America Held Hostage-Then and Now

According to the Washington Times, the new President of Iran has been identified by former hostages as one of the ``students`` who seized the American Embassy and imprisoned our citizens back during the Carter administration.

If true, this means that the same thugs who held us hostage then are, through their developement of nuclear weapons and the exporting of Jihad to Iraq, holding us hostage again. Carterism has carried the day, and Jimmy can be proud of his success!




Americans held in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran said yesterday they clearly recall Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad playing a central role in the takeover, interrogating captives and demanding harsher treatment for the hostages.
"As soon as I saw his picture in the paper, I knew that was the bastard," said retired Army Col. Charles Scott, 73, a former hostage who lives in Jonesboro, Ga.
"He was one of the top two or three leaders," Col. Scott said in a telephone interview. "The new president of Iran is a terrorist."
The new president's hard-line political views and his background as a student radical in the Iranian Revolution are well known.
But recollections of Mr. Ahmadinejad's direct and personal role in the embassy drama promises to complicate the already rocky relations between Iran's new president and the Bush administration.
Donald Sharer, a retired Navy captain who was for a time a cellmate of Col. Scott at the Evin prison in northern Tehran, remembered Mr. Ahmadinejad as "a hard-liner, a cruel individual."
"I know he was an interrogator," said Capt. Sharer, now 64 and living in Bedford, Iowa. He said he was personally questioned by Mr. Ahmadinejad on one occasion but does not recall the subject of the interrogation.
Col. Scott recalled an incident when Mr. Ahmadinejad berated a friendly Iranian guard who had allowed the two Americans to visit another U.S. hostage in a neighboring cell. Col. Scott, who understands Farsi, said Mr. Ahmadinejad told the guard, "You shouldn't let these pigs out of their cells."
Col. Scott said he responded by making a rude gesture to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
The man about to become Iran's sixth president since the revolution became "red-faced" and stormed out of the cell.
U.S. officials have condemned the voting procedures that led to Mr. Ahmadinejad's upset in a runoff win over moderate cleric Hashemi Rafsanjani on June 25.
Iran's hard-line Islamic rulers, who have long and close ties to the incoming president, barred all but a handful of the 1,000 candidates who sought to run in the election.

Pedestrian Terrorism

BobG over at Sweet Spirits of Ammonia had a piece he found on Fox News about Iraqi`s being found in Mexico preparing to cross the border into the United States. This is scary stuff; if we don`t do something to ensure border integrity we are going to wind up with a nasty ``present`` from our middle-eastern friends.

How can Mr. Bush think we can fight a war while making no effort to keep the enemy from walking into our country? It`s madness!

Bitter Pill

"If you can see [the
terrorists] as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give
them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing
better. [We must also think about] the terrorists who are creating
such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of
this karma. If you see it from a much wider point of view, we're all
in this together. We're all intimately interconnected in all of these
actions." --Richard Gere, 10 October 2001

I wonder how Mr. Gere feels about matters now that Buddhists are being targeted for no other reason than that they aren`t Moslems.

Perhaps what the United States is doing IS Karma, Mr. Gere. Perhaps we are the instruments of redemption for those redeemable in this life? Perhaps we are intended to offer protection to the defenseless in these terrible times, and administer justice? Perhaps the medicine these dangerously sick terrorists require is not love and compassion but discipline? Maybe what they need is very tough love.

Mr. Gere concerned himself with the terrorists future suffering, while he should have concerned himself with the massive amount of suffering they have been causing in the present.

The Supreme Court and What Army?

Aussiegirl over at Ultima Thule has a piece discussing Rhode Islands plan to flip the Supreme Court the bird over medical marijuana. They simply plan to disobey the Court.

The Supreme Court doesn`t have any means of enforcing their orders. Who says their rulings have to be obeyed? Would President Bush be willing to mount an army, like Andrew Jackson did when South Carolina ``nullified`` the U.S. Tariff? Will Congress be willing to enforce a Supreme Court ruling in a Blue State? Could this be the beginnings of a nationwide rebellion against the usurpation of power by the courts?

Rhode Island apparently noticed something that nobody else spotted; no-one at the court ever said ``Simon Says``.

Misdirection: by BonnieBlueFlag

BonnieBlueFlag has another great article at Ultima Thule, this one discussing the U.N. land grab via ``World Heritage Parks`` here in the United States. This is a clear violation of our property rights, and is a frightening misuse of governmental power. This is a must-read!

Dependence Day

This study by the Heritage Foundation illustrates what little independence the American People have left.

We should decommission the Fourth of July as Independence Day and make Roosevelt`s birthday, or the anniversary of Chappaquiddick, or the date of Hillary Clinton`s menopause, or some such a new holiday-Dependence Day! Instead of barbecues we can stand in soup lines while listening to speeches by Dick Durban, instead of fireworks we can shoot saturday night specials at unsuspecting liquor store owners, we can picket for more government welfare instead of hold parades honoring our founding fathers. Of course, in honor of Ted Kennedy, we must insist on free beer, and life guards should be stationed near any bridges which happen to cross running water...

You may say I`m a dreamer, but I`m not the only one. Someday America will join the Democrat Party and, with tax increases on the wealthy, we can make all of our dreams come true...

It looks like this is closer than we think.

Putin It In His Pocket

According to CNN our favorite man-who-would-be-king stole Pats owner Robert Kraft`s Superbowl ring! The Klepto Comrad apparently couldn`t resist the urge to abscond with Mr. Kraft`s diamond laden ring when the Patriot owner visited him on a business trip.

I know Russia has financial problems, but surely Mr. Putin can find a less flamboyant way to finance his debts.

A tip of the ole ten gallon to Frank Caliva at Potomac Gadfly. (Just be sure to keep that hat on your head if you are on a state visit to Moscow-it may disappear!)

The Bush Speech

I just have a few thoughts on the President`s speech last night:

1. It was a good speech, and he made a pretty compelling case-John Tabin agrees in his article at TAS today. Still, I don`t understand why the President refuses to address the border issues; most of our recent military operations have occured in westernmost Iraq, where we have been attacking terrorists trying to get across the border into (and out of) Syria. I maintain that we will not be able to secure the country as long as Iran and Syria act as sanctuaries for Jihadists. For some maddening reason Mr. Bush does not want to point this out, or deal with it.

2. The Media once again showed their arrogance by threatening to boycott the speech. They whined and cried about the fact that Bush was not giving it at the White House, and Bryan Williams stated that they ``did not think this was the appropriate venue``. Just who the hell do they think they are! Who are they to decide what venue is appropriate! I thought the media`s job is to report the news; they seem to think they can decide the details of news reporting, and can boycott if they don`t like the arrangements. What gall! It`s small wonder that these monsters of vanity and arrogance can`t figure out why they are hemmoraging their audience.

3. It should come as no surprise that the ``post analysis`` was merely an attempt at spin. At CBS, Madam Botox Nancy Pelosi was given rebuttal time (they used to only do that with the State of the Union speech) and she launched into a completely incoherent diatribe against the President. (It`s pretty clear that the networks only carried the President`s speech so they could do ``damage control`` on it.) She stated:

"The American people now know that the war in Iraq is not making our country safer," says Pelosi. "Let's forget the rosy scenarios and the reminders about how tough the job is. Let's not divide our country by saying who's for the troops and who are not. We're all for the troops, and we view our support for the troops to be measured by not only the equipment we give them, the intelligence, but by a level of planning, again, to meet their level of sacrifice."

Let`s see, the War is not making us safer? She sites the numerous terrorist attacks which have hit the United States since the beginning of the War. Ooops, it looks like she forgot to do that! She pleads that we not divide the country by talking about who is for or against the troops. I hate to point out that SHE is dividing the country by her opposition to victory and the troops. Hey Nan, you can`t launch hysterical attacks on our war effort then blame the other side for dividing the Nation! You can`t claim support for the troops when you destroy their morale and embolden the enemy, sweetheart! And don`t talk to me about planning-you have yet to give us an exit strategy for Bosnia, you have yet to offer any concrete proposals of your own (other than inserting tail between legs and scampering off), you have yet to make ANY constructive efforts. Your best idea is to retreat; but you guys will make us stronger at home!

Meanwhile, PBS dragged out every moth-eaten relic from Vietnam who managed to deny reality in ways I didn`t think possible. They denied Jihadists were working in Iraq, they denied we had made any plans, they denied we were gaining any ground, they claimed that the President`s use of the word terrorism was wrong because these were locals fighting for liberty (an echo of Michael Moore-on`s Minutemen comment). Even Rich Lowery from National Review seemed to have the life sucked out of him, making weak and innocuous comments so as not to disagree with the `60`s love in. It was disgraceful.

4. The President`s speech may help in the short term to boost public support, but he has got to develope a better communication team for his administration. This has been the problem Bush has had all along, and he doesn`t seem to get it. Condi Rice is not the person to use as a point-man for the Administration`s media face. Clinton, ever media conscious, had a slew of people whose sole purpose was to put a happy face on his misadventures. Carville, Begala, Morris, et. al. hovered about to deal with the media in times of need, while Bush tried to use Powell (he is a nice man, but has the personality of a stone), Rice, and other, well, DOERS. They are not professionals at manipulating the media, and it has always shown. Couple that with the fact that President Bush has an easygoing management style (he does not crush dissent in his administration) and you have a recipe for propoganda disaster. The President just can`t overcome the bias in the press with a group of amateurs. He needs a professional staff which is media-savvy-and he needs to reinforce his message regularly.

All-in-all, I would say the President helped his case last night. However, he still has much to do.

More on Property Rights

The American Spectator Online has an article by J. David Bremer which mirrors my own piece on Property Rights at the American Thinker. Check it out!

Life, Liberty, and Property

I haven`t had much to say on the recent Kelo decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no interest enforcing property rights. I have remedied that in the American Thinker today.

How the Supremes could issue such a ruling is beyond me; Property Rights are the cornerstone of all civil rights.

Teddy`s Dream Job

It looks like this kid has Ted Kennedy`s dream job.

That`s unfair of me; I take it back. The Senator would never settle for such low wages-after all, a fourpack would only last him about 45 minutes!

I wonder if the Kennedy clan holds any stock in that company?

Happy Days

Some good news from the American Spectator Online:

The Nation's Pulse
More Donut Than Hole
By Ralph R. Reiland
Published 6/28/2005 12:05:54 AM
The toothless rate in the United States is now twice as good as it was in 1970. Overall, the percentage of Americans between 55 and 64 years of age with zero teeth has been cut in half -- from 30 percent to 15 percent since 1970. Compared to when Ronald Reagan was elected president, the average 55 to 64-year-old American now has four more real teeth.

That's the kind of good news I was reading about in It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years when Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times landed on my sidewalk. In just one short column, Mr. Friedman managed to shine the grim spotlight on all of the following 14 multi-faceted problems: it'll be "a miracle if there is no market-induced implosion in the economy or the housing market in the next three years"; the spending hikes and tax cuts by the Bush team are "ridiculously out of control"; the Arab dictators who support the killing of Americans in Iraq are the "biggest beneficiaries" of our rising gasoline prices; George Bush has no heir apparent in his administration and has therefore too little incentive to expand his political base; the "far right wing" of the GOP is setting the agenda in the second Bush term; Bush has no "new New Deal" to address "the insecurities of the age of globalization"; on Social Security, Bush has a "private accounts obsession"; the White House is out of touch with a nation "deeply concerned about education, competition, health care and pensions"; Bush has "head-in-the-sand positions" on "stem cell research, climate change, population control and evolution"; Bush is "catering to right wing fetishes"; Bush has "utterly failed" to come up with an energy policy; the second Bush term is "drifting aimlessly, disconnected from the problems" in the nation; Dick Cheney is "an overbearing, archconservative vice president imposing his will and ideas on a less-seasoned president"; and "you can bet the farm there will have to be a huge correction after 2008 to get taxes and spending back in line."

Taken as a whole, concludes Friedman, the Bush agenda is a "dog's breakfast of antiscience, head-in-the-sand policies." If global warming won't kill us, it'll be gas-fired terrorism or a nose-diving economy, and all Bush is interested in doing is turning Terri Schiavo into a fetish. That's a tough scenario to handle with the morning coffee.

More optimistic amidst all this gloom and doom is the avalanche of evidence presented by Stephen Moore and Julian Simon in It's Getting Better All the Time, a report published in 2000 by the Cato Institute, regarding how much things have changed since 1900. "The evidence they present is irrefutable," writes Lawrence Kudlow. "This book is so full chock full of good news that it's virtually guaranteed to cheer up even the clinically depressed. Moore and Simon dismantle the doomsday pessimism that's still so commonplace in academia and the media. Give people freedom and free enterprise and the potential for human progress is seemingly limitless."

An excellent measure of a nation's economic performance is the change in its output per capita. Today, per capita economic output in the United States, adjusted for inflation (measured in constant dollars), is more than six times higher than it was in 1900. Since 1950, the official numbers from the Census Bureau show that U.S. median family income, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled.

All told, the American economy in the 20th century delivered a record of wealth and income growth never before equaled in history. "It is amazing but true," write Moore and Simon, "that more financial wealth has been generated in the United States over the past 50 years than was created in all the rest of the world in all the centuries before 1950."

This vast creation of wealth translated directly into more capital investment per worker and, consequently, higher productivity and higher incomes. Bottom line, that's what produced more teeth per capita -- and less poverty, less infant mortality, longer life spans, higher home ownership rates, more leisure, more education, more books, more music, bigger houses, better cars, and taller teenagers.

"In 1940, Californians paid 30 cents --- nearly half an hour's wage --- for the first McDonald's hamburger, one-eighth pound of ground beef," report Moore and Simon. "Today's one-fifth pound Big Mac costs $1.89, the equivalent of just 8.6 minutes of work."


Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Time For Syria

This commentary in the Washington times echoes what I have been saying here; Syria (and Iran) must be dealt with if we are to win in Iraq. What are you waiting for, Mr. President?



A despot to be dealt with
By Arnold Beichman
June 27, 2005


The Middle East is rid of one tyrant, Saddam Hussein. Now it is time to get rid of another Middle East despot, Bashar Assad, president of Syria since June 2000.
What are we waiting for? His assassins kill his Beirut opponents in adjoining Lebanon with impunity and his guerrillas kill Americans in adjoining Iraq with similar impunity. I ask President Bush: How long is this supposed to go on?
Bashar Assad, 40, is as much an enemy of freedom as the suicide bombers he sends into Baghdad. He is conducting a two-front war against democratic Lebanon and against Iraq whose citizens have begun democratizing.
Bashar Assad must not be allowed to halt that process. What are we waiting for? Again, I ask President Bush: How long is this supposed to continue? Mr. Bush knows Syria has a hit list of Lebanese officials. Peace in the Middle East means putting Mr. Assad on our hit list, notifying him that the Lebanese people are mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
It's wonderful Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushes for democracy in Egypt. Even more to the point, she has made it clear that an hour's drive away an existing democracy, Lebanon, is threatened by a Syrian aggressor who is helping kill American soldiers in Iraq. What are we waiting for? How long is this supposed to go on?
Said Miss Rice in her inspiring June 20 speech at the American University in Cairo: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."
I was even more inspired by Miss Rice's June 21 speech in Brussels, in which she accused Syria of interfering for three decades in Lebanese affairs and told Bashar to "knock it off." I think Miss Rice ought to go to Beirut with a military escort and show the flag, the banner of democracy. That would assure the Lebanese people America is on their side and will not allow Syria to again, as it has for three decades, threaten or abrogate their freedoms. For Lebanon holds fair elections like the one completed last week, and has a constitutional government.
I urge Miss Rice to visit Lebanon at the first possible opportunity and thus make something clear to Bashar Assad about President Bush's policies:
In addition to seeking the globalization of democracy, the American people will support existing democracies like Lebanon or democracies waiting to be born, like Iraq. America supported the rebuilding of a democratic Germany and Italy after World War II in face of the Soviet threat. A similar policy against the Syrian threat ought to be pursued in a Middle East where Arab democratic progress is just beginning to be visible.
The most important immediate action the U.S. could undertake today is to send Miss Rice on a visit to Lebanon and thereby notify Bashar Assad: One false move, brother, and you've had it, see? Any more planted auto bombs, any more assassinations of Lebanese leaders, past and present, and you will be held responsible, with or without the United Nations.
President Bush has made it clear he wants a world of democracies in order to ensure world peace. Lebanon is under the gun, a Syrian gun. With Bashar Assad as a neighbor, Lebanese democracy will always be threatened.
Mr. Bush helped rid the Iraqi people of a tyrant now in Allied custody awaiting trial for three decades of terror and murder. Bashar Assad wants to prevent the continued existence of a successful democracy next door. It is time to consider getting rid of the Assad dictatorship. What are we waiting for?

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.

BonnieBlueFlag on John Ashcroft

BonnieBlueFlag posted an excellent piece about John Ashcroft at Ultima Thule I have reprinted it below.

While you are there, check out the piece on Red China.


BonnieBlueFlag ponders "The Spirit of Justice"

By BonnieBlueFlag

The next time you ask why there are no good people in Washington, DC, remind yourself of the former Attorney General, John Ashcroft?

Missouri sent a favorite son to be of service to the entire country, and in the days and months after 9/11, he did every thing humanly possible to unravel the facts of that event, and to set in motion new ways in which to prevent future attacks.
The Washington bureaucracy made his job darn near impossible. Howls from every corner could be heard across the land. "Don't blame me, or my department!" "Don't touch the funding, etc., for my department!"

The need for a "Top Secret" classification, of so much information regarding this new style war on terrorists, will prevent us from knowing all that he did to protect us for many years.

The Washington crowd made no secret from the get go, that they really didn't want a God fearing Christian in their midst. Even before 9/11, he was an easy target for the so called ladies and gentlemen of the press, and the print photographers lapping at their heels.

When the opportunity presented itself to embarrass the Attorney General, with pictures of the female anatomy just above his head, they jumped at the chance.

They positioned the cameras, so that the resulting photograph would not only be very unflattering of the man, but also make him look foolish.



I first became aware of the installation of the drapes, when I heard Whoopee Goldbergh on a talk show. She went to great lengths to tell the audience that John Ashcroft had spent $80,000 of tax payer money, to cover up the statues of Spirit of Justice and Majesty of Law. Her implication being that he was some kind of a religious freak who needed to be tarred and feathered and driven out of Washington.

At that time there was no mention any where, especially in the MSM, that the drapes were originally created by Richard Thornburgh, the Attorney General under Presidents Reagan and Bush 41.

Now that the news conferences are held in a new conference room, and Attorney General Gonzales doesn't have to face the problem of being made to look foolish by the photographers, he has authorized the removal of the drapes. Thereby giving the press one more opportunity to embarrass John Ashcroft this weekend. They did not disappoint!

John Ashcroft, a man much stronger than myself in many ways, remained a Christian openly in word and action, against a tide of secular criticism and personal attacks.
While I do not share Mr. Ashcroft's particular faith, I do consider myself a Christian. I pray every day, that if and when I am faced with the possible persecution for my own religious beliefs, that I will be as strong as he was in the face of those that only worship "earthy power" regardless of it's origins.

If my thoughts seem a little extreme in this regard, please remember the young girl at Columbine High School, who was asked if she still believed in Jesus Christ? When she replied, "Yes," they killed her in cold blood.

Written By: BonnieBlueFlag

Riot or Revolution?

This article in Pravda piques my curiosity; I find it hard to believe that 200 people would be fighting over business space. This sounds more like a riot. Are we witnessing the first rumblings of an orange revolution?


One killed in massive fight in Moscow's center
06/24/2005 11:06
About 200 men wielding baseball beats and iron rods fought in the center of Moscow yesterday

A massive fight took place in the center of Moscow yesterday, in which some 200 people participated. Five people have been reportedly injured in the fight. Four people have been hospitalized. "Four people have suffered severe bodily injures as a result of the fight. One individual has been supposedly killed in the fight," a source from Moscow's law-enforcement authorities told RIA Novosti.

The incident occurred at about 9:20 p.m. Moscow time, in Granatny Side-Street in the city center. It became possible to cease the fight only after special police units arrived to the site.

About 70 men have been arrested for their participation in the massive scuffle.

The fight reportedly occurred as a result of an argument between two companies, whose offices were housed in one of the buildings on Granatny Side-Street. "About 200 people gathered near the building as the dispute between the two companies was gathering steam. The people were wielding iron rods, sticks and baseball beats. Some of the men were wearing masks," a spokesman for the Moscow law-enforcement authorities told Interfax. The conflict reportedly occurred because of ownership rights for the office building: one firm was supposed to move out, while the other one was going to move in. Discrepancies resulted in a massive fight.

Welcome to Aztlan

I occasionally run a google search on myself and on Birdblog to see what may be in the wind. Occasionally I strike gold with something of which I was completely unawares. I found my article Barbarian Invasions on the American Patrol website. American Patrol is a pro-border control organization, and here is a report from them on MECha, a Latino student organization which seeks to reconquer the Southwest and replace it with Aztlan, a new Hispanic nation.

Below is a post on a message thread taken from Mecha`s own constitution and posted on Payson`s Roundup by an alert reader. This is scary stuff; it proves that illegal immigration is a dire emergency:




Re:Taken from the MEChA Web Site
Posted by: Instigator85541
Message posted: Thu Jun 9, 2005, 6:44 pm
Suggest removal
Follow-up to: Barbarian Invasions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is right from the Mecha Web Site and is the preamble to their constitution and by laws>
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán
National Constitution

Preamble

Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán.
The following structure will make every MEChista accountable to its chapter, every chapter accountable to it's central (where applicable), every central accountable to its region, every region accountable to its state (where applicable), and every state accountable to the national.

Article I: Name
Section 1. The name of this organization shall be the National Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de
Aztlán (MEChA).
Section 2. The official symbol of this organization shall be the eagle with its wings spread, bearing
a macahuittle in one claw and a dynamite stick in the other with the lighted fuse in its beak.
The acronym MEChA shall be above the symbol with the phrase "La Union Hace La Fuerza"
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks, which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.
Nationalism
Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.
SELF-DEFENSE of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front line defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of their people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer their responsibility and their lives for their people. Those who place themselves in the front ranks for their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young, there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.
TIME TO SHUT THE DOOR ON THE BORDER DON"T YA THINK..

Global Warming Grift

Below is an interesting exchange between our friend Alnot from Love is Tough Enough and a vintage liberal named Tina on AOL`s Mad World Message Board. Tina and Alnot were arguing about Global Warming, and Alnot quoted from my American Thinker article Hot Air. She scoffed at this without dealing with what I actually SAID, and Alnot e-mailed me with her comments. Below are the posts and my response:


(From Hot Air)
I will admit that there have been cases in the past where societies have destroyed their environments. The natives of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) cut down all of their trees to move those big heads (those heads remind me of several Democrats - Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, for example, but I digress) and then killed each other fighting over the food that remained, after all the soil washed away and the birds stopped coming. The Mayan Indians were forced to move after they exhausted the land through over-cultivation. North Africa was once not as desolate as it is now; overgrazing caused massive desertification. We can put ourselves permanently out of business on a local and regional level.

It is much more likely, however, that we will destroy our spirit and our wealth through the adoption of draconian measures advocated by the socialist climate change people. The real horror would be to adopt the madness of Kyoto to tilt at the windmill of global warming, when the sun is the real culprit. We can’t fight the sun. Our ability to cope depends on the vigor of our science and economy, so crippling ourselves into a neo-Luddite dystopia is exactly the wrong thing to do. We must not rush headlong into the abyss of environmental shadows.

Below is an interesting exchange between our friend Alnot from Love is Tough Enough and a vintage liberal named Tina on AOL`s Mad World Message Board. Tina and Alnot were arguing about Global Warming, and Alnot quoted from my American Thinker article Hot Air. She scoffed at this without dealing with what I actually SAID, and Alnot e-mailed me with her comments. Below are the posts and my response:





What Miz T Had to say in Reply:

Sorry, I almost forgot the property managers sources.

The first three links he provided were from TCS, Tech Center Station, and as I asked before, please no sources in ExxonMobils pockets.

1133 21st St NW Suite M100 c/o Ralph R Brown Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-546-4242
Tech Central Science Foundation was formed in late November 2002 (Form 990). The Foundation appears to be a funding arm of the free-market news site, TechCentralStation.com.

ExxonMobil gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for "Climate Change Support." According to Guidestar.org, a nonprofit research tool, the Foundation had 2003 income of $150,000 and $110,903 in assets. The Foundation commissioned a study by Charles River Associates alleging that the costs of the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 would be a minimum of $350 annually per household through 2010, rising to $530 per household by 2020, and could rise to as high as $1,300 per year per household. Related information: Tech Central Station was launched in 1999 as "a cross between a journal of Internet opinion and a cyber think tank open to the public" (TCS news release). According to Washington Monthly, TCS is published by the DCI Group, "a prominent Washington "public affairs" firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called "Astroturf" organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot." TCS shares office space, staff and ownership with DCI Group. ("Meet the Press" Washington Monthly, December 2003. ,http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html) Corporate funders of Tech Central Station include AT&T, Avue Technologies, The Coca-Cola Company, General Motors Corporation, Intel, McDonalds, Merck, Microsoft, Nasdaq, PhRMA, and Qualcomm. (Tech Central Station website).

So thanks but these guys seem to be very content their corporate/powerlobby love nest.

T.


Al darlin, c'mon! Really, I give you NOAA as a source and you give me a property manager from St.Louis??!

Look, no rational person, property managers notwithstanding, can possibly argue that spewing toxins in the atmosphere can in any way be benefical.

I do not doubt for a second that volcanic activity, the sun and farting cows along with other natural issues influence our atmosphere, but humans contributions do the same. And with a constantly growing population wanting and using the very products that contribute to pollution and global warming, it has the potential to be devastating.

It absolutely astounds me that any person can claim to love their children, yet support the greedy bastards that are callously disregarding the future in order to fill their overloaded pockets more.

I'm equally astounded that anyone that declares their belief in God from the highest rooftops, can be so ungrateful for the earth he created, that they can be so utterly oblivious to the same greedy bastards constant and frivolous destruction of God's gift.

Al, can you seriously say that you believe the smoke and toxins belched into the air do no harm?

Can you look at the brown cloud of smog over most cities and say that it is a good thing and as harmless as the corporate asses would have the easily led to believe?

Please Al, no more ExxonMobil paid mouthpieces or property managers as sources.

Al Responds:

Why answer junk science?The first three links he provided were from TCS, Tech Center Station, and as I asked before, please no sources in ExxonMobils pockets.

This is a classic liberal trick; you cannot dispute the facts in these articles, so you make wild accusations about sinister corporate ties. The fact is, TCS writers are freelancers, and are generally very accomplished in their fields. The sources I sited include Dr. Roy Spencer (go here to view his bio) and his sources are the following:

1. Fu, Q., C.M. Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, Vol. 429, p. 55-58. 2. Fu, Q., and C.M. Johanson, 2004. Stratospheric influences on MSU-derived tropospheric temperature trends: A direct error analysis. Journal of Climate, to be published December 15, 2004 3. Tett, S., and P. Thorne, 2004: Tropospheric temperature series from satellites. December 2, 2004, at Nature online (subscription required).

The second article is by Patrick Michaels from the Cato Institute, Frederick Seitz-past President of the National Academy of Science, and Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller University, and Dr. David Douglass-professor of physics at the University of Rochester.

The third article is by Sally Baliunas. Read her bio here:

Sallie Baliunas, Ph.D. served as part Deputy Director of Mount Wilson Observatory and as Senior Scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute in Washington, DC, and chairs the Institute's Science Advisory Board and is past contributing editor to the World Climate Report. Her awards include the Newton-Lacy-Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom and the Bok Prize from Harvard University. She has written over 200 scientific research articles. In 1991 Discover magazine profiled her as one of America's outstanding women scientists. She was technical consultant for a science-fiction television series, "Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict," airing 1997 - 2001. She received her M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) degrees in Astrophysics from Harvard University.

__________________________________-

The fact that you disregard these authors because they write in what YOU denounce as an Exxon funded site shows your unwillingness to examine the science. You disregard them because they do not agree with you. You are very willing to accept the word of other special interest-the Government Agencies and Universities which stand to receive a great deal of money for ``research`` into global warming; these institutions will lose millions if they admit that the emperor has no clothes, but you take their word as gospel truth! What hypocrisy!

I notice you ignore my other sources completely. You ignore Michel Jarroud at the World Meteorological Organization, Sami Solanki from the Max Planck Institute, Dr. Henrick Svensmark from the Danish Meteorological Institute, and Conservationist David Bellamy. Fine! How about Fred Singer, how about going here or here or here How about the BBC Would you believe the 1200 scientists who signed a petition against Kyoto?

Look, no rational person, property managers notwithstanding, can possibly argue that spewing toxins in the atmosphere can in any way be benefical.

I thought this was about Global Warming, not toxins in the atmosphere. In case you don`t know, these are different issues. (I might point out that the air is far cleaner now than it was twenty years ago.)

It absolutely astounds me that any person can claim to love their children, yet support the greedy bastards that are callously disregarding the future in order to fill their overloaded pockets more.

I agree! Kyoto is an attempt to rob the United States! The greedy bastards on the left are callously disregarding the future in order to fill their overloaded pockets.

I'm equally astounded that anyone that declares their belief in God from the highest rooftops, can be so ungrateful for the earth he created, that they can be so utterly oblivious to the same greedy bastards constant and frivolous destruction of God's gift.

There you go with the greedy bastards part again! Me think thou doth protest too much! God has Commandments against covetousness and theft, dear!

Man made global warming is the great myth of the age. Like all myths, it will perish in the light of truth.

_________________________________________________________


Interestingly enough, David Hogberg has an
article in The American Spectator Online today dealing with this very thing-the mountains of money available to the Global Warming Hysterics. He shows that Climate Change is big business, and that the scientists and organizations who push this junk science have a serious financial interest in maintaining the myth. This Tina doesn`t want to allow anyone to argue with facts from TCS because they receive corporate funds, but she is perfectly happy to use NOAA which receives huge governmental funding, and she apparently doesn`t see the hypocrisy!

Saul Alinsky wrote the gospel for liberals in the 1960`s, and all of their tactics come from his book ``Rules for Radicals``. One of his tactics is to impugne the motives of your opponents when the facts are against you. Tina employs this trick here with her exposition on the evil corporate influence on Tech Central Station. She mocks me because I don`t have numerous Latin figures after my name. She is afraid to actually talk about the science, or examine reality to see if it fits her particular model. Man-made Climate Change is all about theory and models, but has no actual real-world facts to back it up. They are always using graphs and percentage increases to make their case, all the while ignoring the actual physical evidence-which is completely against them. They try to dodge the inconvenient fact that the temperature has increased 1 degree worldwide in 100 years-and that this is obviously within the parameters of normal variation (in fact, we haven`t been keeping careful worldwide temperature records all that long so we are merely guessing even at that!) They start their temperature records to coincide with the end of the Maunder Minimum (the Mini-Ice Age) because this will show a larger increase in worldwide temperatures. (That is like dating river levels on the Mississippi by starting in 1993 during the Great Flood, and then using these records to prove that we are in a period of desertification!) They obfuscate, hide inconvenient facts (like the water temperatures show a rise but the atmospheric tests actually show a slight cooling) and manipulate to prove themselves right. When anyone challenges them on the facts they fall back on Alinsky and attack the motives of their critics. What liars!

Fortunately, the information is there for the asking, and reality is disproving the doomsayers. The end is near for the Global Warming Grift. It`s primary purpose was to swindle the United States, and most of us haven`t fallen for it!

Frontpagemag On The Duelfer Report

There`s a great article over at frontpagemag.com about the Duelfer Report. Author Christopher Carson shows the gaping holes in Mr. Duelfer`s work, and shows how the report actually buttresses the President`s case.

Enforced Paternalism

Professor Walter E. Williams is one of my favorite thinkers. He sees things with such clarity, and can explain his position in a simple, concrete way. The man is a national treasure!

Below is his opinion on mandatory seat belt laws (and all other laws which enforce safety and security on the individual.) I couldn`t have said it any better!

Thanks to the Federalist!



"The NHTSA's 'Click It or Ticket' program is another step toward making Americans serfs of the state. Let's look at it. I personally believe that wearing seatbelts is a good idea, and I buckle up and remind my passengers to do so as well. Because seatbelt usage saves lives, mandating such is an abomination in a free society. There are many other legislative actions that are offensive to liberty and can have saving as their justification, a matter I'll turn to later. But let's talk about the immorality of mandated seatbelt usage. Let's start with the question: Who owns Walter E. Williams? Is it President Bush, the U.S. Congress, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or do I own myself? I'm guessing that any reasonable person would agree that I own Walter E. Williams. The fact that I own myself means that I have the right to take risks with my own life but not others'. That's why it's consistent with morality to mandate that my car have working brakes. If my car doesn't have working brakes, then I risk the lives of others, and I have no right to do so. If I choose not to wear a seatbelt, then I risk my own life, which I have every right to do. ... Some might rejoin by saying, 'Williams, if you're not wearing a seatbelt, and don't do us the favor of dying in an accident and become an incapacitated vegetable, society will have to bear the expense of taking care of you.' That's not a problem of liberty and self-ownership. It's a problem of socialism. There's no moral case for forcing anyone to care for me for any reason. When we buy into socialism, we buy into paternalistic government." --Walter Williams

A Potent Festival

Speaking of unusual foods, these nutty people really know how to have a ball!

I`m not surprised the festival ran out of beer last year-you`d have to be stewed enjoy this one!

Durbin the Turban

One of the things I try to avoid here at Birdblog is regurgitating the stories and opinions which consume the current news cycle. I try to keep Birdblog fresh and relevant, and this sometimes requires me to ignore the hot topic of the day if I have nothing original to add; I`ve never wanted to be part of the echo chamber.

That`s why when Ill-Noise Senator Durbin the Turban, that stink-bomb with a milquetoast casing, the Sheik of the burning bland, made his outrageous remarks I stifled a yawn and went about my business. Democrats and Liberals are always making outrageous, near treasonous remarks these days, and I knew everyone would swarm this like flies on a dunghill. What is one more hysterical rant from the Deadocrats? Their furious windstorms are growing mighty stale, and wild accusations have become so commonplace I have really ceased to care. Still, this particularly nasty commentary by the number 2 Dem in the Senate (the NEW number 2-does anybody remember The Prisoner?) is having international repercussions, and I fear I`m going to have to weigh in on this thing.

Mr. (cough) Durbin makes commentary based on an F.B.I. memo which has not been provided to Tom Delay or any other Republicans. Isn`t that convenient! Nobody from the Republican camp can verify that there really is such a memo. Nobody can verify that the memo says what the turban says it does. How convenient! We have a phantom memo which claims we are engaged in torture at Guantanamo Bay. (Hey Dick, I know you just saw Star Wars but episode 1 was the phantom MENACE not memo!) We have no way of independently verifying this; we have to take tricky Dick`s word.

Why, pray tell, was an F.B.I.agent present during the torture of a prisoner at Gitmo? Doesn`t that strike anybody as odd? If I were engaged in torture, I certainly wouldn`t invite a civilian to watch. I would restrict it to other military personnel who would be under orders, and would be damn certain these military people were ones I could trust. I find it difficult to believe that our interrogation experts would be so careless as to allow a G-man to witness abuse of prisoners. Terrible incompetence there.

This unnamed F.B.I. man in our phantom memo goes on to claim a number of things. For instance, he claims that he saw a prisoner bound hand and foot on the floor, a big pile of hair beside him which he pulled out of his own noggin from frustration and pain. I have been in situations both terribly frustrating and painful, and I have never even considered pulling my own hair out. Yanking out hair is painful! It sounds like this prisoner was torturing himself more than his guards were; sort of like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer to distract you from the pain in your toe! I find that hard to swallow. Also, I would like to know how this fellow was able to yank out his curly locks while bound hand and foot. (Don`t bother me with details, Son!)

We know that Al Qaida has been training prisoners on their behavior if captured. We know they are good at keeping Omerta (the code of silence)and we know that they have been instructed to allege abuse and torture whenever possible. What I think happened is (if it happened at all) we had a prisoner who knew that non-military personnel would see him, and so he pulled his own hair out to make it look like he was being mistreated. I suspect that this guy purposely tortured himself in the hopes that some bleeding heart civilian would get it to a jackass, who would read it on the Senate floor! I suspect that this man was bound to stop him from injuring himself.

Impossible, you say! Who would do such a thing? Who would die flying a jetliner into a skyscraper-both full of innocent people? Who would strap explosives to his body and make a grease stain out of himself just to kill little children and old women in a pizza parlor? If Jihadists are willing to commit suicide for the cause, is it inconceivable that an imprisoned Jihadist might fake marks of torture? Why should we believe any of this?

What are the turban`s other allegations? The A/C made it too cool, the A/C was off and it was too hot! Oh, boo-hoo! They don`t even HAVE A/C in Afghanistan, you dolt! It gets cold in the mountains, and scalding hot in the flats. I guarantee that these people are used to great variations of temperature. I can`t imagine heat bothering an Iraqi, either. Our men are there in 120 degree heat, and they AREN`T used to that, but they get by (in full fatigues and often battle armor, I might add!) Meanwhile, the prisoners at Gitmo are eating gourmet foods specially prepared by a culturally sensitive Chef, are being given Korans, prayer rugs, and are having their calls to prayer broadcast over the camp loudspeakers. They are living better than many Americans living in government run housing facilities. I`m sorry if I find it hard to be sympathetic.

Sunday morning I watched Joe (un)Biden on DeFace the Nation trying to defend the Illinois Ayatollah. It was a revolting affair with Biden essentially saying that the Turban was misquoted, misunderstood, was being denied his freedom of speech, etc. The ultimate point Biden made was that Durbin was correct! When pressed for a solution to the Gitmo problem, Biden hemmed and hawed, saying this is a new kind of war and we don`t know how to fight it. Bullshit! Has Mr. Biden never heard of Quantrill? During the Civil War Quantrill massacred innocent people in pro-Unionist towns in Missouri and Kansas. (Frank and Jesse James rode with Quantrill.) There were others who fought in this dirty fashion. Generally, they were shown no mercy; after any information was extracted from them they were executed without trial. Why didn`t terrorism spread during the Civil War? Because it wasn`t tolerated. We have also met this style of asymmetric warfare in Vietnam, the French and Indian War, and the Japanese fought this way in a limited fashion in New Guinea, the Philippines, etc. The solution is to not tolerate it; go after any hiding places of these ruthless men, keep them running and scared. You can`t win a war like this with smiles and good intentions. This is war at it`s dirtiest-and our enemies are the ones who have set the rules.

Treason is giving aid and comfort to an enemy during time of war. Dick Durbin`s words are playing on every Jihadist television and radio station, as well as in all of their newspapers and on their websites. The enemy`s strategy is modeled on that of the Viet Cong; outwait American patience, take advantage of America`s decency, use left-wing and pacifist politicians to wither American will. They know that the Media is their best friend in this, and that victory will come when enough Americans believe the defeatism being force fed to them daily by the willingly duplicitous ``News`` outlets. Mr. Durbin has given their confidence in victory a major boost-he has aided them psychologically and in terms of propaganda, and has offered comfort by easing their fears that we stand firm.

If this is treason, much of the Democrat party as well as the mainstream media bear the same guilt! If the Duck theory (if it walks and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck) is valid, we must ask ourselves about all of those swimming birds.

Deathhead Dinner Hour

As you all know, I have made the argument that the left-particularly the pro-abortion, pro-euthenasia crowd-has a certain attraction to the concept of death. I like to call them Deathheads because, like groupies, they follow the grim reaper in morbid fascination, and defend the ``right to die`` wherever and whenever possible. This story in World Net Daily takes the Deathhead concept to a new low; no longer content to merely observe and assist, this disturbed Deathhead has gone boldly into the final frontier, fulfilling his lust for the grave in the most disgusting manner possible.

The interesting thing is that the Law is powerless to punish this behavior. Cannibalism is illegal, but, since a fetus is not considered a human being by the wisdom of the Supreme Court, it is perfectly legal to dine away on the remains of the poor aborted child (or blend into a smoothie, as our bon-vivant Deathhead apparently enjoys) and society can do nothing to stop him.

This should hardly surprise us; it is natural for barbarity to breed greater barbarity, and ripping a child out of her mother`s womb is a foul, barbaric act. We have become increasingly desensitized to such abominations, and someone with a morbid obsession will find it increasingly hard to get their adrenal kicks by merely WATCHING a baby die.

Bon Appetite!




(Thanks and salutations to Gindy for this foul bit of news.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: June 18, 2005
10:00 p.m. Eastern



© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Ever since the story broke about a Kansas City abortionist accused of eating fetuses questions have been raised about why he wasn't charged with a crime besides losing his medical license.

The short answer, according to law enforcement authorities involved in the investigation of Krishna Rajanna, is: Because there are no laws against eating fetuses.

After being provided information about horrific conditions of a Kansas abortion clinic nearly two years ago, the Kansas state board in charge of regulating such facilities took months to investigate it and even longer to shut it down.


As WorldNetDaily reported, Krishna Rajanna's clinic was closed in March, but only after the testimony of law enforcement agents who investigated the grisly charges – including one employee's contention the abortionist microwaved a fetus and stirred it into his lunch.

The accusation was made by clinic staffer Julia Walton Garcia.

"Julia went on to describe how she and the other girls actually witnessed Rajanna microwave one of the aborted fetuses and stir it into his lunch," explained Detective William Howard of the Kansas City Police Department, the investigating officer. "Julia claimed that she shared this (information) with some of the other employees, who confirmed that they had seen him do the very same thing."

Howard was so disturbed by the charge that he took Garcia to the office of Nick Tomasic, the district attorney for Wyandotte County. Though Howard told Garcia that lying to a district attorney would be a serious offense, she told the same story to Tomasic.

But Tomasic's hands were tied. There were no laws on the books to prohibit an abortionist – or anyone else – from eating a human unborn baby.

Rajanna announced this week he would appeal the revocation of his medical license by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts.

Krishna Rajanna's license was pulled last Saturday. The unanimous decision ended a drawn-out battle that included startling allegations against Rajanna.

The board unanimously ruled that Rajanna's license should be pulled after a series of inspections turned up such things as a dead mouse in the clinic hallway, filled syringes in an unlocked refrigerator, carpet in a surgical area and a facility that was generally unkempt.

Rajanna has denied those charges as well. The accusation by Garcia was also raised in a legislative hearing earlier this year.

Rajanna denies the claim and points out that it was made by a disgruntled employee who was later fired.

"They're just making it up with no proof whatsoever," he told the Kansas City Star. "We're always under attack. It's not something new. They would always take a lie and make it as big as can be and that's exactly what is happening," he said.


Rajanna first came to the attention of police in September 2003 when he called the cops to investigate alleged employee theft. Howard responded.

"I thought I had heard and seen every vile, disgusting crime scene, but was in for a new shock when I started this investigation," he would say later. Howard turned the matter over to the local district attorney and three state agencies.

While Rajanna denied the accusation about eating fetuses, he did keep fetuses in Styrofoam cups in the refrigerator along with food and drink

Border Criminals

This is from a blog called Tran Sient`s Watch. Tran Sient is very sharp and well worth a read. Check it out!


Another Reason to Secure the Southern Border
Look at what is going on just south of Texas.

Border Police Chief Only Latest Casualty In Mexico Drug War (Account Required, usually)

This week, federal troops and police took over the city (Nuevo Laredo) of 300,000 as the death toll reached 50 in an escalating drug war, and U.S. Ambassador Antonio O. Garza Jr. warned of a "rapidly degenerating situation along the border." The entire local police force was ordered off the streets after city officers engaged in a gun battle with federal investigative police Saturday that left one federal officer seriously wounded.

If terrorism isn’t enough of a reason to tighten up security, perhaps this is. If being overrun by illegal immigrants doesn't concern you, maybe Mexican killers will do the trick.

Mexican authorities this week disclosed for the first time that 90 soldiers had been killed in drug-related violence since President Vicente Fox took office in December 2000, vowing a "war without mercy" on Mexico's drug cartels.

When one can wade across the Rio Grande unhindered, how long before this spills over? Now that the United States is hosting 20,000 members of MS-13, perhaps it already has. These people aren't flying into Dulles.

In a recent interview, Fox likened Mexico's "explosion of organized crime killing" to the Al Capone era in Chicago. "Let's recall Chicago in the early '20s. I mean it took years to get rid of the mafias, it took years to get rid of organized crime,"

Does this mean Fox is going after them on tax evasion?

Federal officials said that frequently their enemies are not just the drug cartels, but local police who have been corrupted by drug money.

Very sad. If Fox can't take care of his own house, the United States should take more measures to protect itself.

He also called on U.S. authorities to help stop the flow of weapons into Mexico.

How about a trade, we stop weapons going south, you stop illegals and drugs coming north. Of course, we could stop all of it if our leaders had the motivation to do so.

He said much of the high-powered weaponry and other technology used by the drug cartels is smuggled in from the United States.

So, the United States is supplying the market and the firepower. Both terrorism and illegal immigration are easily reason enough to shut down the wide open southern border. But since neither of those issues are getting any movement, perhaps drug induced anarchy within walking distance of Texas will be. The United States could make huge strides in security, immigration and illegal drug use by simply taking control of its own territory. Sadly, no one in government is moving in that direction. It doesn’t matter if it’s the National Guard, citizen volunteers, or Border Patrol; we have the ability to control our border. Someone please step up to the plate.

Durban Knows Better

Our good friend Aussiegirl at Ultima Thule has been on fire lately, and I am simply amazed at the pure brilliance of her most recent posts! She has a fascinating piece on the comments made by Durbin the Turban (the Sheik of the burning bland.) You simply can`t miss this one!

Thomas Lifson, editor at The American Thinker, was so impressed with this post he linked it up at his site. Congrats, Aussiegirl!

Space Rage

John Derbyshire has an article in National Review Online in which he condemns the manned space program, and calls for it`s dissolution. Normally Mr. Derbyshire is a lucid and brilliant thinker, but I bitterly disagree with him on this. Below is an e-mail I sent him. If he responds I`ll post it up:

Dear Mr. Derbyshire,

I am normally a great fan of yours, and agree with you on most issues. I have to take umbrage, however, with your article about the space program. I believe it is myopic and narrow, and I think you should re-evaluate your position.

You trumpet the fact that 14 people have died in 113 flights, but you fail to mention that those were 2 shuttle trips out of the 113, which means that out of 791 people who have flown on the shuttle, 14 have died. Granted, this would be an abyssmal record for a commercial airline, but it is not that bad considering the complexities of space flight. How many people died in crashes of the old biplanes? How many deaths in the early days of ballooning? Space flight is in it`s infancy. For that matter, how many ships sank on the way to the New World in the 16th Century? Pioneering is often dangerous.

You complain that the costs are too high for the return, and you point to experiments on Osteoperosis. Granted, we are not seeing overnight miracles, but we have seen a plethora of technological developements which have spun off from the space program. Teflon, of course, is one example, but we have special heat shielding which was developed for Nasa, fuel cells were developed for the space program, advances in material science, in computers, in ergonomics (the science of engineering equipment to human ability), in rocketry. The space program has yielded in abundance. That we haven`t cured Osteoperosis is hardly a rational reason to scrap the entire program. I would like to point out that we haven`t cured cancer yet, either. Does that mean we should shut down Johns Hopkins?

You state:
There is nothing — nothing, no thing, not one darned cotton-picking thing you can name — of either military, or commercial, or scientific, or national importance to be done in space, that could not be done twenty times better and at one thousandth the cost, by machines rather than human beings.

Is that so? Why did we have to send the Shuttle to repair the Hubble telescope? Robots don`t make very good repairmen, Mr. Derbyshire. In fact, the shuttles have repaired numerous satellites through the years-some of these being critical to our national security or communication net. Robots have a hard time conducting anything beyond ``black box`` experiments. Remember the trouble with the Viking probe on Mars? A guy with a wrench would have fixed that in 15 seconds. Ditto with the problems with the current Mars rovers.

I agree we need to streamline the manned space program. The addition of ``international`` to our space station has turned that into a white elephant. The Shuttles are 25 years old, and based on technology even older. We were working on their systems when Nixon was in office! Of course we`re having problems. What we need to do is modernize, not discontinue.

The fundamental flaw in your thinking, as I see it, stems from a short-term view. You say that mining asteroids would be cost prohibitive. That is true today, at any rate. If we had proper facilities and equipment in place the costs would drop drastically and asteroid mining could become a very lucrative business. How about Solar Power Satellites; they would be enormously expensive but would generate free power virtually forever. How about producing silicon or graphite compote whiskers; these have the highest tensile strength of any materials we can produce and they require hard vacuum and microgravity helps.

The problem is infrastructure. The Shuttle was designed to carry massive loads into space to build things. (The Shuttle was intended to have a manned booster which would land and be reused; it was drastically scaled down to cut costs.) If we had the bases and equipment in place we could accomplish much more. We would have these things if the politicians and media weren`t so damn shortsighted. You seem to think that, because we don`t have them, they are not worth having.

What the President understands (or at least gives lip-service to) is that these are all secondary purposes. The real reason to go into space is to live there. Mankind has been expanding for literally millions of years. America has always been a frontier nation, and settling the wilderness used to be at the heart of the American experience. Now the Earth is full, the wilderness is gone, our frontiers are closed. We have lost a vital piece of our national purpose-unless we head up! We have an entire planet sitting within a months car ride over our heads (if we had a road), we have a half-dozen other worlds we could settle, plus millions of asteroids, plus we could build settlements in space itself. Someone is going to go there, and (hopefully) someone is going to colonize the High Frontier. If we fail to do it, perhaps the Chinese will take our place? I want to see America build the future. I want the Solar System settled with our values and beliefs. That is our new frontier. Our future lies above!

The Chinese had an age of exploration. They sent ships out to search the farthest corners of the Earth, then they quit. Europe sent ships out, and stayed to build a new world. It was hard; ships sunk with such frequency that only governments could afford to do it at first. The joint-stock company was created to reduce the financial liability on shipowners who faced complete ruin if a ship sunk. We are in an analogous position today. The time will come when private concerns can take the ball and run. We just haven`t reached that point yet-and never will if we follow your advice. Do we want that? Do we want to sit here while our resources dwindle and our spirits waste away while others inherit the Solar System? Do we want to become the Chinese, while they become the New Europe?

Manifest Destiny was the American dream of colonizing the Continent from coast to coast. We can have a new Manifest Destiny; colonizing space. Will we have the courage to do this, the faith to do this, or will we be content to sit comfortably in our beds while we wither away?

Thanks for your time,

Tim Birdnow

Monsters

This is a particularly foul thing to do; Buddhists are a peaceful, inoffensive people. Beheading them to vent your displeasure is beyond barbaric. Why doesn`t the Mainstream Media report these things? Because they want us to lose the War, and public knowledge of such events would enrage America. The MSM and Democrat Party are traitors, and complete hippocrites.

I am livid about this! This is another foul, evil act which the left and their media buddies will sweep under the rug. They will ignore this while riding the Gitmo pony for all they can milk out of it. They are disgraceful! What will it take for them to admit the truth? What enormous atrocity must be committed by the Jihadists to stir these people? Beheading Buddhists! The left loves Buddhism; where is Richard Geare?

Oh, we mustn`t offend the Arab Street! These pesky Buddhists had it coming anyway; what right do they have walking around practicing Buddhism while annoying their Moslem neighbors? It`s America`s fault for not nuking Israel 30 years ago and giving the radioactive land to the Palestinians! It`s because of Dick Cheney and Abu Ghraib!

I`m eternally thankful for the invention of the internet; without blogs we would never hear about such things, and the left-wing media would continue to lie.

Some Friend

From Pravda:

Yet more proof that Russia yearns for the good old Soviet days. This article celebrates the life and death of Portuguese communist named Alvaro Cunhal. I particularly like this:

Today's world is a vindication and justification of the ideals of everything which Alvaro Cunhal represents and the guidelines of his Project continue to be relevant and pertinent. At a time when public services enter in collapse in the capitalist-monetarist world, at a time when the forces which detain power launch murderous attacks across the globe as they try to grab its resources by the throat, at a time when western society stands at a crossroads not knowing which way to turn, searching for values, the path which Alvaro Cunhal showed us makes more sense.

So, under capitalism public services collapse, and the United States has launched a murderous attack across the globe to grab resources by the throat. How can Russia claim to be our allies if they think of us that way? How can they deny that they miss the old days of collectivism? How can we trust Putin and his government? Pravda is not the New York Times; it does not represent independent beliefs in Russia. It may not be under as tight control as it was during the old Soviet days, but it still acts as a mouth for the Russian government.

It should come as no surprise that the Putin regime has repeatedly done us dirty. Read this editorial from Pravda about Georgia`s request that Russian troops withdraw from their (sovereign) territory. The Russians show what they think of us, and what they think we are doing:

The U.S. aims to build up tension in the Caucasus. Georgia is becoming America's most important tool for achieving the objective. Washington does not care about consequences that Georgia will have to take sooner or later. The future of its vassal states normally does not concern the Americans for they are simply going to dispatch yet another republic of the former USSR into a post-Soviet fire that is designed to clear away territory for installing the New World Order in Eurasia. The Russian military bases have been the only force that prevented Georgia from falling apart and sliding into chaos.

So, we hold Georgia and the other former Soviet Republics as vassal states solely for the purpose of sticking it to Russia! This is Russian paranoia at it`s finest! Why, pray tell, do they think we care enough to do this? Why would we bother? Talk about delusions of grandeur!

Russia claims to be our friend and ally; some friend!

As Ye Sew, So Shall Ye Reap

According to a story in Newsmax a series of bombs exploded in Tehran recently. I also came across this at the United Nations website (it was the ONLY story on that site about Iran in two weeks!) This is big news! The Ayatollahs of All Hell Hole-as rule Iran with an iron grip, and, despite a pro-American public and strong opposition to their regime, have never had this kind of problem before. Considering recent protests, it appears that revolution is in the wind. Perhaps the United States has been more active than it has appeared? Maybe we are applying the Contra Solution after all! (I certainly hope so.)

It`s interesting to note that Iran is trying to blame Saddam Hussein loyalist for these bombings; they know better than to blame the United States (any credit given to us for any sort of competence undermines the political campaign here in the States by radical Islam and the left) and can never admit that their own people are disenchanted with the freedom and beneficience of the Islamic Revolution. The problem for Iran is that they have supported terrorism for decades, and terrorism is a double-edged sword. If they can practice it, why can`t their enemies? Didn`t they consider that their own people may learn to use their tactics against them? The Ayatollahs would have profited from reading their Koran less and taken this wisdom from the Bible, ``As ye sew, so shall ye reap``. If ye sew terror, what fruit will your labor produce?

It`s strange-the Mainstream Media hasn`t made a peep about this.

A Must Read

Aussiegirl over at Ultima Thule has nailed it with her thoughts on the current political scene. This is a must read!

As always, the brilliant Aussiegirl is on the cutting edge!

Syrian Dilemma

The incomparable Jed Babbin has a great piece in the American Spectator Online which dovetails nicely with my June 3 postof a My Way News story about Unmovic and Saddam`s WMD`s. Babbin argues that the weapons were moved to Syria during the United Nations debates, and he backs this up with the Duelfer report (which the media has repeatedly falsely claimed states that there were no weapons.)

President Bush`s ``can`t we all just get along`` strategy has backed him (and us)into a corner; the President was willing to concede the WMD issue because he wanted to take it away from the Democrats politically. (This is a reworking of the Newt Gingrich duck-and-cover strategy which cost the Republicans seats in the off-year elections in `98, I might add.) Now Syria has the weapons, and they have been the principle sanctuary for the ``insurgents`` in Iraq, but the President cannot act since he has lost his credibility over this. Let me state this unequivocally: WE CANNOT WIN IN IRAQ AS LONG AS THE ENEMY HAS SYRIA AS A SANCTUARY!!! They will be able to outwait us. People are already complaining about the War dragging on too long, and these complaints will grow louder. If we leave Iraq the new government will not be able to secure the country. The Media and the left may end up getting what they`ve wanted all along-a new Vietnam.

We know Syria is one of the terror masters (along with Iran). They must be dealt with-the sooner the better. It`s time to get on with the War.

More Shameless Bragging

Zogby International posted my latest article on their website (since I used statistics from a Zogby poll.) Check it out here.


This archived collection offers daily updates of Zogby International articles that are featured in media quotes and commentary from respected voices throughout the country and around the world.

Notice the ``respected voices`` part! I`m now a man of respect, I am!

Just thought everybody would like to know (well, I wanted everybody to know!)

Golden Triangle

Gary over at Both Worlds has a good post delineating the ``Golden Triangle`` relationship between Faith, Virtue, and Freedom. Everyone should check it out!

Not So ``Free Republic``

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Someone posted my article over at Free Republic, and there were a number of factually inaccurate or downright nasty replies. I posted comments, identifying myself as the author, but the moderator removed all of them. I guess it`s not such a Free Republic, after all!

Stingy America

This for ``anonymous`` from the Federalist:


Mathematically Challenged: "[The US] is next to last in the share of national income it gives -- 16 cents of each $100. On average, major European nations give more than twice as much -- 36 cents of each $100." --The New York Times, manipulating statistics just a tad, since the U.S. (you the taxpayer) gives 25 cents of every dollar going to Africa. ++ This week's Left Media Buster Award: "Headline in yesterday's New York Times: 'U.S. Challenged to Increase Aid to Africa' which topped a piece by reporter Celia Dugger. The article states that the European Union has 'agreed unanimously...to almost double assistance to poor countries over the next five years. Japan this week reaffirmed its pledge to double aid to Africa in just three years.' All this in the run-up to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Washington this week at which he 'hopes to shake loose more American aid for Africa.' Way, way, WAY down in the ninth paragraph we read that the 'United States has tripled aid to Africa to $3.2 billion since Mr. Bush took office.' [Emphasis mine]." --Rich Galen

Barbarian Invasions Fallout

This was a letter to the Editor at the American Thinker about Barbarian Invasions. I have included my response:


Dear Editor,



Timothy Bidenow's column on the Invasion of the United States by illegal aliens is a well-written column but makes a terrible mistake in quoting the left-wing Pew Center Poll, estimating that 12 million illegal aliens reside now in the U.S. The true figure is over 20 million, something that neither the Pew Center or The White House want to admit to.



I suggest Mr. Bidenow consult the now famous investment firm Bear Sterns' Report. They said, in a report titled "The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface," issued on Jan. 3, researchers Robert Justich and Betty Ng, conclude that the illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million people—roughly the equivalent of the population of New York State—more than double the official government estimates of about 9 million." This was at the beginning of the year. Given that 3 million illegals invaded the U.S. last year, that figure is now closer to 23 million--DOUBLE the figure that Mr. Bidenow cites from the Pew Center.



The only reason I bring this up is, if the U.S. public clearly understood the true figure of illegals here, there would be an outcry that would force the Bush administration to close the Southern Border, begin fining all businesses hiring illegals and begin deportations immediately.



Until people on the anti-illegal, anti-Invasion side start screaming for and demanding deportations, we are lost. Closing the Border will only solve the future from being worse. But the deportations must begin from WITHIN the country if we are to get that migration chain going BACK to Mexico. At the Border, we will need to convince Mexico to take back it's people. And that will require Bush to get tough with Fox, something he's steadfastly refused to do.



Sincerely,



David Levin




Dear Mr. Levin,

Thank you for the comments on my article on illegal immigration. It`s good to know my work has been read and appreciated!

I definitely agree that the numbers are much higher than those which I used in my article. I purposely used the PEW numbers because I wanted my argument to be unassailable from a factual perspective. As it was, I disregarded the Census Bureau numbers because I knew for certain that those numbers were WAY too low, but I wanted to use statistics which even the left could not dispute. Had they been able to disagree with my statistics they would have been able to sidestep the heart of the argument. As things stand, their own statistics are very damning.

I agree with you that this is far worse than even I made it sounds (and I`m talking about a cultural collapse). We have GOT to deport the illegals!

Thanks for the heads-up on the Bear-Sterns report, and thanks for the comments! If you would like, check out my blog and post or e-mail me, and I`ll try to post what you say! My blogs address is www.tbirdblog.blogspot.com.

Best,

Tim Birdnow

Barbarian Invasions come to the American Thinker

Check out My latest article at the American Thinker.

To regular readers of Birdblog much of this article will be familiar; it is a composit of several old posts which I spliced together while adding new details. I won`t ever do that again! I had a hard time making it work; the original version I sent to Mr. Lifson at TAT read exactly like what it was, and I was asked to do a rewrite (the crazy thing kept growing and growing, and I kept staring at it until I could no longer tell if it was any good or not.) He made a few minor changes to the rewrite, all of which were reasonable. (To make it less pedantic, he removed some historical references) and he altered my line about the barbarian invaders destroying the Empire in a hundred years (which they did; pushed by the arrival of the Huns in 370, the Visigoths crossed the Roman borders in 376 opening the invasion period, and the date historians assign to the fall is 476) to several hundred years (which, I suspect, sounds less alarmist and is true since the invasions continued past the assigned date of the fall.) These were minor, reasonable changes, and I am very grateful to have such a patient and generous man as editor; most editors would simply have rejected it. Mr. Lifson is a terrific guy! (That`s why the American Thinker is so good!)

John Flunking Kerry

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John Kerry has finally released his records, which include his grades at Yale.

The truth comes out! We now know the true meaning of John Kerry`s middle initial! (Hint: it sure isn`t Forbes!)

Overspecialization

Specialization in any area is a double-edged sword; it is useful provided conditions remain unchanged. Consider the Dinosaurs. They flourished for millions of years in a warm, oxygen rich climate, but became extinct when that climate changed. The Saber-toothed Tiger, Mammoth, Giant Beaver, etc. all flourished until the climate warmed during the beginning of the latest interglacial. They are now extinct. This is true of technology as well. The clipper ship was the fastest wind-driven ship ever built, but was replaced after only a few years by steam ships. The Airship died with the Hindenberg explosion. Specialization in profession can likewise be deadly; how many people work as firemen on locomotives? How many telegraph operators enjoy employment in their fields? How about Key-Punch operators (for those of you too young to remember, key punchers used to type programming for computers onto memory cards by punching little holes in them.)

We live in a high tech world. We rely on computers for virtually everything (including our automobiles)and communicate via satellites through cell phones and the internet. Without satellites, or electricity to run our gadgets, our civilization would grind to a halt.

That is what is so troubling about articles like this; they point out the very real weakness in the technological monster we have constructed. Generally, the more specialized a system is, the more likely it is to succumb to inherent flaws. Our modern technological civilization relies too heavily on electronics. If someone can crash ALL of our networks...

Can America survive a nationwide technological disaster?

(Thanks to Townhall)

Mardi Gras Dog

Here in St. Louis we have the biggest Mardi Gras outside of New Orleans. A principle feature is the dog parade, in which dogs are dressed in silly outfits and forced to promenade about. In the spirit of authenticity, we need this poor pooch! After all, Bourbon Street has cabarets chock full of them!:

Doctors create first-ever transsexual dog

Russian vet surgeons performed a unique operation on a male dog, augmenting the animal's nipples with silicon. The operation took place in one of Moscow's vet hospitals yesterday. The animal was severely injured in a fight, when one of the infuriated dogs bit its genitals through.

Doctors said that they usually put such dogs down. "We will have to castrate the dog to save it from death," a surgeon said. The surgeons decided to make the unlucky dog their first extraordinary patient: "In addition to urethrostomy, we decided to make a vagina for the dog and use a little silicon for its nipples," the specialist added.

The dog is currently resting after the operation. However, the animal will still have the behavior of a male dog afterwards. However, reduced male hormones will make the dog show a lot less interest in a female.

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The poor beast really had a dog-day!

Christian Taliban

You would think that a Christian Taliban has taken over our military academies! Oh, the horror!

I love this quote:

``pt. MeLinda Morton, an academy chaplain who says she was fired for her criticism of what she said is religious proselytizing at the academy, said: "This this is a prime example of what we've been talking about here in terms of leadership failure. If he doesn't understand the constitutional boundaries here, to use his position to espouse religious ideology, then who does?"

This woman is supposed to be a chaplain? What does she think a chaplain is supposed to do? (Teach Secular Humanism, I suppose.) This woman is too stupid to realize there is nothing in the Constitution restricting individuals; the Constitution places restrictions on government. The cadet in question was exercising his right to freedom of speech, which is a Constitutionally guaranteed right. Melinda Morton clearly doesn`t understand the Constitutional boundaries!

If this cadet is not allowed to quote biblical passages in an e-mail to his class, will we be banning him from quoting Martin Luther King and George Bernard Shaw?

Medicine Show Academics

When I was in college at St. Louis University, I had a very interesting American history professor; he was a natural storyteller and realist. He also liked to poke fun at academia, and he would regale his students with stories about the pseudo-intellectualism he had encountered. For instance, he had been the principle at a high school and had to take a continuing ed course to keep his certificate current. Now, anyone who has taken an education theory course knows it is a semester-long Bull Session. My teacher, who was very busy, had a presentation due, but hadn`t had time to prepare anything. It was show time!

He carted out an overhead projector (Educrats love overhead projectors) and proceeded to draw overlapping circles while narrating about a fictitious ``concentric circular theory of education``. He made up the entire presentation-and he received an A!

This article (which was posted by Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker) is a classic example of ``academics`` (read: medicine show barkers) needing to justify their endowments. Read it here at your own peril; you may suffer an aneurysm trying to figure out what is being discussed!

After D-Day In The New Millennium

Jed Babbin has a good piece in the American Spectator Online today. He argues that our ``War on Terror` is not being taken seriously enough-and not being prosecuted aggressively enough. To regular readers of Birdblog, this refrain should sound vaguely familiar....

They Run to Iran

What will it take to convince the Bush administration that we need to deal with Iran now? Here is just one more reason for the United States to act.


An anonymous reader commented on this post, and I thought everyone would be interested in the ensuing argument:

Anonymous said...
Sign the Kyoto treaty, cut CO2 emissions. America is stifling the world. Increase aid and debt relief for Africa in line with European commitment. America is a country without a conscious; ignoring human rights atrocities in Africa, and instead warmongering with oil harbouring countries. There is NO international support for military action in Iran, your government has created an atmosphere of fear to manipulate its populace, to justify American violence.

7:28 AM
Timothy Birdnow said...
First, try reading this.

Second, I hate to rain on your parade, but we shell out far more money in aid to Africa than anyone else in the world.

Finally, our 60+ nation coalition hardly amounts to no international support; just because the rodents in the U.N. aren`t behind action in Iran doesn`t mean there is no support. Even if they aren`t, so what? If Iran gets the bomb, they`ll use it. Not everyone is a coward, my friend.

By the way, could you please explain to me how reducing atmospheric CO2 is going to end terrorism or stop Iranian nuclear ambitions?

2:06 PM
Anonymous said...
Aid as a fraction of GDP? The EU recently agreed to commit to spending 0.7% of national wealth, a lost cause in the US. Quote Max Lawson a policy adviser at the British charity Oxfam referring to US "additionality": "The US plan is dastardly"

Check out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4612337.stm

I liked your comment "Even if the UN don’t support action against Iran, so what?." So is America judge, jury, and executioner? Money doesn't buy intelligence, or diplomacy it would seem. . .

8:18 AM
Timothy Birdnow said...
``The American argument is that Africa needs much better economic policies - not open-ended amounts of aid - and that aid is best tied to good governance.``

Apparently you didn`t bother to read this-or you don`t understand it. We don`t OWE Africa anything. You seem upset that we don`t want to allow business as usual in Africa, but instead want to actually make things better. You advocate throwing good money after bad, perpetuating the policies which has kept Africa in grinding poverty and in a state of constant war. Oh, and I don`t care what some liberal British twit thinks of the United States.

You complain that we aren`t shelling out more in GDP, not actual dollars. How much does Europe have to spend on military defense? WE spend that money to protect these ingrates so they can accuse us of stinginess. How much does Europe spend in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, etc. We pay more for the U.N. than any European country. Also, your complaint revolves around tax dollars being spent-you ignore private charitable contributions.
Finally, You ignore the fact that most nations never achieve their promises-and this .7% is a guaranteed fiction. You fail to point out that the United States paid in official developemental assistance in `04 well over twice as much as the second-highest contributor. You want to talk percentages because you believe the motto ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs``.

The United Nations is a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent institution. I notice you ignored the point that we have 60 nations with us in our Iraqi coalition-it disproves your talking-points mantra. Still, even if we were alone in this, we would be right. You seem to think consensus is a goal in it`s own right; are you prepared to gamble your LIFE on that, anonymous? I`m not, and I`m not going to trust my safety to a bunch of corrupt Eurocrats and U.N. lackeys. During the 1930`s Europe gave Hitler everything he demanded, and would have resisted Churchil had he been P.M. and advocated a hardline policy with Hitler. Did that make Chamberlain correct? His was the favored policy-appeasement. Must go along with the majority!

If our national security requires the United States to be judge, jury, and executioner-so be it!

Episode III: Revenge of the Scythians Part III

Alex Parkhomenko said...
First off, let me start by saying that the United States has promised to abide by the Outer Space Treaty and not place any Weapons of Mass Destruction in orbit, and there is no reason for Russian saber-rattling over this since we don`t have adequate launch vehicles at the moment to place WMD`s in position anyway. . What we are trying to do is defend our satellites, and Russia has no reason to oppose this from a self-defense point of view. Russia can only worry about this if they want the ability to knock out our systems-and that means they are positioning themselves for first-strike capabilities. My question for you is, what types of weapons does Russia have in orbit? Russia definitely has satellite killers.

Tim, I don't know what translation did you read, but Ivanov said literally: “We condemn US plans to place any weapons in the outer space. Anyway if this happen I certify that we will be forced to answer it by our own programme wich would be assymetric by scale but truly effective”. And Foreighn Secretary Lavrov said “Russia was always against placing of nuclear weapons on the orbit. We still support UN Unarmament Conference decision to condemn such placement.Out position on that is clear and shared among numerous goverments in the world”.

That was said. No words about first strike. Just clear position.

Tim, I believe this is all about politics. There should be noeclusive right owners in the world. If any country wants to be the most powerful there should be another who balances this power. Just fair.

Why don`t you imagine for a second that the true reason for America is self-defense? Maybe we don`t like having our satellites destroyed as a precurser to a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

I thought this is about terrorism but not Russia. And you talking about preemptive strike from Russia. Here we clearly understand and always was that there will be no survivors in case of any nuclear srike. No at all. And nobody here wants to make any.

US dominates world's politics after 1991 and Ivanov words is a message to the rest of the world: “We are supporting no-weapons-in-space doctrine and we will support others UN countries not just by words but providing good arguments”. Pure politics.

I`m sorry, Alex, but I`ve been taking Putin at his word when he said: "First and foremost, it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Putin was an old KGB man, and his administration has been characterized by increasing despotism.

Bush, Sr. is former CIA man but nobody blaims him for that. I doubt KGB and CIA had had differnet methods in the Cold War period. I do doubt.

Ok. A lot of people criticize Putin here for these words. Not for the words is not true but because a lot of people abroad get it wrong.

Let imagine a fantastic thing. US is Communism-driven and Russia has 200+ years democracy. Just imagine ;)

Here in Russia its own Sbignev Bzezhinsky and Marshall plan to destroy communism dictature in US. And US economical situation is even worse and people understand that “plan economy” and weapons race with Russia is worthless and there are some people in Communist party who decide to change the things. And Russia with 200+ democracy helps to achieve new goals.

US should be a democratic country. But something goes wrong. Economy is in ruins because everything is broken. All links are diminished. People are pure but free.

And Texas is going to be independent. Than Florida and than California. And Mexicans is establishing influence in Texas. A lot of criminal. Another currency, etc. But some unique plants was in Texas and Mainland has to build it's own. And Texas has to build everything form the scratch. English is dismissed in Texas and everybody is forced to speak Hispanic. An etc...

Nightmare, isn't it?

I have to said that although I work in Moscow I am not a Russia citizen. My homeland coutry is Kazakhstan and I do love it. I proud of what we did since 91-93. But from the point of our independence till 98 it was a nightmare. A little money in the budget, poverty, no electricity for weeks, cold winters and coal furnaces in flats.

We had relatives around former USSR and all of them are citizens of different countries now. We had no money to visit them.

These eight years was a catastrophe. Demolishing of big country is always a catastrophe. You wasn't been there. You lived in the rich US and studied, changed cars, bought homes when we had no sugar for tea sometimes and I don't mean coffee at all.

USSR was always an enemy for you but just imagine what happens to people there when everything is crashing around. Do you proud that your enemy was demolished and people fall into the povetry?

That what Mr.Putin meant. He is not nostalgic about USSR but he is trying to remind to the world what happened.

1:55 AM
Alex Parkhomenko said...
Unfortunately, Russia has never known these things. First you had the Golden Horde, then the Dukes of Moscow, then the Tsars, then the Bolsheviks. You have never had any tradition of freedom.

During the Golden Horde and Dukes there was no America at all and Europe was in the same stage as Russia. There was Inquisition and Bruno's execution. And what about religion mass-murders? Slavery in America? KKK? No?

What are you trying to say? One nation is better than another?

I think this is merely rasist point of view. We should argue on modern reality but not on the history of the mankind.


Timothy Birdnow responds:

Tim, I don't know what translation did you read, but Ivanov said literally: “We condemn US plans to place any weapons in the outer space. Anyway if this happen I certify that we will be forced to answer it by our own programme wich would be assymetric by scale but truly effective”. And Foreighn Secretary Lavrov said “Russia was always against placing of nuclear weapons on the orbit. We still support UN Unarmament Conference decision to condemn such placement.Out position on that is clear and shared among numerous goverments in the world”.

That was said. No words about first strike. Just clear position.

Alex, that is definitely different than the translation I saw-and a bit less aggressive. It still does not invalidate my point, which is that Russia can, right now, destroy America`s satellite system, thus destroying the command and control for our defenses. We are thinking about building defensive weaponry for our satellites to insure that they are not taken out by anyone-Russians, Chinese, Etc. That Russia has become upset about our desire to do this suggests that Russia wants to have the means of launching a first strike on the United States. Not that they are PLANNING one, but that they have the capabilities. If the situation were reversed and the United States had the means of destroying Russian command and control, no one would fault you for taking steps to prevent this.

Of Course Lavrov and Ivanov are not going to admit that they have a weapon which could allow a first strike on America.

I thought this is about terrorism but not Russia. And you talking about preemptive strike from Russia. Here we clearly understand and always was that there will be no survivors in case of any nuclear srike. No at all. And nobody here wants to make any.

Alex, the misnamed ``War on Terror`` is about much more than chasing terrorists. Terrorism has flourished as a tool of aggression by State sponsors-including the Chinese-and Russia has been supplying weapons and technology to terrorist nations. President Bush has said that we will go after any terrorists with international reach and the states who nurture them. We cannot consider any nation who gives assistance to our enemies an ally. Russian policy has clearly been to quietly undermine our efforts. I can`t say I know the current views (real views, not what is stated for public display) of the Russian government on nuclear war; I know the old Soviets believed they could fight and win such a war, and they made preparations to that effect. They built a missile defense to protect Moscow, they built nuclear shelters, they placed intermediate range nukes in Europe in the `80`s(prompting America to deploy the Pershing II missiles.) Russia has continued building nuclear weapons at a prodigious rate-while the United States has been giving money to Russia to help decommission your arsenal. It is apparent that the United States is not going to attack you (or we would have done it after the Soviet collapse.) Why do you need so many nuclear weapons?


Here in Russia its own Sbignev Bzezhinsky and Marshall plan to destroy communism dictature in US.

Brzezinski was an advocate of Detente, the idea of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. The Marshall plan was about rebuilding war-ravaged Europe, not attacking the U.S.S.R. but I take your point.

And Texas is going to be independent. Than Florida and than California. And Mexicans is establishing influence in Texas. A lot of criminal. Another currency, etc. But some unique plants was in Texas and Mainland has to build it's own. And Texas has to build everything form the scratch. English is dismissed in Texas and everybody is forced to speak Hispanic. An etc...

You don`t know how close to the mark you are, Alex! With all of the illegal immigration from Mexico, we are witnessing something along these lines today in America. :)

USSR was always an enemy for you but just imagine what happens to people there when everything is crashing around. Do you proud that your enemy was demolished and people fall into the povetry

Alex, this is not personal. I, like most Americans, feel terrible about the suffering the oppressed peoples of the former Soviet Union have had to endure. The real tragedy was not the fall of the Soviet Union-it was the birth of the Soviet Union. The suffering of your friends and family did not start with the fall of the Berlin Wall-it started in 1917 with the Bolshevik overthrow of the Kerensky government. We in America have always wished that the captive peoples of the U.S.S.R. would find freedom and prosperity. We have always understood the bankruptcy of socialism and communism, and that it has only the power to destroy. You refer to us as sitting in the rich United States. True. Why is the United States rich? That is what we wanted for you; a free, private market driven system where people would have a say in their lives and could keep the fruits of the own labor. This is what make you rich.

That said, we in America are proud of our efforts in the Cold War because we destroyed what was perhaps the most tyrranical system of governance ever devised. We did not have to face that challenge; we could have let the Soviets have Europe. We fought as much for you and yours as for Germany or France, or even ourselves. In many ways, the Cold War was America`s finest hour.

That said, I still question Mr. Putin`s comments about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It fits into the pattern of his behavior entirely too well. Russia has been very underhanded with us. Russia has been arming our enemies, and now the Russian President bemoans the collapse of the U.S.S.R. If this were an isolated incident, I would overlook it; the fact is, it is not an isolated incident-and Pravda`s anti-American editorials back this concern up.

During the Golden Horde and Dukes there was no America at all and Europe was in the same stage as Russia. There was Inquisition and Bruno's execution. And what about religion mass-murders? Slavery in America? KKK? No?

What are you trying to say? One nation is better than another?

I think this is merely rasist point of view. We should argue on modern reality but not on the history of the mankind.

Alex, I was not trying to impugne Russia or Kazakhstan; I was making the point that Russia, because of historical forces, has not had the benefits of a free and open society. The United States was greatly privileged to come from a long tradition which has given us our liberty and prosperity. Our English roots gave us the Magna Carta and Adam Smith, the religious character of our original settlers has given us a society which respects the individual and respects civility. These are all blessings bestowed upon us, we were blessed with natural borders which helped give us security. Russia did not have such luxury; without natural borders the Russians had only as much security as they could make. Winters are hard and the growing season short. The Golden Horde destroyed the fledgling democratic institutions (if they hadn`t, the Teutonic Knights would have), and later the Dukes of Moscow put the Orthodox Church under their thumbs. Russia has had a very difficult history. I am not claiming Americans are superior to Russians; I am saying that, thanks to our good fortune and blessings from God, America has been able to develope a better system. It is much more difficult for Russia to develope a free system, given your history. It is far too easy to slip back into the old ways, to force your will with the barrell of a gun. Russia is, and always has been, held together by force of arms alone.

Which is, ultimately, my whole point. I want to see a free and prosperous Russia. I want us to be friends and allies. That won`t happen as long as the forces of tyranny and collectivization remain. Russia must reform if it is not to perish. The era of totalitarian control is gone. It is no longer possible to keep people ignorant, to maintain absolute control. That is what our ``War on Terror`` is about as much as anything-it is about the yearning for freedom throughout the world versus the lust for control by the tyrannts. Freedom is on the march throughout the world. Unfortunately, Putin and the current Russian government seems to be resisting that march.

Thanks!

Tim