Chris At Home

• Israelis kill Islamic Jihad "militant" in car full of rockets before they can fire at Israel. The cool part: a pilotless drone was used. Those "militants" seem to be acting a lot like terrorists.
  
  
• PubliusPundit has a post on the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Europe. She ties this to the mainstream parties lack of solutions to the Islamist and Muslim immigrant problems in their countries. Other bloggers have noted that the European media intentionally distorts news reports on Muslim crimes to minimize outrage.
  
  
• Yahoo news says Russia is doing a "delicate balancing act" between supporting Iran for business reasons and supporting nuclear non-proliferation. I suspect the real issue is this: "Falling afoul of Iran could also expose Russia to further trouble in its North Caucasus region, jeopardizing Tehran's position that the Chechnya conflict is an internal matter for Russia and prompting it to support Islamic militant infiltration into the area, said Vladimir Dvorkin, a Russian analyst and arms control expert." Russia is bending over for terrorist blackmailers.
  
  
• More analysis of Russia's motives here. Double-dealing is mentioned.
  
  
• For those of you waiting for the Arabs to run out of oil and go back to wandering the desert, peak oil won't be here for a while. It is an interesting article and notes that oil producing countries seems to be where the instability occurs.
  
  
• Debka (get your salt shaker, extract a grain) says that the US strategy on Iran is "To lay the groundwork for an alternative Middle East nuclear bloc hinging on Saudi Arabia and Egypt, i.e. a rival Arab nuclear program. Iran was meant to be brought up short by the discovery that if it goes all the way to an N- bomb, so too will its Arab opposite numbers. This race carries the extreme potential of pitting Sunni and Shiite nuclear powers on a collision course." Unlikely. Saudi Arabia and Egypt can't be trusted with nuclear weapons, although the thought of Islamists duking it out against each other brings a smile to my face.
  
  
• Iranian officials ranted and threatened the US, Israel and the world. Like every other day. Nothing was done. Like every other day.
  
  
• Iran received a batch of new missiles from North Korea. They can now hit Southern and Eastern Europe. They were also designed to carry nuclear warheads, saving the Iranians some time.
  
  
• From the Guardian, a way-left British newspaper, regarding Iran: "Put it together and it forms an alarming picture: a state galloping towards a nuclear bomb, led by a messianist bent on destroying a nearby nation...Our leaders invented the wolf last time. But they mustn't miss this one - it's all too real." Cool, they get it!
  
  
• The Religious Policeman explains Saudi justice. Don't elope with a Saudi girl.
  
  
• OpFor gives his wishlist for warfighting techologies. Giant Star Wars walkers are included, of course.
  

Update: I just saw this. I am not particularly interested in immigrationn issues, but it is a big problem when Mexicans smugglers have links to terrorist organizations. Yes, I support stringent border enforcement. There have been too many cases like this, which means there are hundreds of people not caught.



Update: A positive United 93 review:

econd, what's the world going to be like when two things are ubiquitous: high technology and high-intensity religion? Not only have conventional explosives proliferated far past the point of no return -- the jury is still out on nuclear weapons -- but just about every machine we have ever made, no matter how peaceful its purpose, can be "dual-used" into something sinister. And we also know that Islam provides the steely determination that empowers jihadists and suicidalists to do just about anything. To put it mildly, the West, with its porous borders and its cities full of soft targets, has not been ready for this onslaught. Will we fortify ourselves? Or will we seek out the "root causes" of such violence? Those are even bigger questions.

Update: The US got three in Iraq, a regional Al Qaeda commander, based on a tip from the locals.

Update: France ate its Wheaties this morning: "France wants any U.N. resolution on Iran's nuclear program to come under a provision allowing for sanctions or possibly military force, a top French diplomat said Thursday." The US agreed. Meanwhile, Iran fussed over whether women should be allowed to watch soccer. H/t RegimeChangeIran.