"hegemony [hig-em-on-ee]

Notes on the potential for a war in and around Taiwan, China and the rest of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with speculations on how this new totalitarian axis around Shanghai might grow (especially if Barack Obama is elected President and takes no action to slow its growth).

 _______________________________________

The Communist People's Republic of China (PRC) is increasing the percentage of its national economic output and the absolute amount of money they spend to prepare for a military resolution of the Taiwan issue to their satisfaction.

Over the past decade, the non-Communist Republic of China (ROC) on the island of Taiwan has allowed real spending on their national defense to decline.   This has created a challenge to the Taiwanese capacity to remain independent.

The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits the United States to help Taiwanese maintain peace, security and stability through arms sales, indirect support and direct power projection into the area.  If we don't live up to that treaty, our other allies throughout the world will decide that it would be better for them to be allied with some other country.  China or Russia, perhaps. 

Then, our current troubles getting oil into the country will be remembered as "the good old days," just as we now reminisce about how calmer the world was when we just had to worry about one alliance dedicated to our destruction.  (We now have at least two - the Islamist jihad as interpreted to mean that we and all other non-Wahhabi Muslims must be subjugated or murdered; and the new one, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.)

The 2007 Taiwan government's defense budget was US $8.9 billion.  (Compare that to the PRC defense budget (estimated) of between US $97 billion and US $139 billion.)  With that money, in 2007 Taiwan bought 12 P-3C maritime patrol aircraft for locating and dropping torpedoes on Communist Chinese attack and missile submarines, six upgrades for their Patriot system, 3 TP-3A airframes (spare parts), 144 SM-2 naval Surface to Air Missiles, and a feasibility study for 8 diesel-electric submarines.

Over next three years (2007-2010) Taiwan is buying 218 AMRAAM Air to Air missiles, 235 Maverick Air to Ground Missiles, and 60 Harpoon Block II Air to Surface Cruise Missiles. 

Taiwan's 2008 defense budget is US$10.5 billion - a 12% increase over 2007.  This is puny compared to business as usual across the Formosa Straits in Red China.  Fortunately, Taiwan has natural defensive advantages that help offset mainland China's higher levels of spending on military hardware - mountains and caves which lend themselves to conversion into fortifications.  If it weren't for those, China might have already invaded Taiwan.

 ------

From the US Department of Defense "China Military Report 2008":

"The circumstances in which the mainland has historically warned it would use force against the island are not fixed and have evolved over time in response to Taiwan’s declarations and actions relating to its political status, changes in PLA capabilities, and Beijing’s view of other countries’ relations with Taiwan.

These circumstances, or “red lines,” have included: a formal declaration of Taiwan independence; undefined moves “toward independence”; foreign intervention in Taiwan’s internal affairs; indefinite delays in the resumption of cross-Strait dialogue on unification; Taiwan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons; and, internal unrest on Taiwan.

 Article 8 of Communist China's March 2005 “Anti-Secession Law” states that Beijing would resort to “non-peaceful means” if:

-“secessionist forces . . . cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China”;

- if “major incidents entailing Taiwan’s secession” occur;

-or if “possibilities for peaceful reunification” are exhausted.

The ambiguity of these “red-lines” appears deliberate, allowing Beijing the flexibility to determine the nature, timing, and form of its response.  Added to this atmosphere of ambiguity are political factors internal to the regime in Beijing that might affect its decision-making but are opaque to outsiders."

_____________

Deterrence Factors (from the DoD's "China Military Report")

"China is deterred on multiple levels from taking military action against Taiwan.  First, China does not yet possess the military capability to accomplish with confidence its political objectives on the island, particularly when confronted with the prospect of U.S. intervention.

Moreover, an insurgency directed against the PRC presence could tie up PLA forces for years. A military conflict in the Taiwan Strait would also affect the interests of Japan and other nations in the region in ensuring a peaceful resolution of the cross-Strait dispute.

Beijing’s calculus would also have to factor in the potential political and economic repercussions of military conflict with Taiwan. China’s leaders recognize that a war could severely retard economic development.  Taiwan is China’s single largest source of foreign direct investment, and an extended campaign would wreck Taiwan’s economic infrastructure, leading to high reconstruction costs. International sanctions could further damage Beijing’s economic development.

A conflict would also severely damage the image that Beijing has sought to project in the post-Tiananmen years and would taint Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics. A conflict could also trigger domestic unrest on the mainland, a contingency that Beijing appears to have factored into its planning.

Finally, China’s leaders recognize that a conflict over Taiwan involving the United States would give rise to a long-term hostile relationship between the two nations – a result that would not be in China’s interests."

 _______

Most of the 70 billion dollars a year Beijing clears from its trade with the United States would evaporate in the event of a war between the PRC and Taiwan. 

(Unless a Democratic Party president is influenced by the Chinese - perhaps by old friends who are also Maoists, or perhaps by cash, as the Clintons were - to smooth over little bumps in the road like Chinese espionage in our nuclear weapons program or their slaughter of their own people and helps the Communist tyranny in Beijing overcome their own blunders.) 

The Chinese hard currency balance could dwindle to nothing overnight - given a collapse in the Chinese banking industry like our own recent troubles - they have a similar bad loan problem to ours which enriches the favored few of the Chinese government and their cronies in big business - and their dependence on imported oil for any transportation not fueled directly or indirectly by coal.  In China, if it doesn't travel by rail, transport depends on oil that must be purchased from Russia or the Middle East. 

It's possible that the PRC economy might not survive a protracted shooting war, or even economic sanctions involving the US and one or more other Western nations that go on for any length of time.   Sanctions might cause the Chinese to default on contracts,  and causing worse economic damage to the mainland in a cascading pattern. 

In short, if we stop buying their merchandise, the Communist Chinese could go broke in relatively little time.

Whether this would destroy or cement the Chinese Communist Party's hold on the people of the mainland is unclear; it's highly doubtful that following their "24-character strategy," any Chinese government would invade Taiwan or pursue similar aggressive actions without having cast itself as the injured party to the Chinese people.  Any economic damage to the Chinese might then be usable as justification for hardening of the government's stance toward both Taiwan and any of her supporters.

Much would depend on the degree of credibility the Beijing regime enjoys with its people going into such an adventure - and the resolve of the United States to punish China for attacking its neighbors. 

If elected President, Barack Obama would send a letter to the United Nations (over whose military actions China enjoys a veto in the Security Council, thanks to his predecessor Jimmy Carter) if the Chinese invaded Taiwan.  That would not even slow the Chinese down, any more than Obama's tut-tutting or George Bush's impotent bleating slowed Russia down in Georgia.

More problems with Tibet or the Uighurs could cost Beijing hard-won public relations capital and weaken support for action against Taiwan; conversely, an adventure against Taiwan might be used precisely to distract popular attention from economic or political misadventure at home, as well as to justify repressive measures against dissident elements at home.

As the DoD "China Military Report" shows, Beijing understates its defense expenditures officially (as opposed to estimated actual expenditures) by from fifty to two hundred percent.  It would be unreasonable in the regional context to assume that Taiwan was transparent in all of its defense expenditures. 

Rumors persist about at least an embryonic Taiwanese nuclear weapons program from which it was dissuaded by the US, and which might have provoked an invasion from the mainland if pursued publicly.  A previous administration probably explained the facts of life to the Taiwanese - the US could not be held to the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act if Taiwan did anything as provocative as acquiring nuclear weapons (even though the mainland Chinese had over 700 nuclear-armed missiles aimed at Taiwan a few years ago - the total's probably over 1,000 now).

Taiwan , numerically inferior in troop strength and faced with several thousand intermediate-range ballistic missiles aimed at it by the mainland, and outspent between ten and fifteen to one on defense by the PRC, could be expected to have developed a covert nuclear weapons program. 

Taiwan could afford nuclear weapons; if the Taiwanese want to remain politically independent rather than negotiating a largely meaningless Hong Kong-like quasi-autonomy from the mainland, they would have to hold Beijing at risk in order to deter either an invasion or a bombardment.  Nuclear weapons would seem to be the only deterrent worth considering in this context (unless other weapons of mass destruction such as biologicals are in their arsenal).  

An unusually clever (and effective) approach to a nuclear defense might be for Taiwan to hide a nuclear device somewhere in the maze of tunnels under Beijing, close enough to actually endanger the PRC's national command center if its location were known to the Taiwanese.  This tactic has drawbacks - a working nuclear weapon emits neutrons constantly, and relatively cheap handheld neutron detectors about the size of a large flashlight are available.  China has plenty of policemen and soldiers who could sweep the capital on a regular basis with these detectors.

Of course, the opposite is true as well - it might make sense to the Communists to simply cut their Gordian knot and take the obloquy of having slaughtered several million people as the price for consolidating their "first island chain" defensive perimeter and becoming the hegemon of Asia in fact as well as geography. 

Since the Chinese already support the dictator Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in exchange for a new colonialism in which most Zimbabweans are oppressed in a terroristic regime supported by armed Chinese in uniform, it's hard to believe the Chinese worry about how the nuclear devastation of Taiwan might look on CNN. 

Given CNN's propensity to manage the news to make Barack Obama look good right now, it's entirely possible they'd bury any bad news coming out of the Formosa Straits - with or without "suggestions" from an Obama White House.   CNN is certainly covering-up Obama's deep and abiding debt to the radical left.

Whether the rape of Taiwan would be worth the isolation the West would impose on China as a result depends partly on whether the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could replace the revenue which Beijing would lose after committing mass murder in order to settle the Taiwan matter - and whether the West did much of anything.

It wouldn't be the first time a Chinese government in Beijing has chosen to murder millions of innocent people rather than risk losing its control over the rest of the country.

 ___________________________

There is a very real chance, given the current make-up of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its candidate nations, that the foundation for a forcible hegemony including the entire Western Pacific may be in the making.

Decisive amputation of the Taiwanese leadership would signal resolve in a way that might destroy or cripple the Western Pacific and South Asian democracies and re-align the transCaucasus away from reformism and democracy and toward an curving Eastern axis reaching through Beijing from Moscow down to Karachi.   

This, of course, would be only the beginning of a course culminating in threats to India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Phillipines, and Sri Lanka - each of which is now experiencing instability that poses a real threat to its national existence.  The candidacy of Pakistan, North Korea and Iran for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is an ominous development because these three countries stand to benefit directly from instability in the states outside the Shanghai axis.

In Pakistan and China's case, territorial claims which have stood for centuries might be settled in a swift strike at India.  Kashmir and the Indian borderland with China in the Himalayas could be ripped away from India in a series of strokes along the entire Shanghai Cooperation Organization axis. 

A resurgent Pakistan might allow the Taliban to operate even more freely from its sanctuaries than it now does, taking Qandahar from the east of Afghanistan, while Iran creates mischief and perhaps even grabs some land from Afghanistan's western borders.

Russia and China would scarcely have to act in this case, except to make adventitious additions to their own borders in the Caucausus and Central Asia; the cozy relations between Russia and Iran may finally give the Russians the warm water port they have coveted, replacing the access they lost when the Ukraine seceded

(Even if the unrest that Putin and his Communist retreads are fomenting causes the Ukraine to fission, their supporters probably could not recover access to the Black Sea for Russia from Ukrainian soil, because the reunionists live over to the East and North.  The Russians' bid to kill Kuznetsov and abort the Orange Revolution aborning has failed, so far).

Russian activity in Georgia, meanwhile, continues.  There has been no real justification for their invasion or continued presence in Georgia beyond the borders of Abkhazia or Ossetia; none that doesn't involve laying the foundations for an eventual Russian takeover of all of Georgia, gaining the Russians a foothold on the Black Sea to replace the one they'll eventually lose when the Ukrainians boot them out of their naval base there.

 ___________________________

We're looking at an axis extending from Shanghai to Moscow, with ambitions to expand all along that line into other people's territory.  

Look at it.  Look at the size of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a military alliance which exists... why does it exist?

Consider when World War II started in 1939, it was begun by Germany, Italy and Japan, with the Soviet Union promising to stay out of Germany's way as they conquered Europe - until they themselves were invaded by Germany in 1941. Three relatively small countries could only be defeated an alliance of nearly the entire rest of the world which had not already been conquered.  

Russia and Germany split Poland between them in the years between the beginning of World War II and the invasion of the Soviet Union.  And, as we've seen in Georgia, Russia has their walking shoes on nowadays.  They might elect to either stand aside and split Chinese conquests on their border with the Chinese - or strike out on a campaign of conquest of their own.  History supports either outcome.

Barack Obama doesn't think we need to maintain or expand our military.  He has pledged to draw it down.  Apparently they don't teach map skills in Harvard - or European history, a subject that seems to bore Obama, since he failed to show up for even one meeting of the subcommittee he chairs on European Affairs in the Senate.

History shows us that in 1939 plenty of people who went to Harvard didn't think Hitler and Tojo were a threat, either.  Then as now, people here in the United States screamed about how the axis threatening the world just wanted peace, and how we were provoking them by daring to defend ourselves. 

FDR had to weave a tortuous path between isolationists in both political wings and Stalin's "community organizers" simply to rebuild the United States' military and supply Great Britain with what she needed to resist a German invasion.

We never really recovered from Clinton's destruction of the US military - and Obama wants to throw away even that degree of recovery.  He's promised to do exactly that.  We'll be many years and spend billions rebuilding our military if Obama wins this election - and WE WILL NEED A MILITARY. 

Obama has an incredible set of endorsements - every dictator and would-be dictator on Earth hopes Barack Obama will be elected President of the United States.  Professional courtesy, I guess.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:34 AM MDT

Updated: Wednesday, 24 November 2010 7:16 PM MST

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Mood:  incredulous

I am stunned.  A shooting war has broken out between Russia and Georgia and until just now, CNN has been talking about some sex scandal involving John "Senator Gone" Edwards.

I managed to get Email to my contact list before CNN as much as mentioned the Russian-Georgian War.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7549594.stm

Trouble between Russia and Georgia has been brewing for some time - minor skirmishes on their border and in the South Ossetia region of Georgia which wants to break away and become part of Russia.  There's been a lot of major harassment - dead animals thrown in rivers running through both countries, Internet warfare against the Georgian government, minor armed actions.

Since Georgian troops are serving in Iraq alongside our own, they have urgently requested that we airlift their troops back home to help in the defense of their homeland.   The US also has troops in Georgia training their army; we have civilians working in the oil industry there as well.

The precipitating event seems to have been breach of a ceasefire between South Ossetian separatists and Georgian government forces - the separatists attacked the Georgian government, provoking a harsh response from the Georgian internal security forces.  Russia has used the death or injury of Russians serving as peacekeepers in the South Ossetia region as an excuse to invade Georgia.

So far, only delays in the admisssion of Georgia to NATO have kept this from being the first shot in another European, possibly a World War.

It's as I've been saying - Russia has been arming for an aggressive foreign policy which will almost inevitably lead to war.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:49 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 10 August 2008 12:51 AM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Disgust with the wide gulf between Obama's carefully cultivated image as a populist who, if he does say so himself, is too pure and honest to take money from registered lobbyists and what he really does is spreading across all political persuasions. 

Counterpunch magazine has been unsparing in shining the light of day on Barack Obama's willingness to take money from anyone with a pulse.   In fact, they've been unsparing in criticizing everything and everybody - if you need to raise your blood pressure, just spend some time surfing their Web site.  They have something to offend everyone.

Counterpunch correspondent Pam Martens has written a two-part article on exactly how much money Obama's taken, and from which lobbyists' political action committees (PACs).  I ran the first part of Ms. Martens' article a week and some days ago; here are some excerpts from the second part:

 http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05062008.html

"Bankrolling a Presidential Campaign

The Obama Bubble Agenda

by Pam Martens

The Obama phenomenon has been likened to that of cults, celebrity groupies and Messiah worshipers. But what we’re actually witnessing is ObamaMania (as in tulip mania), the third and final bubble orchestrated and financed by the wonderful Wall Street folks who brought us the first two: the Nasdaq/tech bubble and a subprime-mortgage-in-every-pot bubble. 

To understand why Wall Street desperately needs this final bubble, we need to first review how the first two bubbles were orchestrated and why.

In March of 2000, the Nasdaq stock market, hyped with spurious claims for startup tech and dot.com companies, reached a peak of over 5,000. Eight years later, it’s trading in the 2,300 range and most of those companies no longer exist. From peak to trough, Nasdaq transferred over $4 trillion from the pockets of small mania-gripped investors to the wealthy and elite market manipulators.

The highest monetary authority during those bubble days, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, consistently told us that the market was efficient and stock prices were being set by the judgment of millions of “highly knowledgeable” investors.

Mr. Greenspan was the wind beneath the wings of a carefully orchestrated wealth transfer system known as “pump and dump” on Wall Street.  As hundreds of court cases, internal emails, and insider testimony now confirm, this bubble was no naturally occurring phenomenon any more than the Obama bubble is.

First, Wall Street firms issued knowingly false research reports to trumpet the growth prospects for the company and stock price; second, they lined up big institutional clients who were instructed how and when to buy at escalating prices to make the stock price skyrocket (laddering); third, the firms instructed the hundreds of thousands of stockbrokers serving the mom-and-pop market to advise their clients to sit still as the stock price flew to the moon or else the broker would have his commissions taken away (penalty bid). While the little folks’ money served as a prop under prices, the wealthy elite on Wall Street and corporate insiders were allowed to sell at the top of the market (pump-and-dump wealth transfer).

Why did people buy into this mania for brand new, untested companies when there is a basic caveat that most people in this country know, i.e., the majority of all new businesses fail? Common sense failed and mania prevailed because of massive hype pumped by big media, big public relations, and shielded from regulation by big law firms, all eager to collect their share of Wall Street’s rigged cash cow.

The current housing bubble bust is just a freshly minted version of Wall Street’s real estate limited partnership frauds of the ‘80s, but on a grander scale. In the 1980s version, the firms packaged real estate into limited partnerships and peddled it as secure investments to moms and pops. The major underpinning of this wealth transfer mechanism was that regulators turned a blind eye to the fact that the investments were listed at the original face amount on the clients’ brokerage statements long after they had lost most of their value. 

Today’s real estate related securities (CDOs and SIVs) that are blowing up around the globe are simply the above scheme with more billable hours for corporate law firms.

Wall Street created an artificial demand for housing (a bubble) by soliciting high interest rate mortgages (subprime) because they could be bundled and quickly resold for big fees to yield-hungry hedge funds and institutions. A major underpinning of this scheme was that Wall Street secured an artificial rating of AAA from rating agencies that were paid by Wall Street to provide the rating. When demand from institutions was saturated, Wall Street kept the scheme going by hiding the debt off its balance sheets and stuffed this long-term product into mom-and-pop money markets, notwithstanding that money markets are required by law to hold only short-term investments. To further perpetuate the bubble as long as possible, Wall Street prevented pricing transparency by keeping the trading off regulated exchanges and used unregulated over-the-counter contracts instead. (All of this required lots of lobbyist hours in Washington.)

But how could there be a genuine national housing price boom propelled by massive consumer demand at the same time there was the largest income and wealth disparity in the nation’s history? Rational thought is no match for manias.

That brings us to today’s bubble. We are being asked to accept on its face the notion that after more than two centuries of entrenched racism in this country, which saw only five black members of the U.S. Senate, it’s all being eradicated with some rousing stump speeches. 

We are asked to believe that those kindly white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people. 

The number one industry supporting the Obama presidential bid, by the start of February, -- the crucial time in primary season -- according to the widely respected, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, was “lawyers/law firms” (most on Wall Street’s payroll), giving a total of $11,246,596. 

This presents three unique credibility problems for the yes-we-can-little-choo-choo-that-could campaign: (1) these are not just “lawyers/law firms”; the vast majority of these firms are also registered lobbyists at the Federal level; (2) Senator Obama has made it a core tenet of his campaign platform that the way he is gong to bring the country hope and change is not taking money from federal lobbyists; and (3) with the past seven ignoble years of lies and distortions fresh in the minds of voters, building a candidacy based on half-truths is not a sustainable strategy to secure the west wing  from the right wing.

Yes, the other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn’t. That makes it not only a legitimate but a necessary line of inquiry. 

The Obama campaign’s populist bubble is underpinned by what, on the surface, seems to be a real snoozer of a story. It all centers around business classification codes developed by the U.S. government and used by the Center for Responsive Politics to classify contributions. Here’s how the Center explained its classifications in 2003:

“The codes used for business groups follow the general guidelines of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes initially designed by the Office of Management and Budget and later replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)...”

The Akin Gump law firm is a prime example of how something as mundane as a business classification code can be gamed for political advantage. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Akin Gump ranks third among all Federal lobbyists, raking in $205,225,000 to lobby our elected officials in Washington from 1998 through 2007. The firm is listed as a registered federal lobbyist with the House of Representatives and the Senate; the firm held lobbying retainer contracts for more than 100 corporate clients in 2007. But when its non-registered law partners, the people who own this business and profit from its lobbying operations, give to the Obama campaign, the contribution is classified as coming from a law firm, not a lobbyist. 

The same holds true for Greenberg Traurig, the law firm that employed the criminally inclined lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig ranks ninth among all lobbyists for the same period, with lobbying revenues of $96,708,249. Its partners and employee donations to the Obama campaign of $70,650  by February 1 --  again at that strategic time -- appear not under lobbyist but the classification lawyers/law firms, as do 30 other corporate law firm/lobbyists. 

Additionally, looking at Public Citizen’s list of bundlers for the Obama campaign (people soliciting donations from others), 27 are employed by law firms registered as federal lobbyists. The total sum raised by bundlers for Obama from these 27 firms till February 1:  $2,650,000. (There are also dozens of high powered bundlers from Wall Street working the Armani-suit and red-suspenders cocktail circuits, like Bruce Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs; J. Michael Schell, vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup; Louis Susman, managing director, Citigroup; Robert Wolf, CEO, UBS Americas.  Each raised over $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)"

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 12:10 AM MDT

Updated: Monday, 14 July 2008 12:15 AM MDT

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Barack Obama has stated that the "surge" in Iraq is not working. 

Although you wouldn't know it from the so-called "mainstream media's" failure to cover the story, this is just another in a pathetic series of lies from Obama.

Don't take my word for it -  Scripps-Howard News Service's Deroy Murdock says:

"July 10, 2008, Thursday 5:03 PM EST...  "

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Islamo-puritanism sealed its doom


DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service

As al Qaeda in Iraq's fortunes wane, it has no one but itself to blame.  President Bush's troop surge indisputably has crushed al-Qaeda and other terrorists, while Iraqi soldiers have honed their ability to hammer deadly insurgents.

But much of al Qaeda's damage has been self-inflicted. Largely overlooked is the Islamo-puritanism that it inflicted on the Iraqi territories it seized.  Rank-and-file Iraqis tasted life under bin Laden-style Islam, and they gagged.  They responded by collaborating with American and Coalition forces to expel these mad zealots from their midst.

At one level, al Qaeda's religious decrees have been nearly comical.

As the Institute for War & Peace Reporting's Sahar Hussein al-Haideri revealed before she herself was murdered in June 2007, terrorists targeting what they considered pagan symbols bombed a statue of several women hauling jars on their shoulders.

"Do these statues work with police? Were they translators for the Americans or members of the dissolved Ba'ath party?" Mosul police spokesman Brigadier-General Sa'eed Ahmed al-Juburi asked the Institute. "Those terrorists are a bunch of idiots."

Al Qaeda's agenda for Mosul included a decree that clothiers cover the heads of their in-store mannequins. Some relented, and shrouded their mannequins with plastic bags.

"I don't know where these groups came from," shop owner Mutaz Ahmed told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "They want to take us back 1,400 years. But if you want to stay alive, you have to obey their orders."

Extremists banned soap in public baths because the Prophet Mohammed lacked it back in the 600s."

As anyone who went to school with Saudi exchange students could have told you.

"Al Qaeda took particular interest in clamping down on various food items.

"Sammoun," a type of bread popular in Mosul, also was prohibited, since Mohammed never ate it. Islamo-puritans found the sight of cucumbers and tomatoes side by side sexually charged, so they ordered produce stands to keep them apart, and told restaurateurs like Khalaf Khalid to serve them on separate plates.

'We obey them because they threatened to blow up the restaurant and kill us if we didn't,' Khalid said, back when al Qaeda was in command.

Al Qaeda also took a "Just Say No" attitude toward ice. Mohammed didn't have it, so Mosul's residents could not, either.

"They prevented production and sale of ice in Mosul from last year," Khalaf Abed Al-Hadidi, an ice manufacturer, told Agence France Presse. "Last summer was tough for us, but we couldn't use the ice factory.

As part of a general crackdown on public displays of joy, al Qaeda even banned wedding parties in Mosul."

As James Glassman, the State Department's chief of public diplomacy, observed at Manhattan's Council on Foreign Relations, "What began to turn the tide in Iraq was when Iraqis began to realize that this was a murderous ideology that was killing Muslims and justifying it by saying, 'If I think you're not a good Muslim, it's OK for me to kill you.'"

"They threatened to kill me if I used an electric shaving machine," barber Atta Sadoun told Agence France Presse. He added that al Qaeda forbade the removal of men's facial hair and forced him to install a sign saying he used scissors but no electric shaver. He said several colleagues who refused were killed. Al Qaeda also bombed women's beauty parlors."

According to restaurateur Hashim Abdullah Al-Hamdani, al Qaeda murdered two of his employees and injured his son. Why? His establishment served both male and female students from local colleges.

Episodes like these eventually led exasperated Iraqis, including Sunni imams, to work with American and Coalition forces to boot al Qaeda from Iraq. This has helped Iraq enjoy its current relative peace.

These bizarre, frightful incidents illustrate the bottomless depravity of America's chief enemy in Iraq. This is a glimpse of how Iraq could look if U.S. forces prematurely withdrew, and the bad guys returned. This also is a cautionary tale of the insanity that likely would erupt wherever al Qaeda or any of its allies gained power."

"Finally, al Qaeda's chilling tenure in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq puts the lie to the notion that Islamofascists merely are defending themselves against America's allegedly over-assertive foreign policy and Israel's supposed anti-Muslim menace. Combating ice, cucumbers, and wedding gowns has nothing to do with the policies of the Pentagon or the Knesset. It's all about building a bridge to the 7th Century."

Mr. Murdock has the guts to speak the truth about Iraq; while it's not as safe or as peaceful as either we or the people who live there would prefer, you can say that about almost every major city in the United States.

And thereby hangs a home truth about not only Barack Obama but the entire class of politicians who make a nice living from lying to us about the origins and extent of violence in today's world - both the proximate and ultimate cause of violence is those who commit violence, not economic want or social inequity.

Murderers and muggers do what they do because they have no respect for the sanctity of other people's lives.  And the effective cure for violence isn't pouring money into social programs, or violence would have been eradicated after billions were poured into "the war on poverty," starting back in the 1960s and continuing to this day.

What we need are politicians with the audacity to speak the truth.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:27 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 11 July 2008 7:30 PM MDT

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Mood:  not sure

Physical chemist Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) spent most of his career in the research laboratories of General Electric.  He won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1932 for or his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry, which evolved into the field of thin film physics.

Four years before his death, Langmuir gave a talk at General Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory on what he called "pathological science" - things like perpetual motion (most recently asserted to have been achieved by a Mississippi inventor named Joseph Newman ), Kirlian photography, Trofim Lysenko's theory of environmentally-induced hereditary changes in plants and animals, René Prosper Blondlot's "N-rays," and many other "discoveries" which turned out to be self-delusions on the part of the scientists reporting the phenomenon in question.

Langmuir, after reviewing a colleague's upcoming talk on something called the "Davis-Barnes Effect," found that he got the same results whether or not his apparatus was working properly, or at all...  it was not a case of fraud, but of honest self-delusion and observational errors which were systematically - but unconsciously - made by otherwise highly professional, careful researchers who were so excited by what they thought was a new phenomenon that they overlooked alternative explanations for their results and miscounted events in a way which affirmed their hypothesis by making allowances for data which denied their hypothesis as being due to problems with their experimental gear.

Looking back at earlier examples of such incidents, Langmuir analyzed the work of René Prosper Blondlot's reports of "N-rays," shortly after Roentgen announced his discovery of X rays, and found remarkably similar sources of experimental error.  Langmuir studied the errors of his colleague, Blondlot and other researchers who'd made similar errors, and found that there were significant common features in these experiments.

These Langmuir called Symptoms of Pathological Science:

1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
   
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
   
3. Claims of great accuracy.
   
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
   
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
   
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.

Reader, does this remind you of something?  A certain climate change theory, perhaps?

"Global warming" exhibits several of the symptoms Irving Langmuir described:

- while there have been recent changes in world climate, they don't correspond to carbon dioxide levels (the claimed causative agent) in any fashion that can be described with consistency;

- statistical analysis of the relation between climate change and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not reveal a relationship that is significant by the standards of science;

- while proponents of global warming claim predictive power for their theories, so far reality isn't cooperating with them;

- the predictions of future climate trends fly in the face of what has been observed about behavior of the Earth's climate until now;

- the ability of proponents of global warming theory to rationalize counter-intutitive developments such as the sharp DROP in world temperatures while the Earth is supposedly warming is truly remarkable.

So far, the only missing symptom is the sharp fall in the number of supporters of global warming theory.  There is no shortage of people who profess to agree with this theory despite its troubling inconsistencies, and it has become popular with politicians at the national and global level, as evidenced by Al Gore's having won the Nobel Peace Prize for espousing global warming and having promoted it as tirelessly as he has.

Of course, we've seen things like this before - eugenics was once universally accepted as received wisdom.  Compulsory sterilization was once promoted not only for those who were assessed as being mentally or physically subnormal, but those who exceeded the intellectual norm by too high a degree ("excessively high" intelligence was considered to indicate a tendency toward mental instability).  Supreme Court decisions were based on eugenics theory, state laws written based on it, and history shows how the Nazis abused it to justify murders (passed off as "euthanasia") - killings which may have happened in other countries, even the United States, as eugenics enthusiasts began trying to emulate the German example before World War Two.

After the war, the Nuremberg Trials tore the veil away from the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors in the name of eugenics; suddenly very few people outside Nazi Germany believed in eugenics any more, and papers on work done here in America involving those unfortunate enough to be considered "defective" suddenly were put away, spiked by scientific journal editors.  But it took not only years, but a catastrophic world war and grisly excesses committed by a psychotic regime run by a madman to overthrow the hold of eugenics on the world's intellectuals.

So it may well be with global warming.  As long as people are willing to squint a little when they see data that disagrees with the consensus that the Earth is inexorably getting warmer, and believe that a hundredth of a degree increase in temperature worldwide (the rise predicted by most global warming models) will have the catastrophic effects predicted by the people who have hitched their professional and political wagons to the global warming star - then it will be fashionable, perhaps even mandatory in the future to parrot the global warming credo.

But eventually the world will stop squinting.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:16 AM MDT

Updated: Friday, 11 July 2008 1:05 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

I didn't think there would be much to the allegations that Barack Obama has taken a LOT of money and/or expensive favors in shady circumstances.

I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong, though.

This is a link to a London Times online story about Obama accepting assistance from one of Britain's richest men, an Iraqi expatriate, to purchase a mansion and help with his fundraiser...

Quoting from the article, which also gets into the deal with Mr. and Mrs. Rezko for financing for the Obamas' South Side Chicago mansion (of course, there's no obligation to do favors for millions of dollars of campaign money, is there?   Just ask Hillary Clinton... )

"A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.

The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.

A company related to Mr Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr Obama's bagman Antoin "Tony" Rezko on May 23 2005. Mr Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.

Three weeks later, Mr Obama bought a house on the city's South Side while Mr Rezko's wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15.

Mr Obama says he never used Mrs Rezko's still-empty lot, which could only be accessed through his property. But he admits he paid his gardener to mow the lawn.

Mrs Rezko, whose husband was widely known to be under investigation at the time, went on to sell a 10-foot strip of her property to Mr Obama seven months later so he could enjoy a bigger garden.

Mr Obama now admits his involvement in this land deal was a “boneheaded mistake”.

Mrs Rezko’s purchase and sale of the land to Mr Obama raises many unanswered questions.

It is unclear how Mrs Rezko could have afforded the downpayment of $125,000 and a $500,000 mortgage for the original $625,000 purchase of the garden plot at 5050 South Greenwood Ave.

In a sworn statement a year later, Mrs Rezko said she got by on a salary of $37,000 and had $35,000 assets. Mr Rezko told a court he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets, no unencumbered assets [and] is significantly in arrears on many of his obligations."

Mrs Rezko, whose husband goes on trial on unrelated corruption charges in Chicago on March 3, refused to answer questions about the case when she spoke by telephone to The Times."

_____ 

This is better than the Korean millionaire Tongsun Park giving Mrs. Edwin Edwards (his ex-wife, now) $50,000 for a living room table in the Louisiana governor's mansion - some deal or other having to do with rice exports.

But what's the quid pro quo for an underpaid office worker (married to a man under indictment for corruption) to buy a $625,000 piece of land to sell to the Obamas , or an Iraqi businessman to float these people a $3.5 million dollar home loan - through an offshore company, no less?

What, exactly, would a guy under indictment for corruption and a foreigner already convicted of corruption want a US Senator - or God forbid, a President - to do for him?  

The mind boggles.

_____

If you don't trust the British press, how about the Chicago Sun-Times?

"Obama surfaces in Rekzo's federal corruption case

Source confirmed Obama is the unnamed "political candidate" referred to in document which outlines case against Rezko"

(blogger note - Did Katie Couric share this with you yet?  Chris Matthews sling a hardball about it on his Sunday morning show?  I thought not.) 

For the first time, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama has surfaced in the federal corrupton case against his longtime campaign fund-raiser, Tony Rezko, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The Illinois senator isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. And there’s no evidence Obama knew contributions to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign came from schemes Rezko is accused of orchestrating." 

Rezko is set to go to trial Feb. 25. The revelation that Obama’s name could come up in court is a political headache he doesn’t need as he heads into a round of primaries that are likely to determine his party’s nomination for president."

(Blogger note: this is old news.  Why on Earth haven't the national news media picked up on it?  The British know about it.  They seem to know more than even the Sun-Times does about the foreign campaign contributions to the Obama campaign.

What was that about "no special interests?"  Obama, you lying sack of.... )

"Obama is not named in the Dec. 21 court document. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that Obama is the unnamed “political candidate” referred to in a section of the document that accuses Rezko of orchestrating a scheme in which a firm hired to handle state teacher pension investments first had to pay $250,000 in “sham” finder’s fees. From that money, $10,000 was donated to Obama’s successful run for the Senate in the name of a Rezko business associate, according to the court filing and the source.

Rezko, who was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee, also is accused of directing “at least one other individual” to donate money to Obama and then reimbursing that individual — in possible violation of federal election law."

(Blogger note: This sort of thing has gotten people in deep trouble - like entrepreneur Michael Zinn, whose story was told in the documentary "Mad Dog Prosecutors" - he was accused of this very infraction and spent a lot of time undergoing administrative abuse in the Federal prison system - all because some of his business rivals said he MIGHT have reimbursed some of his employees for making donations to a Congressman whose campaign he supported.  They proved NOTHING, but Zinn remained in jail.) 

"A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment.

Obama — a state senator when he got the contributions in 2004 — has moved to distance himself from Rezko since his longtime friend and supporter was indicted in October 2006. After news reports that Obama had engaged in a real estate transaction with Rezko’s wife at a time Tony Rezko was known to be under investigation, the senator called the episode “boneheaded” and “a mistake.”

"Obama campaign aides said Friday he was unaware Rezko was behind the contributions cited in last month’s court filing or that the document referred to the senator.

“We have no way of knowing he is the politician named here,” spokesman Bill Burton said, “but we returned this money months ago for other reasons.”

 (Right.  Sure.)

"Rezko is one of Obama’s earliest political patrons. Long known as a prolific fund-raiser, the Syrian-born businessman helped raise money for Obama’s political campaigns beginning in 1995, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate.

In 13 years in politics, Obama has gotten at least $168,000 in campaign donations from Rezko, his family and business associates. The Sun-Times reported that figure last June. Obama’s “best estimate” seven months earlier had been that Rezko had raised no more than $60,000 for him.

When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, Rezko held a June 27, 2003, cocktail party in Rezko’s Wilmette mansion, picking up the tab for the lavish event. Obama’s campaign staff has said it has no records to show who attended that party, or how much it cost.

Obama’s relationship with Rezko dates to 1990, when Obama, then a Harvard law student, interviewed for a job with Rezko’s development company, Rezmar Corp. Obama turned down the job, instead going to work for a small Chicago law firm — Davis Miner Barnhill. That firm did work on more than a dozen low-income housing projects Rezmar rehabbed with government funds.

Eleven Rezmar buildings were in the state Senate district Obama represented between 1996 and 2004. Many of the buildings ended up in foreclosure, with tenants living in squalid conditions, the Sun-Times reported last year. In one instance, Rezko’s company left tenants without heat for five weeks. Obama said he was unaware of problems with the buildings and minimized the legal work he’d done.

Obama’s relationship with Rezko grew closer in June 2005, when Obama and Rezko’s wife bought adjoining real estate parcels from a doctor in the South Side Kenwood neighborhood. Obama paid $1.65 million for the doctor’s mansion, while Rezko’s wife paid $625,000 for the vacant lot next door. Obama’s purchase price was $300,000 below the asking price; Rezko’s wife paid full price."

(Blogger note: This confirms the London Times's account of that particular activity.)

"Six months later, Obama paid Rita Rezko $104,500 for one-sixth of the vacant lot, which he bought to expand his yard. In November 2006, he expressed regret about the transaction.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else,” Obama said, “to believe that he had done me a favor.”"

(Blogger note: why does the press just sit there and nod when Obama's flacks hand out crap like this?  After all the flak the White House took over Scooter Libby POSSIBLY not being accurate about something he said under oath? 

Inconsistency here, folks... no, let's call it what it is - partisan media bias.)

It would be better, in my opinion, if Obama's campaign had simply returned the money to the donors - or declined it in the first place.  That way, there's NO question of a quid pro quo.

It also would be a lot closer to what Obama pledges he WILL do.  All we can really evaluate is what he HAS done.

Obama's campaign has historically allowed donors to believe that they have some influence with the Senator instead of rebuffing them outright.  It seems as though the Obama campaign lacks the courage to live up to their rhetoric on campaign finance.  No audacity with the donors, eh?

Historically, the Democrats have been loud in demanding campaign reform only to ignore the resulting laws when it is convenient (and local party officials here in Denver have said outright that they're still scrambling to come up with the money for this year's Democratic National Convention in Denver, so I think even money that smells like ten-day old fish entrails will be welcome right around now to finance the big party).

______

It's also interesting to note that a Vice Chairman at Perseus, LLC (which also employs Bush administration critic Richard Holbrooke), James A. Johnson, is active in the Obama campaign and in charge of selection of the vice-presidential candidate.

Going over to the Perseus LLC Web site, we find that it is an investment fund, and that George Soros is an investment partner of theirs.  Perseus Soros Partners LLC invests heavily in pharmaceutical companies. 

http://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1250191.htm

George Soros pumped incredible amounts of soft money into the coffers of the Democratic Party during the 2004 elections.  Now he's trying to buy himself another Democratic President.  And that's the only name you can give to the transaction. 

Wealthy foreigner dumps tons of money into a political campaign...  why?   Based on what the Chinese got from the Clintons for their generous support - neutron bomb plans, most favored nation trading status, lots of slack on their human rights record, the answer is obviously political influence, and plenty of it. 

And Barack Obama just doesn't seem able to say "no" to contributors.  If he were a Republican, the hue and cry for his impeachment from the Senate would be in progress now. 

By the standards the "mainstream" press and critics of the Republican Party apply to conservative politicians, Obama would be regarded as a moral leper.  He takes money from Chicago slum lords, just plain crooks and people whose business practices don't bear too close an examination.  

In fact, by the standards applied to a recent House majority whip (the guy who used to spray for bugs for a living in Dallas - as opposed to the guy in Obama's campaign team who lets slum apartments swarm with cockroaches), Obama should be writing his resignation speech from the US Senate right now.

How can reasonably intelligent people idolize a man who lets a slum lord run his political campaigns and has had a lifelong relationship with this guy? (The obvious answer is that they may not be as swift as the press is telling them they are.... )

Some of the same people who probably voted for Obama into office went without heat in a Chicago winter (worse than Denver, I can testify) while the guy who owned their apartments threw lavish parties to raise campaign funds for the guy they voted for - why wasn't Obama in this guy's face about people freezing in their apartments?  How compassionate IS he, when it comes down to real decisions?  (Another canape, Senator?)

Obama has worked hand in glove with someone who oppresses the poor of Chicago for years while prosing around about his celestial vision and "the audacity of hope."

All that you see once you peel away the crap is the audacity of Obama.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 11:27 PM MDT

Updated: Monday, 16 June 2008 2:14 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (also increasingly known as "that treasonous, ignorant, terrorist-enabling bitch") demanded that our people in Iraq negotiate an end to the sectarian violence there with the Iranians without whose donations of money, technical help and advanced weapons such as "copperhead" shaped armor-piercing charges the Sadr-led Shia insurgency would have collapsed long ago.   The usual suspects in the House and Senate added their me-toos to the clamor.

Would you like to see how well that worked out?

"Top Military Officer Assails Iran's Role in Iraq" by David Stout, the International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/25/mideast/military.php

Washington: The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was "extremely concerned" about "the increasingly lethal and malign influence" by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran's theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen's remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago," Mullen said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way."

The discovery of weapons caches in Iraq, with devices bearing stamps that indicate they were manufactured quite recently, run contrary to the Iranian promises not to interfere in Iraq, the admiral said. He conceded that he had "no smoking gun" to prove direct involvement by the very highest echelons in Tehran, but he said he found it hard to believe that all the top leaders were ignorant of recent developments."

Since they pay for those "recent developments" from a shrinking pool of oil revenue from which they must also finance terrorism elsewhere in the world - including those famous Qassam missiles landing on Israel - and their nuclear weapons production program (I think that it's fair to say they're past the "development" phase, since they have thousands of centrifuges busy purifying bomb-grade uranium, and are hot at work getting their reactor at Bushehr on-line - presumably to create plutonium, since they have more oil and gas than they'll EVER need to generate electric power at home). 

"The Pentagon is sufficiently concerned about Iran's apparently deepening involvement in Iraq that it plans a briefing in the near future by General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, to publicize the caches of weapons, some of which are believed to have been used against U.S. troops in the recent fighting in Basra, in southern Iraq. Details of the weapons and the Pentagon's concerns over them were disclosed Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

"I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability," Mullen said.

Of particular concern to U.S. military commanders are explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which the Pentagon says are being made in Iran and shipped to Shiite militants in Iraq, where they are used to deadly effect against U.S. forces trying to subdue extremist elements and bolster the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Asked whether the new evidence of Iranian mischief in Iraq portends an U.S. military conflict with Iran, the admiral said, "I'm not going to add anything to what I've already said in that regard." For now, Mullen said, the best weapon against Iran is a combination of diplomatic and financial pressure by the United States and other nations alarmed by Iran's attitude.

Pentagon leaders have said they would not rule out military action against Iran. But it is not uncommon for U.S. civilian and military leaders to leave "all options on the table," in an often-used phrase, because to rule out military action in advance is seen as admitting a lack of resolve.

Mullen acknowledged that the U.S. military was being stretched thin by the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, "it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability." As for Iranian motives, Mullen said he believed the leadership in Tehran hopes for a weak Iraq, so that Iran can increase its influence in the region.

Moreover, deep resentment remains in Iran toward the United States, which until the Iranian revolution in 1979 long supported the repressive regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Cold War. The current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has shown little indication of wanting better relations with Washington.

Mullen said Iranian influence in Iraq goes beyond shipment of weapons. "They continue to train Iraqis in Iran to come back and fight Americans and the coalition," he said. Reiterating earlier accusations, he asserted that Iranian leaders "continue to broadly support terrorists in other parts of the region," including the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

"And in fact, we're seeing some evidence that they're supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan," Mullen said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting."

We read this sort of reporting where?   In the International Herald Tribune and Reuters, which distribute their news mostly overseas.

Is the mainstream-media truth-tropic enough to stay with the "let's negotiate with Iran" story long enough to find out whether it worked? 

Of course not. 

It's not "newsworthy" unless (let's say it all together) it confirms the biases of the people who make decisions in the mainstream press.

These people are savvy enough, they think, to believe that admitting when they're wrong to their public would impair their credibility.

The opposite is true.  When the CIA admits that their intelligence gathering prior to the war may have been flawed (that's never been proven, by the way, and indications are that even Joe Wilson's news flash about uranium sales from Niger was crap and that there were sales of yellowcake from Niger that could have ended up through intermediaries in Iraq), this is taken as proof that there's something wrong with their process.

The truth is not so simple.  CIA is to be commended for publishing the outcome of their in-house analysis.   The willingness to question the validity of one's methods and conclusions is truth-tropic, scientific behavior. However....

There are people in CIA who were gaming the situation all along to make Bush look bad.  These people at the very least were guilty of malfeasance and should have been sacked.  Instead, their opinions were reported as fact by the press when their motivations should have been questioned just as closely as the Administration's were.  Joe Wilson himself should have had to explain many irregularities in his reports to CIA from Niger, his appointment to do the investigation there in the first place, and his statements afterward.

In reporting the aftermath of Wilson's "mission" and the railroading of Scooter Libby on contrived charges unrelated to the original accusations against him, Big Press has been anything but truth-tropic.

Joe Wilson declared early on in the media circus that he intended to have Karl Rove "frog-walked out of the White House" under arrest.  Clear evidence of malice and a poisonous agenda.  Has anyone ever held Wilson's feet to the fire about this?  Of course not.

During prosecutor Fitzgerald's series of show trials directed at West Wing staffers under Rove, had anyone influential in Big Media questioned the propriety of pursuing the investigation once it became clear that Richard Armitage and not Karl Rove had been the person responsible for revealing that Wilson's wife worked for CIA? Of course not.

In the precincts of Big Press there anything approaching a clamor to know why Scooter Libby is going to jail for some inaccuracies in his testimony - when Bill Clinton got by with a slap on the wrist for lying outright under sworn testimony in order to conceal his activities as a sexual predator? Of course not.
____ 

And will Big Press return to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and the rest of the terror-enabling caucus to ask them why negotiating with the Iranians has not had the effect they predicted?  Of course not.

For that to happen, Big Press would need to be inexorably guided by a sense of responsibility to the public which depends on them for information, and objectivity, candor, a professional ethic inclining them toward looking critically at the facts before reporting on them.   Are they?

Of course not.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 9:51 PM MDT

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Mood:  irritated

Hamas terrorists make 2008 U.S. presidential pick
Cite need for change, excuse opposition to Carter meeting

_____

Posted: April 14, 2008
10:09 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
C 2008 WorldNetDaily

Sen. Barack Obama (Courtesy Carrie Devorah)

JERUSALEM - On the eve of a planned meeting with former President Jimmy Carter, the isolated Hamas terrorist organization has expressed "hope" Sen. Barack Obama will win the presidential elections and "change" America's foreign policy.

"We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections," Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, said in an exclusive interview with WND and with the John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio in New York.

"I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will change the political discourse. ...I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principal (sic). And he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance," Yousuf said, speaking from Gaza.

Yousuf, the Hamas figure usually responsible for coordinating meetings with foreign officials, told WND
www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61496 earlier that Carter's planned meeting this week with Hamas would help the terror organization "engage with the world community."

"Carter can achieve something no one else can. He is open-minded and has a very noble cause to come and meet with all people," said Yousuf."

Well, that confirms something I've been saying all along (let's glide past the obvious comment that Carter's open mind allowed his brain to escape from his head somewhere on the way to the North Korean nuclear weapons negotiations in the 1990s) - 

Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter (plus fifty IQ points, apparently used for charm and plausibility).

Any questions? 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 7:30 PM MDT

Updated: Wednesday, 16 April 2008 8:37 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Answer:  When it's committed against someone not in a "protected" group.

Example: Rude, hostile and threatening phone calls.  The last one was this afternoon, I have the phone number, have reported the call as a nuisance call with Qwest, and I have the subscriber's name.

Example: One of the lawn sprinklers on our front lawn was mangled, the little rocket scientist next door as much as admitted to doing it (after spending most of the preceding week stirring up racist hate speech directed at our home - we're one of the few caucasian families in the area, and since we stopped paying the kid who's stirring up all the trouble NOT to do our lawn work, we've been getting... well, it's extortion.  If you don't pay the kid, you get fireworks set off in your enclosed garage, you get gangs of the little bastards screaming in front of your home, your car gets keyed... just high-spirited fun, according to the local police department.

30 million people are in this country illegally.  What happens when they are the majority in a neighborhood?   Everything that the people who insist the law be enforced are accused of.

I have so much of this activity on video and audio tape, it's incredible.  Eventually someone will be interested.   I am not going to be driven out of a place where I have a legal right to be.    I think that it's about time that the people who are trying to run honest, law-abiding citizens out of the area are investigated.   I'd bet that at least some of these people don't belong here - in the sense that they are illegal immigrants, people who stole the rights that the rest of us have by right or because they went through the proper steps to become US citizens.

I have no problems with Hispanics or anyone else because of their race, religion or creed.  

I have BIG problems with little sneaks who make trouble for hardworking people because they won't pay protection money.   When you pay a malignant, lying little shit money to keep your yard up, and he won't - and when you stop paying him (partly because we over-heard him bragging to his friends about the way he abuses our attempts to be friendly), then the petty crimes start ramping up - and the police do nothing but "talk" to the perpetrators - that's an extortion racket.   I don't care WHO does it - it's extortion.   And when the cops won't enforce the law against extortion, that's corruption, malfeasance and a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

That's what our contemptible coward of a President wants to happen more and more.   He wants people like this to have a "path to citizenship."  I want them to have one-way bus tickets to wherever they come from.  And I want them in jail when they come back after having been sent home.   And after their jail terms expire, I want them shipped back to the country they came from.

We already had crooks here twenty years ago.  We don't need more crooks.   We need to send the new crooks back where they come from.

Want to read more stuff about our new "guests," the ones that George Spineless W. Bush wants to have a "path to citizenship?"

http://www.nicedoggie.net/2006/?p=1056 has stories to make your blood boil.  

So does 

And this is proof that we're not just enforcing the law against south-of-the-border criminals - the border cops and Customs just nailed three Canadians who had dug a tunnel under our border to smuggle marijuana in to the US.  Works for me.   Crooks are crooks, no matter where they're from.  Bust 'em all.   Better yet, flood the tunnel while the perpetrators are in it. 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 9:52 PM MST

Updated: Monday, 25 February 2008 12:50 AM MST

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