All posts by Chief

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Stupid Crook Department

Mississippi Man Mistakenly Calls 91l, leads Cops to His Meth Lab

A man trying to call a news station to complain about not getting a FEMA trailer after Hurricane Katrina accidentally dialed 911 and was charged with making methamphetamine after police arrived, authorities said.

Curtiss Randall Coleman was trying to get the number for Biloxi’s WLOX-TV on Wednesday just before the 6 p.m. newscast, investigators said. He misdialed when trying to reach directory information and called 911 instead of 411. When he hung up on the emergency dispatcher, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department was sent to the home to see if anyone was in need of assistance.

Deputies said that when they arrived at Coleman’s house, no one answered the door. Officers broke in and allegedly found a methamphetamine lab.

Sometimes, there is justice in the world!

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Iran Wrap

Iran vows to use ‘smart’ bomb on enemies

Conventional sword-rattling again.

Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb against its enemies and unveiled mass production of the new weapon, state television reported. The government first announced development of the long-range guided bomb Thursday, saying it could be deployed by the country’s aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets

Iran: Nuclear activities have not halted

Meanwhile, in addition to conventional sword-rattling, they keep up with the nuclear sort, also.

Iran said Sunday its nuclear activities have not halted or slowed down, rejecting reports that it has not significantly expanded its uranium enrichment program this summer as planned. “There has been no slowing down, no halt and no retreat. Our activities continue on the same basis we began our peaceful nuclear program,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

So, take them at their word. Then, the question becomes, given the ideology of the Mullahs and their political mouthpiece Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad, can the world accept a nuclear Iran?

Israeli says Hamas is training hundreds abroad

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them.

In addition to Iran’s contributions, Ham-ass has a lot more going on than this…which bodes no good for Israel.

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Rice? (Not Condie!)

New cash crop for South Dakota

Xingyou Gu, an assistant professor of plant science and rice geneticist/breeder, explained, “Based on my experience over the past 20 years, I think that it’s possible to develop new varieties (of rice) that are suitable for the South Dakota environment.”

Interesting. Could give the area a bit more agricultural diversity, if it all works out.

National Insecurity

Same Judge, Same Case, Same Result: Same Sedition

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act

A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible “far-reaching invasions of liberty.”

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: “We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time.”

As an alternative philosophy the Chief would offer this tag from Cicero:

SILENT LEGES INTER ARMA. (In time of war, the laws are silent.)

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Your Tax Dollars at Work…or Not.

Homeland Security falls short, GAO says

The Homeland Security Department has failed to meet even half of its performance expectations in the four years it has been in existence, congressional auditors concluded in a draft report obtained by The Associated Press.

Predictably enough the response of the agency is ¡No problemo!

The department disagreed with the findings of the Government Accountability Office report, which was to be released Thursday, particularly with the way auditors defined and measured progress.

How sneaky, to actually look for and expect measurable results! In spite of the hemming and hawing around in Cong hearings this week, HS Secretary Chertoff summed the situation up:

“But if you ask me is the job of keeping us safe done, the answer to that is no,” Chertoff said. “It is not done. And it may not be done within our lifetimes.”

OK. If that’s the case, quit dinking around, and let us carry guns to defend ourselves…wherever…including at airports, etc.

Dang! There I go, thinking again! Foolish error, when dealing with bureaucratic minds.

Defense Matters!

US Attacks on USMC?!

Haditha Video Doctored by Investigators

The Chief has been following this for some time…and has noted with satisfaction that the case against the Marine “boots on the ground” has started to unravel. It looks like this process is continuing, with these reports of doctored video evidence.

A video taped from a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle – purported to show the action that took place in Haditha when 24 Iraqi civilians and insurgents were killed – was heavily edited by government investigators, a NewsMax investigation reveals. The reason, according to an inside source: to avoid showing anything that exonerates the Marines who were accused of murdering the victims. Four Marines originally faced murder charges stemming from the Haditha incident. Charges against three of them have since been dropped, but Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich is still facing a court martial.

What was actually recorded leaves a very clear history that the Marines’ actions were fully justified by the rules of engagement. What WAS actually recorded?

The Marine intelligence officer who monitored the Scan Eagle’s video transmissions throughout the day told NewsMax that therewas continuous video feed from the Scan Eagle for 8 to 10 hours. Yet barely an hour of it was provided to the Marines’ defense teams by the prosecution or the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. “This 8 to 10 hours, viewed in its entirety, shows men in black, with weapons, fleeing the neighborhood of houses 1, 2, 3 and 4 [the area where the civilians and eight of the insurgents were killed]. It follows their route as they meet up with other insurgents throughout the city. It clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the insurgents’ organization, skill, and timing in attacking Marines.”

The video, he recalled, “shows them parking, exiting the vehicle, and entering the housing complex. It shows Marines assaulting the building, insurgents fleeing out the back of the building, and Marines falling back from the assault as the insurgents defend the house.” Finally, the intelligence officer revealed, the full, undoctored Scan Eagle video “shows an insurgent, at the end of the day, under continuous observation from the air and under continuous pursuit and fire, emerge from a family’s home holding their children hostage, in order to protect himself from further air strikes.”

What was actually used as “evidence” and which was released to CNN, who played thr role of the willing fool in helping the prosecution, was somewhat less that this:

“Someone, under the supervision of NCIS, screened this video feed, and made the conscious decision to preserve only four segments of approximately 15 minutes each – according to the defense attorneys who received it upon discovery release,” our intelligence source confided.

What the Chief really CANNOT wrap his mind around, is an understanding of the attitudes and motivation of any bottom-feeding, slime-sucking, traitorous scum who would do this to our own troops.

Execution is too good for them. One needs to hearken back to the old-style penalty of the British monarchs to APPROACH justice: hung by the neck, taken down while still alive, racked, disembowled, with the innards still attached and then thrown into a fire, and only then beheaded, with the body quartered, and the fragments placed on public display as an instructive lesson.

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New Machinery to Replace Ag Workers

Robots May Become Essential on US Farms

This is one way to deal with undocumented illegal alien workers: mechanize their former jobs.

With authorities promising tighter borders, some farmers who rely on immigrant labor are eyeing an emerging generation of fruit-picking robots and high-tech tractors to do everything from pluck premium wine grapes to clean and core lettuce. Such machines, now in various stages of development, could become essential for harvesting delicate fruits and vegetables that are still picked by hand.

Sounds like a plan!

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Mex Pres’ Imperialism & Freewheeling Cross Border Trucks

Teamsters continue to battle Mexican trucks

The plan to let Mexican trucks operate throughout the United States has prompted a war of words and legal papers between the Bush administration and Jim Hoffa, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Hoffa and his allies at the Sierra Club and Public Citizen have sued in federal court to stop the government from issuing permits to Mexican freight haulers. Their lawyers argued in court that Mexican trucks pose a danger on the roads and threaten increased human and drug smuggling. “Dangerous trucks should not be driving all the way from Mexico to Maine and Minnesota,” said Hoffa in a prepared statement. “What is it about safety and national security that George Bush doesn’t understand?”

The Chief has some more or less direct interest in this, since he lives 2.75 miles from an officially designated North American international trade route (I-29).

The government argued that stopping the trucks would unsettle a key trading partner in Mexico and delay U.S.trucks from operating south of the border.

So, the Mexicans could become unsettled. The point is…?

This goes right along with another item:

Calderon blasts U.S. immigration policies

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.”

This reminds the Chief of the sort of things that Germany was saying in the 1930’s as it moved to implement “das Grossdeutches Reich“, or Greater Germany, incorporating large parts of Czechoslovakia, the entire nation of Austria, most of Poland, and targets on the then USSR up to the Urals. Indeed, Germany did NOT end at its borders…it kept marching as long as it could get away from it. One fears Mexico is moving in the direction of going for anything it can get, as long as we continue to “assume the position”. BOHICA!

Admittedly Calderon is no Hitler (yet), but imperialism is imperialism…and asserting claims of extraterritorial rights historically is one of the tried and true arrows in the imperialistic quiver.

He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

This is the Mexican version of the doctrine of “Once a German, always a German.”

“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”

Frankly, as far as the Chief is concerned the only right that ILLEGAL immigrants have, is to not let the door hit them in the ass on their way out.

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“…the new boss, same as the old boss”

Chinese donor sounds like ’96

Donks, and especially Clintons, will do what they do.

Questionable donations to Democratic officials and presidential candidates from a Chinese-American businessman highlight past concerns over Chinese political influence-buying operations. Apparel executive Norman Hsu, who turned himself in last week to authorities in California to face fraud charges, donated more than $1 million to senior Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Could anyone with any common sense at all REALLY expect anything different from the Donk crew?

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Moonbat Judge Halts Immigration Screening

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Judge Halts Illegal Immigrant Notices

The Social Security Administration has sent out “no-match” letters for more than two decades warning employers of discrepancies in the information the government has on their workers. Employers often brushed aside the letters, and the small fines that sometimes were incurred, as a cost of doing business.

But this year, those letters will be accompanied by notices from the Department of Homeland Security outlining strict new requirements for employers to resolve those discrepancies within 90 days or face fines or criminal prosecution, if they’re deemed to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

The judge’s ruling Friday temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing the new rules, which were scheduled to take effect Sept. 14.

This is just nutso. The suit was brought by the AFL-CIO, no doubt preferring new workers to organize, but ignoring the situation of their CURRENT workers who are losing jobs, having wages driven down, etc. due to the loose state of our borders.

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Shock and Awe 2, or something more?

Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

From The Times of London:

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Hmmmm. Time will tell. Unfortunately, the historical record indicates that air power without boots on the ground doesn’t work really well.

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UK Dairy Predicament Update

The Chief earlier posted on an article From the London Sunday Telegraph examining the apparently perilous state of the British dairy industry, and noting that the UK’s losses have resulted in some gains right here in Moody County, SD.

Now comes a piece from the Times of London, commenting at some length on the same situation.

How dairy herds yield the milk of human blindness

Should anyone ever want a perfect example of what short-termism has done to the world, they just need to go and look at a dairy cow. If they can find one. The domestic British milk industry is in tatters, systematically dismantled over recent years by a retail food industry that has pushed farmers to the edge by paying them less and less for their product.

The mantra is familiar to us all. Give the customers what they want. Give the shareholders what they want. And hell mend the future � if anyone even considers it, given they don’t teach anything over the immediate horizon at most business schools. So vicious has been the squeeze that as many as a third of family dairy farmers have now quit, dispersed their herds and sold their farms. Spirits have been broken, generations of family history binned. Those who struggle on with their 14-hour days and their 4am starts do so on incomes from milk of as little as £5,000 � well below the poverty threshold and just a fraction of the average wage.

And, while this process has been going on, did anyone care? Did its longer-term economic significance register? No, of course not, because we, the public, take a limitless supply of milk totally and utterly for granted; and indeed there is probably a significant proportion of the modern population that believes it is sourced from a tap somewhere.

Sadly, there’s more. Looks like they really are getting to have a serious problem.

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ACHTUNG! Ve vill be healthy! Or else!

Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. “It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse.

How much more totalitarian could he be than THIS!??? Think about it a bit. What if you DON’T go? The Medical Enforcement Police will have to be sent out to drag you into the penal hospital system for examination and treatment?

The attitude of mind that can produce this proposal assumes that we are unable to care for ourselves at all, and that the Big Brother state has to step in to do it for us. Also implicit in this is the assumption that since we are all “human resources” we can be managed like any other economic resource in order to maintain our social utility.

This represents an practical denial of any right to individual free agency…and IMHO this is a form of ultimate evil.

It’s rare that a politician openly rips the lid off of hell and directly offers it to us as a supposed benefit.

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Why British Dairymen come to Moody County

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Milked dry: British dairy farmers uncovered

The ag economy is so out of kilter in the UK that dairymen are forced to work at a loss…is it any wonder they are literally seeking greener pastures, like Moody County’s recently acquired British originated dairies.

Every time that Bob and his team at Henden Manor Farm in Kent milk the cows, they lose money. This is because the price the farm gets paid for its milk is around 1.5p per litre below the cost of producing that milk. This morning’s session alone has cost the farm around £50.

This account from the London Sunday Telegraph gives a thorough account of one Brit dairyman’s situation, as an example of a serious problem over there… with their loss becoming Moody County’s gains.

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A New Pyramid Scheme?

German town wants its own Great Pyramid

What to do when you have an economically depressed east German backwater? Here’s an idea:

The pharaohs may have set the standard, but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt’s pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world’s largest pyramid.

wdessau102.jpg
The pyramid of tombstones planned at Dessau

They have secured €90,000 (£61,000) in state funding to assess the feasibility of building a 1,600ft tall “Great Pyramid” near the town of Dessau, in the impoverished east German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

OK. Whatever….It WILL be interesting to see if it gets off the ground at all.

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Brit “Educational Reform”?

Cameron: Hold failing primary pupils back

The Chief was bemused to see that the Conservative leader in the UK was proposing a radical new suggestion to improve educational quality:

Poorly performing children would be forced to stay on to resit their final year at primary school under plans to drive up classroom standards unveiled by David Cameron today.

WOW! What a concept! Repeat the content to learn it better! Why haven’t WE thought of that? (Oh, right. We DO do that, at least in some places.)

But wait! They’re on a roll:

The Conservative leader calls for a “genuine schools revolution”, including improved discipline, a concentration on the basics and a better chance for pupils from deprived backgrounds. In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Cameron backs plans for an “advantage premium” which would see schools given an extra payment per child, on top of existing state funding, for taking pupils from disadvantaged families. This could mean schools being granted up to £6,000 for each disadvantaged pupil they took – making them more attractive “customers” for a range of schools.

This is what now passes for “Conservatism” in the UK. £6000 is a pretty healthy chunk of change…somewhere near the $10K-12K range these days. This is an EXTRA payment also. By comparison, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs formula for per student expenses at its boarding schools TOTAL is less than half that, speaking of “disadvantaged”.

How did the once proud UK reach this sad state? Maybe this has something to do with it:

Its most eye-catching initiative is a call for the worst performers at the end of year six – the final year at primary school, when children reach the age of 11 – to catch up either by attending summer schools or in some cases resitting the entire year. This would lead to children of much more widely differing ages becoming classmates than is usual in the present system, which is strictly delineated by age. (emphasis added)

THIS, sports fans and fun-seekers is what happens when the schools are “dumbed down”, but surely this can’t happen HERE, could it?

At least there IS some positive sounding direction behind the proposals:

In his article, Mr Cameron vows to use school reforms to help tackle Britain’s “broken society”. He adds: “Educational failure lies at its root. Labour’s obsessive micro-management and rigid attachment to old-fashioned ideas has entrenched deprivation, shut doors and closed minds….We need a new approach: one that offers real hope and opportunity; harnesses aspiration and opens minds; and gives children from poor backgrounds the chance to get on in life….I know what parents want for their children because it’s the same thing I want for mine: schools with a disciplined learning environment; focus on getting the basics right; tailored teaching according to each child’s ability; and emphasis on rigorous teaching standards. I wouldn’t – and we shouldn’t – expect anything less.”

SOUNDS good…the devil, as usual, will be in the details, along with the fact that this is dealing with government schools. Meanwhile the current Labor goverment toots it’s own educational horn, with a tune that sounds strangely familiar to the Chief:

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said: “Our investment and reform is driving up standards after the neglect of the Tory years. We will do even more to help kids who are falling behind with our Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts programmes.

Hmmm. Any similarity there to “No Child Left Behind”? (Another reason why Dubya got along so good with Blair?)

One hardly knows whether there is any hope at all for Britain any more. For that matter, is there any hope for US?

National Insecurity

Getting Loose from the Tar Baby

Endgame: American Options in Iraq

George Friedman at StratFor has given some thought to possible outcomes in Iraq, given the current state of affairs over there. He makes too much sense as he develops his favored scenario:

The new U.S. mission, therefore, must be to block Iran in the aftermath of the Iraq war. The United States cannot impose a government on Iraq; the fate of Iraq’s heavily populated regions cannot be controlled by the United States. But the United States remains an outstanding military force, particularly against conventional forces. It is not very good at counterinsurgency and never has been. The threat to the Arabian Peninsula from Iran would be primarily a conventional threat — supplemented possibly by instability among Shia on the peninsula.

The mission would be to position forces in such a way that Iran could not think of moving south into Saudi Arabia. There are a number of ways to achieve this. The United States could base a major force in Kuwait, threatening the flanks of any Iranian force moving south. Alternatively, it could create a series of bases in Iraq, in the largely uninhabited regions south and west of the Euphrates. With air power and cruise missiles, coupled with a force about the size of the U.S. force in South Korea, the United States could pose a devastating threat to any Iranian adventure to the south. Iran would be the dominant power in Baghdad, but the Arabian Peninsula would be protected.

This goal could be achieved through a phased withdrawal from Iraq, along with a rapid withdrawal from the populated areas and an immediate cessation of aggressive operations against jihadists and militia. It would concede what the NIE says is unattainable without conceding to Iran the role of regional hegemon. It would reduce forces in Iraq rapidly, while giving the remaining forces a mission they were designed to fight — conventional war. And it would rapidly reduce the number of casualties. Most important, it would allow the United States to rebuild its reserves of strategic forces in the event of threats elsewhere in the world.

This is not meant as a policy prescription. Rather, we see it as the likely evolution of U.S. strategic thinking on Iraq. Since negotiation is unlikely, and the three conventional options are each defective in their own way, we see this redeployment as a reasonable alternative that meets the basic requirements. It ends the war in Iraq in terms of casualties, it reduces the force, it contains Iran and it frees most of the force for other missions. Whether Bush or his successor is the decision-maker, we think this is where it must wind up.

If this doesn’t seem to be a very tidy outcome, check out the alternatives detailed in the piece. It could be FAR worse.

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Terrs Taking Care of Business?

$1 Billion in suspicious stock activity reminiscent of pre-9/11 conditions

Unusually for the Chief, I offer the following intact blurb from NE Intelligence Network:

In the weeks preceding the 2001 attacks on America, there were very significant financial warning signs that something big – and bad – could be about to happen. Huge surges in purchases of “put options” on stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines used in the attacks, and “put options” on Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley, stocks of two financial services companies hurt by the attack were noted. Put options are essentially “bets” that a stock or stock index will drop on or before a certain date; the larger the drop, the bigger the gain for the purchaser of the option.

Fast forward to the present day, and we have the same type of trading that took place in the days that preceded the 9/11 attacks – but on a larger scale. Nearly $1 billion of “put options” have been purchased, basically betting that Standard and Poor’s 500 index will fall significantly by the third Friday in September. A large number of these options have also been purchased calling for 50% decline by September 21, 2007. For example, a 5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be the current equivalent of about 670 points. A decline of 11% would equal about 1,470 points in today’s market. Obviously, larger drops, such as a 50% decline, would cause an unprecedented market collapse. Money would be made for the purchaser(s) of the put options – but the same purchaser(s) stand to lose over $1 BILLION in the investment if the market remains relatively static through September 21, 2007.

The questions are: who can stand to lose $1 BILLION, who will gain in the wake of such a devastating collapse, who are the investors, and what do they know that we don’t?

Sounds sort of alarming to ME, but hey, what do I know about high finance? (Not a whole lot!)

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GlowBull Warming Update

Runaway Climate Captured?

Runaway global warming, the climate alarmist fantasy let loose on the public, has not yet been captured, but it certainly appears to have at least been cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH).

Yet more “inconvenient facts” for AlGore.

In a study published in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters on Aug. 9, the UAH researchers provide more real-world evidence of the atmosphere’s self-regulating nature. If this particular self-regulatory mechanism is confirmed by additional research, it will represent yet another deal-breaker for the scientific hypothesis that has propped up climate alarmism thus far.

Global warmers claim that increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures. But even if this claim was true — and there is ample reason to be skeptical — greenhouse gases by themselves could only warm the planet by so much.

FYI, there’s quite a bit of the technical and scientific background for this in the article. IMHO, it looks pretty good, but check it for yourself…or not.

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German Scientists Declare Speed of Light Broken

What’s being reported here as being new is the release of a peer-reviewed paper of this research.

According to modern physics, the speed of light is a fundamental, unbreakable limit. Yet two physicists are now claiming they have done just that, and propelled a stream of photons faster than the speed of light.

Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen of the University of Koblenz, Germany, have been researching a phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling. Two prisms are placed together. When a light is shown through the prisms, a detector picks up the light and records information about the photon. However, when the two prisms are separated, Nimtz and Stahlhofen discovered that photons would occasionally “tunnel” between the prisms — arriving at the detector sooner than should theoretically be possible.

Dr. Nimtz, and his experimental set-up was featured on a NOVA show episode a few years ago. The Chief was impressed!

However, Dr. Aephraim Steinberg, from the University of Toronto, disagrees with the findings. He says its all just a matter of interpretation. The “wave packet” of the virtual photon exceeded the speed of light, but no actual information was transmitted that fast. Therefore, according to Steinberg, Einstein’s cosmic speed limit remains safe.

This is just WRONG that no “information” was transmitted! In the above mentioned NOVA episode, Nimtz transmitted a recognizable recording of Mozart Symphony no.40 through his system. As he pointed out, in response to the argument cited by Steinberg, “It seems to me that Mozart 40 carries quite a bit of information.”

So, where does this lead us?

Being able to violate the speed of light would undermine our current understanding of space and time, and lead to a number of bizarre effects, such as being able to travel backwards in time.

The Chief was impressed with the experiment when he saw it on TV, and is still impressed. Critics can squawk all they want, but if the science works, the science works!

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What Goes Around, Comes Around

We’ll Sue Murtha, Chessani Lawyer Vows

If Marine Col. Jeffrey Chessani is exonerated of the charges against him he may haul Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha, into court, suing him for libel, one of his lawyers told NewsMax.com.

As case after case clears the Marines involved in this situation, one would think that trying an officer charged with covering up something that didn’t happen is a logical, and hopefully legal absurdity.

On a personal level, with a nephew in the USMC, currently stationed at Okinawa, I hope these Marines are all vindicated of these phony charges…setting the precedent for the others.

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More Inconvenient Truth – for AlGore

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

This is the stuff cited ad nauseum by AlGore and his ilk to justify their quasi-hysterical warnings of disaster.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Only if you don’t keep up with the REAL (as opposed to junk) science.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”

No shit, Sherlock!

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.(Emphasis NOT added by Chief.)

The truth is out there!

China Watch, Defense Matters!

Selling our birthright for a mess of pottage…

Genesis 25:
29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:
30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.
31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

Trinkets and treasure: China tames the US

A new version of an old story. All it takes to see this is a quick trip to the local Wal-Mart.

…the real dreadnoughts of modern-day Chinese naval power, the huge containerized cargo ships, some Chinese, most not, full of Chinese manufactured goods, making another one of their visits to the port of Seattle, the same way they do to hundreds of other Western ports every single day….You frequently see containerized cargo ships making their way down Puget Sound to the port facilities in Seattle, completing their two-week high-seas journey from the massive Hong Kong and Shenzhen port complexes in southern China.

And the point is…

Most of the time, as they complete these voyages in from the Pacific, they ride low in the water, right down to the waterline. On these ships, the thousands of containers visible on deck, and the many more you don’t see under the decks (the largest container ship in the world, the Maersk Line’s Emma Maersk, can hold more than 14,000 individual 20-foot container units) are chock full, with TVs, washing machines and appliances, tires, toys and trinkets; the full catalogue of rapidly depreciating disposables over which North America is sacrificing its treasure.

As the containerized cargo ships leave Seattle, or San Francisco, or Long Beach, San Diego, Vancouver, all the way north to the newly bustling port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the ships ride a lot higher in the water. Most of the cargo containers are empty; they’re being sent back to China to be refilled. With the Chinese trade surplus with the US now running at about $150 billion a year, there’s a lot more stuff coming into the US west coast than leaving. (And much of the value of what the US does export to China comes from either Boeing jetliners or intellectual properties, such as first-run teen-slasher movies, neither of which gets much transported to China on containerized cargo ships.)

Or maybe it just seems that way. What really is being transported back to China in those empty containers is power.

The gory details of Wally-World (and others’) addiction to “Made in China” are clearly and unambiguously, and depressingly detailed., leading inevitably to this congealed lump of inconvenient truth:

China does not have to lobby US congressional representatives to look after its interests; the US industrial elite does that quite well on its own. In much the same way that Nazi Germany established Vichy France to further its interests without actually occupying the country, the US corporate elite’s desire to use China to enrich its wealth further has allowed China to create Vichy America.

That is a REALLY ugly concept to wrap one’s mind around. And to return to global realpolitik…we approach a potentially more serious consequence: Taiwan.

Here can be seen the true genius of the Chinese plan to subdue the US with trinkets and treasure. To counter the US militarily would be hugely expensive, and probably beyond China’s current technological capacity. Far better to do it the way it has, with trade. The Chinese could have America’s industrial elite, fearing a shutoff of the China wealth spigot, whisper in the ears of American policymakers that they should lay off any military countering of a Chinese move against Taiwan.

Give China 10 days to two weeks of unhindered military access to the Taiwan Strait, and it’ll put the flag of the People’s Republic of China over the Presidential Palace in Taipei. This is the classic “indirect approach” of mid-20th-century English military strategist Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart; instead of facing the US at its strongest, its technological superiority, China has attacked the US at its weakest point, its acquisitive, materialist, greedy soul.

After noting what China has done with two surplus” Soviet mini-carriers (turned them into tourist traps!) the conclusion here notes that

Real power now lies in those cargo ships forever steaming inexorably to the American heartland. In a couple of years, the United States will conclude its (by then) million-death, trillion-dollar misadventure in trying to subdue a few spits of green land between the Tigris and Euphrates. It will discover that, even if General David Petraeus’ “surge” might have won the battle of al-Anbar, back home the US ruling elite has surrendered to China in the battle for the United States, without even firing a single shot.

Someone PLEASE tell me this is all wrong?

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Irish Rough Justice

Tarred, feathered and tied to a lamppost

Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment. It is a very public humiliation, and a medieval one. Almost ten years since Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially ended, this remains the crude face of justice on the streets of south Belfast.

This man was subjected to the painful tarring and feathering on the Taughmonagh estate, a loyalist stronghold in the city. Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands. Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.

Hmmmm. This could be a solution to the urban phenomenon of the “known crack house”, which everyone knows about, but which the authorities have somehow overlooked.

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Operation Backpedal

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Border Patrol chief apologizes for remarks

A Border Patrol chief yesterday apologized for saying the agency’s mission is stopping terrorists, not illegal aliens or drug smugglers, a stance that outraged congressional lawmakers. “It’s painfully obvious to me that I could have done a better job of articulating my talking points,” said sector Chief Carlos X. Carrillo, who made the controversial comments last week at a town hall meeting in Laredo, Texas.

Didn’t take too long for the ol’ cluebat to whop Carlos upside the head.

“As long as the resources are made available to the people who can make it happen, we will certainly do everything we can to ensure that a zero tolerance policy is brought forward. But to initiate a program like this, without the funding, would not be wise.” Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, was angered by Chief Carrillo’s comments and contacted him yesterday for clarification. Mr. Culberson, a member of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, said the Laredo chief apologized and promised to continue strict apprehension policies along the border.

Well and good. The remaining question is why anyone in Carillo’s position could be so lacking in situational awareness as to make the initial statement at all.

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Movement, but not Toward Progress

Palestinians back caliphate over politics

By day, they are the middle class, putting in days as mild-mannered teachers, factory supervisors and office clerks. But by night, the growing number of supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic fundamentalists who reject modern democracy in favour of a pan-Islamic religious caliphate, are gathering in the West Bank to recruit the thousands who have grown disillusioned with the vicious stand-off between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas.

ALthought the Paleswinian gangfight between Fatah Phat-a and Hesbollah Hiz-ballers in not a good thing in and of itself, thiis tilt towards a Caliphate is, at best, no improvement.

“Any person living in Palestine now realises political parties, especially the Islamic ones, have not achieved anything for the individual,” said Sheikh Abu Abdullah, a thin-framed man with a wiry beard. His is the commanding voice behind weekly Hizb lessons at the al-Faruq mosque in the middle-class suburb of Kfar Aqab, past a crowded Israeli checkpoint where east Jerusalem melds into Ramallah. About 50 men, young and old, stayed after evening prayers this week to listen to the sheikh’s lesson entreating them to follow the Koran and stop infidels from profiting at the expense of the poor – one of an estimated hundreds or thousands of mosques in the West Bank and east Jerusalem where Hizb ut-Tahrir now teaches every week.

Somehow the Chief is afraid that we’ll hear a LOT more about this in the future.

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For whatever it’s worth:

US ‘poised to strike Iran’

Bob Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the next couple of months because things could be about to change. Baer, in an interview with The Weekend Australian, says his contacts in the administration suggest a strategic airstrike on Iran is a real possibility in the months ahead.

“What I’m getting is a sense that their sentiment is they are going to hit the Iranians and not just because of Israel, but due to the fact that Iran is the predominant power in the Gulf and it is hostile and its power is creeping into the Gulf at every level,” Baer says.
He says his contacts have told him of his book: “You better hurry up because the thesis is going to change. I told them submission is in January but they said, ‘You’re probably going to be too late’.”

On the other hand:

Washington’s intelligence community is abuzz about possible military action against Iran, which is being weighed at the highest levels of the Bush administration. While the guessing game has become “will they or won’t they?”, at least some experienced and trusted intelligence sources have told The Weekend Australian that the possibility of a strike in the next 12 months remains remote.

One hopes the prez will stand up to Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad, but who knows any more? Well, whatever. SOMETHING will happen, sometime.