s “he’s crazy, extreme, and dangerous”—as it also was with Palin.
Why can’t people just disagree? That’s a rhetorical question.
An American Bride in Kabul
Phyllis Chesler’s new book, An American Bride in Kabul, is described and recommended by John Hinderaker at Powerline.
Sounds interesting. Nothing like personal experience to drive a point home.
The BBC covers itself with shame…
…as it provides cover for murderous Islamist terrorists.
Zombie reports on the now-familiar inverted pyramid of the BBC.
Checking out the NY Times’ coverage of the same event (the terrorist attack at the Nairobi mall), I see that the paper does a somewhat better job than the BBC, but displays some of the same reluctance to name the religious affiliation of the perpetrators—so important to the terrorists, and yet so seemingly unimportant to our intrepid reporters. The Times article doesn’t mention terrorism in the headline (we just have some generic “gunmen”), but is faster than the BBC to get to the point, using the phrase “terrorist attacks” in the article’s first paragraph. But it isn’t until paragraph six that we get to the Muslim angle, with this:
Several witnesses said the attackers had shouted for Muslims to run away while they picked off other shoppers, executing them one by one.
And what of CNN? Nothing in the headline; the perps are “attackers.” The lede mentions “armed gunmen” (is that not redundant, by the way?). We find the first mention of the identity of these “gunmen” in paragraph six (are you noticing a pattern here?), where they are identified as belonging to “an al Qaeda-linked militant group.” Also in that paragraph we find the mention of escorting the Muslims out and sparing them; this time it is a quote from the “militant group” itself that makes the claim.
The AP headline mentions no perpetrators at all: “Kenya Minister says 59 Killed in Mall Attack.” The AP is the only one of the three that mentions “al Qaeda-linked” in the lede, but takes away a bit from that by calling them “militants” rather than “terrorists,” although if the latter term ever fit a situation, it would fit this one. However, in paragraph two we get the word “Islamic” (again, followed by the softening noun “extremists”). In paragraph six we finally get to the term “terrorists,” but interestingly enough it’s used in a quote from a former prime minister of Kenya. And finally, it is in paragraph seven that we learn the group “specifically targeted non-Muslims.”
Lastly, we have the Guardian, whose headline mentions the now-familiar “militants” and the lede says “gunman” and then “al-Qaida-linked militants.” In addition, the paper cuts to the chase by paragraph five rather than six, and is more forthcoming and detailed than the others in its description, as well as presenting the Muslim/non-Muslim selection as fact rather than merely quoting someone about it:
The heavily armed attackers pulled up in several cars and shot their way into the most upmarket shopping centre in Nairobi, ordering Muslims out if they could prove their religion by reciting a prayer or answering a question on Islam. They started killing those who failed the test.
So it’s the Guardian that uncharacteristically does the best job reporting this particular story. But there is no question all of these papers could, and should, do a lot better. How about reinstating the term “terrorist” as a starter? And then perhaps they could work up to “Islamist terrorist”?
Meanwhile, as we wage this war of words, the terrorists are marveling at (and exploiting) our stupidity.
Merkel and austerity…
But Merkel’s previous partner, the FDP (Free Democratic Party), a group defined as “classically liberal” and in favor of policies somewhat to the right, has lost enough votes that it will no longer be part of Merkel’s coalition government.
I can’t quite sort that out; perhaps someone more in tune with German politics can help (commenter “expat,” where are you?).
A few hints appear in this WSJ article. It seems that the FDP’s previous support was split by the emergence of a new, anti-euro party, and overshadowed by Merkel’s huge popularity. Plus, “squabbling among its leadership” weakened the FDP this go-round (sound familiar?).