More on Quemoy-Matsu II

For the last week, Walter Russel Mead has been doing an incredible job covering the slowly boiling situation developing in the Far East with Japan and China both claiming a small island chain that the Japanese call the Senkaku Islands and the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands:

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between China and Japan is heating up. The biggest anti-Japan protests in years erupted in China this weekend in response to 150 Japanese activists who attended a commemoration for Japan’s war dead there, reports the Financial Times:

Chinese protestors gathered in dozens of cities, in some cases vandalising Japanese-made cars and retail outlets. About 1,000 people marched in the southern city of Shenzhen, overturning a Japanese-made police vehicle and attacking a Japanese restaurant, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

And we can expect more to come. September 18 is the the 81st anniversary of the Mukden incident, Japan’s pretext for invading northern China in 1931. The same Chinese activists from Hong Kong who first landed on the island plan to organize protests at Japanese embassies across the world on this anniversary, according to the New York Times.

I'm back

Have been swamped this week but now I am back. Uh, did I miss anything?

Dan Burton involved in DC infiltration by Pakistani intelligence?

While we're on the subject of what is treason and not treason, over at Pajamas Media, Patrick Poole has the first part of a series discussing the possible infiltration of the US government by agents of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the same cute, cuddly, teddy bear-types that created the Taliban:

Two years ago, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), Ghulam Nabi Fai, was riding high in Washington, D.C. circles. In March 2010, he hosted a pricey fundraiser in his own home for Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia and co-chairman of the Congressional Pakistan Caucus.
In 2004, Fai testified before Burton’s subcommittee. Internal KAC documents show that in just 2007 alone, he had 33 meetings with members of Congress, congressional staff, the Bush administration’s National Security Council, and the State Department. He led congressional delegations to the disputed Kashmir region, and over the years nearly three dozen different members of Congress of both parties attended or spoke at Fai’s annual Kashmir Peace Conference held on Capitol Hill. KAC’s events were even broadcast live on C-SPAN.
One thing that bought Fai so much access was that Fai and the KAC board of directors generously spread campaign contributions all over Capitol Hill to members of both political parties. However, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the bulk of contributions by Fai, KAC’s board, and Fai’s associates went to Burton and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

That all changed on July 19, 2011, when Fai was arrested by the FBI not far from his Fairfax, Virginia home, where he had held the fundraiser for Burton sixteen months earlier. And just last month, a year after his arrest, Fai reported to federal prison.

Is Obama protecting Hugo Chavez?

Investor's Business Daily ran an editorial yesterday detailing a very disturbing pattern of conduct on the part of Obama with respect to Venezuela's fat paratrooper Hugo Chavez:

Colombia's Alvaro Uribe admitted he was ready to invade and hose out Venezuela, but term-limits stopped him. It calls to mind that President Obama urged Uribe to limit his term. Was Obama protecting Chavez?
That's turned into an interesting question, given that Chavez has emerged as a full-blown security threat to the U.S., and is taking desperate measures — like launching a new guerrilla army and pulling out of human rights conventions that may hold him accountable — to ensure he wins reelection in October.
But even with this ugly picture, it's startling that Obama says Chavez is "not a threat."
Never mind that Chavez has forged an alliance with Iran and illegally shipped U.S. military aircraft there to help it evade U.S. radar.
Or that his defense minister is listed by the Treasury Department as a full-blown "kingpin," and he's hosted terrorists — from Iran's Hezbollah to Colombia's FARC — on Venezuelan soil. He's also helping Iran and Syria evade international sanctions. And he's buying billions in advanced weaponry from Russia.
For all this, Obama says Venezuela is not a threat. Does Obama not care, or is he protecting Chavez?

Islamist Nazis consolidate power in Egypt

I never cease to be amazed at how dense the foreign policy community is when it comes to Islamists like al Qaida, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood. They continually underestimate their capabilities and refuse to accept their malevolence. The latest example is Egypt, where the ability of the military to hold power and halt the country's descent into hell has been overstated:

Remember how the military junta was going to keep Egypt’s new Islamist president on a tight leash?

Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s president, has dismissed the head of the armed forces and defence minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, according to the country’s state news agency…
Yasser Ali, the presidential spokesperson, said in a news conference aired on state TV on Sunday, that Morsi appointed a new defence minister, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Tantawi headed the military council that ruled Egypt for 17 months after Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011…
Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Sherine Tadros, reporting from Cairo, said the president’s spokesperson made the surprising announcement on state television.

Sorry for the light posting

This week I have been swamped with work.

Faux-Microsoft phone scam

General rule of thumb: Microsoft will not cold call you for any reason.

This afternoon I got a call from a guy with an Indian accent. Identifying himself as "Michael," he told me that he was from Microsoft. According to "Michael," my computer had indicated to their servers that it had a bad virus that would cause it to shut down permanently in the next 2-3 days. "Michael" said they wanted to help me fix it.

I'm no computer engineer, but I do generally know my way around a computer and computer software. So I practiced my litigation skills by asking "Michael" some questions, like, from where was he calling. He said Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA. I countered that if he was calling from Redmond, why did my caller ID say it was from "PAYPHONE" somewhere in Burbank, CA. He said that Microsoft's phone system was trunked there.

Then I asked him how did "Michael" know my computer was infected. He responded by saying it had told their servers so. I told him that my computer does not talk to Microsoft servers. He insisted that it did, because that's how they know my IP address, or at least what he said was my IP address, which he proceeded to read off to me. I told him I have anti-viral software that has recorded no virus of any kind. He kinda grew desperate and pleaded that he was "trying to help" me.