Archive for the ‘International’ Category
Tomorrow’s Wars
by Victor Davis Hanson, 3/12/2010
Have we not seen, then, in our lifetime the end of the Western way of war?” Two decades ago, I concluded The Western Way of War with that question. Since Western warfare had become so lethal and included the specter of nuclear escalation, I thought it doubtful that two Western states could any longer wage large head-to-head conventional battles. A decade earlier, John Keegan, in his classic The Face of Battle, had similarly suggested that it would be hard for modern European states to engage in infantry slugfests like the Battle of the Somme. “The suspicion grows,” Keegan argued of a new cohort of affluent and leisured European youth—rebellious in spirit and reluctant to give over the good life to mass conscription—“that battle has already abolished itself.”
Events of the last half-century seem to have confirmed the notion that decisive battles between two large, highly trained, sophisticated Westernized armies, whether on land or on sea, have become increasingly rare. Pentagon war planners now talk more about counterinsurgency training, winning the hearts and minds of civilian populations, and “smart” interrogation techniques—and less about old-fashioned, “blow-’em-up” hardware (like, say, the F-22 Raptor) that proves so advantageous in fighting conventional set battles. But does this mean that the big battle is indeed on its way to extinction?
Read more at http://www.city-journal.com/2010/20_1_decisive-battles.html
America’s future could be all Greek to us
by Mark Steyn, OC Register, Feb. 27, 2010
While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.
What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 – or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared with Spain and Italy, Greece has the least-worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.
So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?
Read more at http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/greece-236468-government-america.html
The Democratic Party is No Longer the Pro-Israel Party
by yidwithlid, Saturday, February 27, 2010
Ever since President Obama began his public assault on Israel, I have been waiting for Congressional supporters of Israel to speak out, especially the Democrats who received 78% of the Jewish vote in the most recent election.
But the silence of the Democratic Party has been deafening, none of the usual whining from Chuck Schumer about the POTUS trying to pressure Israel while allowing the Palestinians to get off scot-free, nothing from Gary Ackerman about POTUS linking the creation of Israel to the Holocaust, even nothing from Anthony “The Weenie” Weiner about Obama’s bigoted statements saying only are not allowed to live in Jerusalem. One would think that someone like Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who never misses a pro-Israel dinner (or any dinner), would speak out about the latest Obama criticism, bashing Israel for wanting to take care of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s tomb. Or you would expect my congressman Steve Israel to refuse the request of the White House to lend his name to a dinner sponsored by the anti-Israel group J-street.
You would expect all that, but none of it happened. As the far left progressive movement continues its stranglehold on the Democratic Party, the party faithful moves away from Israel to satisfy the progressives.
Progressive websites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post contain some of the most vile Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic rhetoric on the web.
Read more at http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2010/02/democratic-party-is-no-longer-pro.html
Bill Gates, Environmental Kook
by Claude Sandroff, American Thinker, February 18, 2010
If giving away a multibillion-dollar fortune is hard work, Bill Gates has been slaving away since he relinquished active management of Microsoft Corporation in 2008. Perhaps the most loathed technology executive of the P.C. era, he now bottle-feeds African babies and champions touchy-feely models of capitalism as he yearns to become the world’s most beloved philanthropist.
–SNIP– At the TED 2010 conference in Long Beach, California, Bill Gates won a standing ovation by calling for the end of carbon-based fuels in forty years; literally, our CO2 emissions must drop to zero or we risk a warming world, lower crop yields, and starvation of the poor. It is absolutely stunning, as we read Gates’s excerpts, to accept that a formerly unrelenting strategic genius has transformed himself into a conveyor of hackneyed global warming alarmism.
According to Gates, “There is uncertainty about how bad the effects of increases in atmospheric CO2 are, but they will be bad. Until we get to near zero, the temperature will go up.”
Does Bill Gates not know how shaky the foundations of anthropogenic global warming science have become?
Read more at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/bill_gates_environmental_kook.html
CNN: “Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050.”
Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero! “The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.” Video at http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html
What to say to a ‘warmer’
by Mark Landsbaum, OC Register, Feb. 14, 2010
It has been tough to keep up with all the bad news for global warming alarmists. We’re on the edge of our chair, waiting for the next shoe to drop. This has been an Imelda Marcos kind of season for shoe-dropping about global warming.
At your next dinner party, here are some of the latest talking points to bring up when someone reminds you that Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won Nobel prizes for their work on global warming.
ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain’s East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics’ views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the “science is settled?”
FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff’s so solid, why the secrecy?
ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn’t be located. “Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?” the paper asked. The paper’s investigation also couldn’t find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, “how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?” The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.
HimalayaGate
PachauriGate
SternGate
Read more at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-234092–.html
There has been no global warming since 1995
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
by Jonathan Petre, Daily Mail, 14th February 2010
- Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
- There has been no global warming since 1995
- Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes
Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
Also
THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE RETREAT
By Ed Price, Daily Express, February 15, 2010
THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.
Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.
The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory.
Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.
Read more at http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214
Global Warming is Man Made . . .
Oh, its man-made all right, the DATA is man-made!
The fact that the MSM isn’t trumpeting the news about the falsification of data from the British Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is just amazing. (Anthropogenic: man-made) And they wonder why trust is declining. Look in the mirror!
Oh yeah, its “settled” science! Does “settled” in this instance mean fixed?
WHERE IS AL GORE? Strangely silent lately, no?
Actually we shouldn’t be so hard on Mr. Gore. After all, he was willfully misled by scientists. Scientists who, supposedly, are looking for the facts.
German High Court Outlaws Electronic Voting
by Michael Collins, dailycensored.com, Oct 19, 2009 (yes its old, I just found out about it)
The justices above are clearly the most rational group of high level functionaries in the industrialized world. They did what no other court would do in Europe or the United States. They effectively outlawed electronic voting. On March 3, 2009, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared that the electronic voting machines used in the 2005 Bundestag elections for the German national parliament were outside of the bounds of the German Constitution.
They reasoned that electronic voting is not verifiable because citizen votes are counted in secret. It obscured a technology inaccessible to all but a very few initiates. Most importantly, the German high court noted, electronic voting machines don’t allow citizens to “reliably examine, when the vote is cast, whether the vote has been recorded in an unadulterated manner” Mar. 3, 2009.
The written opinion effectively bars electronic voting in future elections based on the complexity of voting machines and the inability of voters to watch their vote being counted. This raises the bar of acceptability well above the meaningless solutions offered by “paper trails” for touch screen votIing or the so-called “paper ballots” for computerized optical scan voting machines, the most popular form of voting in the United States.
Germany’s 2009 Bundestag elections were conducted with hand counted paper ballots.
Read more at http://dailycensored.com/2009/10/19/a-censored-headline-and-why-it-matters/
Yes its old, I just found out about it. Now, since the US Supreme Court is starting to follow international precedents, will this one be among them?
Economics in One Rap Lesson
“Fear the Boom and Bust” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem, youtube.com, January 23, 2010
In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.
video, 7:32
Found this originally at http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3962&Itemid=76
US Gov’t to spend $63 billion on Global Healthcare Initiative
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secrectary
For Immediate Release May 5, 2009
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON GLOBAL HEALTH INITIATIVE
In the 21st century, disease flows freely across borders and oceans, and, in recent days, the 2009 H1N1 virus has reminded us of the urgent need for action. We cannot wall ourselves off from the world and hope for the best, nor ignore the public health challenges beyond our borders. An outbreak in Indonesia can reach Indiana within days, and public health crises abroad can cause widespread suffering, conflict, and economic contraction. That is why I am asking Congress to approve my Fiscal Year 2010 Budget request of $8.6 billion — and $63 billion over six years — to shape a new, comprehensive global health strategy. We cannot simply confront individual preventable illnesses in isolation. The world is interconnected, and that demands an integrated approach to global health.
As a U.S. Senator, I joined a bipartisan majority in supporting the Bush Administration’s effective President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). That plan has provided lifesaving medicines and prevention efforts to millions of people living in some of the world’s most extreme conditions. Last summer, the Congress approved the Lantos-Hyde US Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS Act — legislation that I was proud to cosponsor as a U.S. Senator and now carry out as President. But I also recognize that we will not be successful in our efforts to end deaths from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis unless we do more to improve health systems around the world, focus our efforts on child and maternal health, and ensure that best practices drive the funding for these programs.
Read more at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-by-the-President-on-Global-Health-Initiative/
This is an old press release by the Obama White House, for a program actually started by President Bush, but . . . We’re Broke!
Glaciers melting? It was propaganda, says the propagandist
by Patrick McIlheran of the Journal Sentinel, Jan. 25, 2010
The story so far: The United Nations’ chief global warming agitators, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued a report a couple years back. It said, among other things, that the glaciers atop the Himalayas would be gone by 2035.
Now, it turns out there’s no science to back that up. The glaciers won’t be gone by 2035; the claim was bogus and was based on nothing more than a talking point in an old environmentalist brochure. Experts on the Himalayan glaciers said the claim is baseless.
Now, new twist: The guy who put the claim in the report, according to the Daily Mail, “admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
Read more at http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/82598642.html
It seems like Global Warming really IS man-made, full of lies.
The Global Debt Bomb
by Daniel Fisher, Forbes, 1/20/2010
The world has issued so much debt in the past two years fighting the Great Recession that paying it all back is going to be hell–for Americans along with everybody else. Taxes will have to rise around the globe, hobbling job growth and economic recovery.
Featuring:
Can Japan Beat Its Debt Disaster? by Daniel Fisher - It’s a measure of Japan’s mounting fiscal problems that its finance minister, Hirohisa Fujii, resigned in early January because of exhaustion.
The United States Of Debt by Kurt Badenhausen, Illinois - New York and Connecticut top our list of problem places. What about your state?
The Risk List by Neil Weinberg - Ten companies flashing financial danger signs
The Coming Sovereign Debt Crisis by Nouriel Roubini and Arpitha Bykere - Will investors move out of their ‘’safe haven” markets?
AND MUCH MORE at http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/20/global-debt-bomb-business-wall-street-debt-10_land.html
Climategate: CRU Was But the Tip of the Iceberg
by Marc Sheppard, American Thinker, January 22, 2010
Not surprisingly, the blatant corruption exposed at Britain’s premiere climate institute was not contained within the nation’s borders. Just months after the Climategate scandal broke, a new study has uncovered compelling evidence that our government’s principal climate centers have also been manipulating worldwide temperature data in order to fraudulently advance the global warming political agenda.
Not only does the preliminary report [PDF] indict a broader network of conspirators, but it also challenges the very mechanism by which global temperatures are measured, published, and historically ranked.
Read more at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
Also,
Expert Warns of ‘Climategate’ Conspiracy
by Jim Meyers, Newsmax, Friday, 22 Jan 2010
Renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray tells Newsmax that a possible new conspiracy regarding global warming has been uncovered in the U.S.
–snip– Gray told Newsmax.TV’s Kathleen Walter about a new report out of San Diego calling into question the accuracy of “the data that they’re basing global warming on — that this is the second or third warmest month or year of the last 100 years and that sort of thing. [Investigators have] been digging more and more into the data bases and they’ve been finding that there are inconsistencies there.”
Manmade global warming proponents in the government “are handling the data in ways to obtain data that shows the globe is warming more than it really is.
Read more at http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/Expert-Warns–Climategate–Conspiracy/2010/01/22/id/347676
It seems like Global Warming really IS man-made, full of lies.
The United States of America demoted to “Mostly Free”
by Terry Miller, Heritage Foundation blog, January 20th, 2010
The United States is losing ground to its major competitors in the global marketplace, according to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. This year, of the world’s 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. Its score declined to 78 from 80.7 on the 0 to 100 Index scale.
The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed “too big to fail.” These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits.
Read more at http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/20/the-u-s-isnt-as-free-as-it-used-to-be
Ranking the countries at http://www.heritage.org/Index/Ranking.aspx
Hey, we’re Number Eight! (Behind Canada?)
Glenn Beck Show - The Revolutionary Holocaust
Glenn Beck Show - The Revolutionary Holocaust - January 22, 2010 - Pt 1 of 7, Youtube.com
Pt 2 of 7 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRHCzd_5rA
See all 7 parts at http://lucianne.com/article/?pageid=glenn_beck_show
The most influential US conservatives: Paul Ryan is #9!
By Toby Harnden, US Editor, Telegraph, 15 Jan 2010
#9. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin congressman
Paul Ryan has it all – including time on his side. He entered Congress at the tender age of 28 and doesn’t turn 40 until this year. A budget hawk, he is now the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee and is holding the Obama administration’s feet to the fire just as he challenged the Bush administration to return to fiscal conservatism. Undoubtedly a future presidential prospect, he hails from a swing state and won re-election in 2008 even though his district went for Obama – an illustration of his powerful crossover appeal. A Catholic and strong social conservative, Ryan is happily married with three children and is a keen bow hunter and fisherman. His website Americanroadmap.org outlines his plans to rewrite the entire federal tax, healthcare and Social Security system.
Increasingly a national figure, he recently endorsed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate primary, saying that “Marco’s record of conservative leadership offers convincing evidence that he will hold Washington accountable, prevent government from wasting our tax dollars and lead a new generation of Republicans”. Showed he is not afraid to go against his party’s hierarchy. A former Senate aide, he wrote speeches for Jack Kemp, Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1996. He is the fifth generation of his family to live in Janesville, Wisconsin. Used to hold constituency hours in an old truck that he would drive to remote towns and villages. Has a populist touch, recently penning an essay for Forbes entitled Down With Big Business, railing against lobbyists, “crony capitalism” and the “record profits” of rescued banks.
Congratulations Paul!
1st Congressional District - Paul Ryan’s House website
Paul Ryan for Congress, campaign website
Chilly politics: Gore ice sculpture back in Fairbanks
Anchorage Daily News, Published: January 5th, 2010 02:25 PM, Last Modified: January 6th, 2010 09:15 AM
Link: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Two Fairbanks businessmen are still so annoyed by former Vice President Al Gore’s stand on global warming that they have commissioned another “Frozen Gore” ice sculpture for display in front of a liquor store. This year’s version features Gore blowing smoke — but only when a truck exhaust is connected. Businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora say they’ll commission the sculpture annually until Gore comes to Fairbanks to debate climate change. “Before we start carbon taxing … let’s try and educate ourselves,” Compeau said. The Frozen Gore Web site also has pictures of last year’s creation.
From http://www.adn.com/3437/story/1080124.html
Obama: Is He Learning?
Obama’s Remarks on the Terror Plot Review, NY Times, January 7, 2010
Following is the text of President Obama’s remarks on Thursday in which he addresses the results of a government review of the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day, as released by the White House:
Over the past two weeks, we’ve been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let’s be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/us/politics/08obama.text.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=all
Comment: Is President Obama learning on the job? Or has the above paragraph from his speech just been focus-group-tested, but he really doesn’t believe it? And, if he really does believe it, what is his next step?
Is THIS his next step?: The President mentions the word “Islamofascism” !!
Discover The Networks: A Guide to the Political Left
Discover The Networks: A Guide to the Political Left
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org
Welcome to DiscoverTheNetworks. This site is a “Guide to the Political Left.” It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left’s (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.
The site is made up of two principal data elements along with a powerful search engine to locate and explore the information stored. The first of these elements is a database of PROFILES of individuals, groups and institutions, which can be accessed through the heptagram on the home page, or the DTN DIRECTORY on the navigation bar. The PROFILES provide thumbnail sketches of histories, agendas and (where significant) funding sources. More than 1,500 such groups and individuals have already been delineated in the PROFILES sections of this base. The information has been culled from public records readily available on the Internet and other sources, whose veracity and authenticity are easily checked.
The second data element of this site consists of a library of articles, which analyze the relationships disclosed in the database and the issues they raise. These analyses are drawn from thousands of articles, both scholarly and journalistic, that have been entered into the base and linked in the RESOURCES columns that appear on the PROFILE pages. The judgments that inform these analyses are subjective, reflecting informed opinion about the matters at hand. In every case possible, their authors and sources are identified so that users of the database can form their own judgments and opinions about the reliability and value of the analyses.
White House: No matter what, we’re sending Gitmo prisoners back to Yemen
By Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent, Washington Examiner, January 3, 2010
As Susan notes below, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging the Obama White House not to go forward with plans to send a number of Yemeni terrorists now being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility back to their home country. But the Obama White House insists it will continue to send those Gitmo inmates to Yemen — a country now recognized as a hotbed of terrorism so dangerous that the U.S. has decided to close its embassy there.
On Fox News Sunday, top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said the administration “absolutely” intends to keep sending Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen. The administration has sent seven detainees to the country, Brennan said, with six of those sent in December. “Several of those detainees were put into Yemeni custody right away,” Brennan said. He did not elaborate on how many is “several” or where the other Guantanamo inmates sent to Yemen might be today. But he said the U.S. has faith in Yemen to handle the situation. “We’ve had close dialogue with the Yemeni government about the expectations that we have as far as what they’re supposed to do when these detainees go back,” Brennan said.
Given that, host Chris Wallace asked, “You are going to consider on a case-by-case basis sending more Yemenis back to Yemen?”
“Absolutely,” said Brennan.
This is going to bite us back.