Turning point in Syria?

Several top Syrian generals have defected from Bashar Assad and joined the rebels:

A Syrian Major-General has deserted Assad's army along with a group of other officers and joined the rebels.

In an Arabic video clip posted on Youtube on July 29, 2011, the officer, Major-General Riad El As'ad is seen in the company of other officers, announcing the establishment of the "Free Syrian Army whose main goal will be to fight the army of oppression headed by President Bashar Assad".

As'ad accused the Assad regime of crimes against the Syrian people and called on the officers and soldiers in the Syrian army not to aim their weapons at the people. He further called on them to join the Free Syrian Army.

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This is how Islamists do it

To paraphrase Montell Jordan, "This is how they do it:"

Abdel Fattah Younes, the top military commander of the Libyan rebels and a former Libyan government official, has been assassinated by–according to opposition officials–an Islamist militia. That’s a problem with Islamists: they murder people and intimidate with threats and violence. Consequently, they often get their way. Reformers can’t compete with that kind of thing. That’s why prospects in Libya or Egypt are not good. That’s the kind of thing that Westerners tend to forget since, despite what the mass media might say, Sarah Palin for example doesn’t have an armed militia dedicated to wiping out her enemies by decapitation.

In a few weeks or months, the Salafists in Egypt will probably start killing (or at least trying to do so) outspoken secularists. The Muslim Brotherhood won’t be involved directly but will point its finger and denounce people who are then targeted by other Islamist groups. The Western media will then remind us constantly that the Brotherhood has “renounced” violence and even that the Brotherhood is “protecting” Egypt from the “real” hardliners. Of course, for every person shot at, wounded, or killed (10, or is it 100 or 1000?) are thus intimidated.

And there are so many more instances.  Lebanon.  Iraq.  Afghanistan.  Read the whole thing.

America's Least Wanted found?

You know him, you love him.  The skyjacker whose pseudonym "Dan Cooper" became famous as its corrupted version "D.B. Cooper."  Has the FBI finally found him?

The FBI today revealed that it believes it has America's most elusive fugitive finally in its sights 40 years after famed hijacker DB Cooper disappeared when he jumped out of a plane over Washington.

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While we are distracted

are things heating up on the Korean Peninsula?

ICE Busts Egyptian Antiquity Smuggling Ring

The ICE gets bashed for a number of legitimate reasons, but here they did something really good -- protect Egyptian artifacts that represent our united heritage -- and it deserves to be publicized and praised.  Check out Professor Kimberly Alderman's excellent Cultural Property & Archaeology Law blog for details.

Party like it's 1937

That's where Victor Davis Hanson thinks we are, on the verge of major world catastrophe, encouraged in part by military and financial weakness, that will find the US alone, stripped of allies because:

[T]he Obama administration, in four or five key instances, has signaled to the world that there are no advantages to being a nonjudgmental U.S. ally, and no downside to being an outspoken American enemy. Who has been more often on the receiving end of U.S. lectures—Netanyahu or Abbas? Eastern Europeans or Russia? Who has been the recipient of U.S. outreach? Iran or Israel? Syria or Egypt? It would be far better to be a totalitarian police state that practices institutionalized murder than a pro-American kleptocratic autocracy, at least as seen in the differing attitudes accorded a Tunisia in comparison to Syria and Iran. This administration has a bad habit of calibrating a regime’s authenticity and legitimacy by the degree of its expressed anti-Americanism between 2001-8.

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The ineffectiveness of "soft power"

You hate to kick a country when it's down, but in the aftermath of the massacre in Norway, increasing scrutiny is being placed on Norway's version of "law enforcement," or, as they call it, "Gentle Justice":

Trond Berntsen was not only the stepbrother of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit. He was also an off-duty policeman and former amateur boxing champion who was working as a security guard on Utoya island that fateful day when Andres Behring Breivik, dressed as a policeman, blew away as many people as he possibly could — including Berntsen.
Berntsen was by all accounts a brave man who made a heroic effort to protect his charges. Alerted to the fact that Breivik was acting suspiciously, Berntsen was one of the first to encounter and confront the gunman, although not before Berntsen had managed to save his own 10-year-old son by pushing him to safety in some sheltering bushes. But even bravery is sometimes powerless to save a person facing a determined murderer who is armed — because Berntsen, the real policeman, was not.

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