Rudy Carrera

So much to read, so little time to do it…

The threat from East Africa by Mark Thiessen, Washington Post. Thiessen discusses the worrying trend of Africa’s Al Qaeda clients are linking more strongly with their counterparts in the Arabian Peninsula.

Exit Tony Hayward by Nile Gardner, National Review. Gardner gives Hayward a line commonly used in this household: “Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya!” Brilliant as Hayward is purported to have been, he made a fool out of himself as BP’s very own gaffe machine. He gave Joe Biden a run for his money.

Oliver’s Sorry: ‘I Made a Clumsy Association About the Holocaust’ by Dylan Stableford, The Wrap. Oliver Stone is a poster-boy for Hollywood self-loathing antisemitism. He’s become a piss-poor director in the process. In a fair world, this would be the last straw for his career, but like Mel Gibson, he’ll keep clawing his way out of the cesspool.

Why Liberalism Is Dangerous by William Voegeli, National Review. It’s bad enough that liberals will lie through their teeth about current policy. It’s especially sickening to see them lie about their role in history. Orwellian speak never looked clearer.

Why the Left Hates Conservatives by Dennis Prager for National Review. See above. We call them on their lies, so it’s understandable that they have a psychopathic hatred of anything smacking of normalcy.

Russia Spies, America Apologizes by Mona Charen, National Review. Wow, the meme continues. What fool in either the CIA or State Department thought it wise to apologize to Russia, of all countries, about their spies we caught? November can’t come soon enough, nor can 2012.

How Smart Are We? by Thomas Sowell. Sowell asks a poignant question. The so-called elites who try to shape policy in this country don’t even have the intestinal fortitude to work a real job or run a business, yet have the temerity to brush off those they deem as lesser intellects, always to the ruin of the countries they wish to mold.

Dems fear GOP oversight of Obama administration by Byron York, Washington Examiner. All the hypocritical dirty dealing will come back to haunt the Democratic Party. May they suffer in the way the country has suffered under their leadership.

Jim Webb’s case against racial preferences by the Washington Examiner’s Editorial Board – Jim Webb may as well come back to the Republican Party, as the wackos of the far left will brand him a racist for talking frankly on race.

France declares war against al-Qaida by Elain Ganley, Associated Press. It took the murder of a humanitarian aid worker, a 78-year-old man, to get France motivated to cleanse Africa of this filth, but it looks like the French are finally serious about engaging a now well-defined enemy in the War on Terror.

Here’s an odd story, courtesy of the (U.K.) Telegraph. China has rewritten its textbooks to say that North Korea did indeed strike the first blow in the Korean War, after decades of teaching that America and the United Nations were the aggressors. This comes as good news to the governments in Washington, D.C. and Seoul, as perhaps Chinese historians are finally learning the truth about the war.

Zahi Hawass, the legendary Egyptian archaeologist, and his team have scored a large find in Egypt. 57 ancient tombs have been unearthed, and look the be nearly 5,000 years old.

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. should be a name familiar to political junkies.  He is the same Skip Gates of “Beer Summit” fame where he, President Obama and a police officer Gates accused of racism ended up having a drink and a chat together. 

Normally I wouldn’t let the ramblings of a race-baiter pollute my blog, but Gates redeems himself with a reminder to race hucksters that, as evil as the slave trade was from a European standpoint, it would have gone nowhere without the implicit help of West African leaders (some of whom have apologized for this most grotesque of crimes).  I happily give kudos to Gates for penning this timely op-ed.

I have to admit to being a bit boggled by the fact that the first American president didn’t have a presidential library. What’s even funnier is that he’s about 220 years late in returning some rather interesting books. Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post explains here.

Bryn Mawr College has a blog covering classical studies, including archaeology.  Especially interesting is The Medieval Review, covering history from the Middle Ages in a scholarly fashion.

From Reuters’ Cairo Office:

New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt’s chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.

“If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”

He said the collection of workers’ tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves “friends of Khufu” — another sign that they were not slaves.

The tombs, on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo, are 4,510 years old and lie at the entrance of a one-km (half mile)-long necropolis.

Hawass said evidence had been found showing that farmers in the Delta and Upper Egypt had sent 21 buffalo and 23 sheep to the plateau every day to feed the builders, believed to number around 10,000 — or about a tenth of Greek historian Herodotus’s estimate of 100,000.

These farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the government of ancient Egypt — evidence that he said underscored the fact they were participating in a national project.

The first discovery of workers’ tombs in 1990 came about accidentally when a horse stumbled on a brick structure 10 meters (yards) away from the burial area.

(Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Alison Williams and Michael Roddy)