Abu Muqawama is one of the the blogs that we go to for news on Lebanon. If you are at all interested in what is going on over there, you should read the posts from the last couple of days.

But if that is to much work, just go to this post and scroll to bottom where Abu Muqawama writes….

Tom Perry — friend to both Londonstani and Abu Muqawama — is now reporting for Reuters that Hizbollah/Amal has now taken control over most of Beirut. Oh, if only Abu Muqawama had a nickel for every time an M14 sympathizer swore to him this would never happen. A clue for why it happened might be found in all those pictures of gunmen holding their rifles at the hip, cowboy-style. Great shooting positions, boys!

Look at the picture that he posts next to those words. Then go to this post at Abu Muqawama and look at the picture.

Of course, it is unfair to judge the fighting styles of two different groups just by a couple of pictures. But those pictures back up what people from the region have been saying for a long time.

Who’s going to step up and defend a cult that practices polygamy? Who is going to argue that children should be raised in such an environment? We must confess that we cannot find it in ourselves to defend either point.

But we must confess that it seems to us that Vox Day has a point when he argues that raid on the compound of a Mormon sect was hypocritical and immoral. His comparison of instances of underage pregnancy within the sect to rate of population at large in Texas is particularly damming. But we must imagine that he could have strengthened his argument even more if he had laid his hands on statistics showing how children in the tender embrace of child protection agencies turn out.

The YouTube Clip below has been in the news a lot lately. If you have not seen it, you might want to watch it. It is the CIA’s explanation of the target that Israel destroyed in Syria awhile back. It publicly accuses North Korea and Syria of conspiring together to make atomic weapons.

In related news, The Times reports….

An airbase inside a mountain is the latest sign that North Korea, whose links to Syria’s nuclear programme came to light last week, is cranking up its military machine

North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel.

The 6,000ft runway is a few minutes’ flying time from the tense front line where the Korean People’s Army faces soldiers from the United States and South Korea.

The project was identified by an air force defector from North Korea and captured on a satellite image by Google Earth, according to reports in the South Korean press last week.

It is one of three underground fighter bases among an elaborate subterranean military infrastructure built to withstand a “shock and awe” assault in the first moments of a war, the defector said.

There are a number of soldiers over in Iraq who have tried to document their experience over in Iraq. But amongst all of them, LT G stands out. We have already named one of his posts essay of the week some time ago. But he writes so many good posts that it would be an injustice to only highlight one.

In this essay he ruminates on dealing with the after affects of a Special Forces (our inference, he just calls them the other unit) raid.

From Marginal Revolution….

A satellite missed its orbit. The problem can be fixed but, believe it or not, Boeing has a patent on using the moon, i.e. gravity, to change a satellite’s orbit! The patent probably wouldn’t hold up in court but because of a different lawsuit Boeing is threatening to sue anyway if the firm uses the procedure. Since the costs of a lawsuit are high and the satellite is insured, down it may come.

As cities are going to have a harder and harder time raising revenue, I think you will see more of this…

Six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the amber cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners. The local governments in question have ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead.

More commentary here.

We have put videos in the poem of the week section. But never before have we put a clip in the rant of the week section. But this week we are making the very controversial Fitna the rant of the week.

We are of mixed minds in posting this. Fitna is nothing more than propaganda. By that we mean that it is designed to shut your brain down and let your emotions take over. On the other hand though, it is interesting to see a well done piece of propaganda. More to point, you should see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

Last week we featured an essay that introduced the term post heroic warfare. But last week’s essay was too academic for most of our readers. So this week we thought we would highlight a well written first person narrative that perfectly captures what post heroic warfare is all about.