This cartoon was inspired by Dean Barnett’s excellent Weekly Standard article: The 9/11 Generation: Better than the Boomers.
In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn’t answer the phone.
Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers–those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation–took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers’ response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.
Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled through the rest of the century. In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, military service didn’t occur to most young people as an option, let alone a duty.
But now, once again, history is calling. Fortunately, the present generation appears more reminiscent of their grandparents than their parents…
Go read it all. It’s worth your time.
Signs of a weak horse:
British schools remove Winston Churchill from history lessons.
Fury erupted last night after Sir Winston Churchill was axed from school history lessons.
Britain’s cigar-chomping World War Two PM — famed for his two-finger victory salute — was removed from a list of figures secondary school children must learn about.
Instead they will be taught about “relevant” issues such as global warming and drug dangers. Churchill’s grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames, branded the move “total madness.”
Britains’s new Prime Minister Gordon Brown says Muslim terrorists may no longer be referred to as Muslim.
Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in connection with the terrorism crisis.
The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on terror” is to be dropped.
The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair.
More:
Honor killings increase in Britain.
Jihad recruiting at British universities.
(H/T’s to LittleGreenFootballs, Neal Boortz & Michelle Malkin)
Todd Bensman from the San Antonio Express-News:
U.S.-bound illicit travel from Islamic countries, which started long before 9-11 and includes some reputed terrorists, has gained momentum and worried counterterrorism officials as smugglers exploit 2 million Iraq war refugees. The irony is that the war America started to make itself safer has forced more people regarded as security threats toward its borders….
Mahmoud Kourani, convicted in Detroit as a leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah. Using a visa obtained by bribing a Mexican official in Beirut, the Lebanese national sneaked over the Mexican border in 2001 in the trunk of a car.
Nabel Al-Marahb, a reputed al-Qaida operative who was No. 27 on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list in the months after 9-11, crossed the Canadian border in the sleeper cab of a long-haul truck.
Farida Goolam Mahammed, a South African woman captured in 2004 as she carried into the McAllen airport cash and clothes still wet from the Rio Grande. Though the government characterized her merely as a border jumper, U.S. sources now say she was a smuggler who ferried people with terrorist connections. One report credits her arrest with spurring a major international terror investigation that stopped an al-Qaida attack on New York.
The government has accused other border jumpers of connections to outlawed terrorist organizations, some that help al-Qaida, including reputed members of the deadly Tamil Tigers caught in California after crossing the Mexican border in 2005 on their way to Canada.
One U.S.-bound Pakistani apparently captured in Mexico drew such suspicion that he ended up in front of a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has posted a summary of Mr. Bensman’s findings:
– More than 5,700 illegal migrants from 43 Islamic countries, including State Sponsors of Terror, have been caught while traveling over the Canadian and Mexican borders along well-established underground smuggling routes since 9-11, a traffic that continues daily. People caught coming from these countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are labeled by our federal law enforcement agencies as “Special Interest Aliens.”
– I have estimated that between 20,000 and 60,000 have gotten through without getting caught since 9/11. Most are probably economic or politically persecuted migrants but all of those who evaded border patrol also did not undergo terror watch list screening and are walking around the country anonymous. This evasion constitutes the primary national security vulnerability of our unguarded borders.
– These migrants, though relatively small in total numbers, are high risk because they hail from countries where American troops are actively battling Islamic insurgents such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and the Philippines. They come from nations where radical Islamic organizations have bombed U.S. interests or murdered Americans, such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Lebanon. And they come from State Sponsors of Terrorism such as Syria, Iran and Sudan. And lastly, they come from Saudi Arabia.
– Unguarded U.S. borders are most certainly in terrorist playbooks as a means of entering the country. Since the late 1990s, at least a dozen confirmed terrorists have sneaked over U.S. borders, including operatives from Hezbollah, Hamas, the Tamil Tigers and one Al Qaida terrorist once No. 27 on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list…
More…
An interview with Mr. Bensman can be found at View From A Height.
Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe is making another effort to starve as many of his people as possible: price controls.
Panic buying swept through the streets of Zimbabwe yesterday, as stores ran out of basic goods and shopkeepers complained that they were selling goods at a loss after the government ordered prices to be halved in a last-ditch effort to tackle hyper-inflation.
Shoppers desperate to restock in a country ravaged by shortages cleared out supermarkets in the capital, Harare, and Bulawayo, where shelves were bare of essential items such as maize meal, cooking oil, sugar, milk, soap, bread, chicken, beef and other items.
“I am selling goods at less than what I paid for them. I am selling bread at less than what it costs to bake it,” a distraught Harare shopowner said, pleading for anonymity so as to avoid government retribution. “I am following the government’s orders. Army soldiers came here this morning to check prices. Mugabe has threatened to seize any business that does not do what he says. I don’t know how long this can continue.”
Mugabe’s government will now make it impossible to profit from the sale of food, putting every grocery store in the country out of business.
David Cuthbertson at the Adam Smith Institute:
Put simply, there is no good reason, none, why Zimbabwe should be in such a mess. All of the pieces were there 10 years ago. Elections, natural resources, education and so on. Constant meddling by the government has destroyed what was one of the strongest economies in Africa. It’s hard to see where to go from here, but Robert Mugbe cannot possibly be part of the solution.
…….
Note: The line in the above cartoon is based on a comment once made by New York Times reporter Walter Duranty who was employed as the newspaper’s chief correspondent to the Soviet Union during the 1930’s. Duranty was an admirer of the communist efforts to create a “worker’s paradise” and would often slant his news stories to promote Joseph Stalin’s propaganda.
When the truth about Stalin’s terror (10 million deaths in 1932-33) finally began to reach the outside world Duranty simply remarked; “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
…….
Update: Welcome Neal Boortz fans!
Recycled cartoon watch.
Fact checking:
Job growth- better than expected in June, unemployment at 4.5%, employment for April and May stronger than originally believed.
And these are not “burger flipper” jobs. If you graduated from college your jobless rate is only 2.0%.
Deficit shrinking.
Dow Jones Industrials- all time high.
S&P 500- all time high.
Survey: 7 in 10 Americans Say Economy Is ‘Getting Worse’
…….
Update GatewayPundit: “If we had a less biased media Americans might know that we are in the midst of an economic boom.
The Bush Administration would be wise to tout these numbers at the beginning of every speech from now until January 2009.”
