OldPolitico

Patriots Day - a day late

2010-04-20T01:00:00.002-04:00

I had intended to say something about Patriots Day when it was still Patriots Day, especially this year as the official state holiday (Massachusetts and Maine, anyway) which is one of those always on a Monday things actually fell on April 19 this year.

April 19 is Patriots Day, not because of the OKC bomb or the Waco inferno, but because of the Minutemen who, thanks to the timely warning system devised by noted silversmith Paul Revere, assembled at Lexington and Concord to prevent the regular army from seizing the military stores of the militia. This was the actual beginning of the armed conflict stage of the struggle for American independence.

That series of skirmishes on a chilly spring night in the British North American colony known as Massachusetts Bay was seen as the beginning of a significant war at that time. The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army less than two months later and appointed George Washington of Virginia a major general and commander-in-chief of the army.

Patrick Henry had already made his famous speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses in favor of independence a month before Patriots Day and by August of that year was colonel commanding the 1st Regiment of the Virginia militia and led them in fighting troops loyal to Governor Dinsmore over war materiel.

General Washington took the initiative to send out armed ships to attack and capture British supply ships and Congress followed suit by establishing the Continental Navy in October. The following month, the first Marine Corps units were formed as naval infantry.

So, we had an army, a navy and war for them to fight months before we had a an official declaration of what it was they were fighting for - independence, and not merely a return to the status quo ante.

DC - More Smoke and Mirrors from Wonderland

2010-03-03T06:36:00.000-05:00

The AP reports the Senate Banking Committee is hashing out the details for a new consumer protection agency to handle things like credit cards and mortgages and to put it in the Federal Reserve.

It is things like this that prove to me almost daily what a good idea it has been not to go back to DC. I was born there in 1950, moved to the suburbs at age four and left the area at 17 to go to UVa. Except for a 13 months working in the Nixon administration and a few visits on government business in the Reagan years, I haven't been back.

The place reminds me of nothing so much as Lewis Carrol's fictional Wonderland - full of self-important people saying meaningless things which they think are pearls of profound wisdom.

All this high level palaver is supposed to make us safe form another financial crisis of the sort that took these worthies by surprise in 2008. A crisis that had been predicted by more serious and sensible observers for years.

Who, in their right mind and possessed of the relevant historical facts. can possibly believe that the crisis was in any way related to a deficiency of power at the Federal Reserve?

If those on Capitol Hill want to see the source of the mess we are still struggling with, I suggest they look in a mirror.

Spanish Judge Ties Chavez Regime to Terror, Assassination Plots

2010-03-03T05:36:00.000-05:00

In Spain, a judge made the allegations of Chavez terror ties public on Monday in a 26-page indictment in which he charged six members of the Basque guerrillas ETA and seven members of the Colombian rebel group FARC with a series of crimes, including terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.

It seems the leader of the new Bolivarian revolution was plotting the murder of a number of serving and former members of the government of Colombia while they were residing or visiting in Spain. Venezuela used their drug smuggling allies in the Colombian revolutionary army known by its Spanish initials FARC to set the plan in motion; and FARC turned to their revolutionary brothers in ETA, Spain's Basque separatist movement, for help in setting up surveillance of ther targets in Spain.

As I have pointed out before, the Bolivarian movement is not just another political movement or diplomatic initiative. It represents a changing of the guard in leadership of the Latin American left from Fidel Castro (who idolized Adolph Hitler before declaring himself a communist) to Hugo Chavez (who patterns himself after Bolivar whose inspiration was Napoleon). Megalomaniacs like Chavez can inflict great harm in their single-minded pursuit of power.

Reinforcing the Bolivarian connection, the investigating judge in Spain has asked his government to request that Cuba and Venezuela extradite the suspects residing in their territories.

The Other War - HUMAN EVENTS

2010-03-02T08:37:00.000-05:00

This article from HE's Guns & Patriots email newsletter by Oliver North provides some very good data and insights on out ongoing border control problem.

I think Col. North is wrong about the solution, however. Rather than clamping ever-tighter on financial transactions, drug legalization will gut the entire crime syndicate operation overnight. We'll still need to spend some police resources on keeping drugs away from children, but they are getting them now.

On the other side of the balance we have jobs for Americans producing drugs consumed by Americans instead of all that money going overseas. Legalization would also cut into the corruption of government officials, especially in law enforcement, both here and in the countries where drugs are produced and shipped.

Drug policy has no warrant in the US Constitution and its time we dusted off that old piece of paper and started taking it seriously again. Given the perilous state of federal government finances, curtailing government to only those functions specifically authorized in the Constitution is about the only way we have any hope of restoring fiscal sanity.

Terror in the name of tradition - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

2010-03-02T07:06:00.000-05:00

From the Mail & Guardian of Jo'burg comes a very interesting article by an Oxford trained legal scholar on some of the absurdities and outrages of the South African government's policies regarding traditional tribal governance in the countryside.

To understand the scope of such a problem, imagine that our Indian reservations contained over half the land and half the people of the country and that, rather than imposing democratic forms (which was the US policy) we told them to go back to governing their territories by pre-Columbian standards.

There is an old saying that "hard cases make bad law" - and in this controversy it is possible that a particularly outrageous case might cause the pendulum to swing too far away from central government respect for traditional cultures.

The hard case is Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, king of the amaThembu. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for exercising his traditional powers by his own lights. If you want the details, read the article - some of it is too gruesome for me to describe here. The king has responded by announcing on January 14 the intention to secede. His territory covers 60% of South Africa's territory.

Secession, were South Africa to allow it, might well (this is my opinion, not the author's) lead to rebellion if the people find themselves without any hope of redressing their grievances through the South African courts.

On the other hand, the ANC-led government and the courts are at loggerheads about just how much authority traditional leaders like the king of the amaThembu should have. If the government have their way, some of the acts for which the king was convicted might well be within the law.

I found this article and the accompanying comments particularly interesting for the light it sheds on the push to bring Islamic law to Europe. Can any country function with two fundamentally different legal systems?

Economic Freedom Falling in Bolivarian Andes

2010-03-02T05:19:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting piece from The Heritage Foundation using the recent announcement of the foundation's annual economic freedom rankings to contrast the performance of three nations of the Bolivarian bloc in South America with three contiguous countries pursuing much more pro-freedom policies.

To the embarassment of great economic thinkers of a progressive bent, freedom wins! Of course, freedom can be valued for its philosophical and theological merits. But, it also does a better job of delivering more goods to more people than the leviathan state so fondly embraced by communists, socialists, progressives or leaders of our own Democratic Party.

This study was, of course, done before the recent tragedy of the 8.8 earthquake near Concepcion, Chile. It will be instructive in following the recovery efforts to contrast the experiences of Chile and Haiti. Among other things, I expect it will demonstrate the superiority of a highly developed, free market economy in responding to human needs in the wake of natural disaster - something to also keep in mind in the global climate change debate.

Solar complaints are hotting up

2010-02-26T22:24:00.000-05:00

From Australia's newspaper The Age comes an interesting item on the success of efforts to promote solar photovoltaic energy production and use in the residential sector.

It seems that in half a year the monthly number of complaints has risen from 17 to 141 - and they run the gamut from meter reading issues to substandard and potentially unsafe wiring.

But the most remarkable complaint is that some of the homeowners who took the AUD $8,000 government grant to install energy saving solar panels and sell excess power to the grid (at "66 cents per kilowatt" - I think they mean per kilowatt-hour) found their electric bills going up.

This seemingly paradoxical, but fully foreseeable, circumstance comes from the loss of certain other rate preferences for things like off-peak water heating and heat pumps which only applied to the conservation of conventional power used in homes. It seems that those selling and installing photovoltaics were a bit lax in explaining this to their customers.

Of course, none of this can defeat the enthusiasm of a trade association lobbyist thrilled at the prospect of doing well by doing good:

Matthew Warren, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said any problems with the solar program needed to be resolved or Australians would lose trust in green initiatives.

''I think the scheme has been an outstanding success in that it has transformed the solar industry … to make it affordable for ordinary Australian families,'' he said. ''But if there are problems … they need to be addressed quickly.''

Iran's "students" at it again

2010-02-26T21:27:00.001-05:00

TEHRAN – “An attack has just been carried out against the Italian embassy in Tehran. Several dozen basiji [Iranian paramilitary militia – Ed.] wearing civilian clothes attempted to storm the Italian embassy throwing stones and shouting ‘Death to Italy, Death to Berlusconi’”. The announcement was made by the foreign minister, Franco Frattini, early yesterday afternoon during a Senate committee hearing. Similar incidents took place at the consulates of France, Holland and Germany. Mr Frattini said that intervention by the Iranian police had “prevented an actual assault and there was no serious damage”. Italian diplomatic sources did, however, point out that it was “a hostile demonstration”, not an attempt to storm the building.

Corriere della Serra reports on in its English language web edition that its mission in Tehran was among those of several European powers subjected to ugly incidents from young adults in civilian clothes. Iranian government TV said it was not true these mobs were basiji but merely students.

If Italy were singled out for particular scholarly attention it would seem to be because of what Iran's state TV called "services rendered to the Israeli masters" by Silvio Berlusconi; although, as the article goes on to say, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini pointed out: "Unfortunately, Iran has complicated, problematic relations with the entire international community. The issue is not relations with Italy."

One cannot help but be reminded of a time when another group of "students" took control of the US Embassy in Tehran. We hope and pray such an outrage is not contemplated against other legations, perhaps to coincide with next Thursday's official celebration of the 31st anniversary of the revolution that brought the current theocratic junta to power in that unhappy land.

Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, the Italian ambassador has been summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday to receive that government's formal protest over recent remarks by the Italian Prime Minister. Were a European power to demand the attendance of an Iranian envoy on the Muslim sabbath there would be harsh cries against such insensitivity. But Iran summons the ambassador of a Christian nation to appear on his nation's sabbath with impunity.

For some interesting comments from a current Green Movement opposition leader who was, three decades ago, a close associate of Ayatollah Khomeini, see this interview with Mehdi Karroubi.

CNN Political Ticker: AlCNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights

2010-02-26T17:02:00.003-05:00

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

I point this out for the benefit my libertarian friends who keep telling me there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.
It is true that there are a number of Republican Party officials whose behavior in office - either personally or professionally, and sometimes both - has been less than stellar. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to find a Democrat Party official worthy of praise. Add in the current prevalence of Democrats in high office and one sees a rather stark difference between officials of the two major parties.

But, my larger point is that any serious effort to address this problem at the polls has a much better chance by starting with the GOP rather than frittering away effort on the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party and other third parties, let alone the utter fool's errand known as Get Out Of Our House (GOOOH).

There are too many places where RINOs are in control of the Republican Party structure or winning GOP primaries. If even half of those independents and third party folks who agree with conservative Republicans on many of the major issues would quit complaining and join us, we could again have the sort of party that could nominate a Goldwater or Reagan, if we can find one.

I'm showing my age already, so I'll throw in a little anecdote. In the summer of 1969, after my second year at UVa, I was a chaperone at the Teen-Age Republican National Leadership Conference in DC. One of our more colorful speakers issued a challenge to the eager young folks there to take over the party so that a man like Gov. Nelson Rockefeller could not win a Republican primary.

We've still got a ways to go in meeting that challenge, but the ebbs and flows of conservative fortunes over the intervening years convince me that it is possible. And, the precarious position of our federal republic makes it more urgent now than it was four decades ago.

Exclusive: What happens next in health care - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com

2010-02-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

Exclusive: What happens next in health care - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com

The other Politico agrees with the Old Politico.

I'm listening to the Schnitt Show on WFLA via the internet right now; and the 4 PM Fox News Radio report says the White House has just announced that the president will make a statement next week on "the way forward" with healthcare legislation.

At the end of the day ...

2010-02-25T17:30:00.002-05:00

President Obama's bipartisan healthcare reform summit is now over and, at the end of the day, he made it clear that it's my way of the highway.

I admit that I only caught some snatches of the session during the day - I had other things to do, things that might actually improve my life. But, the president's concluding remarks made it clear that the whole affair was just window dressing for moving ahead with the "nuclear option" - reconciliation.

It's not clear that the reconciliation gambit can succeed. The left wing of the House Democrat caucus are upset that the Senate bill, extravagant though it may appear to sentient beings, is too parsimonious. On the other side of the caucus, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) says his pro-life colleagues will not settle for the Senate language on abortion. Perhaps this charade at Blair House today was merely intended to shame a few more "moderate" Republicans into proving their bipartisan bona fides by casting a grudging vote for this monstrosity.

I suspect it won't work, but if it does it will hand the Congress (or at least the House) over to the Republicans. The Democrats then only need to hold enough votes in the Senate to mount a filibuster to prevent repeal next year. At the end of the day, that is the Democrat strategy - put anything they can on the books now and it will become politically impossible to overturn it later, even if they are in the minority.

Is this healthcare?

2010-02-22T13:41:00.002-05:00

Close Tax Loopholes. Adopts two House proposals to close tax loopholes: (1) Current law provides a tax credit for the production of cellulosic biofuels. The credit was designed to promote the production and use of renewable fuels. Certain liquid byproducts derived from processing paper or pulp (known as “black liquor” when derived from the kraft process) were not intended to be covered by this credit. The President’s Proposal adopts the House bill’s policy to clarify that they are not eligible for the tax credit. (2) The President’s Proposal helps prevent unjustified tax shelters by clarifying the circumstances under which transactions have “economic substance” (as opposed to being undertaken solely to obtain tax benefits) and raises the penalties for transactions that lack economic substance. In so doing, it adopts the House’s policy, with minor technical changes.

By the time anyone reads this, they will doubtless have already found out that the key reforms proposed by the Republicans have not, contrary to the rhetoric on WhiteHouse.gov, been included in President Obama's new plan; although this a bit hard to pin down given the disjointed way in which the material is presented.

But, I think the paragraph quoted above may be more instructive of the mindset of the administration. This paragraph deals with two rather obscure provisions of the tax code which have nothing to do with healthcare. Why are they here and taking up so much of the little space given to explaining this new version of the plan?

The second part - abusive tax shelters - is almost amusing. It says the government is going to crack down on tax shelter activities that are undertaken "solely to obtain tax benefits" rather than for their "economic substance." But all "preferences" in the tax code - and they are legion - are there to steer the behavior of taxpayers. Does anyone rmember the Cash for Clunkers program this same administration touted so highly last year?

Amazon.com: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War: Books: Thomas Dilorenzo

2008-02-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

Amazon.com: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War: Books: Thomas Dilorenzo: "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Paperback)"

This being Fedruary 12 - and the 199th anniversary of the birth of "Honest Abe" - the subject of America's worst president seemed an appropriate subject on which to return to publishing my ruminations on public affairs.

I am happy that Thomas DiLorenzo's excellent The Real Lincoln is available in a paperback edition. I bought and read the hardcover edition several years ago and recommend it highly.

The question of Lincoln and his legacy may seem to belong to the dim, dark past. But, like other seminal events of our history - the motives and character of those who colonized America, the struggle to establish constitutional self-government, etc. - a clear and correct understanding of the facts, rather than the government-approved myths taught in government schools, is essential to understanding that history and evaluating our stewardship of the legacy bequeathed to us by so many who suffered, even unto death, for our liberties.

The book is frankly critical of Lincoln and the fables told about him. The Lincoln we find in The Real Lincoln is a white supremacist of a sort with whom even Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi, or Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, or Gov. Lester Maddox of Georgia, might well have scrupled to share a stage. This Lincoln also had a view of the nature of constitutional government very much at odds with the traditions of this country.

Walter E. Williams, the celebrated columnist and professor of economics, begins his foreword for the book this way:

In 1831, long before the War between the States, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun said, "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail." The War between the States answered that question and produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day.

DiLorenzo demonstrates how great a revolution in governmental principles Lincoln's unnecessary war was. I would say as great a revolutionary turn as that by which we broke free from British rule, but that time a regression toward tyranny.

It would be immensely fitting if, a year from now, we could celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of a truly great American statesman who also began life in a humble home in Kentucky and rose to the leadership of a great republic founded on the principles of the American Revolution. I refer, of course, to Jefferson Davis.

Bush administration pushes food prices higher

2007-09-05T19:02:00.000-04:00

Corn looks surprisingly good considering the very dry conditions that prevailed here for most of the summer. This is field corn intended for feeding the dairy herd on the farm where I live when I am in Pennsylvania. Corn is getting expensive and likely will go much higher which will force up prices of meat, poultry and dairy products. Another government program at work.

The Bush Administration has decided to score some brownie points with the environmental wackos by lining the pockets of a handful of corporations which stand to make a pile of money out of the ethanol from corn racket. This policy has been around for a while and has generally been dismissed as pandering to rural voters in the Plains and Midwest states. But the real beneficiaries have been the corporations that broker and process corn. There are also promoters prowling the countryside raising money from small investors with the promise of great riches to be had from owning a piece of one of the many ethanol manufacturing plants being planned and built in rural areas from Pennsylvania to the Dakotas.

Ethanol supporters tout the government's support for the industry which includes heavy off-budget subsidies by the federal government and some of the states. But, as one who neither grows corn nor owns any shares in ethanol or grain companies, how does it look from here?

Higher food prices form just the tip of the iceberg, and the easiest symptom of coming problems to discern at this time. Ethanol is highly inefficient in the engineering sense - comparing the energy required to produce it to the energy it makes available for transport fuels. Ethanol subsides also starve the Federal Highway Trust Fund of funds needed for construction of interstate highways. States which have followed the federal lead with reductions of per gallon fuel excise taxes on ethanol fuels are starving their own highway agencies of desperately needed funds for highway maintenance. Rising demand for corn to produce ethanol will also encourage the cultivation of corn on marginal lands best left idle or in crops less prone to encourage soil erosion.

The Austrian School of economics (and that included yours truly) takes a very dim view of subsidies to favored industries because they divert investment from other, objectively more profitable, alternatives and often require very painful corrections later. In the present case, we see a headlong rush to build new ethanol facilities which are almost certain to fail. For example, one investment newsletter I read recently reported that one northern Plains state already has enough ethanol plants - in being, under construction or in the fundraising and planning stages - whose operation will require more corn every year than the state has ever produced. Similar bottlenecks will develop in other states if the ethanol hysteria continues.

Go in peace, my former countrymen

2007-08-01T23:42:00.000-04:00

ABC News: Love it or Leave it -- Record Number of Americans Flee to Canada:

"In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies.
"Of course, those numbers are still outweighed by the number of Canadians going the other way. Yet, that imbalance is shrinking. Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005."

If, as the article says, the reason for so many Americans heading to the Frozen North is politics, then let them go and good riddance. They can't make Canada much worse and they might help the real Americans keep this country from becoming another Canada.

Americans heading to Canada for political reasons has much deeper roots than the article's mention of the tens of thousands of vacationers who preferred the tundra to the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. All the way back to the American Revolution, people unhappy with the political trends in this counrty have made Canada their preferred destination - it's not far away and they speak English - most of them, anyway, albeit with a funny accent.

ABC uses the word "flee" in the headline even though one of the two persons quoted admitted to keeping an American Flag on his wall in Canada and having no intention to renounce his citizenshp here to become a Canadian. The Tories who went to Canada in the 1770s and 1780s were fleeing. One might even say that of the draft resisters of the 1960s and 1970s. But the word seems an odd choice in the present context.

A little perspective is in order here. ABC's idea of perspective is to say that the numbers of Americans moving to Canada are starting to catch up to the niumbers of Canadians following the sun southward. This is true, but less instructive than it might seem.

Canada is a huge territory with a small population - only a little more than one-tenth the population of the US. Using 2006 population estimates from the TIME Almanac and the figures given in the article for immigration each way in that year yields a very different picture.

So easy a caveman could do it. But not, it seems, easy enough for an ABC reporter. The bottom line: a Canadian is about 20 times more likely to move to the US as an American is to move to Canada. QED

The artist still known as Elton John explains what's wrong with Al Gore's invention

2007-08-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

The Sun Online - News: Why we must close the net:

"I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span."

Sir Elton is, of course, entitled to exercise his right of free speech even when he chooses to say things that ate stupid, silly, or downright wrong as his remarks are this time. For some reason this is a common failing of artistic types, especially those on the left.

I won't bother giving this latest rant by an aging pop star a detailed analysis. It will suffice for me to endorse the following comment, addressed to Sir Elton by his birth name, posted by a reader on The Sun website:

Reggie Dwight, stick to music! One minute he wants to ban religion, the next the net. Funny he never wants to ban knighthoods for pop stars, gawdy clothes, bad hairdos or tax loopholes for the rich Posted_by: Proudanglosaxon

Population control has a new, high-profile cheerleader

2007-08-01T13:04:00.000-04:00

We need fewer people to halt global warming - Telegraph :

"'My position on population is that I am disturbed that no one will talk about it,' [Chris] Rapley [head of the UK's Science Museum in London] says."

Maybe they aren't talking about over-population in Antarctica (Ripley's last job was running the British Antarctic Survey), but it is discussed elsewhere. I have even heard a high school girl bring up the subject in a casual conversation.

China's population controls have been widely publicized - and often criticized. When I was a young man, there was considerable attention given in the public prints to India's population control efforts. And, of course, there are many voices speaking of population control in Africa - from UN-funded family planning programs to hysterical claims that AIDS in Africa is a plot by white people to keep Africa backward.

Ripley's real problem is that effective measures to accomplish his goal are viewed with repugnance by so many people.

Meanwhile, birth rates have fallen below replacement levels in most of Europe. Even Mexico's birth rate has been falling rapidly. And the latest responsible demographic studies predict that world population will peak within this century and then slowly decline.

Ckicken Littles like Ripley and his pal Al Gore need a constant barrage of fear-mongering to drum up support for their coercive utopian visions.

The real threat

2007-07-31T05:36:00.000-04:00

China Military Marks 80th Anniversary:

"Much has yet to change, however. People's Liberation Army leaders took the opportunity of the anniversary to recommit to their role as the ruling Communist Party's house army, rejecting any notion of shifting loyalty to the government."

The complexity of China is neatly captured here. The government of the Peoples Republic of China may claim to be, in some senses, the successor to the governments that came before it - certainly so as the rightful government of every place that ever was under the control of some government of China. Yet the Peoples Liberation Army still sees itself as the servant of the Chinese Communist Party rather than the government. Thus, the role of the army is not. in the usual sense, the defense of the homeland, but the instrument by which the power of the party is extended.

Take Taiwan, for example. It was not a part of China when the Communist Party was formed, nor was it a part of China when the PLA was formed. It was part of Japan. It passed to the control of the government of the Republic of China as a result of the ROC's role as an ally of the US and Britain in WW2. That government continues to exist although its capital is at Taipei rather than Nanking. For those who haven't been paying attention, the ROC is the one with a vibrant, if sometimes unruly, multi-party democracy while the PRC is the one with a one-party dictatorship.

Defending Taiwan is not on the same order as the ill-advised attempt to create a democratic regime in Iraq. Kowtowing to the dictators in Beijing is both undignified and self-defeating. War with the PRC is not necessary unless the PRC forces the issue. Keeping the lid on its own people is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge for the Chinese Communist Party. That lid might have already been blown sky high if our own government had not been so anxious to please that regime, even at the risk of other vital national interests.

On The Road With John Edwards - not the cold reader, the other one

2007-07-10T12:55:00.000-04:00

Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com:

"Can JRE pull off a JFK, or an RFK (asks Politico chief political writer Mike Allen, who is sharing guestblogging duties while Ben is on vacation)? John Edwards plans to announce Monday that he’ll take a break from fund-raising and campaigning in early-voting states next week for a three-day, eight-state, 12-city “Road to One America” tour aimed at calling attention to poverty in the deep South, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Rust Belt."

The Breck Girl - according to that other Politico blog, not yours truly here at OldPolitico - is set to take his roadshow on a tour highlighting poverty in America.

For some reason, Mike Allen wants to see this as harking back to the political tactics of the brothers Kennedy, JFK in 1960 and RFK in 1968. For example:

"The photogenic swing is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s repeated coal-country campaigning before the West Virginia primary of 1960. His overwhelming victory ended Catholicism as an issue in the campaign and brought national attention to Appalachian poverty. Twenty-eight years later, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis donned a hard hat and overalls for an hour-long tour of a West Virginia coal mine."

I remember JFK campaigning in West Virginia, but I don't recall it being billed as rich boy slumming. If it had been, it is doubtful that he would have crushed Sen. Hubert Horatio Humphrey (D-MN)in the primary.

There were, and are still, a lot of proud, independent folks clinging to those hillsides and working the mines and hard-scrabble farms; some of them - the Pauleys of Charleston - cousins of my maternal grandmother. Great-grandfather Pauley was an organizer for the United Mine Workers back when that put a price on your head and forced your immediate family into hiding. Those people in West Virginia appreciated all the attention. I remember eating often in a restaurant in Charles Town which had little brass plates on some of the plain wooden chairs, each inscribed with the name of a politician who had stopped there and sat in that chair - JFK, HHH, and several lesser lights.

Being put on display as a living museum exhibit of poverty would have been deeply offensive. The psychological value of a big win in West Virginia for JFK was that the state was one of the whitest and most protestant and the most southern of the few states (15 plus DC) on the primary schedule at that time.

As for Dukakis in his miner's hat that seems to me to have harked back to the Roaring Twenties when donning absurd headgear was de rigeur for politicos. Did you ever see a photo of Calvin Coolidge in an Indian headdress? Stunning! Unfortunately, Dukakis skipped the part of the Dress For Success manual that said small men should avoid large headwear. The most absurd image of his campaign was Dukakis sitting in the open hatch of a tank wearing a tanker's helmet and commo rig. After that he was toast.

Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for making poverty tours fashionable. Commercial network television, of all institutions, set the tone with prime-time documentaries like Harvest of Shame (CBS Reports, 1960 - aired after the election) and Walk In My Shoes (ABC Close-Up, 1961); and Michael Harrington's book The Other America probably played a role, too.

LBJ followed up his January 1964 announcement of a War on Poverty with his nine-state tour of poverty in Appalachia in 1964. He may have been treading some of the same ground as JFK four years earlier, but this time there was intentional focus on poverty.

Immitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. If so, Johnson should have been gratified by the alacrity with which other Democrats launched their own tours of poverty or hunger. These included Fritz Hollings in South Carolina and Bill Spong in Virginia.

Give the Devil his due, to quote another old chestnut, LBJ deserves the credit (or blame as many Southerners thought) for pointing to backward conditions in a region struggling to attract industry from the north and overseas to take up the slack from the decline of agriculture.

You read it here first

2007-07-10T00:10:00.000-04:00

U.S. warns citizens over Naples garbage crisis | U.S. | Reuters :

"U.S. citizens traveling to of through the area may encounter mounds of garbage, open fires with potentially toxic fumes, and/or sporadic public demonstrations by local residents attempting to block access to dumps,' the embassy said in an advisory note."

Reuters updates the garbage crisis which I noted here on the 3rd of June.

Family rallies to support Dr. Haneef questioned in Australia about London and Glasgow bomb plot

2007-07-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

Doctor's family explains plane ticket, SIM card - National - theage.com.au

"THE in-laws of Dr Mohammed Haneef, arrested at Brisbane airport on Monday night and held awaiting the arrival of British police, have an explanation for his sudden departure.

"His daughter was born 10 days ago — sick, with jaundice — and his wife, Firdous Arshiya, is suffering the after-effects of giving birth."

Unanswered questions remain despite the headline on this story.

The baby was born more than a week before he left. So, Dr. Haneef seems to have had ample opportunity to notify his employer of his need to return to India to be with his wife and their ill newborn baby. The family insist he was planning to return to Australia with his wife and baby as soon as arrangements could be made. Any reasonably intelligent and responsible person, much more so a doctor employed at a hospital, tells his employer when he is leaving and gives some idea of when he expects to return.

The family's explanation for the one-way ticket is equally unconvincing. Wouldn't it be cheaper for the doctor to purchase a round-trip ticket with open return and a one-way ticket for the wife and infant than buying three one-way tickets?

I won't be surprised if the family's explanation about the cell phone angle - that Dr. Haneef gave the SIM card to his uncle - also turns out to give more heat than light on the case.

The Glorious Fourth

2007-07-04T03:49:00.001-04:00

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

How far out in left field do you have to be to interview Ahmadinejad?

2007-07-03T11:49:00.000-04:00

Iran rejects Stone film request: Entertainment: International: News24:

"'We have already seen his documentaries - even though Stone is considered a member of the opposition group in the US, it is still part of the Great Satan,' he said."

Oliver Stone may have been trendy-lefty enough to make a documentary out of an interview with Cuba's president for life, but that's not good enough for Ahmadinejad. Maybe Ahmadinejad is just too polite to say he was disappointed by the failure of Commandante (the Castro flick) to generate much business.

For all the lefties out there (and I do mean out there) who are looking for common ground with the likes of Ahmadinejad, the news that Stone is just another tool of the Great Satan's propaganda machine ought to be a wake-up call. Alas, the lesson they will take from this will likely be that they must redouble their attacks on Bush, Christianity, capitalism, etc. to enhance their appeal to truly enlightened leaders like Ahmadinejad.

Call this one "the doctors plot"

2007-07-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Local suspects linked to UK plots - National - theage.com.au:

"Dr Mohammed Haneef, 27, was picked up by members of a joint federal and Queensland police taskforce as he was about to leave Australia to India via Malaysia.

"He had a one-way ticket but had not resigned from the hospital."

Another Indian-trained Muslim doctor, Dr. Mohammed Ali, who also arrived from Britain a year ago, is currently under questioning. Police authorities in Australia were at pains to say that Dr. Ali's case was not related to the British investigation of the attack on Glasgow airport and the two car bombs found in London.

This disavowal seems odd since the article also points out that the car belonging to the fleeing Dr. Haneef was found in the garage of Dr. Ali.

Let's see, six of seven suspects arrested in Britain are doctors and two more doctors are being questioned in Australia. Another blow the the sociological interpretation which holds that radicalism is bred by poverty and lack of opportunity. Of course, 9/11 also showed the falsity of such explanations in that several key players in that affair were engineers, a profession respected and in demand in most of the world.

Unlike the "doctors plot" in which Stalin - either from delusional paranoia or political calculation - accused Jewish doctors of trying to poison him, this one appears to be real.

Socialism ruining Iranian economy, public support for Ahmadinejad fading

2007-07-01T05:22:00.000-04:00

Iran curses Ahmadinejad over petrol rationing | International News | News | Telegraph :

"'We have hard-working shopkeepers in our neighbourhood from whom I get important economic information,' he [President Ahmadinejad] told Iranian newspapers recently. 'For example, there is an honourable butcher in our neighbourhood who is aware of all the problems.'"

Reminds me of Jimmy Carter getting advice on nuclear war from his daughter. No wonder Iran's economy is in a shambles. By the way, The Telegraph interviewed neighborhood shopkeepers but was unable to find that perspicacious butcher the president relies upon.

The article also notes that critics have labeled as "Stalinist" Ahmadinejad's promise to spend a billion dollars on steel, cement and petrochemical plants in the economically depressed eastern part of the country to create a million jobs.

This is preposterous on several levels. First, $1,000 per job is way too little money in such capital-intensive industries. Second, it takes a lot of infrastructure to bring in raw materials (the article says the nearest iron mines are 200 miles from the steel plant) and get finished product out. Third, this single project is supposed to suck up more than a third of the entire county's unemployment even though it occurs in one of its least populous regions and the country already faces a shortage of skilled labor of the sort such facilities require.

Ahmadinejad is supposed to be an engineer (Ph.D. in transportation engineering and planning), surely this all has occurred to him. Of course, after more than a decade in political office, maybe he's not thinking past his 2009 re-election campaign.

The current five-year plan of Iran seems as unreasonable as the socialist planning that stagnated India for decades. It is fitting, then, that current Iranian humor reflects the sort of cynicism in the old Soviet Union where a common saying was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."

Here's a sample of the reaction to the petrol price hike making the rounds as a text message on Iranian's cell phones (the samizdat of the new millenium):

"On the orders of President Ahmadinejad," read one, "those who are short of petrol can have a ride on the 17 million donkeys who voted for him."

A study in contasts

2007-07-01T03:19:00.000-04:00

Floods are judgment on society, say bishops | Uk News | News | Telegraph :

"The bishops argued that while those affected are innocent victims, the flooding was a result of western civilisation's decision to ignore biblical teaching."

Here we have a bunch of staid and stuffy old bishops of one of Christianities oldest denominations saying that this year's floods in Britain are a divine judgment on everything from gay rights to environmental degradation.

Telegraph.co.uk reports it straight, no snarky adjectives like "remarkably," no "balancing" quotes from other religious figures, let alone politicians or spokesmen for gay rights who might presumably be offended. Contrast this to the way our press has jumped on preachers like Pat Robertson for making similar statements.

I'm not saying that natural disasters are divine retribution, although they could be. My point is the difference in press coverage. Amazing.

For a good article on the way the Labor government has failed to implement flood prevention in the areas now suffering, see this article. There are also links to photos and other coverage of the floods.

Liberals hate free speech when it's not their own

2007-06-30T01:49:00.000-04:00

The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio - A Joint Report by the Center for American Progress and Free Press

You may have read about this report by now - perhaps this CNS article; it was published last week. Intrigued, I actually slogged through the whole report, all 40 pages. It is, as one might expect, a skillful bit of propaganda dressed up with lot of statistical fluff - much of it incapable of proving the claims asserted.

The CNS story is right to connect the dots between this report and some other recent stories linking prominent Dems to a desire for tighter broadcast censorship - Sen. James Inhofe's (R-OK) recollection of a conversation overheard between Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senate majority leader Dick Durbin's (D-IL) support for a revival of the Fairness Doctrine, among others - and, not just Dems, even Sen. Trent Lott's (R-MS) complaint about talk radio running the Congress.

There is a hollow ring to statements in the report itself and by various authors and others speaking for its sponsors denying any such intent to support revival of the Fairness Doctrine if you read the report carefully.

"There are many potential explanations for why this gap exists. The two most frequently cited reasons are the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and simple consumer demand. As this report will detail, neither of these reasons adequately explains why conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves." [SOURCE: Center for American Progress]

But this assertion is undercut by two points.

First, the report uses phrases like "public trustee" and "public interest" - which they say the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not enforcing adequately - as code for the nanny state mindset they want to resurrect.

Second, the report actually states on page six:

First, from a regulatory perspective, the Fairness Doctrine was never formally repealed. The FCC did announce in 1987 that it would no longer enforce certain regulations under the umbrella of the Fairness Doctrine, and in 1989 a circuit court upheld the FCC decision. The Supreme Court, however, has never overruled the cases that authorized the FCC’s enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine. Many legal experts argue that the FCC has the authority to enforce it again—thus it technically would not be considered repealed. [Footnote numbers omitted]

I will pass over trying to condense the substance, such as it is, of the report which includes such astounding findings as that minority-owned stations are more likely to carry "progressive" talk shows.

What is not in the report is much more revealing - that old elephant in the parlor that no one talks about.

The most glaring lacuna is the treatment of audience ratings. There is some tabulated data on audience shares in the report, but not what one might expect. For example, Clear Channel, the 800 pound gorilla of the radio industry - and ownership concentration is the report's main complaint, offers both progressive and conservative talk show line-ups in some major markets. How do their ratings compare? The report is silent.

Looked at across all owners, several more of these markets offer both conservative and progressive talk line-ups. How do market shares (which dictate advertising rates) compare for the two types of programming, especially at equivalent times of day? Silence.

Another intriguing omission in the report is that it simply ignores the hours of programming for hosts that it deems not classifiable as either conservative or progressive. Do moderate opinions not count? Do they not serve the public interest? The report doesn't explain this adequately.

The report also omits the hours of progressive talk programming provided by National Public Radio (NPR) by omitting from its universe of data all non-commercial licensees.

The report's recommendations are predictable: a return to a three-year license renewal cycle (it is currently eight years), a significant reduction in the number of stations owned by one company in a single market, and a fee for licensees to pay to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to distribute to NPR if they are not sufficiently progressive.

What will shorter renewal cycles do except divert FCC staff from what the report claims is already inadequate oversight?

How will the authors view a greater divesity of station ownership when there are ten or twelve major players instead of the four cited in the report and none of them has a line-up like that of the late, unlamented Air America?

If they want more money for CPB to give to NPR, shouldn't the amount be set by congressional appropriations and not by subjective evaluations of FCC bureaucrats?

GW prof blowing a little sunshine up our what's-its on the immigration issue

2007-06-29T06:14:00.000-04:00

TCS Daily - How the Mexican Immigration Problem Will Solve Itself:

"There has been a stunning decline in the fertility rate in Mexico, which means that, in a few years there will not be many teenagers in Mexico looking for work in the United States or anywhere else. If this trend in the fertility rate continues, Mexico will resemble Japan and Italy - rapidly aging populations with too few young workers to support the economy."

He ought to know better, but Prof. Dunne - who teaches economics at George Washington University - manages to ignore the fact that what he sees as a looming labor shortage in both Mexico and the US will still come nowhere near to equalizing wages between the two countries. The US economy will still be a great magnet drawing immigrants to it for many years.

Compounding the problem is the fact that a real train wreck is coming in the form of the collapse of Mexico's status as a significant oil exporter. The loss of oil export revenues will severely curtail Mexican government spending on social services, health care and other programs that must expand to make staying in Mexico a more attractive proposition.

The second coming of the Napoleon of South America

2007-06-29T02:29:00.000-04:00

Chavez hints at nuclear future for Venezuela | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

"During his three-day visit to Russia, Mr Chavez is expected to buy more military hardware, including as many as five submarines."

Yet more evidence that the leader of what he himself calls the Bolivarian revolution is in deadly earnest. A country with little justification for a blue ocean surface navy is buying submarines and talking about building nuclear weapons.

Simon Bolivar - Chavez' inspiration - was a complicated man who began his career in public life as a fairly typical creole aristocrat revolutionary. During a sojourn in France he was briefly associated with Napoleon Bonaparte, although he later sided with Spanish legitimists against Napoleon's placing his brother on the throne of Spain.

In his early military campaigns back in South America, he claimed to be establishing a federation of republics more or less modeled on the US but progressed to the point of attempting to establish himself as dictator for life of a unitary republic of continental scale more on the order of Napoleon but without the imperial court trappings. His later battles were fought, not for independence from Spain, but to consolidate his personal power. He died en route to exile, of tuberculosis, at the age of 47.

It is the latter part of Bolivar's career - the part that came years after he was hailed as El Libertador, the part that alone would never have justified all those statues and memorials to him from Canada to Bolivia - that Chavez seeks to emulate. There is no Spanish empire to fight, and despite some of Chavez' more fanciful claims, no US empire frustrating the will of independent countries in Latin America. Yet, he needs the cloak of anti-Americanism to justify his growing dictatorship at home and his projection of power into other nations in the region. (See, for example, my recent post on Cuban and Venezuelan meddling in the internal affairs of Bolivia.)

Just as Napoleon turned from defender of republicanism in France to imperial despotism, so Bolivar turned from democrat to dictator. And, as Hitler was the bastard offspring of Napoleon in his vision of a continental empire, so Chavez is Bolivar's.

Make no mistake, the formation of the Havana-Caracas axis should be treated as seriously as the Rome-Berlin axis that led to World War Two.

The media magnate the establishment loves to hate

2007-06-29T01:07:00.000-04:00

Exclusive: Rupert Murdoch Speaks - TIME:

"Murdoch has invested billions in newspapers when few others were willing, but he has also kept them alive through a lowest-common denominator approach typified by the trashy Sun, with its topless Page 3 girls on the breakfast tables of a million Britons. Murdoch wouldn't be Murdoch if he didn't love sticking it to sanctimonious J-school toffs. 'When the Journal gets its Page 3 girls,' he jokes late one night, 'we'll make sure they have M.B.A.s.'"

An excellent assessment of Rupert Murdoch emphasizing not only his recent battle for control of the Wall Street Journal but how it fits into his long-term internet-based interests. Read it.

Crisis in Iran deepens

2007-06-29T00:15:00.000-04:00

Unrest grows amid gas rationing in Iran - Print Version - International Herald Tribune:

"'Iran is in a bind,' said Vera de Ladoucette, an energy analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Paris. 'They have acted too late and too harshly.'

"According to de Ladoucette, Iran is also seeking to increase its gasoline production and has outlined plans to spend $18 billion by 2012 to increase its refining capacity by 1.5 million barrels a day from about 1.6 million. The government's plan is to build four refineries and expand older ones. But, she added, it is unlikely to achieve that goal by 2012. 'The problem will be financing all this,' she said."

No wonder Iran has trouble financing refinery expansion. For years they have been selling gasoline at prices not seen here since the 1970s while buying it from refineries in 16 other countries for a wholesale price that is now about $2 per gallon.

The parlous condition of Iran's government is illustrated by a passing mention in the article that the gasoline rationing scheme is hitting hard at lower paid government employees who moonlight using their personal vehicles as taxicabs.

All this pain appears to be a calculated effort to get the citizenry prepared for real suffering if and when the UN security council gets around to actually imposing economic sanctions to retaliate for Iran's nuclear weapons program.

In World War Two in this country, rationing helped to bind the folks on the homefront to the vigorous prosecution of the government's war policy. In Iran, it seems to be having the opposite effect - riots, arson, and angry editorials even though news media have been ordered not to report on the extent of the popular reaction against the rationing effort.

Lead and anti-freeze join Chicom poisoning of America

2007-06-28T23:05:00.000-04:00

My Way News - US: Chinese Seafood Detained for Safety:

"'In order to get cancer in lab animals you have to feed fairly high levels of the drug over a long term,' said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection. 'We're talking not days, weeks, not even months but years. At these levels you might not reach that level, but we don't want to take a chance.'"

Melamine poisoning of pet food from Red China was only the tip of the iceberg. Despite protestations from the Chinese commerce ministry, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the perpetrators have assurance their government will not prosecute them for adulterated products exported to the West.

Long-term, low-level exposure of target populations could be a stealth warfare strategy. As the examples accumulate, the odds that this is just a string of unfortunate, but unconnected, examples of sloth or greed diminish. Somewhat ironically, China's best argument for the latter, an argument they are unlikely to offer publicly, is that the shortcomings of their legal system encourage such corner-cutting - where is China's equivalent of John Edwards when you need to file a product liability suit there?

The hidden element of the immigration debate

2007-06-27T19:49:00.000-04:00

"Honduras today survives on remittances, but mass migration also causes enormous damage," said Julio Velásquez, an official of the Honduran National Human Rights Commission. "Those who manage to reach the U.S. can lift their families a little out of poverty, but often the families fall apart and the kids end up in gangs or on drugs. We need to create the conditions so people don't need to leave, instead of thinking of migration as something to admire."

Broken families - this is the hidden element of the immigration debate. And it is a problem which will not improve much, if at all, by passage of the type of expanded guest worker program that is so dear to El Presidente Arbusto and all the liberals in the Congress.

The immigration "reform" bill currently in the Senate, the last I heard anyway, wants to double the H1 visa quotas (there are separate quotas for professionals and seasonal or temporary workers) to something over 300,000 per hear. No one talks about the damage such long separations do to the families involved, at least not yet. Watch for this issue to surface after the amnesty and expanded guest worker programs become law. This will be a powerful emotional argument for expanding family unification, thereby admitting even more people who will strain the social safety net.

There is a misconception that temporary guest workers are concentrated in seasonal occupations in fields like agriculture and construction. Some do, but many do not. Moreover, construction is a year-round business even here in Pennsylvania where the only segment of the business that shuts down altogether in winter is highway construction and maintenance. In some of the more southerly parts of the country even a lot of agricultural employment is year-round. Here in southeastern Pennsylvania, mushroom growing, which is done indoors, is an intermittent but year-round employer of large numbers of foreign, largely illegal, labor. A producer of sod in the deep south lobbying for easier access to foreign seasonal labor complained last year that he hade trouble recruiting local labor because his farm needed workers only 11 months out of the year.

And, the guest worker programs on the books and in the bill are not seasonal. They admit workers for about two years straight then send them home - in theory. Of course, those who go home can re-apply and many do, often requested by their prior employer to return to the same job if their work was satisfactory. This compounds the negative effects on children growing up without fathers in their home countries.

Money sent directly to Honduran families from relatives working in the United States, both legally and illegally, provides nearly one-third of the national income -- $1.8 billion in 2005, $2.3 billion last year.

The same is true for other countries in the region. For Mexico, with it's vastly larger number of workers (mostly illegal) in the US, the value of remittances is much larger. Throw in the billions we spend on food stamps and other subsidies for Puerto Rico and the cost of US dollar support of the region is staggering.

Ten percent is the usual figure cited for the proportion of the combined populations of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean islands already in the US. Here is the Honduran situation in a nutshell (all from this Washington Post article):
Population - about 7.5 million
Attempting US border crossing - 90,000 per year
Number deported from US - about 14,000 so far in 2007, up from 18,941 for the entire year of 2005

Fragmenting the community of scholars

2007-06-16T04:25:00.000-04:00

Let the Segregation Commence by John Leo:

"But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive."

Institutional racism, in my long ago student days, was the idea that universities and other institutions ignored minorities and their special needs or desires. Things have now flipped 180 degrees/ John Leo notes that UCLA now offers, in addition to the mass graduation ceremony for all student, so many special ceremonies for various ethnicities, orientations and niche subject matter that avoiding schedule conflicts is difficult. One could hardly argue with Leo's conclusion:

As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal.

Chicoms arming insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq

2007-06-15T18:26:00.000-04:00

Inside the Ring�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper:

"Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms."

Weapons from Red China also go by air to Iran for infiltration into Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is also, of course, the principal patron of Hamas which has just consolidated its hold on Gaza by defeating Fatah in a short civil war.

Bush, like Clinton, refuses to take any action that might irritate the Chinese Communists. Commercial ties and pretended cooperation in the GWOT seem to be more important than the well-being of our and our allies' troops or the long-suffering civilian populations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

ChiCom cooperation against terror has been a one-way street anyway, putting the US on the wrong side of the Uighur separatist movement in Xinjiang. The Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnic minority in China have long chafed at being a subject people of the Han-dominated Chinese empire.

25th anniversary of Argentine surrender to be observed tomorrow, June 14, in Stanley

2007-06-13T02:20:00.000-04:00

Minister: UK would defend Falklands - Yahoo! News UK:

"... despite renewed noises from Buenos Aires pressing Argentina's claim and 'diplomatic and economic pressure' on the British Overseas Territory, there was 'no prospect' of a repeat of the 1982 conflict."

UK dignitaries arrive in Stanley for celebration of British victory in the 1982 Falklands War. US support of Britain at that time did much to cement the close working relationship between then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher and president Ronald Reagan.

Stanley has become a tourism mecca as a popular stopover for cruise ships in the South Atlantic providing an alternative to sheep herding for the local economy

And now for something entirely different

2007-06-13T01:59:00.000-04:00

India "bigfoot" sightings prompt official probe - Yahoo! News UK:

"One local farmer, 40-year-old Wallen Sangma, said he had seen an entire family of the creatures -- possibly a lowland relative of the Himalayan Yeti, or a cousin of the North American bigfoot and Sasquatch, or Australia's Yowie."

Nigeria to increase LNG exports ... maybe

2007-06-13T01:49:00.000-04:00

THISDAY ONLINE:

"The award of the engineering and procurement contract to a privately owned US company (Bechtel) last week, the report said, indicates that the Brass LNG project would definitely go ahead despite the challenges."

Before you call your broker, keep in mind that ongoing attacks on petroleum facilities and kidnappings of personnel in Bayelsa state, site of the proposed project, have already pushed off a decision on financing construction from last fall to perhaps next winter.

It isn't just in the Middle East where violence and political instability contribute to problems with meeting the world's growing demand for petroleum.

Rocky record on human rights in India

2007-06-13T01:12:00.000-04:00

Probe ordered against Pune orphanage-India-The Times of India:

"Indian children are 'popular' for inter-country adoption. The US tops the list of overseas adoptions from India with 945 Indian children having found homes in that country over the past three years.

Italy comes next with 419 Indian children being adopted in the past three years. Spain follows with 301 adoptions and Denmark with 194."

This story, which also reports that a documentary film aired on Indian television this week shows an orphanage director in Pune quoting a price of $7,000 for an orphan, appeared on the same day as the announcement that India for the fourth straight year had been placed on the US State Department's watch list for human trafficking.

Inflation comes to China

2007-06-08T13:22:00.000-04:00

Rise in China’s Pork Prices Signals End to Cheap Output - New York Times:

"Business executives say that with wages rising 10 percent or more a year in many Chinese cities, the country’s days are numbered as the world’s lowest-cost producer of many cheap labor-intensive products, like toys and shoes."

A crisis in China as pork prices rise might sound a bit over the top from our perspective, but pork accounts for a significant part of the protein in the diets of Chinese, especially the poor, in a nation which consumes over three ounces of pork daily for every man, woman and child - over 90 billion pounds.

As dire as the situation is now, the government is still hesitating to release supplies of pampered pigs from the subsidized strategic pork reserves.

The commerce ministry keeps a national reserve of frozen pork and live pigs, and local governments keep their own reserves as well, constantly selling older supplies and procuring fresh stock. Government agencies pay a pig subsidy to farmers to keep their animals in the program.

“The sties are very roomy, there is heat in the winter and fans in the summer,” the television program said, describing conditions very different from those endured by many other pigs in China, including those here in Gaoyao, 50 miles west of Guangzhou.

I can understand the dilemma facing the Chinese government. Long ago I did an analysis of a proposed anthracite coal stockpile for the US government. Forcing prices lower now will discourage producers from making the investments needed to create greater supplies in future. On the other hand, continuing high prices may undermine public health and contribute to social unrest in the short run.

The NYTimes article makes the point of comparing the Chinese pork reserves to our own Strategic Petroleum reserve but misses the parallel between the way Chinese media hint that pork producers are to blame for rising prices while our own media make similar claims about the oil companies. Yet, in both situations, it is clear that demand is outrunning supply and costs are also rising for wages and raw materials.

Demographic shift udermining British identity

2007-06-08T12:19:00.000-04:00

Rising immigration fuels 26-year fertility high | Uk News | News | Telegraph :

"As Britain's demographics change, Mohammed is expected soon to replace Jack as the most popular boy's name. It has already pushed Thomas into third place."

Immigration has profoundly altered Britain in the past - and not always in a good way. What will be the impact of changes currently under way?

Ancient Celtic Britain was altered by the Roman conquests which began with Julius Caesar in the mid-first century BC and went on for a few centuries. Piecemeal integration of a large portion of the island into the Roman Empire had profound impacts on commerce, architecture, public works, social organization, and religion. While the Romans brought their pagan gods and goddesses with them, it is also possible that Britain's inclusion in the empire may have facilitated the extension of Christianity into the island beginning in the first century AD.

As the Roman empire began to collapse in upon itself, the legions left and so did their brand of pagan religion, but another sort of paganism arrived with the Jutes, Angles and Saxons which proved even more hostile to Christianity driving most of the bishops and clergy into Wales. This created the opening for Roman Catholic influence which arrived with Augustine in 597.

Raids and limited conquests, mostly in the north and east, from Scandinavians had limited direct impact but helped to weaken the island's defences in the face of its greatest challenge since Roman times. In 1066, King Harold Godwinson had to fight off another invasion from the Scandinavians and immediately turn his forces south to face Duke Willliam of Normandy in the decisive battle at Senlac.

The Norman conquest not only upset old social and political structures and revolutionized the language, it also buttressed the influence of Rome in religion. As the Normans extended and consolidated their rule over most of what is now England, Wales and Ireland, the Christian churches were united under the tutelage of Rome in the 14th century. a situation that would last for two centuries and play a major role in later upheavals both social and political.

What can we expect of the accelerating changes in Britain that trace back to the end of empire following WW2? A part of the current situation traces to the conversion of the old empire into the commonwealth. The wholesale granting of British passports to former colonials had the effect of greatly increasing immigration, especially non-white immigration, by people seeking better economic opportunities and/or fleeing political and social chaos in their newly-independent countries.

The race riots that once plagued places like Brixton have largely abated, but a new, and less tractable, problem than race relations has arisen. As the Muslim component of immigration has increased, there have been increasing calls for Britons to allow for the parallel functioning of Sharia law as an interim measure until Britain becomes part of Dar al Islam. This is a challenge facing much of Europe including France, Germany and the Low Countries. In the case of the UK it is exacerbated by the large number of Hindus living there with their traditional rivalry with Islam fed by continuing conflict between India and Pakistan and periodic outbreaks of inter-communal conflict within India.

An almost unreported crisis in Brazilian law enforcement

2007-06-08T03:25:00.000-04:00

Brazil Has Two Polices: One Shines, the Other Puts the Country to Shame:

"... the best story is that PF-2 wants nothing to do with the other Police, the PF-1 - the one with the strikes, the airport lines, all those police stations, the 40-day wait to get a passport, all those inquests wandering like moribund zombies without an end in sight ..."

An interesting commentary on the curious situation in Brazil of a portion of the Federal Police (PF-2 in the author's terminology) which operates independently of the main body of the PF (which he calls PF-1). The author's gripe is that it is this PF-2 that operates efficiently and has cracked several major cases recently, yet the press reports generally credit the PF generally without acknowledging that this force-within-the-force exists even though it operates with distinct personnel and from different office locations than PF-1,

Costa Rica drops diplomatic ties with the Republic of China

2007-06-08T02:54:00.000-04:00

Mercopress:

"Central America in particular has been a bulwark of support for Taiwan, and Taiwan had expressed fears that if Costa Rica were to shift its recognition to Beijing, other nations such as Nicaragua and Panama could soon follow suit."

Forty years ago, the Republic of China had diplomatic recognition from nearly seventy nations, now it is down to two dozen and the withdrawal by Costa Rica seriously questions how long the quarter of them in Latin America will continue to recognize that nation.

The usual suspects gather in Havana

2007-06-08T02:34:00.000-04:00

granma.cu -Chavez calls for expanding ALBA throughout Latin America :

"The president gave the closing remarks at the first meeting here of the Council of Ministers of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). The council was created a month ago at the 5th ALBA Summit, a process formed by Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua."

Fidel, Daniel, Hugo and Evo (Granma routinely refers to political leaders by their first names, so consider this a nod to the customs of the source of this story) have held the first ministerial conference of their fledgling organization. Note that one of their stated goals is to withdraw from the Inter-American Defense Board and set up their own joint military and intelligence agencies. Can you guess who the enemy is?

Self-criticism - just like the "good old days" in Stalin's Russia

2007-06-06T18:01:00.000-04:00

NASA chief regrets remarks on global warming - Climate Change - MSNBC.com :

"NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that “unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it.”"

The groveling in front of one's peers, the confession of crimes that are not crimes, the exaggeration of one's offenses, the apologies to those who have not deviated from the "party line" - all this has more than a whiff of the old-style Communist self-criticism sessions. But what was NASA administrator Griffin's offense?

“I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin said on NPR. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

That's it? There is a warming trend, but it might not mean the end of the world as we know it. Compare this to some rather candid comments from the alarmists about the need for their rhetoric to punch above the weight class of their evidence. Seems to me the apologies ought to be demanded of the other side.

The strange contradictions of Islamic law in UAE

2007-06-04T02:17:00.000-04:00

Aussie businessmen set to face UAE court - Breaking News - National - Breaking News:

"'The most interesting charge that we find the gentlemen are facing is drinking alcohol on a flight as non-Muslims without a permit,' Mr Mulcahy told AAP from Abu Dhabi.

'I'd be very concerned if I was flying Etihad at this point in time as a passenger if you did have your ticket booked that you had your alcohol drinking permit.'"

The three Australian businessmen were arrested as they got off a scheduled flight of Etihad, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates.

The airline, it seems, is quite willing to serve alcohol to infidels in flight, but not warn them of the need for a permit to consume it.

Champagne
If you have a reason to celebrate on board an Etihad flight (birthdays, honeymoon, anniversaries, etc) a bottle of champagne can be made available for the occasion.

The only other reference to alcohol I found on the Etihad website was this item in the list of things not to include in your baggage: "Flammable liquid fuel such as petrol/ gasoline, diesel, lighter fluid, alcohol, ethanol." The site does not include a search feature.

And this is an airline that serves such hard-drinking cities as Sydney, Munich, Paris, Dublin and New York. You would think they would offer warnings about alcohol to their customers. The website helpfully offers special meals for Hindus, Jains, various sorts of vegetarians and others on special diets (that's all on the page where I lifted the quote about Champagne) but no word I could find about alcohol consumption permits for non-Muslim customers.

Parties change, but Italian malaise continues

2007-06-03T23:36:00.000-04:00

Corriere.it:

"Criticism of the government targets all areas of activity, to a greater or lesser extent. Three sectors do, however, come in for special censure: tax policies, pensions and justice."

One year after a switch in the national leadership to the Center-Left, Romano Prodi's government is no more popular than his predecessor Silvio Belusconi of the Center-Right was at the one year mark of his administration. The disaffection crosses party lines, however, and the recent municipal and provincial elections produced few significant shifts in partisan alignment.

“For fifteen years, Italy has been hostage to a transition that shows no signs of ending. For fifteen years, the country has been seeking a way out of the political crisis into which it has sunk”. But [outgoing head of the Confindustria business association] Luca Cordero di Montezemolo sees no signs of a much-needed change.

Three thousand assembled business and political leaders cheered Montezemolo's remarks which included such gems as: "The real Italy is better that some politicians think it is." Politics, he said, should no longer be “Italy’s leading industry with 180,000 elected representatives, more than France, the United Kingdom and Spain put together, for a total cost of four billion euros." Montezemolo also called for an end to political leaders “bobbing on the water waiting for the next elections” and spoke of the “duty to build today the country of tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, as if to illustrate Montezemolo's point, we read of the landfill crisis in Naples where the local authorities have let their municipal landfill reach the point where it must be closed without finding a suitable substitute. The result is 15,000 tons of trash piling up on the region's streets and angry residents setting fire to the rubbish piles while others engage in protest marches to express opposition to each of several replacement landfill sites. This is not the sort of crisis that occurs overnight. The paralysis of politics in Italy could not be demonstrated more starkly.

Who shares your views?

2007-06-03T15:59:00.000-04:00

Issues2000.org - VoteMatch Quizzes :

"The OnTheIssues.org quizzes are now operational for the 2008 Presidential race. Please try out our older quizzes ..."

You can have some fun with this site's political questionnaires. Fill one out and have your views compared to the major and minor parties, 2008 candidates (Democrat and Republican) or a list of political leaders.

My responses vs. the parties were not too surprising: Constitution 60%, Republican (where I have been most of my life) 55%, and Libertarian (where I was briefly in the 70s) 35%. Ranging from 25% down to 10% were, in order, Democrat, Natural Law, Socialist, and Green.

For those who insist, in George Wallace's famous phrase, that "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the major parties," this could be an eye opener.

Among their list of "political leaders," my responses were a 63% match to Pat Buchanan, 60% to Alan Keyes, 53% to Steve Forbes, and 50% to both John Ashcroft and (surprise!) George W. Bush. At the bottom of the list (all under 20%) were Hillary Clinton, Jesse Ventura, and Bill Clinton.

This exercise has its limits, though. Among the 2008 candidates, my closest match was Duncan Hunter who is my fourth choice at this stage while my favorite, Jim Gilmore, ranked fourth in matching my views.

The price of biofuels isn't paid only at the pump

2007-06-03T00:53:00.000-04:00

Food prices rise as more crops go into producing biofuels | The Japan Times Online:

"Many countries, including Japan, see biofuel, mainly ethanol, as an eco-friendly replacement for petroleum, but experts doubt it can be a sustainable alternative energy resource."

Hold the mayo! That seems to be one result of the push for biofuels in Japan. A leading producer of that critical condiment is raising prices by ten percent in response to higher raw matierial prices linked to the competition between biofuel and food production.

This will mostly pass under the radar, but look carefully and you will see other examples of this phenomenon; and not just in Japan, but around the world.

Colombia's unhelpful economic policies

2007-06-03T00:32:00.000-04:00

Latin Business Chronicle:

"... the country does not generate sufficient export earnings to cover the costs of its imports, and it constantly reports a trade deficit. Colombia, for example, posted a trade deficit of $272 million in March; meanwhile, most of its peers were reporting huge trade surpluses."

The elephant in the parlor is never mentioned. In this case, of course, I mean the huge trade surplus from the illegal narcotics trade which escapes the official statistics.

This omission is doubly curious here since one of the reasons the US government has helped Colombia to keep a foothold in the US textile and apparel market is the War on Drugs.

Chavez and Castro: the Bolivarian Revolution in action in Bolivia

2007-06-03T00:22:00.000-04:00

Latin Business Chronicle:

"Nowadays, seeing Venezuelan helicopters flying around Bolivian skies, or seeing the Venezuelan ambassador and his Cuban colleague actively taking part in official events is not surprising at all. However, these are unprecedented facts in Bolivian history and verify the intrusion of Venezuela and Cuba in the internal affairs of the country."

The old Cold War pattern repeats itself. Cuban, and now Venezuelan, "advisors" nosing about in the internal affairs of another once-sovereign nation. An interesting report by a former Bolivian legislator.

Puzzling assertion by leading Venezuealan media analyst

2007-05-29T23:04:00.000-04:00

Chavez Defends Decision on TV Station:

"Information Minister Willian Lara on Monday accused Globovision of encouraging an attempt on Chavez's life by broadcasting the chorus of a salsa tune—'Have faith, this doesn't end here'—along with footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square."

I have no idea how one can interpret this as an incitement to assassinate president Chavez, although I have no doubt that many Venezuelans might welcome such an act and some of them might even work for Globovision. Nor can I find any further elucidation. Even the MercoPress independent news agency in Montevideo, Uruguay had nothing to offer on this beyond the short shrift given in the AP story, although another blogger on blogspot.com did offer that the song in question was sung by Ruben Blades.

Whither Turkey? Parliamentary election coming July 22

2007-05-29T01:19:00.000-04:00

Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Turkey at the crossroads:

"At a time when there still has been no concerted attempt to solve the Kurdish problem, the country cannot afford another deep division in society. But at the moment the JDP and the secularists who have been taking to the streets appear to be moving further apart, not coming together."

In what could be a major watershed election on July 22, Turkish voters must decide whether they will continue to have a secular republic or slide further into the abyss of Islamic extremism.

Turkey has a very awkward electoral system based on proportional representation but requiring a party to get a minimum of ten percent of the vote to gain any representation. So many small parties were represented in the 2002 vote that only two parties crossed the threshhold and the Justice and Development Party (JDP), the Islamist party, walked off with a two-thirds majority despite getting only one-third of the votes.

This election may be much different as center-left and center-right parties are forming mergers and pro-secular demonstrations have attracted large numbers of persons. The problem is that the JDP will likely still be the largest party and may well get a majority in the parliament without a majority of the vote and still claim a mandate for its anti-secular policies.

This, in turn, could lead the military to reassert its traditional role as the last line of defense of the pro-secular Turkish constitution. Either military intervention or a retreat from secularism could have serious repercussions for Turkey's long-delayed bid to join the EU.

Some things in India are slow to change

2007-05-29T00:31:00.000-04:00

Thousands embrace Buddhism-India-The Times of India:

"MUMBAI: In a hugely symbolic gesture that may have a long-term effect on state and national politics, thousands of tribals and Dalits converted to Buddhism at a massive gathering here on Sunday, marking the 50th year of Dr B R Ambedkar's conversion to the religion to escape the rigid Hindu caste system.

"Though the number of people present at Mahalaxmi Race Course was a little less than the expected figure of 100,000, it was definitely one of the biggest mass conversions in modern Indian history."

Despite all the signs of material progress, some parts of Indian culture have been very slow to change. Dalits (untouchables) and tribal peoples are still at a great disdavantage socially, economically and politically vis-a-vis higher caste Hindus. The ascendance of militant Hinduism in Indian politics has exacerbated those problems.

It isn't just Muslim-Hindu tensions that tear at the fabric of Indian society. There is also a lot of hostility toward Christians - both native born believers and foreign missionaries.

The Dalits and tribals who converted to Buddhism in this mass ceremony - approximately 50,000 of them - are said to be doing so in part to exempt themselves from the Hindu caste system.

Expedia.com survey rates tourists

2007-05-28T23:44:00.000-04:00

Indian tourist most impolite: Survey-India-The Times of India:

"Trailing India in the league of terrible tourists are the Chinese followed by the Russians and Brits, according to the latest survey by travel website Expedia. The Japanese were voted the world's best tourists, followed by the Americans and the Swiss."

The French enjoy a hard-won reputation as being among the rudest people to travel among. Now a survey of hotel managers by Expedia.com reports that they rate as the most obnoxious when they are the doing the traveling. Despite the "Ugly American" image of so many American tourists in the movies, even our own movies, we Americans managed to place second in the nice tourists rankings behind the Japanese and ahead of the Swiss.

One might wonder that the Indians were sufficiently numerous to show up in the survey. But the Indian economic boom of recent years has been marked by a great increase in foreign travel. I suspect that, in addition to rising wages, there is some impact here of what economists call the "wealth effect" - the value of publicly traded shares on the BSE now exceeds one trillion US dollars. BTW, an ad on the Times of India site gives a price of only $579 for a flight from Delhi to New York City.

Particularly galling to their French hosts must be the Indian penchant for package tours to bring along their own chefs to supply the tourists with a steady diet of home cooking. I just don't see the point; sampling local foods has to be one of the great pleasures of travel right along with getting to know something of other cultures' art, architecture and music.

Chalk up a win for the distaff side

2007-05-28T01:57:00.000-04:00

Vodka knocks out Derby competition | The Japan Times Online:

"Disbelief and awe swept over the crowd as Vodka pulled out with 400 meters to go, swept forward and powered decidedly into the lead with a dozen strides left to the finish. The rest of the 18-strong field appeared to have lost its equilibrium as the daughter of 2002 Derby winner Tanino Gimlet went unchallenged to the line."

For the first time in 64 years, a filly has won the Nippon Derby. And, not just won it, Vodka finished three lengths ahead of Asakusa Kings which had led the field from the gate. This race was run at a distance of 2400 meters (almost a mile and half) in 2:24.5.

Playing hardball in South Africa

2007-05-28T01:22:00.000-04:00

The great Zuma funding mystery : Mail & Guardian Online :

"The Sunday Independent said that an explosive 'top secret' report, titled Special Browse 'Mole' Consolidated Report, alleges that Zuma was bankrolled by Libyan and Angolan leaders to topple President Thabo Mbeki."

"Politics," said Mr. Dooley over a hundred years ago, "ain't beanbag." And, that's still true today. But the latest political news from South Africa has a delicious touch of irony.

The deputy president of the African National Congress is counting on South African law enforcement agencies to get to the bottom of smear campaign which seems designed to derail his bid to oust South African president Thabo Mbeki from the leadership of their party later this year.

Meanwhile, police have determined that a claim by Mr. Zuma's supporters that a former member of the South African Defense Forces had been offered a million Rand to assassinate him was a hoax designed to gain sympathy for his candidacy. Police have a beach bum in custody who posed as the assassin and have raided the home of a member of Mr. Zuma's inner circle in pursuit of evidence as to the origins of the "plot."

Gee! I thought the 60 Minutes flap over Bush's national guard records was a bit juvenile, but that pales in comparison to this nonsense coming from what is supposed to be the most advanced nation on the African continent.

Radical islamism: 'eaarly detection,' specialized services' new tool'

2007-05-28T00:49:00.000-04:00

Radical islamism: 'early detection, 'specialized services' new tool:

"According to the DST chief, 'families, teachers, social workers, and sports coaches must be made more aware in order to identify youngsters who become introverted, develop an aggressive rhetoric on religion, or criticize their parents for frequenting cafes... The aim of the operation is not to include these youngsters on any file, but to engage in dialogue and to help them before it is too late.'"

A report on the French contribution to the G6 interior ministers' conference on dealing with the terror threat. An attempt to forge a pro-active strategy runs some risks, but so does waiting for the bombs to go off in Paris. One wonders whether a strategy of getting parents to notify police that their sons have suddenly become religious is going to work. Still, the French are serious about this and it's worth thinking about.

Le Figaro editorial sees prominent role for France in search for peace in Mideast

2007-05-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

France gaining new scope in Middle East:

"Paris enjoys two major assets in the region, one of them old, the other new. The former is the fact that France had the wisdom and courage, from September 2002 through March 2003, to do its utmost to try to prevent the disastrous Anglo-US military venture in Iraq. Its undiminished credibility makes France the Western power best placed to perform an honest broker role in all the Middle Eastern crises.

"However paradoxical it may seem, its second asset is the esteem enjoyed by both Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner in the United States. This, because, though the United States' influence has diminished greatly in the region from the days of the Clinton administration, none of the crises can be resolved in the long term without Washington's endorsement."

While I am always a bit skeptical about grand plans to settle the seemingly intractable quarrels of that ill-starred region, the editorial makes a good case for its outlines of a settlement on two key issues, Iran's nuclear power needs and Israel's security needs. It's worth a read.

Global warming hysteria penalizes developing nations

2007-05-27T02:22:00.000-04:00

.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.:

"But the most verifiable threat to the recreation and travel industry is the unintended consequences of misguided government policy and environmental activists. The chilling effect of guilt that the climate alarmists are attempting to instill in Americans for owning four wheel drive vehicles, flying in an airplane and enjoying travel is enough to harm the industry."

So said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK), ranking minority member at a recent hearing of the environment and public works committee on global warming in relation to the recreation industry. He pointed out that global warming alarmists are attacking not just Americans driving SUVs and RVs, but air travel, even that for very trendy eco-tourism.

Eco-tourism is a significant part of the tourist industry for many poor nations that depend heavily on tourism to earn hard currencies. As. Sen Inhofe mentioned, one such nation is Kenya where tourism is the leading foreign exchange earning industry. And, Kenya's second largest source of foreign exchange - horticulture exports to Europe - has now been hit by the announcement of UK supermarket chain Tesco that it will reduce its offerings of air freighted products by half.

I'll stick to butterflies

2007-05-27T01:52:00.000-04:00

Photographer Mauled by Yellowstone Bear:

"YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - A man whose face was severely mauled by a grizzly in Yellowstone National Park is a photographer and author of books about grizzlies who also had been attacked in 1993."

I wish Jim Cole, author of Lives of Grizzlies: Montana and Wyoming and Lives of Grizzlies: Alaska, a full and speedy recovery from this unfortunate attack.

I don't expect that my photos will ever apppear in books or make me any money like this other 57-year old nature photographer. But at least my butterflies and other subjects won't litterally rip my face off if I encounter them in a bad mood.

I do, however, have a Power Point (TM) presentation in the works featuring my own photos of butterlies in northeastern Berks County. Some of my other photos are available on my photo blog - Keen's Photos.

Chavez muzzles opposition voices in media

2007-05-27T01:14:00.000-04:00

Venezuelans march against closure of TV station | International | Reuters :

"For years, Venezuela's television stations were virulently anti-Chavez and openly supported the 2002 putsch that briefly ousted him. But more recently the media have slowly started falling in line with the increasingly powerful government."

In a move condemned by a resolution in the US Senate, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has ended the 53-year existence of RCTV in Caracas. He has also threatened to pull the license of Globovision which was attacked by his thugs recently.

Don't look for any criticism from the American (or, should I say, anti-American) left in this country. Chavez is a hero of the left because he constantly attacks George Bush. The fact that he is a thug with utter contempt for civil liberties like his friend and mentor Fidel Castro seems to make no impression.

Bush gets the hatchet job from the most high profile show on CBS and takes it in stride. Yet he is denounced by those who claim to be interested in free speech. Chavez closes TV stations and the same crowd shows their commitment to free speech by freely refraining from speaking out against the suppression of dissent in Venezuela, Cuba and other repressive leftist regimes.

Too Much Monkey Business

2007-05-26T11:56:00.000-04:00

Suit Sheds Light on Clintons’ Ties to a Benefactor - New York Times:

"“When the C.E.O. of a publicly traded company can say with a straight face that the shareholders benefit from having a yacht with an all-female crew stationed in the Virgin Islands, then you’ve got a problem,” Mr. [Herbert A.] Denton [president of a New York hedge fund that invested in the company] said."

A shareholder lawsuit brought by two Connecticut hedge funds - Dolphin Limited Partnership and Cardinal Capital Management - has brought into question the profligate spending of corporate funds by InfoUSA's founder and CEO Vinod Gupta. Among the specific complaints made by Dolphin and Cardinal in their suit are numerous questionable trips made by the company's jet in support of former president Bill Clinton in his hectic schedule of lucrative public appearances, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) on the presidential campaign trail, and both Clinton's on vacation in Acapulco with Mr. Gupta. All this in addition to extremely well-paid consulting contracts for Bill Clinton.

No word in the article on whether Bill or Hillary has spent any time on that yacht with the all-girl crew, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. In any event, it might help explain why Bill and Vinod are so sympatico. Even onetime Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), of Monkey Business fame, didn't have an all girl crew for his seagoing antics in the Caribbean, although he did have a companion named Donna Rice who was all girl if the photos are anything to go by.

It makes you proud to be an American

2007-05-26T08:51:00.000-04:00

Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than 'Hogzilla':

"Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot."

Not quite as good as the legend of Davy Crockett (guys my age will remember the TV show theme song "killed him a bar [bear] when he was only three"), but still an inspiring performance. In fact, this hog was bigger - a whole lot bigger - than our black bears in the eastern US.

My hat's off to this young man from Alabama. The biggest revolver I've ever fired was a .357 Magnum and that's enough punishment for a grown man's hand. I don't even want to think about the pounding young Jamison Stone's hand has taken to develop proficiency with a .50 calibre.

And not only an accomplished hunter, this eleven-year old just finished sixth grade as an honor roll student at Christian Heritage Academy.

A crisis more dire than oil supply

2007-05-18T06:28:00.000-04:00

Hi-tech bid to boost desalination - National - theage.com.au:

"This week the West Australian Government announced it is to build a second desalination plant. The $400 million existing plant, which began operating last month, now provides about 17 per cent of Perth's drinking water."

This is the shape of the world to come. There are substitutes for oil (nuclear, coal, etc.), but there is no substitute for water. When water runs out, so does life.
The Age of Melbourne reports that Aussie scientists are hopeful that in a few years they might be able to cut the energy costs of operating desalination plants by half. Let us all hope they succeed.

We might need that technology soon for Los Angeles. Already the US and Mexico are at loggerheads because the US is exceeding treaty quotas for withdrawals of water from the Colorado watershed for diversion to southern California and Mexico retaliates by overdrawing from the Rio Grande hurting farmers in Texas.

Pigeons and pie crusts make strolling St. Mark's Square less pleasant

2007-05-18T05:54:00.000-04:00

Corriere.it:

"Now, new rules will apply preventive and repressive measures with an iron hand.To begin with, guards will be hired to patrol the St Mark’s area.They will form emergency “decency patrols” with the task of reprimanding disrespectful or delinquent tourists."

If it would do any good, I'd suggest to the authorities in Venice that, rather than banning the sale of take-out food in the St. Mark's area, it might make more sense to tax the businesses in the area a bit more heavily in order to pay for more refuse bins, street sweepers and special officers. This sort of arrangement works reasonably well in many jurisdictions here in the US.

Of course, it is always harder to do anything sensible in Europe. The article linked here mentions that tourists feeding the pigeons is a problem and the city is trying to figure what sort of alternative employment to offer to the birdseed sellers if they decide to outlaw the sale of birdseed.

I am also mystified by this statement in the Corriere della Sera article:

"The cash-strapped Venice local authority has too few municipal police officers (“We need 6,500 and we’ve got 450”, says Mr Salvadori)."

The population of Venice is comparable to that of Lexington, Kentucky and the latter manages to get along with about 550 officers. No doubt the need for a large marine division, the difficulty of responding quickly across scattered islands and the large numbers of tourists justify higher staffing levels, but 6,500 officers seems excessive. New York City (30 times the population of Venice) is mostly surrounded by water and has a huge daily influx of commuters and tourists, yet it gets by with 35 to 40 thousand officers.

DING !

2007-05-18T04:03:00.000-04:00

FOXNews.com - Pop Tarts: Did Angelina Jolie Give Lap Dance to Ex? - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

I have lately noticed a glaring lacuna in my commentaries. I have never written anything about the three most important topics in American life. I am speaking, of course, about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

That "DING!" was the the sound of the toaster serving up our three hot, steaming, sticky pop tart tales this week.

Who says rehab doesn't work? Britney Spears, fresh from a stay in rehab, was observed celebrating her return to the real world at a party at an LA night spot called Teddy's. It has been reported that she was consuming what Rush Limbaugh refers to as "adult beverages." And, that she discarded her outer garments and frolicked in her underwear while her bodyguards attempted to block the view of other patrons of the club. You might ask, how does this prove the efficacy of rehab? Answer: Before rehab, she wasn't wearing underwear. I call that progress.

Jail is so unfair! It appears that numerous letters and petitions from prominent acquaintances and ordinary fans have been deluging California officials to protest the imminent jailing of Paris Hilton for a parole violation related to her DUI conviction. I have considerably less sympathy for Miss Hilton on her imminent, temporary loss of freedom than I had for Martha Stewart; all the hotel heiress had to do to stay out of trouble was leave the driving to her chauffeur until her parole was ended. Whether the PR campaign had any effect or not, she has dropped her appeal and the state has agreed to cut her sentence in half for good behavior and place her in a section of the facility reserved for cops, guards and others at heightened risk from other inmates.

On a happier, but puzzling, note - Maxim magazine has announced that Lindsay Lohan ranks #1 on their Hot 100 list. And, the accompanying photo is sufficiently modest that you can't tell whether she's wearing panties. I realize that Miss Lohan has come a long way from The Parent Trap; but, poised to launch herself into the realm of legal alcohol consumption on July 2, she still has the look, if not the reputation, of the wholesome girl next door.

Kennedy assassination still breeding controversy after all these years

2007-05-18T02:00:00.000-04:00

Researchers challenge Kennedy lone gunman theory | Science | Reuters :

"... researchers, including former FBI lab metallurgist William Tobin, said new chemical and statistical analyses of bullets from the same batch used by Oswald suggest that more than two bullets could have struck the president.

"'Evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed,' the researchers said in their article."

The timing of this is quite fortuitous for the publication of Saint John Hunt's new book Bond of Secrecy on the JFK assassination which draws on the confession of his late father, CIA operative and Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt, that the death of President Kennedy was engineered by a group of CIA veterans acting on behalf of then-Vice President Lindon Baines Johnson.

Unseemly haste on Senate immigration bill - shouldn't they read it before voting?

2007-05-18T00:13:00.000-04:00

United States Senator - Jim DeMint:

"But the little we do know about the bill is troubling."

So said Senate Republican Steering Committee chairman Jim DeMint in commenting on the thousand page Senate immigration bill just unveiled in DC. His comments were in marked contrast to the unrestrained enthusiasm of his fellow senator from South Carolina, Lindsay Graham.

There seems to be a mood among many senators to get this plan approved quickly before anyone has a chance to read it. Early reports indicate that the plan is a wonderful mix of bits of window dressing to distract conservatives from the bills flaws, a basic orientation toward expanding legal immigration, and enough bureaucratic redtape to convince many illegals to ignore the new rules and continue to work here illegally.

While senators might want to vote on this turkey quickly before people notice what it means, that won't entirely solve their problem as the House expects to produce its own bill covering the same subjects sometime before the congressional recess in August. This would set the stage for a conference committee to work out discrepancies when Congress reconvenes in the fall. That would be a time of year when constituents are much more likely to be paying attention and writing the kind of disrespectful and insulting letters and emails that are the bane of political life.

Gender discrimination in public accomodations - is this even legal?

2007-05-17T11:31:00.000-04:00

Hotel Reservation: Floor For Women Only - Travel News Story - WKMG Orlando:

"A lounge at the hotel also will be reserved for women only when the hotel opens in September."

This comes from the announcement of a new Marriott hotel to open later this year in Grand Rapids. No doubt the company's legion of high-priced lawyers has gone over this, but I find it hard to believe that this does not amount to impermissible gender discrimination in public accomodations. Could a hotel get away with having a men-only floor or a lounge reserved only for men? I don't think so.

The GOP candidates' first debate

2007-05-06T04:27:00.000-04:00

Interactive: Rate the candidates - The Debates - MSNBC.com

I started to write this a few hours after the debate when the number of post-debate ratings was less than 18,000; but I got knocked off line by a computer glitch. Now the number of post-debate ratings is over 80,000 (about 10% more than the number of pre-debate ratings) but the shape of the numbers has held up pretty well, so my analysis isn't really changed.

On the MSNBC rating scheme whish allows only three options - positive, neutral or negative - for each candidate, even the three front-runners started rather dismally only one of them (Giuliani) getting more positive than negative assessments. Their positives ranged from 41% for Giuliani to 28% for Romney. The only others with double-digit positives were Huckabee, Thompson, Tancredo and Brownback and none of them did better than 14%.

Curiously, McCain, with negative ratings from 40% of pre-debate viewers, was only barely ahead of the bottom seven whose negavives ranged from 49% to 40%.

With such a lackluster response to this diverse field of contenders (two senators, three representatives, four former governors and an ex-mayor of New York), it is no wonder Fred Tompson and Newt Gingrich are keeping the door open. However, with all due respect to Gingrich, Hunter, Paul and Tancredo, I cannot recall a serious candidacy for the White House by a US House member in my lifetime. With the notable exception of Eisenhower, the serious contenders since FDR beat Hoover have been governors, senators or vice-presidents and even most of the Veeps had senate experience.

Trying to shoe-horn 10 candidates into a 90 minute Q&A session (not really a debate) was bound to produce less than satisfactory results. I would rather they had given us a 180 munute debate and skipped the 90 minutes of analysis and interviews that followed on MSNBC.

Still, I think it is true that none of these 10 men seriously embarassed himself. And, as one of them said, any of them would make a better president than any of the Democrat contenders. None of the second tier candidates increased his negative ratings, but all three of the leaders did.

My favorite, Jim Gilmore, used his marvelous speaking voice and clarity of thought rather well in the relatively few opportunities given him, but his appearance suffered from an excessively shiny forehead gleaming under the television lights. Tom Tancredo proved himself knowledgable on a range of issues and not merely a "Johnny one note" on immigration. Duncan Hunter's performance was a revelation to me, having known him only by reputation - he'd make a good candidate for vice president or he could be an excellent defense secretary.

Ron Paul was the real surprise of the evening. He jumped out of the pack in the post-debate ratings to 36% postive and 27% negative. That doesn't look too impressive by itself, but those were the best scores posted by any candidate in the post-debate poll.

Mitt Romney did best among the top three' holding his positives steady at 28% and dropping his negatives by four points. All things considered, this has to be good news for Romney.

John McCain dropped his positives by 11 points - from 31% to 20%, but nine points of that drop only moved into the neutral category. This reinforces my view that McCain doesn't have much room to improve. He has been a national figure for a long time, longer than any of his rivals; and. if folks were inclined to like him, they would by now.

Rudy Giuliani took the worst hit - dropping his positive ratings from 41% (the pre-debate poll leader) to only 25%, with almost half the 16 point difference going into the negative column. Giuliani is toast, the better known his positions are on a wide range of issues the farther he will fall among likely GOP primary voters.

I suspect that by Labor Day the race will change significantly. Both Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson will get into the race and Tommy Thompson will be gone by then, followed closely by Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee. Tom Tancredo probably has enough fans of the immigration issue to hang in until the primaries start and the serious spending starts. Whether Jim Gilmore and Duncan Hunter will still be in the race is hard to say, but they at least look and sound presidential.

As for Ron Paul's future, he has already been the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party once and there is some talk that they might put him forward again after the Republican primaries have run their course. He has no reason not to keep going even if he does poorly in the primaries.

Democrats should not assume that a Ron Paul candidacy on the LP ticket would hurt only the Republican nominee. Depending on who the Democrats nominate, and this includes both Clinton and Obama, Paul could take a lot of votes from the anti-war crowd and civil libertarians.

Polish PM: More Gays Bad for Society

2007-04-27T03:27:00.000-04:00

Polish PM: More Gays Bad for Society

"Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland," Kaczynski told reporters hours after the vote.

"However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools, I fully agree with those who feel this way," he said. "Such propaganda should not be in schools; it definitely doesn't serve youth well."

"It's not in the interest of any society to increase the number of homosexuals—that's obvious."

So spoke the Polish prime minister, and very right he is, too.

Although this AP story focuses on the controversy such remarks have engendered between Poland, an EU member, and EU politicians and bureaucrats, there is another dimension to this issue.

Europe, as the home of Western Christendom, is nearing its own death. Even with immigration included, the population of Europe as a whole is falling and is expected to decline substantially over the next generation or more.

Combine with this the fact that much of the recent immigration and that which can be expected in the near future, both legal and illegal, is from non-Christian populations - Muslims from nearly every country from Morocco to Indonesia, and Hindus from India and the Indian diaspora in former British colonies - and the result is that Europe, where even Christian religious affiliation has been in long-term decline, may cease to hold onto a Christian culture.

For those who believe all cultures are equal, this may not matter. But for those who believe, as I do, that without Christian influence some key Western values - like equality before the law, the status of women and religious toleration - may cease to be supported, this is a very troubling development.

The Polish government is to be saluted for its sensitivity to this issue.

NOTE: The US birthrate is 14.0 births per thousand. Only three countries in Europe exceed this - Islamic Albania (15.1) and Azerbaijan (20.7) and Catholic Ireland (14.4). [Source: TIME Almanc 2007] Of the 30 countries and regions with the lowest numbers of births per female - ranging from 1.13 in Bulgaria to 1.54 in Sweden - 26 are in Europe. Poland ranked #22 with 1.37 births per female; no wonder the prime minister is worried. [Source: CIA Factbook 2004 as reported in a post on physicsforum.] France has the highest rate (1.9) in the EU, and the US rate has recently gone from 1.8 to 2.0 due largely to more teen pregnancies. In industrialized countries with long life expectancies and low infant and child mortality, a rate of 2.1 births per female is generally accepted as the minimum replacement level. [Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Zero Population Growth, etc.]

Just a thought

2007-04-25T12:42:00.000-04:00

Does anyone out there know what the connection is between devotion to the game of chess and religious heresy?

I've never understood it myself. I guess any obsession can interfere with due piety, but why chess in particular? And is the auto da fe the best way to deal with it in this day and age?

Well, just something we can all think about the next time the holidays roll around and everyone starts singing: "Chess nuts roasting on an open fire."

What have we done to our young people?

2007-04-20T16:51:00.000-04:00

My Way News - Many Campus Threats After VTech Shooting:

In Michigan, police said they arrested a former Kalamazoo Valley Community College student who posted Internet messages praising the Virginia Tech shooting. Officials closed the college's two campuses through the weekend.

The 26-year-old man 'said his intent was just to evoke a response from other people,' sheriff's Lt. Terry VanStreain said. 'He got a response from us, I guarantee you that.'

From idle internet chatter like this case of a 26-year old former community college student in Michigan to a fake bomb in the locker of a middle school student in Colorado to three loaded guns brought to school by a high school student in the state of Washington, this AP story describes ten incidents since the tragedy at Virginia Tech at the start of this week.

This is not good news, although when you consider how many schools there are in this country and how many young people are either certifiably mental or "Jackass" wannabees, the total could easily be higher.

It is also not surprising. Research has shown that youth suicides tend to occur in clusters with one kid snapping and, as the news of that event is spread by the news media, others who have been on the brink step over the line.

And, it is not primarily a matter of gun control. Germany has tighter gun control laws than the US and lacks our "cult of the gun" and frontier mythos. Yet, as Bild noted in an editorial this week, even Germany has had school shootings. In Japan a few years ago, a man murdered several people at an elementary school armed only with a kitchen knife. And, don't forget the Iranian student who celebrated his graduation from UNC-CH by driving a rented car into a crowd of pedestrians and, only by a miracle, did not kill any of the nine people he struck with it.

What we ought to be asking is what are we doing to our children and young adults? Incidents of this sort were rare when gun laws were lax.

In some parts of the country it was once common for young hunters to bring their rifles to school during hunting season so they could get in a bit of hunting right after the end of the school day.

There must have been some incidents that haven't made it into the history books. My own paternal grandfather had to disarm a student with a handgun in a class he was teaching almost a century ago. But such occurrences must have been rare.

What has changed? Church and Sunday School attendance are likely down. Schools have adopted values clarification and cultural relativism that have undermined respect for traditional values. Progressive ideas on parenting and schooling have made discipline almost a thing of the past. The popular culture is now aimed primarily at young people and is saturated with violence and immorality of every description. The War on Drugs has turned many American cities into armed camps where the sound of gunfire hardly attracts any notice unless it is very close by. Crisis mongering over environmental and other concerns has led a few to action but more to the paralysis of despair. And there is the rampant drug abuse, both illegal narcotics and dangerous prescription drugs with known side effects including violent outbursts and suicidal ideation.

All of these influences have, for many young people, undermined any sense of hope and confidence in a better future awaiting the rising younger generations.

Poisoned pet food scandal grows more serious

2007-04-20T13:40:00.000-04:00

ABC News: Officials: Pet Food Poison
May Have Been Intentional:

April 19, 2007 — For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

It was bad enough when this incident appeared to be a quality control problem. Now it seems it may been a product of greed and contempt for the foreigners who were buying this material.

Adulteration of the product with melamine, known to Americans of my generation as the plastic from which ugly but nearly unbreakable Melmac (TM) dinnerware was made when we were kids, may have been an intentional effort to fool pet food industry buyers that the product had a higher protein content than was the case.

But, the scandal grows worse still:

Some of the tainted pet food has apparently made it into feed for hogs. Federal agencies are trying to determine if it was actually fed to animals and whether it may have reached the human food supply.

It will be interesting to see if we ever get a believable story from the Red Chinese about how this could happen. And watch for US government officials to begin making excuses on their behalf and refusing to take serious punitive actions.

The arrogance of power

2007-04-17T23:38:00.000-04:00

N.J. Gov.'s SUV Went 91 Mph Before Crash:
"TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The SUV carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, Superintendent of State Police Col. Rick Fuentes said Tuesday."

I truly wish Gov. John Corzine (D-NJ) a full and speedy recovery. But one has to ask why the governor was riding in the front seat, why he was not wearing his seatbelt, and why his state police driver was going over 90 miles per hour (over 25 mph over the posted limit) with his emergency lightss flashing? I guess the whole world is supposed to get out of the way when royalty is in a hurry.

A senior majoring in English who can't write in that language

2007-04-17T21:09:00.000-04:00

Virginia Killer's Violent Writings - April 17, 2007:
"APRIL 17--The college student responsible for yesterday's Virginia Tech slaughter was referred last year to counseling after professors became concerned about the violent nature of his writings, as evidenced in a one-act play obtained by The Smoking Gun."

Read the murderer's one-act play at The Smoking Gun - in addition to being deeply disturbing, it is barely literate. And this was a junior year composition from a 22-year old who had lived in the US since the age of eight, so almost his entire education had been in English in American schools. This is a sad commentary on the state of education.

Virginia Tech may well have lower standards in English than some other universities because its strengths in science and engineering attract disproportionate numbers of foreign, especially Asian, students.

Stalemate on immigration reform possible

2007-04-12T22:00:00.000-04:00

Immigration Debate Sours for Illegals:

"Privately, senators in both parties and strategists on the issue say he [Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)] has faded from the forefront of immigration negotiations—leaving his staff to track them and a confidant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to mediate—while he waits for the right moment to weigh in."

I'm not certain I'm reading this as intended, but what I take this comment and others regarding McCain to mean in the context of this article is that McCain would prefer to keep a low profile on immigration while he is trying to get the GOP nomination; but, if a deal does emerge during this session of Congress, he will take credit for it.

No doubt, McCain sees that a compromise along the lines emerging in the current debate on the Hill might peel away some support from the opposition to illegal immigration making it less damaging for him to get back in front of the parade. Moreover, putting himself out front might help him in a few open primary states and in the general election if he wins the nomination.

So much for the brave "maverick" McCain.

Meanwhile, it is interesting that a new Congress with a Democrat majority in each house is now considering legislation more restrictive than last year. Of course, the new proposals are still far from satisfactory to critics of unrestricted immigration like myself.

I suspect, as the article mentions, that many Democrats would prefer to have no bill at all. This would save them from some criticism from the left that would accuse them of caving in to the GOP. It would also give them a stronger issue to use to keep a lock on the Hispanic vote in 2008.

The $64 question is this - How can the Democrats keep their hold on the Black vote and support more immigration when immigration has been the cause of Black unemployment rising even as the national unemployment rate has been dropping?

I'll say it again, unrestricted immigration does greater danger to the Black and Native American communities than to White Americans.

A remarkable success using patients' own stem cells

2007-04-12T21:00:00.000-04:00

Diabetics cured in stem-cell treatment advance-Life & Style-Health-TimesOnline :

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

It appears that the MSM can't bring themselves to report on a medical miracle without getting in a sly and misleading dig at W.

How can a responsible journalistic enterprise claim that embryonic stem cell research is opposed by Bush when his budgets have included massive funding for research using existing stem cell lines?

How can such a news organization characterize embryonic stem cells as merely the "most versatile" type without mentioning the fact that it is precisely that versatility which has proven to be so problematic that no therapeutic success has been achieved by their use despite billions of dollars in both government and privately funded research around the world?

This truly astounding success in treating Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes - most patients off insulin for three years and counting - actually bolsters the case made by many critics of embryonic stem cell research. It is yet another success in the use of non-embryonic stem cells. Based on the track record, a strong case could be made that government funding in the US should concentrate exclusively on non-embryonic stem cells - cells harvested from the patient's own blood, bone marrow, nose, fat, etc.

The therapy, known as autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, has already shown benefits to individuals with a range of auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and lupus.

In this clinical trial, patients with very recent diagnoses had stem cells harvested from their own blood. They then underwent a course of chemotherapy to disable their white blood cells which were attacking the pancreatic beta cells which produce insulin. Finally, their stem cells were returned to their bloodstream where they went to work rebuilding an immune system that was no longer prone to attack their own beta cells.

These successes with autologous transplantation mentioned above, and others like the work with nasal stem cells in repair of central nervous system injuries, demonstrate the value of non-embryonic stem cell research. Money, especially government money, ought to flow toward success, not failure.

The usual suspects in another orgy of pious self-promotion

2007-04-11T11:21:00.000-04:00

Australia hosts Live Earth gig - Music - Entertainment - theage.com.au:

"Proceeds will create a foundation to combat climate change led by The Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by former US vice president Al Gore."

From the Material Girl (Madonna) to the Great Gasbag (Al Gore) the usual suspects will gather for a series of concerts in seven venues on July 7, 2007. The organizers have announced sites in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. They say they are working on the remaining continent Antartica. Someone needs to remind them that, global warming or no, July is midwinter in Anartica and non-governmental travel is virtually impossible in that region except in summer.

Algiers rocked by terror bombings

2007-04-11T11:02:00.000-04:00

Bombs in Algiers kill 17 - World - theage.com.au:

"Attacks have also risen since the main guerrilla group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), adopted a new name in January and deepened its ties to al Qaeda."

Two bombs on the same day, the first such attacks in the capital city of Algeria since the 1990s and with a combined casualty toll of nearly 100, have raised fears of a return to the days when Islamic fundamentalist violence routinely rocked the cities as well as the countryside.

One of the blasts did substantial damage to the prime minister's offices. Just a reminder, and one seems to be needed in certain quarters (the Democrat Party, for example), that it doesn't take the US or Israel to bring out the worst in the "religion of peace." Salafist, for those who don't keep a scorecard on such things, is a sect within the Sunni branch of Islam.

Anti-Americanism in Italy decried

2007-04-11T10:39:00.000-04:00

Corriere.it:

" Some say that anti-Americanism is an over-abused and even intimidating term, but for what other democracy, if not for our trouble-torn emotional relationship with the United States, is it so easy to confuse government with state, the –passing – policies of an administration with the – permanent – existence of a nation, or a president’s international policy with the rationale of an enduring alliance? "

An interesting opinion essay by Pierluigi Battista in Corriere della Sera of Milano.

Chinese find Italian investment no jewel

2007-04-11T08:11:00.000-04:00

Corriere.it:

It’s true that it has received machinery capable of processing dozens of tons of gold every year but has yet to start up production.It’s true that after twenty-two years, it has yet to turn out a single necklace and that inquiries into past management teams have led to charges of fraud ...

A cautionary tale of what can happen, and all too often does, when the government tries to make good things happen. In this case it was the Italian federal government trying to spur economic activity and create jobs in a part of the impoverished south hit by an earthquake in 1980. Beginning around 1985, they poured over 13 million euros into a jewelry factory that underwent numerous changes of ownership but never managed to produce anything. But, this is not a peculiarly Italian story, when I worked in the Nixon administration I saw the records of similar debacles here in the US.

Meanwhile, the years slipped by but the factory’s gates remained shut. The young workers stipulated by the government were never hired and the machinery remained silent.And the Chinese, led by the Beijing Art & Craft consortium initially set up by fifty-eight companies, failed to make what the documents proclaimed as “Beijing’s most important investment in Europe”.

And after all this, the Chinese can't figure out why the Italians are not more grateful. Go figure!

Barack Hussein Obama and the politics of race

2007-04-11T05:52:00.000-04:00

Obama's silence on Imus alarms some blacks - The Boston Globe:

"But with Obama battling other Democrats -- most notably Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York -- for the support of black voters, the candidate's reticence on the Imus issue set off alarms yesterday among some black activists who are anxious to see him more forcefully push for racial justice."

Obama is not an Irish name or a Polish one, but there must be days when the Illinois senator must wish it were. Almost any change at all would make his life less complicated. Obama did not become a US senator from Illinois by being "the black candidate." That is a strategy that only works at lower levels - city and county offices, state legislatures, or the US House of Representatives.

There is no state where such a strategy will lead to victory for a statewide office and it certainly won't work running for president. It won't even come close to winning the Democrat nomination as Shirley Chisholm (1972), Jesse Jackson (1984 and 1988) and Al Sharpton (2004) have amply demonstrated.

Look at the record of black politicians who have succeeded in races for state-wide offices. The late US Senator Ed Brook of Massachusetts, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of Ohio, Lieutenant Governor Mike Steele of Maryland had to build broad coalitions in states that were either heavily Democratic or highly competitive - states where being black and Republican were not enough to secure an election.

Doug Wilder did not get elected governor in Virginia merely be being the black candidate or even the Democrat; he did it by being the business-friendly Democrat who happened to be black. Harold Ford Jr. made his race for US senator in Tennessee competitive by being a Democrat with strong political experience, not primarily as a black candidate.

No doubt, Sen. Obama knows this history well. His own career is just the most recent example.

Obama knows that even 100 percent support from the black community can't guarantee much more than winning the primaries in South Carolina and a few other states where black votes are the principal voting group in the Democrat Party. He needs lots of white votes (more white votes than black votes), Hispanic votes, Asian votes - the votes of all sorts of Democrats to get the nomination and to do so in a way that he is positioned to make a competitive run for the presidency.

So, Obama has been walking a tightrope, trying to work black voters away from his primary rivals while not alienating the white constituency he needs to break free from the pack and actually win the prize. The Imus flap is just the latest pothole in the road to victory, there will likely be others. And they pose a different and greater challenge for Barack Obama than they do for Hilary Clinton or John Edwards.

Another cops and schoolchildren controvesy

2007-04-07T05:02:00.000-04:00

wcbstv.com - 13-Year-Old Arrested In School For Writing On Desk:

"CBS 2 contacted both the NYPD and the Board of Education for a response. The police say the arrests followed a request by the school's principal. The Board of Education said the matter is under investigation, adding that graffiti was found on several desks."

There are certainly circumstances where children as young as the 13-year old girl at the center of this story, and even younger, may need to be arrested. And even some circumstances in which they may properly be placed in restraints although not technically under arrest on any criminal charge. I don't know how they do things in New York, but this sounds like the sort of matter that might well be handled by writing a citation and sending the defendants on their way.

Making some allowances for the usual defects in news stories, the quote above raises two questions. The first is: What do the police mean when they say they took action at the request of the principal? Does this reply indicate that whether or not to initiate proceedings via arrest was a matter of discretion and, if so, why did police defer to the principal to make that call? Are there other classes of non-police officials that have such power over police officers in determining how they carry out their duties?

The second question is: What does the Board of Education mean when they say this case is "under investigation"? Do they mean that they (through the authority they grant to the principal) ordered arrests to be made before they were in possession of the relevant facts? That doesn't sound like a responsible way to exercise such power.

Underwater surfing, only in the land down under

2007-04-05T02:01:00.000-04:00

Australian to live underwater for two weeks:

"Lloyd Godson, 29, believes he can survive inside his airtight steel box by growing algae to produce oxygen and to eat, and by riding a stationary bike to generate electricity."

One wonders what practical effect success in this experiment might have. Would we all be expected to inhabit a 10x12-foot room at the bottom of a lake?

NASA already covered this ground a decade ago and it hasn't yet proven to have enhanced our lives. After all those billions and all we have to show for it is Tang. You'd think they could have given us something useful like a fleet of missile platforms in orbit over our enemies or a four-star resort on Mars - Club Red, anyone?

Mr. Godson is taking his computer, complete with internet connection with him. Too bad they don't give us his email address so we could keep in touch during his ordeal in service of mankind.

Some uncommon good sense about AGW and Kyoto controls

2007-04-04T04:58:00.000-04:00

A CEO With A Spine - April 3, 2007 - The New York Sun:

"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."

Hats off to Bob Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation for having the courage to speak out for the best interests of the American people. I guess it takes the kind of man who actually mined coal for a living and had the courage to mortgage his home to start a company that has grown to employ 3,000 people to have that kind of courage.

I also want to salute the author of this piece in The New York Sun, Alicia Colon, for concluding her article with this comment about on the Kyoto CO2 control regime:

The irony is that these caps and controls will do little to affect climate. Timothy Ball, a renowned environmental consultant, testified before the committee that global warming is more likely to be caused by sun spots rather than human activity. Mr. Murray's passion for saving the "little guy" is truly admirable. Too bad that fervor is completely absent in Congress.

Jim Gilmore for President

2007-04-02T05:12:00.000-04:00

Exclusive Interview With Gov. Jim Gilmore by Human Events - HUMAN EVENTS :

"I’m already a conservative and always have been. My record’s as clear as crystal and I’m not going to shift now so that I can get elected President. I am the real thing and that’s what I am …and I don’t think it costs much money to do that."

So said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore in his recent interview with the editors of Human Events, the leading national conservative weekly newspaper.

The interview goes into particular depth on two issues of interest to most conservatives - taxes and protection of the unborn - as well as broader philosphical concerns. He also comments on the three currently leading candidates for the GOP nomination - US Sen. John McCain, former mayor Rudy Giuliani and former governor Mitt Romney. There is no doubt that Jim Gilmore is the real conservative in that field.

In the couse of the interview, he mentions that his membership in the Republican Party dates back to 1967. That was when I first met Jim Gilmore. We both entered the University of Virginia that year, both joined the University Republican Club, and both were appointed dorm captains. We worked on Republican campaigns in the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County and attended senior party, Young Republican and College Republican meetings and conventions all over Virginia.

I knew Jim Gilmore then, and later, as a man of great intellect, sound conservative principles, enormous energy and ambition. Now, ambition is one of those qualitites that is neither a virtue nor a vice per se but can be judged only in relation to the objects toward which it is directed. Jim put that ambition to work in pursuit of those sound conservative principles I mentioned.

In 1971, when Jim took his degree on time (I was always more interested in other things than studying and took a longer route to my BA), he wouldn't settle for a second-tier law school and enlisted in the US Army where he was trained in intelligence and served as a non-commissioned officer. When he returned from army service in Germany in 1974 he realized his dream of admittance to the law school at the University of Virginia. But because he came in late, he had not been able to arrange for housing and he lived at the Young Republican House at UVa.

I was in residence at the YR House myself to complete my last year of study. Another roommate was a first-year law student who had just taken his BA at the University, Bill Hurd. Seeking quieter quarters where they could study, the three of us shared apartments each of the next two years. So, during three years of living together, I got to know Jim very well indeed. This was also the period when Jim was courting his future wife, the lovely Roxane, and I had the great privilege of being a member of the wedding.

Although I have only seen Jim a few times in the intervening years (the last, I think, was in 1988) my respect for him is undiminished. I will do whatever is in my poor power to assist his campaign for the Republican nomination and, I hope, the presidency itself in 2008.

You can learn more about Jim Gilmore by visiting his campaign website.

Cherry Blossom Festival on the National Mall

2007-04-02T04:29:00.000-04:00

The Cherry Blossom Festival is underway in DC, see the festival page at the Natinal Park Service (NPS) website for further information. Peak blossom time should be the middle of this week. The festival is Washington's biggest tourist event drawing about a million visitors each spring.

The photo above from the NPS is of a kwanzan cherry, the deeper pink of the dominant types on display at the National Mall. The trees, over 3,000 of them, were a gift of the Japanese government in 1912.

No embryos were harmed in this stem cell experiment

2007-04-02T04:06:00.000-04:00

British team grows human heart valve from stem cells | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:
"A British research team led by the world's leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years."

Read the article and you find that Prof. Yacoub's team in London is using stem cells from bone marrow. As I have commented elsehere, the furor over embyonic stem cell research has more to do with keeping the murder of babies via abortion legal than with the needs of medical research. Stem cells from umbilical cords an placentas are readily available from the constant stream of medical waste, as are stem cells from adults which can be harvested without harm from fat, including bone marrow. In all the real world research I have ever seen, such sources yield better results. Stem cells from embryos tend to produce unstable results.

The article notes that growing a heart valve from the patients own stem cells might take a month producing a perfect tisssue match, but that tissue banking might serve the needs of most patients in producing close, but not perfect, matches.

My readers may recall Dr. Lima in Portugal (December 6, 2004) who has been getting results in repairing damaged nerves by using the patients own nerve stem cells from their noses. Similar work is underway in China and elsewhere.

Bring It On meets ER ... the 411 on the most dangerous sport in women's athletics

2007-03-31T05:06:00.000-04:00

Pompoms, Pyramids and Peril - New York Times:
"Emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries nationwide have more than doubled since the early 1990s, and the rate of life-threatening injuries has startled researchers. Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 — head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death — more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined did not surpass cheerleading."

I was a bit surprised to read of the level of injuries in high school and college cheerleading until it occurred to me that there would be very few ER visits for sports women traditionally engage in compared to men's sports like football, basketball and wrestling.

The article points out that concerns about excessive injury claims led many schools to drop gymnastics and many gymnasts then turned to cheerleading and ratcheted up the physical challenges of that endeavor and it brought in more men who, being larger and stronger made higher pyramids and higher tosses possible.

If you haven't been paying attention to this trend, take a look at the film Bring It On or one of its sequels.

There is no denying that cheerleading nowadays bears little resemblance to what it was in my student days. When I was in high school in northern Virginia in the mid-50s, I attended most of our football and basketball games and only knew of one male cheerleader, a lone guy on the Yorktown High School squad. Cheerleading was more about loud yelling than gymnastics in those days. I even tried out for the cheerleading squad at UVa about thirty years ago when it was a nearly all-male school and we had no women cheerleaders - I didn't make it.

It is curious that while cheerleading was becoming more an athletic activity rather than an artistic perfomance at the student level, in pro sports they now have dancers rather than cheerleaders and a lot of these young women are very serious about dance. One of my cousins was a dancer for pro sports teams but is now back in university studying dance.

From Boob tube to YouTube, movie studios shift to web for bigger audience

2007-03-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

Movie Trailers Bomb on the Boob Tube but Score Big Online - :

"In the world of online advertising, there's nothing quite like movie trailers. Apple gets upward of 2 million unique visitors a month for the trailer section of its website, which shows promos for everything from The Simpsons Movie to The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Not surprisingly, trailers also pull in large crowds on MySpace and YouTube; they're even a major draw for mobile users."

More evidence that there actually is some commerce in ecommerce. Movie studios are putting more emphasis on making trailers available on the web at the expense of television advertising. One reason, you can get people to watch much longer trailers (i.e., spend more time selling them on the idea of seeing the movie) at a reasonable cost.

Here's a link to the movie trailer-oriented website http://joblo.com/ mentioned in the Wired,com story.

Sky high property values in north Jersey keep our housing market afloat

2007-03-29T21:29:00.000-04:00

Mortgage crisis hits million-dollar homes�|�US News�|�Reuters.com:
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sheriff Leo McGuire presides over foreclosure auctions in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the bidding for a home reached $1.2 million last June -- a record for one of the wealthiest counties in the nation."

Although not quite the boom times of a year and more ago, the pressure of rising home values in the Jersey fringes of the New York metro area continues to encourage residents in those places, especially those at or near retirement, to move west along the I-78 corridor even as far as Berks County where I live (about two hours west of the Hudson River).

You can still find plenty of homes in a wide range of size and price offering semi-rural setting, woods, mountain views and similar amenities. Schools are generally safe, local traffic tolerable, taxes reasonable but getting worse. And, there are lots of golf courses.

More whining about income inequality

2007-03-29T21:10:00.000-04:00

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows - New York Times:

"Others argued that public policies had played a role in the shift. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor, said that the data understates the widening disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country.

"He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending."

Of course, the advocates for more government meddling in the economy like Mr. Greenstein are anxious to bolster their case any way they can, even if it is less than fully accurate.

Assuming it were true that "health care, child care and education spending" were falling (if so, I hadn't noticed), how would you factor that in - subtract the dollar value of reductions in services consumed from the income figures for each income cohort? But how could that be appropriate when we don't include the dollar value of the services they do consume?

This study is based on IRS income data and doesn't even take account of welfare services consumed exclusively by those with the lowest incomes. Poorer persons and younger persons (the two tend to overlap substantially) produce more children so they consume more than their pro rata share of child care and education spending. (You might discount this for the poor quality of those government services, but that is a whole other can of worms.) This effect is magnified by the tendency of upper income persons who do have children to employ nurses, nannies, and governesses, and send their children to private schools. The rich are also not significant consumers of government-funded health care services.

As usual, a close inspection shows that what we get from the left by way of argument is less than meets the eye.

Our "ally" speaks and he sounds like an enemy

2007-03-29T19:41:00.000-04:00

Saudi king slams 'illegitimate occupation' of Iraq - Yahoo! News:
"'In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,' Abdullah said."

One wonders, if the Arabs are so upset, why haven't they stepped forward to supply troops and police to help stop the "ugly sectarianism" in Iraq or even helped to train Iraqi troops and police.

Of course, a part of this is posturing by the Saudi king to maintain his family's claim to the leadership of the Arab world, and by that position to be the major force in the Muslim world.

Back in the heyday of the Baath socialist movement, Egypt's strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to use his nation's position as the most populous Arab nation, with the largest armed forces and on the front line of the confrontations with Israel to seize the the leadership of the Arab world, for a time even forming a union with Syria called the United Arab Republic.

Anwar Sadat and his successor Hosni Mubarak, by giving up on hostilities with Israel in exchange for massive subsidies from US taxpayers , have forfeited Egypt's claim to Arab leadership. The US-led invasion of Iraq directly eliminated Saddam Hussein as a contender for the mantle of Arab leadership and indirectly led to a lowering of the profile of the only other significant contender Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.

So, whatever the rhetoric, Saudi Arabia's ruling family really owe the US a great debt. Or are we just fools? Maybe both.

On the other hand, check out Israeli pride minister Ehud Olmert's response to the latest interation of the Saudi-authored Arab peace initiative as quoted at length in Haaretz.

DHS can't keep up with growing deportation backlog

2007-03-27T03:11:00.000-04:00

U.S. Can't Account for 600,000 Fugitives:
"... 'despite the efforts of the teams, the backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the program was established in February 2002,' the inspector general said."

This from a report on the fugitive operations teams by the Department of Homeland Secutity's inspector general (IG). As of last August, the number of immigration fugitives - those who were once caught, ordered deported, released from custody and then failed to report for removal from the US - stood at 623,292.

The report also notes that the records did not permit the IG to determine how many of those apprehended were picked up by the efforts of the DHS fugitive teams vs. those arrested for other reasons by state and local or other federal law enforcement officers.

As a former constable, I would love to see the feds give constables a crack at reducing that backlog. I have a strong suspicion my former colleagues could do the job more effectively and more efficiently than DHS. I understand that the feds have reservations about allowing just any state or local agency personnel to work cases designed to initially apprehend suspected illegals, but here we have a database of known fugitives, just the sort of quarry constables seek and find for Pennsylvania's courts every day.

New factor in an all but forgotten war

2007-03-26T06:06:00.000-04:00

Tigers take fight to new level with first air raid : Mail & Guardian Online :
"The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said their first ever airborne attack was carried out by two light fixed-wing aircraft against the Katunayake air base where the military's supersonic aircraft fleet is located."

The Tamil Tigers now have an air arm. Already the only insurgency with a navy (they claim to have inspired the attack on the USS Cole), the Tigers 35 year quest to partition Sri Lanka has already cost more than 60,000 lives. This adds a whole new dimension to counter-insurgency operations.

Another doomed experiment in socialized agriculture underway in Venezuela

2007-03-26T03:41:00.000-04:00

Venezuela's Chavez announces plans for 'collective property' under shift toward socialism - International Herald Tribune:
"'If Mr. Chavez really wants to help Venezuela's poor farmers, he must offer them technical assistance and sufficient financing because land doesn't become productive without investment,' said opposition leader Alfonzo Marquina. 'We're only seeing increasing shortages and more expensive products.'"

Alfonso Marquina is absolutely right. Merely putting a bunch of campesinos on a large plot of seized land and telling them they are a cooperative now is only setting them up for failure. In fact, I suspect that is El Commandante's plan. When the coops go bust, he will have an excuse to set up state-owned and managed farms. The campesinos will still be poor, the government will think itself rich, and poor Venezuela will still be importing food.

Agriculture, if it is to be anything more than mere subsistence, requires investment and education. Chavez could show he is serious about agricultural productivity if his government were increasing the budget for agricultural research, for extension work to teach best practices to farmers, and to establish a system of production credit.

The education component is vital. You cannot take a farmworkers who have followed orders all their lives and just expect that they all magically comprehend the big picture. A man can know a lot about animals from riding herd on them for many years, but that doesn't mean he has learned anything useful about when and how to market them and that is the difference between success and failure. Likewise, driving farm machinery to plant, cultivate and harvest doesn't make you an expert on when to sell immediately and when to hold the crop in storage or how to hedge with futures contracts.

My suspicion is that in a few years agriculture in Venezuela will be in serious decline as it is in that other socialist paradise Zimbabwe.

Financial woes for traditional media, especially newspapers

2007-03-26T03:13:00.000-04:00

Drop in Ad Revenue Raises Tough Question for Newspapers - New York Times:

"Mark Fratrik, an economist at BIA Financial Network, said the February results were “not a blip on the screen.”

"“It’s fundamental, what’s going on with newspapers,” he said. “The younger groups, the most desired demographics, are just not reading them. They aren’t listening to traditional radio either, but I tell radio broadcasters that they’re lucky not to be in newspapers.”"

"...

"Newspaper circulation nationally reached its peak in 1984, when there were 1,600 morning and afternoon paid dailies with a circulation of 63 million. With the rise of cable television and, later, the Internet, newspaper circulation began to decline. Today there are 1,450 paid dailies with a circulation of 53 million. The losses have accelerated over the last two years."

Considering the sad state of American education, it is hardly any wonder that newspaper circulation is dropping like a stone. People who can't read don't read newspapers. Add to that the influx of immigrants who are not literate in English and the schools' enchant for teaching their children in their native language first.

The newspapers have been cheerleaders for all the fads that have messed up the schools, so they may be getting what they deserve. But, in the process, they have debased our politics as well, and that harms us all.

Negotiating with madmen - the ghost of Jimmy Carter stalks the Middle East

2007-03-26T02:42:00.000-04:00

FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Iran may charge British sailors :
"The Iranian military said at the weekend the 15 personnel held near the Shatt al-Arab waterway dividing Iraq from Iran had committed “blatant aggression” and were being interrogated. The rhetoric in Tehran escalated, with some regime loyalists seeing a chance to use the case to help free five Iranian officials taken by US forces in northern Iraq in January."

The mad mullahs are still at it. When Jimmy Carter decided to tolerate the Iranian invasion of the US Embassy in Teheran three decades ago, he made it clear that the US would not insist on being treated with the minimum of respect that one nation demands from another. That was an act of war and we flinched. No wonder we are having trouble being taken seriously now.

Of course the brunt of the latest outrage is being borne by an unfortunate band of British sailors and marines. But it's the same old game.

To all those fools and well-meaning knot-heads who are clamoring for more diplomacy with Iran, what planet are they on?

Earlier today I read an email sending around what was supposed to be a letter from a congressman to a constituent explaining his support of a resolution asking for more diplomacy with Iran and Syria. Since I can't vouch for the veracity of its authorship, I won't name the congressman, but the sentiment is fairly conventional. One of the arguments adduced for this course is the electoral prospects of reformers in Iran.

How can reformers ever gain any real power in Iran when the religious authorities maintain an absolute veto power over all candidates, public officials and laws? These mullahs are not the sort of shrinking violets we are accustomed to democratic societies who will sell out their principles and their country rather than endure some bad publicity. These men are absolutely convinced that, if they hang tough, they or their successors will rule the world. On the record of how they have been doing for the last three decades, they have every reason for such confidence.

The mullahs of Iran depend heavily at the present time on allies among the unrepentant communists of the PRC and the DPRK, as well as the crypto-communists of the former Soviet Union. But this is, to them, a passing phase. They have no respect for their allies of convenience and fully expect those infidels to cave in to them along the way to their eventual triumph.

I am not advocating an invasion of Iran, nor even necessarily air strikes and commando raids. The time for all that was when the US embassy was seized. Anyone who thought that by putting US troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq that we would be putting Iran in a vise just didn't think things through. All we have done is to pin down our own forces in a way that prevents them from being of any use against Iran.

What I am saying is that we are in a war, but not the war on terror that our leaders insist we are fighting. We are in a fight for the life of Western Christian Civilization. Our old enemies from the Cold War, the communists, are still around in most of their former domains and a few new ones; but now they are in alliance with a particularly militant brand of Islam which threatens to topple the current regimes of the Muslim countries it does not already control. The big change from the Cold War is that we have lost many of our allies. Britain and Australia are still with us, but much of Europe may well be lost to us already and what remains has little of material support to offer.