They’re still at war.
ChipIn: Holiday Mail to our Troops
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 30, 2008
Posted in Blogophilia, Heart and spirit | 2 Comments »
Leveraging terror
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 29, 2008
I made a point in a previous post that appears to have gotten obscured, and while I reiterated it in the comments earlier this evening, I subsequently saw another item (again via Instapundit) that seemed, in perhaps a somewhat roundabout way — to confirm it. Here’s what I said:
The terrorists “leveraged” Western victims in Mumbai. I use that term because 100 300 dead Westerners will have more impact in the West than probably many more hundreds of dead Indians. That is not how it ought to be, but look at what goes on in Africa, to the shock and horror of just about no one in America. Usually our thoughts are, if we notice such stories at all, “Well, those people are always killing each other over there.” It may be a less than ideal reaction, morally speaking, but I believe I am accurately describing the human condition, as I wrote last year when considering the “never again” myth.
So, now this:
And as Indian commandos ended the bloody 59-hour siege at the Taj yesterday by killing the last three Islamic gunmen, baby-faced Kasab was dispassionately detailing the background to the mayhem.
He described how its mastermind briefed the group to ‘target whites, preferably Americans and British’.
The direct victims of terror, really, are not the objects of the terrorism. Rather the object is the survivors of terror. But high-value survivors only yield the payoff if they notice, if they care, if terror scans on their screen at all. Instapundit, tongue somewhat in cheek, grimly jokes that these Islamists weren’t just mass murderers, but — by modern lights — they were worse: They were “racists”!
Of course they were, but, as I said above, that’s because, well, in a way, “we” are.
Posted in Homo sapiens, Oppression, Stragety | Leave a Comment »
Everything we know is wrong?
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 29, 2008
JOHN THOMPSON: The Mumbai attacks represent a scenario that few Western police and security forces have dared envision. Fewer still have prepared for it.
The basic strategy: use a large number of attackers to overwhelm a target city’s ability to respond, and then suddenly switch focus to high value targets and seize hostages.
I guess Glenn Reynolds would call that An Army of Davids. Why are we surprised that such a strategy can be a force for evil as well as for good?
A partial response, actually, is the big and rather eye-opening discussion Glenn’s having on the topic of ubiquitous gun ownership / carrying at that first link, especially as juxtaposed with the depressing story he links to later: Indian police refused to shoot back, evidently being poorly trained for situations requiring … what you’d want police with guns, in a democracy, to do.
But the bigger response to Thompson’s point is this: We will always have a problem of terrorists’ originality. Their 9/11 strategy worked all right: Once. It will never work again, now that I can’t take a nail clipper onto an airplane. Granted, this sounds like a hairier one to combat, but it’s not surprising that Western police and security forces haven’t thought of every possible tactical approach that these Davids — and, really, terrorism is all about being a David; all about using focused and conceptually distinct force to knock out a Goliath who could never be overcome by brute force — will cook up. Frankly they’re more motivated toward originality, and they’re, well, more wicked.
They’ll always have one up on us if we, Goliath-like, think we have to guess everything they might do in advance. The only way to turn this formula on its head (not to say that more and better security, training and planning isn’t called for) is to better manage the way we allow terrorism to affect policy — to make these “stunning victories,” if not less stunning, less victorious. The pre-9/11 message to terrorists such as the PLO (and the one Israel is still sending, unfortunately) was bloody our nose enough times and, okay, we’ll honor you at the UN, give you a Nobel prize, provide you with your own provisional government to loot and we’ll arm you, too. It’s going to be a long time until that is unlearned.
Posted in Packing heat, Stragety | 2 Comments »
Armed to the teeth
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 28, 2008
Amtrak terminal, Penn Station, NY
Originally uploaded by Ron Coleman
Did you have any idea the Amtrak Police could muster this kind of firepower?
Did you know there are Amtrak Police?
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
OK, so he’s a weensy bit impressed with himself
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 28, 2008
K. Ryan James (who is in fact a bit of a big deal): So for Barry, when did it all become about Barry?
Now note that I somehow missed the moment when Barack became “Barry.” I picked this up on right wing blogs all too late to get in on the fun and, as regulars here know, I am a tad soft on the President Elect, being rather taken with his First Minus 60 Days, frankly. (It’s the First 100 — when Congress is in session — that scares me.) But I have to admit I loved this little nugget from Ryan, and the accompanying graphic:
On Wednesday, The One pushed back against the unbelieving left who were wondering about “change” being implemented by Clinton retreads. He offered this nugget:
Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost,” he told reporters at his third press conference in as many days. ”It comes from me. That’s my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing.
To put it simply, from The One comes the Change.
Did I mention my wife was Ron Coleman's classmate at Princeton?
This is good work. I don’t happen to think it’s productive in any way besides the inducing of mirth, but that’s a kind of productive, and for sure calling out Mr. Obama on his soaring ego is entirely called for.
Now frankly if I had accomplished what the man has accomplished in the time he’s accomplished it, I’d probably be mightily impressed with my own bad self, too. I know this because I haven’t done that but I still pretty much am. (Mightily impressed with me, that is.)
The main difference between me and President-Elect Obama in fact is that Ryan hasn’t done any cool graphics about me. So we have the ones about Mr. Obama to enjoy — and I did. And that’s the main thing because, well, you know, it’s my blog and … right. It’s pretty much all about me, too. But, hey, I’m not the President-Elect.
Posted in Blogophilia, Jocularity, Narcissus Rex, Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »
Reuters: Still no such thing as terrorists
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 27, 2008
I wondered if perhaps the Mumbai attacks were enough for Reuters “news service” to admit the existence of terrorism?
Here’s the article. The answer: Nope. “Militants” all. “Fighters.”
Because after all, if they’re merely killing you-know-whos … who’s to say?
Posted in Medialites, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »
Giving thanks to to whom? And why?
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 27, 2008
In light of all the Thanksgiving blogging and tweeting, I am reposting this piece, originally posted earlier this year on the eve of Rosh Hashana. It is not being the first time I’ve raised the same point on Thanksgiving. Both days are fundamentally about thankfulness — and the introspection that it demands — so I’m bumping it up here today, with minor tweaks:
Recipient
It has been an extraordinarily eventful year for me on many, many planes, overwhelmingly in ways for which I am very grateful to God. Gratitude is the alpha of service of God, and of self-fulfillment, too — two endeavors that, to the thoughtless, appear to be opposite, but which are in fact one. From my point of view, neither is achieved fully without the other.
I say “from my point of view” even though my cousin Debbie, the writer, taught me many years ago that when you write something you need not say such a thing, because of course it is your point of view. You wrote it. But I say it so as not to offend my many friends who read here and who disagree and are, by habit, less offended if a proposition is put forth in a manner that sounds less absolute. It is a form of apology, and of course we know just how apologetic your blogger is at any time!
More of my point of view is my reiteration that when speaking of “gratitude,” God is the Whom to which gratitude must be directed, which is not to say that gratitude toward other individuals for their specific kindnesses is not also appropriate. But “I’m grateful” without an object — this makes no sense. I have never understood people expressing free-floating generic “gratitude” directed at … nothing. I do not consider it to be any more logical to say, “It is directed at the Universe,” which is essentially the same exact thing. I believe that people who express “gratitude” without acknowledging the source of the benefit to which they claim to be grateful, are saying words, but not, really, expressing gratitude. Gratitude must have an object because it is an acknowledgment of need, or lack, fulfilled by the other. Failing to recognize the other nullifies gratitude, and makes it merely a statement of fact, not an expression of thanks, that the empty stomach is now full; the infirm is now cured; the benighted, enlightened.
But I am not here to fight, not today. Forgive the digression — there, apologies again! Well, regret may be part of the introspection borne of gratitude, too.
Round and round
And I for one am grateful, grateful to God, for a year that has been very good to me, and to many of the people I care about the most. Much progress, some of it incremental, but progress all the same.
I am grateful to have reached a point where I can perceive and appreciate incremental progress, too.
I am grateful to be able to interact with so many fine, deep, multifaceted people whose intentions are good.
I am grateful for middle age. I was born to be middle aged and now I am home. I hope I get to stay here for a long time!
I am grateful for life, for perspective, for wisdom, judgment, the ability to give, the powers that I have, for the judges who are starting to listen and the clients who do their best to pay.
I am grateful for the things that ought not be written, but should be said.
Grateful… step one. It is the first step, and while we must go beyond it, gratitude is the step that is never completed.
Thank you.
Posted in Americana, Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | 1 Comment »
We’re all Chabadniks now
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 27, 2008
Extremist Muslims lashing out angrily at the West, as leverage on the Hindu majority in India, have slaughtered over 100 people in the Indian city of Mumbai. (Good roundup here.) These people were killed, in classical Islamist terrorist style, for just being who they are. So naturally the Jews were on their list of targets too, and the latest news is that “ten to twenty” Israelis are being held hostage in Mumbai’s Chabad House and a Mumbai hotel. [Update for live reports here.]
The Rabbi and his wife
What’s a Chabad house? CHABAD is the Hebrew acronym for the words chochma, bina and daas — wisdom, understanding and knowledge — which form the basis of the philosophy of these Orthodox Jews, hasidim of the Lubavitch movement (named after a Russian town whence sprung their grand rabbis). Chabad has been controversial among Jews for over half a century, both for important aspects of its philosophy that distinguish it from other Orthodox Jewish approaches, for departing as it has from certain communal and “political” expectations of leaders among both the hasidic and non-hasidic world of strictly Orthodox Jews, and, most recently, for the unfortunate messianic insistences of a significant percentage of its adherents regarding its late Grand Rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a multifaceted genius who passed away 14 years ago and who despite his revolutionary leadership did not bring the Redemption.
Antipathy towards Lubavitch, or Chabad, has been intense among non-Lubavitchers among the strictly Orthodox for many years, in fact, and there is very little interaction between this group and the rest of us, even though many — such as myself — were profoundly and positively influenced by them at one time in their lives, frequently as a result of Chabad’s groundbreaking worldwide outreach efforts. Their interest has always been to recapture the spark of Jewishness in every child of the people Israel, though as is our practice not to proselytize outside of this extended family. But as to those within, not a single Jewish soul, they believed, taught and lived, is to be written off. Unfortunately, and ironically, their subculture within the broader strictly Orthodox Jewish subculture is perceived to have departed so far from the main that, for most, in the main centers of Jewish life we do not mix.
But today we are all Lubavitchers, all Chabadniks. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg were sent to Mumbai by Lubavitch to do their part to account for the thousands of Jewish souls, many Israeli, doing business, and others seeking (we believe, erroneously) spiritual enlightenment, in this major Indian city. They manned the Chabad House in Mumbai and met the expectation of every Jew who travels the world that in any place where it is likely that more than a handful of Jews might be found, there is a Chabad House (frequently where the Chabad rabbi and his family live) to offer Shabbos (Sabbath) hospitality, kosher food, perhaps even a bed for a few days, a connection to the root of the Jewish world and perhaps a little mashke (straight vodka) and a few hasidic stories more than “thrown in” for inspiration.
The latest report on the status of the Holtzbergs, their place and their persons targeted, as persons such as these have always been, is not encouraging. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Orient | 37 Comments »
Six Meat Buffet!
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 25, 2008
You’ll come for the icon.
My kinda guy
You’ll stay for the great humor blogging! It’s Six Meat Buffet: That’s my kinda eatin’!
Posted in Blogophilia, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »
Nyak nyak nyak!
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 25, 2008
I came home “early” tonight, so my fourth grade twins begged me to “do something” with them, which of course I had to do, and what they wanted me to do and what I did was watch three Three Stooges shorts on 
DVD on the computer in the basement. Now I have not seen a frame of the Stooges in over 35 years, I am sure, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. They certainly enjoyed it and, no less important, they enjoyed watching it with me.
My main “takeaway”: Shemp — who actually preceded Curly as the third Stooge, it turns out, though he replaced him after his death — really gets a bum rap. Yes, Curly was very special, but the fact is Shemp was one heck of a talented comic actor.
But the whole thing, really, is sad… but not in a way a fourth grade boy, or even two, would understand.
Posted in Americana, Ars Longa, Heart and spirit, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »
