Motus Mentis

5 Comments

1. JK says

   For those who’re following along yet mainly depend on Western media, things appear to be getting interesting in a corner of the world of strategic value to the West.

   http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/rival-yemeni-protesters-take-to-streets/

   Malcolm placed this link up a week or so ago but to understand the machinations a bit more fully:

   http://bigthink.com/blogs/waq-al-waq

   Posted February 18, 2011 at 5:23 am | Permalink
2. Kevin Kim says

   I didn’t understand why the first female shooter was referred to as a “sniper” in the article, given the circumstances of that killing:

   Saber Rtibi, a 23-year-old who was about to move to France with his father, came to the defence of one of the fleeing women. The young man had just been to the grocery store when he saw his neighbour, Monia Omri, running up the street from the hammam with her young daughter, both coughing from the gas, according to Sourour Abdallah, an 18-year-old who was standing on the street that day.

   The blond agent was chasing Omri and swearing at her. Rtibi tried to intervene, but the agent shot him in the stomach, killing him slowly.

   She chased one female target down the street, then gunned down that woman’s protector, apparently in front of witnesses, given what the article says next.

   I don’t know, but I think “shooter” is more appropriate than “sniper” here (the article uses “shooter” in other spots). I normally think of a sniper as someone who performs a long-distance kill, taking the victim down from a hidden vantage point.

   There were other ladies, though, who might have qualified as female snipers:

   Shortly after midday, at least five snipers standing on rooftops suddenly started firing on the procession, according to Ahmed. Most of them appeared to be women, he said, wearing helmets and black uniforms, automatic rifles in hand.

   I had a crazy thought. What if they weren’t women, but dudes in blond wigs? The first shooter might have been a woman if it’s true that she was cursing and that she did indeed take off her helmet and blow a kiss at her victim’s corpse; she would have been heard and seen to be a woman. But what if the purpose of all that blond hair peeking out of all those other helmets was to sow confusion?

   Bleh. Like I said — a crazy thought.

   Posted February 18, 2011 at 10:46 am | Permalink
3. bob koepp says

   No, Kevin, not crazy at all. I’ve been amazed and dumfounded more than once by the weird “strategies” of tyrants who are struggling to maintain a grip on power, having lost their grip on reality.

   Posted February 18, 2011 at 12:35 pm | Permalink
4. Horace Jeffery Hodges says

   The details are weird enough for me to find these stories suspect . . .

   Jeffery Hodges

   * * *

   Posted February 18, 2011 at 2:56 pm | Permalink
5. JK says

   Kevin, (Jeff),

   There a few ‘odd things’ in this piece – “snipers” and “automatic weapons” seem incongruous. Most of the sniper weapons I’m familiar with are bolt-action, though multi-round magazines are definitely not unknown.

   http://defensetech.org/category/snipertech/

   http://www.snipercentral.com/rifles.htm

   Female snipers however are not unknown – Stalingrad comes to mind.

   Posted February 18, 2011 at 6:19 pm | Permalink