Tag Archives: Across the Pond

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A New Reich in Reach: Deutschland über Alles!

Merkel To Europe: “Prepare To Cede Sovereignty”

…as always happens, once the crisis talk is back, so is discussion of a fiscal union. Sure enough, earlier today Germany’s Angela Merkel once again reminded everyone just what the stakes are in order to achieve a truly stable, and sustainable European union: nothing short of ceding sovereignty to Germany. And with that we are back to square one, because that has always been the trade off – want a unified, fiscally and monetarily, Europe? You can get it: just bow down to Merkel.

Just goes to show…you can catch more countries with cash than with bullets.

The Euros can at least be glad that the Germans didn’t figure this out 75 years ago or so when a somewhat different set of people were in charge of the Reich!

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View from Across the Pond

Barack Obama is trying to make the US a more socialist state

Anotehr nugget dredged (not Drudged!) up from Airstrip One (the UK in Orwellspeak)

What was it everybody used to say about the United States? Look at what’s happening over there and you will see our future. Whatever Americans are doing now, we will be catching up with them in another 10 years or so. In popular culture or political rhetoric, America led the fashion and we tagged along behind.

Well, so much for that. Barack Obama is now putting the United States squarely a decade behind Britain. Listening to the President’s State of the Union message last week was like a surreal visit to our own recent past: there were, almost word for word, all those interminable Gordon Brown Budgets that preached “fairness” while listing endless new ways in which central government would intervene in every form of economic activity.

Later, in a television interview, Mr Obama described his programme of using higher taxes on the wealthy to bankroll new government spending as “a recipe for a fair, sound approach to deficit reduction and rebuilding this country”. To which we who come from the future can only shout, “No‑o-o, go back! Don’t come down this road!”

After running through a number of the gory details, the
The United States is a country that was invented to allow people to be free of domination or persecution by the state. Its constitution and political institutions are specifically designed to prevent the federal government from oppressing the rights, or undermining the sense of responsibility, of the individual citizen. If it ceases to stand by that principle, then it will suffer a catastrophic loss of purpose and identity.

This gal over in the U.K. has it nailed! Now, why can’t the LibDonks see it?

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News Digest Snapshot Comments

A series of different things going on currently…some related, some not.

Firstly, at the time of T.A.R.P. and the rest of the financial bailouts, we were repeatedly warned by all of the Washington establishment that this was essential in order to prevent a total, and irreparable financial meltdown. But what if the bailouts had never taken place?…

Iceland did not bail out the banks or the bank investors and its economy is thriving, proving that the the US-Irish model of bailing out the banks with taxpayer money was harmful unless you were a wealthy bank investor

What was the ultimate effect?

Today, Iceland is recovering. The three new banks had combined profit of $309 million in the first nine months of 2010. GDP grew for the first time in two years in the third quarter, by 1.2 percent, inflation is down to 1.8 percent and the cost of insuring government debt has tumbled 80 percent. Stores in Reykjavik were filled with Christmas shoppers in early December, and bank branches were crowded with customers.

Meanwhile, there are items relating to the B.O. administration is engaging in apparently betrayal and/or mistreatment of allies and friends abroad:

ITEM:
The American betrayal
Op-ed: Obama’s abandonment of Mubarak shows Israel cannot count on US at times of crisis

…there is one more thing we can learn from the events in Egypt, aside from the fragility of the region we inhabit, and it is something that’s not easy to digest: The Western world’s and mostly America’s treachery. We learned that the way they abandoned President Mubarak and gave him the cold shoulder can happen to us too. Or in other words, we cannot count on the Americans at a time of crisis.

ITEM:
WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets

The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The US, under a nuclear deal, has agreed to give the Kremlin the serial numbers of the missiles it gives Britain Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal to be signed by President Barack Obama next week.

After his returning the Churchill bust, snubbing Brit leaders, including the Queen, one gets the idea that B.O. REALLY does not like Britain.Along with this, the upside-down policy orientation of B.O. is further illustrated by policies that refuse to recognize those who are our enemies:

Failures by FBI, Pentagon contributed to Ft. Hood massacre, report says

The FBI and the Pentagon are responsible for a “string of failures” in the way they attempted to track a disgruntled Army major in the years before he allegedly opened fire at a crowded Ft. Hood, Texas, deployment center in the worst domestic terror ambush since the attacks of September 2001, two key Senate leaders concluded Thursday.

In addition, Army supervisors repeatedly referred to Maj. Nidal Hasan as a “ticking time bomb,” and FBI agents and the military knew he had become radicalized under the influence of a violent Islamist extremist. Yet the agents never arrested him, and his military superiors never disciplined or furloughed him out of the Army.

In an apparent triumph of political correctness no action was taken lest it offer offense to Islam. The Chief’s response would have been to s–tcan Hasan, and f’em if they can’t take the joke.

Meanwhile, there is also THIS particular bit of craziness:

China Maneuvers for U.S. Defense Contracts

The maker of China’s new stealth fighter jet has teamed up with a tiny, unprofitable California company to try to launch bids for U.S. defense contracts, possibly including one to supply Chinese helicopters to replace the aging Marine One fleet used by the president, according to people involved in the partnership.

Fortunately this one looks to be beyond the reach of even B.O.’s aspirations for playing kissy-face with the ChiComs:

Any Chinese bids for this or another contract under discussion would be certain to meet intense political resistance and would appear to have very little chance of success given mounting U.S. concern about China’s military power and long-term strategic goals, and the often-prohibitive opposition in the past to Chinese attempts to enter other strategic U.S. sectors, such as energy and telecommunications

UNforunately, they may be back for another attempt:

…the two companies have also been discussing putting forward AVIC’s new L-15 trainer jet as a candidate to replace the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of Northrop T-38s, which entered service 50 years ago and on which American fighter pilots learn skills such as how to fly at supersonic speeds.

That contract is expected to be one of the most lucrative military aviation contracts this decade, with the U.S. likely to buy about 400 and other allied countries about 600 more as the jet will become the standard for training pilots to fly the U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters.

Is it just me, or does anyone else get a really bad feeling about the US becoming dependent on the ChiComs for maintaining our military? Sheeesh!

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Int’l Effect of Fed’s Quantitative Easement: Unease!

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Specter of trade war looms as G-20 nations gather

When I made this posting a few days ago, I was really sort of hoping that the comparison between what’s happening now regarding international trade and exchange and what happened when FDR figuratively blew-up the 1933 London World Economic Conference would prove not to continue to hold water, since the outcome then, and the expected outcome (given no change of course) now are both Very Bad Things for economic health.

Unfortunately, it seems that there is more expectation of the present, problematical course of the B.O. administration continuing.

The world’s economies stand on the brink of a trade war as leaders of rich and emerging nations gather in Seoul.

A dispute over whether China and the United States are manipulating their currencies is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession.

Hopes had been high that the Group of 20, which includes wealthy nations like Germany and the U.S. and rising giants like China, could be a forum to forge a lasting global economic recovery. Yet so far, G-20 countries haven’t agreed on an agenda, let alone solutions to the problems that divide them.

Doesn’t sound like everyone is ready to play nicely together.

G-20 leaders were expected to issue a communique detailing results of the summit on Friday.

Good luck on THAT! Oh, for sure there’ll be a “statement”, but it doesn;t look like there will be much to state except “Yep, we’ve been there, and done that – time to go home. See you all next time around!”
Meanwhile, as the Fed fires up the printing presses, and the results on Main Street will be predictable: don’t get a crick in your neck watching the rocketing contrail of higher prices.

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B.O. to World: Too Bad If You Can’t Take a Monetary Joke!

Obama says U.S. low growth or no growth danger to world

U.S. President Barack Obama defended the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing dollars on Monday after China and Russia stepped up criticism ahead of this week’s Group of 20 meeting.

The G20 summit has been pitched as a chance for leaders of the countries that account for 85 percent of world output to prevent a currency row escalating into a rush to protectionism that could imperil the global recovery. [ID:nSGE6A703T]

But there is little sign of consensus.

The summit has been overshadowed by disagreements over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) policy under which it will print money to buy $600 billion of government bonds, a move that could depress the dollar and cause a potentially destabilising flow of money into emerging economies.

So, where will be be when China decides to bail out on buying our debt, since it’s value will be diving due to the Fed’s inflationary debt monetization? We don’t really want to go there…but we might not be given a choice in the matter.

As a historical sidebar note, something somewhat similar happened to us before…where a reform-minded US president with economic difficulties told the world to shove it, that we were doing our own thing in spite of it’s impact on them.

The occasion was during the early days of the FDR administration in 1933. Roosevelt set the stage in his first inaugural address by stating that “our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.” He went on in June 1933, to instruct the Secretary of State who was attending the London World Economic Conference that “…far too much importance is attached to exchange stability…”

AS the Conference continued, he sent what has become known as the “bombshell message” July 3, 1933 in which he told the Conference delegates that the U.S. would NOT be a party to efforts at exchange-rate stabilization while declaring that “old fetishes of so-called international bankers are being replaced by efforts to plan national currencies”.

THe ultimate take-away message to the world was that the U.S. was going to be focusing on its own situation, and was not willing to extend itself to take part in concerted international efforts to avert danger. The lesson was not missed by Hitler, who saw a green light to his own nationalistic plans for “problem solving”.

(ref: Freedom from Fear; David M. Kennedy; Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)

So we REALLY want to give a similar impression to such luminaries of international peace and enlightenment as the Chicoms, and Putin’s Russia? REALLY?

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Some Notes from Across the Pond, and More

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First a thought about the Tea Party from The London Telegraph in this excerpt from a James Delingpole post:

Liberty is not a pick and mix free-for-all in which you think government should ban the things you don’t like and encourage you things you do like: that’s how Libtards think. Libertarianism – and the Tea Party is nothing if its principles are not, at root, libertarian ones – is about recognising that having to put up with behaviour you don’t necessarily approve of is a far lesser evil than having the government messily and expensively intervene to regulate it.

And this isn’t an argument for anarchy. There are still plenty of ways society can make known its disapproval of certain “immoral” practices, such as through the traditional method of stigma. Libertarianism doesn’t mean doing what the hell you like and letting everyone else go hang themselves. It’s about doing whatever the hell you like so long as it doesn’t harm others. (Property rights, for example, would remain sacrosanct).

Maybe this technically isn’t directly from the Brits, but it is the Brit Samizdata blog quoting the American Richard Viguerie:

Some have asked how the Tea Party movement hopes to pressure Republican leaders or influence the party. That’s the wrong way to look at it. The goal is not to pressure Republican leaders but to become the Republican leaders. The goal is not to influence the party but to become the party.

That led to another Viguerie comment

“Voters have given Republicans one more chance to get it right,” Richard A. Viguerie said today. “They are on probation, and if they mess up again, they won’t get another chance.”

“The last time the Republicans were in charge, they became the party of big spending, Big Government, and Big Business. They abandoned the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and cozied up to lobbyists and special interests. And they paid a price at the polls.

“This year, the Democrats under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi drove millions of voters right back into the arms of the Republicans. But if Republicans return to their bad habits – if they start working for K Street instead of Main Street – they will pay a terrible price. Tea Party voters and conservatives will turn them out in the 2012 primaries.

“People will say: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and the Republican Party is dead,” Viguerie said.

The Chief would add the observation that there was once a political party called the Federalists. A bit later in history there was one called the Whigs. Both died and went away. The Republicans are still able to profit from those examples.

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USN Indian Expeditionary Force Update

The Chief’s conclusion that the reported 34 ship escort to that “it is a bit much” apparently turned out to be the case…it WAS a bit much, acording to the Pentagon. One presumes SOME naval presence for the occasion of B.O.’s visit…but there’s appropriately no comment on that. OPSEC (operational security) and all that.

Now, if only the fleet of jet aircraft and 3000 retainers was similarly an exaggeration…no such luck.

No, Pentagon says, Obama will not be guarded by 34 ships

President Barack Obama will not be protected by a vast armada of 34 US warships when he visits Mumbai this weekend, officials said, calling reports from India on security preparations “comical.”

The claim that many of the 288-ship US naval fleet would be deployed to waters off Mumbai was “absolutely absurd,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters on Thursday.

US officials usually decline to discuss details about security precautions for the president, but the media accounts circulating out of India were so off the mark that press officers at the Pentagon and the White House said they felt compelled to speak up.

“I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy — some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier — in support of the president’s trip to Asia,” Morrell said.

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USN Indian Expeditionary Force

My tendency has been to just note in passing, to the accompaniment of internal headshakes and and recognition of the tendency of B.O.’s administration to not economize in its travel plans when wretched excess will do, the amazing scope of The One’s latest travel extraviganza to India.

Even with a jaded expectation that this spectacle is inevitable given the nature of the beast, a report from India that 34 US Naval combat ships are yet another part of the plans broke through the Chief’s shell of cynicism, and caused him to catch his breath in amazement due in part to the Naval connection, and the realization of exactly what is taking place.

34 warships sent from US for Obama visit

The White House will, of course, stay in Washington but the heart of the famous building will move to India when President Barack Obama lands in Mumbai on Saturday.

Communications set-up and nuclear button and majority of the White House staff will be in India accompanying the President on this three-day visit that will cover Mumbai and Delhi.

He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there beginning Saturday. The measure has been taken as Mumbai attack in 2008 took place from the sea.

Oh yeah, there were a few boats with outboard motors that moved into Mumbai an dropped off the Islamoterrs in ’08. A carrier battle group plus other deep-water combattant ships is just the ticket to stop something like that from happening again? NOT.

Admittedly, given that B.O. (or any President) is visiting overseas, security, communications, etc. is of necessity huge…hence the Chief’s initial lack of getting exercised about the entourage…but this? Just to add a bit of historical and military perspective:

FDR was able to travel to Newfoundland aboard a single Navy cruiser during the height of the N. Atlantic U-boat war to meet with Churchill. He later traveled to Casablanca, Cairo, and Teheran to meet with foreign leaders during the war. Casablanca at the time had been recently seized from Vichy France, and French troops had recently been involved in combat against the U.S. concerning that issue. Neither Cairo nor Teheran were exactly noted as being completely stable places: Teheran was available since the Persian Shah was elsewhere…after playing diplomatic footsie games with the Nazis. Roosevelt somehow thought he might be able to survive with fewer than 3,000 staff plus additional military security forces. (He was right!)

Another perspective is the 34 Navy ships. According to the US Navy web site as of today there are 288 deployable battle force ships as of today. As this is written, there are 147 ships underway (away from home ports), and 110 ships on deployment. SO…about 1/3 of the total US deployed Naval force, or 12% of the total US combat fleet will be at Mumbai to defend B.O.

Seems a bit much, at least, especially when deployments and operational commitments have been placing a heavy load on the ships and personnel, but what does THAT matter to His Eminence? Not much.

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Ex-great Britain’s Navy Taking a Dive

Navy aircraft carrier will be sold after three years – and never carry jets

One of the Navy’s new £3 billion aircraft carriers will never carry aircraft and will sail for only three years before being mothballed and possibly sold, ministers will announce on Tuesday. The Government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review will also confirm that Britain will not have an effective “carrier strike” capability – a working aircraft carrier equipped with fighter jets – until 2020.

…and that’s not all:

The Navy’s fleet of warships will drop from 24 to 19 and it will lose 4,000 personnel. Harrier jump-jets will be scrapped next year but no F35 Joint Strike Fighters will be available to replace them until 2020.

Wow…the once great Royal Navy…going down to 19 warships?!

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar which established the superiority of the Royal Navy at least through WW-I a century later.

…and now the Brits are saying “If we need carrier support we can always turn to the…FRENCH??!!! Aside from tradition, what’s wrong with this picture?

Nelson, Churchill, and a whole series of other Naval persons of the once great Britain have got to be turning over in their graves about now.

Nelson’s prayer before the battle:

MAY THE GREAT GOD, whom I worship, grant
to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in
general, a great and glorious victory: and
may no misconduct, in any one, tarnish it: and
may humanity after victory be the predominant
feature in the British fleet.

For myself individually, I commit my life to Him
who made me and may His blessing light upon my
endeavours for serving my Country faithfully.

To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is
entrusted to me to Defend.

Amen, Amen, Amen

His death in victory sealed his testimony. (You may notice from the portarait, that he had previously lost his arm in battle.)

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THIS is Change that we can REALLY use!

As usual…another case of the London Telegraph going where no US mainstream media has dared to venture.

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

What’s not to like about this one? Well, it IS kind of disconcerting to be in a position to [potentially] supporting an Obama initiative…but then again, it hasn’t happened yet, and since it depends on the other (technological) n-word (nuclear), the Chief is willing to be that B.O. will be no more likely to adopt this than he would be to embrace the original n-word.

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday – produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. “It’s the Big One,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

“Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels,” he said.

Ooops. What would happen to the “uranium cartels”, to say nothing of the vast, wealthy, and dare one say influential oil iindustry? Anyone else think there may just be a BIT of opposition to this from those locations? (I’m just saying…you know?) As an object lesson in support of this observation:

You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed.

Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. “They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology,” he said.

C’est la vie.

After explaining some of the technical aspects of thorium energy, and the prospects of at least one privately financed effort underway (in Norway), the piece from the Telegraph concludes:

Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice.

When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.

Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. “This needs action,” he told his military aide. It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.

The global energy crunch needs equal “action”. If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.[Emphasis added]

Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes.

The Chief concurs.

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Smoke gets in your eyes

This has been going on for a bit…but I wanted to take cognizance…in order to make a point:

Volcanic ash cloud: new threat to flights

A “new ash cloud” was spreading towards the UK on Monday night, leaving air passengers facing the possibility of further delays.

Air traffic control company Nats said the “situation was worsening” in some areas. But it said Scottish airports should be available from 7am on Tuesday and other airspace over England from 1pm, although not including the main London airports.

Nats said in a statement on Monday night: “The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK. “This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.

“Latest information from the Met [Meteorological] Office shows that the situation is worsening in some areas.

UPDATE: More Delays: New Ash Cloud Heads Towards UK

Here’s the output from ONE volcano, in a relatively remote location, that has thoroughly disrupted a huge chuck of the world economy. (40,000 Americans stuck in the UK!)

Could this be a bit of a hint in favor of personal and family preparedness? Just a thought.

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Smoke Gets in your Eyes

This has been going on for a bit…

Volcanic ash cloud: new threat to flights

A “new ash cloud” was spreading towards the UK on Monday night, leaving air passengers facing the possibility of further delays.

Air traffic control company Nats said the “situation was worsening” in some areas. But it said Scottish airports should be available from 7am on Tuesday and other airspace over England from 1pm, although not including the main London airports.

Nats said in a statement on Monday night: “The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK. “This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.

“Latest information from the Met [Meteorological] Office shows that the situation is worsening in some areas.

UPDATE: More Delays: New Ash Cloud Heads Towards UK

Here’s the output from ONE volcano, in a relatively remote location, that has thoroughly disrupted a huge chuck of the world economy. (40,000 Americans stuck in the UK!)

…think there just MAY be a bit of a hint in favor of personal and family preparedness?

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Brookings Man OK After Chile Quake

Brookings, SD native James Francis has been reported safe in Santiago, Chile in the aftermath of the massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the South American country early this morning.

Francis, a graduate of Brookings HS, is currently serving a two-year mission in Chile for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His mother, Madelyn Francis has received a report that all the LDS Church’s missionaries are reported safe and accounted for after the quake. She reported that her son had noted that a couple of weeks ago all of the missionaries serving in Chile were given water filtration bottles, and received contingency training for surviving earthquakes and dealing with the aftermath.

In other accounts Chile, with it’s well-developed infrastructure and more modern building codes is withstanding its heavy damage with less harm to human life than Haiti did.

Now…after getting past tsunamis and aftershocks, the task of search, rescue, and damage clearance starts and will continue.

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Unexpected Truth Outbreak in UK!

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Muslim MP: security profiling at airports is ‘price we have to pay’

A funny thing happened across the pond…there was an outbreak of truth:

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said it had become necessary to ‘profile’ passengers from certain racial and religious groups in order to weed out possible terror suspects.

He said: “I think most people would rather be profiled than blown up. It wouldn’t be victimisation of an entire community.

“I think people will understand that it is only through something like profiling that there will be some kind of safety.

Somebody or more accurately somebodies need to pass this along to the B.O. administration, especially the head cheese himself, and the clueless Janet Napolitano.
Speaking of speaking the unspeakable, the MP goes on with this astounding observation:

“If people want to fly safely we have to take measures to stop things like the Christmas Day plot. Profiling may have to be the price we have to pay.

“The fact is the majority of people who have carried out or planned these terror attacks have been Muslims.”

WOW! What a concept…Islamoterrorism is being done by…Moslems!

To add to the “dog bites man” nature of this story is the fact that not only is MP Mahmood a Moslem himself, but he is also a member of the radically PC “Ingsoc” Labor Party.

Amazing!

Defense Matters!, National Insecurity

UK Defense Minister Hits B.O.’s Afghan Dithering

Bob Ainsworth criticises Barack Obama over Afghanistan

It’s GOT to be bad when even the IngSoc government thinks B.O. is too squishy on the war.

Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.

Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban.

A “period of hiatus” in Washington – and a lack of clear direction – had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defence chiefs echoing the concerns.

But Mr Ainsworth is the first Government minister to express in public what amounts to personal criticism of the US president’s leadership over the conflict which has so far cost 235 British lives.

“It ain’t that pretty at all.”

Defense Matters!

A Modest Proposal…

The Brits are starting to position themselves for their next election cycle. This is part of that positioning from the opposition Conservatives

Tories to pull British forces out of Germany

British forces will pull out of Germany for good, nearly 70 years after the Allied victory in World War Two, as part of a Tory defence “revolution” being drawn up by Dr Liam Fox.

The Shadow Defence Secretary told The Daily Telegraph that ending Britain’s 25,000 strong military presence on the Rhine would be part of a fundamental reorganisation of Nato forces designed to free troops for military operations outside Europe.

The decision would close one of the unfinished chapters of the last war that saw the British military go from occupying force in the ruins of Nazi Germany in 1945 to guarantor of German security against the threat of Soviet invasion during the Cold War.

The announcement of what would be a major reassessment of Britain’s role in European defence came just 24 hours after the European Union surprised Westminster by handing responsibility for its diplomatic relations to the Labour peer Baroness Ashton.

Dr Fox’s decision to call time on Britain’s military links with Germany is a signal of his determination to force through a “wholesale recasting of our foreign and defence policy”.

He also called for the public to be told the truth about the “cost of defeat” in Afghanistan, including Britain being relegated to “the third division” of world politics.

What a concept! Why don’t WE do this? Do we REALLY need to still have a military presence in GERMANY any more? I doubt we’re worried about an incipient Nazi coup. Also, the threat of Soviet tanks from East Germany rolling through the Fulda Gap is obsolete.

IMHO, Dr. Fox has an excellent idea, that should work for us too!

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You Too Can be a Hamster (But WHY?)

French hotel offers guests a night as a hamster

It’s a unique concept according to its creators,…

Well, that’s ONE way to put it.

…a hotel in the French town of Nantes is offering the chance for people to become a hamster.

…but WHY would you want to?  This seems on the verge of psychosis…but at least it’s not harmful to anyone else.

For 99 euros ($148.10) a night, you can eat hamster grain, run in a giant wheel and sleep in hay stacks in what is called the “Hamster Villa.”

The Chief can supply some grain for a heck of a lot less than $148.10.
So who would do this?

Maud and Sebastien are the first ones to experience how hamsters live, not afraid at the thought of sleeping in hay or feeding on a hamster fountain and special grain.

It’s a unique experience and, the guests say, just something different. “To become a hamster, eat seeds, change our way of life…come out of our daily routine” Maud and Sebastien told Reuters TV…

If it’s their money, and that’s REALLY how they want to spend it, it’s THEIR problem, but IMHO these people SERIOUSLY need to find themselves a real life somehow.

It seems like there’s another descriptive word that might fit better than “hamster”.

Hmmmm. Let’s see…(think, think)…oh, yeah: MOONBATS!

China Watch

CHINA Worried About Obamacare Costs!

This is sourced from Reuters…not exactly noted as a nerve center of the VRWC!

China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform

Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.

Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.

Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.

Looks like even the ChiComs get the picture…now, if we can only get SanFranNan Pelosi and Dusty Harry Reid to exercise some fiscal rationality….

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Paying the Danegeld – Update

[UK] Army tells its soldiers to ‘bribe’ the Taleban

British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday.

Army commanders should also talk to insurgent leaders with “blood on their hands” in order to hasten the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British and Nato forces have failed to defeat the Taleban. The manual is also a recognition that the Army’s previous doctrine for success against insurgents, which was based on the experience in Northern Ireland, is now out of date.

In a previous posting concerning other NATO bribes tribute payments the Chief noted that according to the report at least the US and UK had enough sense not to revive this historical tradition of paying “Danegeld” to the Taliban. (See the previous posting for the explanation concerning Danegeld.)

Unfortunately, it is necessary to retract the credit for a residue of rationality that the current Ingsoc government of the island that has recently transformed into Airstrip One.  Apparently the current Big Brother Gordon Brown has completely lost his historical mind, and forgotten the lessons that the England of King Alfred the Great learned through hard experience.

Glowbull Warming

AirStrip One Update

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ATTENTION!  Among the late dispatches received from Airstrip concerning the latest Ingsoc Party proposal:

Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’

Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say.

Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.

Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using.

If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.

Let’s see…a word comes to mind:…oh…er…well…? ORWELL!

Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: “This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about….

D’ya think?

It’s Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business.”

Hopefully, for their sake, the GlowBull Warming mania fad will have run its course before this goes into effect.

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Big Brother Arrives in Airstrip One

Every phone call, email and internet click stored by ‘state spying’ databases

Big Brother is arriving in what used to be known as Britain…but which now might more appropriately be given Orwell’s designation from 1984: “Airstrip One”.

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.

Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

From across the pond, here’s the commentary from Samizdata from the UK.  They are similarly unimpressed, maybe there’s still some hope for Britain NOT to morph into Airstrip One, at least just yet.

NOW do you get what the movie “V for Vengeance” was about?  (By the way, Guy Fawkes Day was last week on November 5th.)

Glowbull Warming

Glowbull Warming Disaster in the Making

The real climate change catastrophe

In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages

This is from the London Telegraph, and by now it’s no secret that the Brits have their own nests of moonbats who are every bit as radical (if not even MORE so, as impossible as that might seem!) as the B.O. Presidium Czars.

Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.[emphasis added]

EIGHTY PERCENT?  They have got to be kidding! Seriously – IF it is fully enforced this would end industrialization, with the necessarily associated death of…how many millions?…The Chief CANNOT envision even the enervated and anesthetized Brits rolling over voluntarily allowing themselves to go through the collective mass suicide that this would require.

This piece has a thumbnail history of the rise of the Great and Orthodox Junk Science Church of Glowbull Warming, as expounded by the false proclamation of It’s Truth as expounded by the IPCC, which in reality isn’t at all what it has been presented as.

More and more eminent scientists have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that the IPCC, with its computer models, had got it all wrong. It isn’t CO₂ that has been driving the climate, the changes are natural, driven by the activity of the sun and changes in the currents of the world’s oceans.

The ice caps haven’t been melting as the alarmists and the models predicted they should. The Antarctic, containing nearly 90 per cent of all the ice in the world, has actually been cooling over the past 30 years, not warming. The polar bears are not drowning – there are four times more of them now than there were 40 years ago. In recent decades, the number of hurricanes and droughts have gone markedly down, not up.

As the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for COâ‚‚ threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale.

Yet it is at just this point that the world’s politicians, led by Britain, the EU and now President Obama, are poised to impose on us far and away the most costly set of measures that any group of politicians has ever proposed in the history of the world – measures so destructive that even if only half of them were implemented, they would take us back to the dark ages.

We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”.

In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

Such is the truly extraordinary position in which we find ourselves.

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

Drill now, and throw another log on the fire!

Meanwhile, western and central South Dakota is preparing to shovel and/or plow a coming installment of cold, white October Glowbull Warming.

China Watch, National Insecurity

“Here’s the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”

Russia’s Leaders See China as Template for Ruling

Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party.

Or at least, the one that reigns next door.

Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed.

United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power.

18russia.big

In the words of Rod Stewart:  “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

A police state is a police state – whether you call it the “Communist Party of (insert country here)”, “United Russia”, or the “National Socialist German Workers Party”, it’s just different sides of the same coin.

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We’ve seen this before…

Wasn’t it around 60 years ago that Jews had trouble travelling in Europe without fear of being arrested?

The bad old days appear to be returning…and Europe is supposed to be considered sane and civilized?

Israelis may stay home to avoid arrest in Europe

Israel is seriously considering restricting travel to Europe by its senior officials and military officers, fearing they might be arrested in the wake of a disputed U.N. report that accuses the Jewish state of targeting civilians in its Gaza war earlier this year.

Oh yeah. Some Palestinians got killed in a round of warfare that THEY started. So some UN-crats and traditionally anti-semitic Euros think that this constitutes war crimes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday harshly criticized the U.N. report, written by a team headed by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, “as distorted” and vowed not to permit the Israeli officials who launched the Gaza war “to arrive at the International Court in The Hague.” The U.N. Security Council will discuss the report on Wednesday.

Just how did this iteration of fighting get started? Remember the HAMAS Palestinian terrorists firing literally thousands of rockets into Israel (Which is roughly comparable in size to say, South Dakota between I-29 and the Minnesota border.) Then they get upset when Israel responds militarily and comes after them…and even fired real bullets back at them! (Shocking!!)

Israel launched the offensive to stop the militant Palestinian group Hamas from firing rockets on Israeli cities from Gaza, which Hamas controls. While the war is viewed in Israel as a tactical success, its large civilian death toll – estimated at 926 by Palestinian rights groups and at least 295 by Israel – has created significant diplomatic fallout.

How’s about the bit that there were so many civilian casualties because many rocket launching points were in hospital and school courtyards (with the normal users still present in the buildings while the rockets were going out) naturally becoming targets of the Israeli response.

F ’em if they can’t take the heat…next time MAYBE they’ll actually THINK before you start with the rocketry again, but it’s doubtful.

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The Latest Norwegian Joke

The Chief woke up this morning to Mrs. Chief saying “Guess who won the Nobel Peace Prize?”

The way the question was asked signalled (after 30+ years of questioning experiences) that there was something extraordinary about the answer.

Being thus alerted, the immediate thought came…”It must his Imperial Divine Eminance B.O. hisself!  This was immediately followed by the thought “Naw – not even the Norwegians could be THAT stupid…after all, he hasn’t accomplished anything significant yet.”

Sadly enough, the first impression was right. So much for any more credibility to the Nobel Peace Prize.

This makes Ole, of “Ole and Lena” fame seem be a genius by comparison.

Obama Wakes Early To News Of Nobel Win

The White House says President Barack Obama was woken up a little before 6 a.m. with the news that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs learned from reporters that Obama had won the 2009 prize, and telephoned the White House early Friday to pass along the news to his boss.  The president plans to talk about his award at 10:30 a.m. Friday in the Rose Garden.

One awaits with bated breath!

President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation….

During the press conference to announce the winner, there were gasps in the room when Obama’s name was mentioned in Norwegian. Moments later, the announcement was made again but in English.

Gasps…no kidding. They were lucky there wasn’t gagging…no, it WAS the international press…most of them can swallow anything with the proper seasoning of political correctness!

Analysis: He won, but for what?

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what?

For one of America’s youngest presidents, in office less than nine months — and only for 12 days before the Nobel nomination deadline last February — it was an enormous honor.[emphasis added]

A richly UNdeserved honor.

The prize seems to be more for Obama’s promise than for his performance. Work on the president’s ambitious agenda, both at home and abroad, is barely underway, much less finished. He has no standout moment of victory that would seem to warrant a verdict as sweeping as that issued by the Nobel committee.

And what about peace? Obama is running two wars in the Muslim world — in Iraq and Afghanistan — and can’t get a climate change bill through his own Congress.

Without commenting on the demerits of the climate change bill…the stunning lack of achievement is obvious.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews

This report is mostly more of the same, except for this little tidbit:

Critics — some in parts of the Arab and Muslim world — called the committee decision premature.

Not even the Arabs all agree on the merit of this one.

Premature?  D’ya think? Maybe just a bit?

Nobel Committee’s Decision Courts Controversy

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, so early in his presidency, is bound to reignite criticism of the workings of the Nobel committee.

The deadline for nominations for the prize was Feb. 1 — two weeks after Mr. Obama was inaugurated.

“So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far,” former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, said Friday.

So, how do they make these selections?  Read on:

When all the nominations are in, the committee draws up a short list of between five and 20 candidates which are then considered by the Nobel Institute’s director and research director and a group of Norwegian university professors. Their reports on the candidates are then discussed by the five-member prize committee.

Members, all of whom are former or serving deputies of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament, seek to reach a unanimous decision — normally by mid-September — but this has sometimes proved impossible and the choice is then made by a simple majority vote.

Some have criticized the selection procedure as untransparent. The committee never announces the names of nominees and information about candidacies is only made public 50 years after the decision. “It is all done in secret, you don’t know what is happening and whoever sits on that panel is very susceptible to the tides of the moment,” said Philip Towle, an academic from the department of politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge.

Even in Norway, where Mr. Obama enjoys huge popularity, the decision raised eyebrows among some. “It is just too soon,” said Siv Jensen, leader of Norway’s main opposition party, the Progress Party. “It is wrong to give him the peace prize for his ambition. You should receive it for results.”

She said that the decision to bestow the award on the president was the most controversial she could remember and was one of a number that had moved the prize further away from the ideals of Alfred Nobel.

Ah! Enlightenment!

Norskie University professors and Eurosocialist politicians do the heavy lifting.

’nuff said.

China Watch, National Insecurity

B.O. Middle East Disarray

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The B.O. administration seems unable to get itself organized in the middle east, with the resulting development of serious economic consequences, as illustrated by the unfortunate pattern of the following articles found online today…as contradictory as they are.

White House angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan

At the time that General McChrystal was appointed, B.O. pledged to take care of the needs of the force as communicated by the commanding general…that WOULD be McCrystal. Ooops! When he says something that B.O. doesn’t want to hear, it’s a different story. Support for the war apparently only goes so far now that the election is over.

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

Truth is a bitch!

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago’s unsuccessful Olympic bid. In an apparent rebuke to the commander, Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said: “It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president, candidly but privately.”

This ignores the situation that McChrystal’s requests were made weeks ago, with hardly a “Howdy do?”  In reply. B.O. doesn’t seem able to realize that military combat doesn’t operate according to the whims of his attention…or rather, inattention.

Less than perfect decisive action is generally better than no action at all, which has been the White House pattern of late.

If there was an incipient plan to cut out and abandon the effort (without commenting on the merits of THAT), then there MAY be some rationale to the non-response from Washington, but…that’s NOT what they are insisting:

White House: Leaving Afghanistan not an option

The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that walking away isn’t a viable option to deal with a war that is about to enter its ninth year. “I don’t think we have the option to leave. That’s quite clear,” Gibbs said.

If that’s really the case, not to put a fine point to it, then it’s past time for B.O. to s–t or get off the pot!

In addition, to completely have two opposite trends at the same time, comes SECDEF Gates

Taliban Afghan momentum due to lack of U.S. troops

The Taliban has the momentum in Afghanistan now because of the inability of the United States and its allies to put enough troops into the country, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday.

HUH?

Firstly, Gates essentially is agreeing with McChrystal that we do not have enough troops in-country to successfully do the job: so now both the Commanding General AND the Secretary of Defense apparently don’t buy into B.O.’s pusillanimous inaction.

Secondly, is the United States Secretary of Defense REALLY saying that this is due to the “INABILITY of the United States and its allies to put enough troops into the country” [emphasis added]?  We are UNABLE to carry out a policy that would enable winning the war in Afghanistan?

Anyone else remember B.O. proclaiming that AFGHANISTAN was the “central front” of the war on Islamoterrs, in contrast to Iraq? Apparently that was then (campaign mode) and this is now (Administration mode).

However it plays out, our allies and so-called allies are betting that the United States uner B.O. is a paper tiger, so they are getting together behind our back and planning to slip it to us financially and economically, apparently with no fear of possible effective response:

The demise of the dollar

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

Our reaction thus far is in any practical sense, ineffectual, as we slip towards an expansion of Cold War II.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. “Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable,” he told the Asia and Africa Review. “We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security.”

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil…

God help us…we’ll need it if we don’t start to get our sh… er… stuff together.

Defense Matters!, National Insecurity, Obamunism

B.O. Rolled by Putin on Missile Defense

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Given what any thinking person knows about B.O.’s history, associations, and evident ideological orientation, this is no surprise, but nevertheless is still regretable.

U.S. Shelves Nuclear-Missile Shield

The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirmed Thursday that a “major adjustment” is planned and said the decision was made to better protect U.S. forces and allies in Europe from Iranian missile attacks.

Let me try to parse this: we are canceling missile defense sites to better protect us and our allies from Iranian missiles…HUH? Logic check anyone?

The U.S. is basing its move on a determination that Iran’s long-range-missile program hasn’t progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

At least until the next Korean or bootleg Russian shipment makes port…

Now at least the Russians will play nicer though, right?

Russia on Thursday welcomed the news but said it saw no reason to offer concessions in return….”The Bush plans on the missile defense as we knew them until now were nothing more than a provocation of security in the European region,” said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a phone interview.

So, from their point of view, the U.S. has been a paper tiger all along…and B.O. has now officially confirmed this to be the case.

Meanwhile…what about the other Euro allies left swinging in the breeze?

Anger in Europe as Barack Obama ‘scraps missile defence shield’

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US is to shelve the plan, which was first mooted by the Bush administration and has been a source of friction with Russia ever since.

The move would be a cause of celebration in Moscow but of real concern to Eastern European countries which have looked to Washington for support against their former imperial master Russia. The US has said the shield is to guard against attacks by rogue states, such as Iran.

The former Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, said: “This is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence. It puts us in a position wherein we are not firmly anchored in terms of partnership, security and alliance, and that’s a certain threat.”

Not good for the U.S. and the west, as noted in the Brit press:

Barack Obama surrenders to Russia on Missile Defence

I blogged a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration was about to abandon its plans for Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. I wrote then that “if enacted, this would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defence system, and a massive betrayal of two key US allies in eastern and central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.”

It now looks as though the president has surrendered to Russian demands to kill off Third Site.

After noting some more about the details of B.O.’s capitulation to the will of the the ex-KGB enforcer Putin, the real kernal of this all is summed up thusly:

This is bad news for all who care about the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance and the defence of Europe as well as the United States. It represents the appalling appeasement of Russian aggression and a willingness to sacrifice American allies on the altar of political expediency. A deal with the Russians to cancel missile defence installations sends a clear message that even Washington can be intimidated by the Russian bear.

What signal does this send to Ukraine, Georgia and a host of other former Soviet satellites who look to America and NATO for protection from their powerful neighbour? The impending cancellation of Third Site is a shameful abandonment of America’s friends in eastern and central Europe, and a slap in the face for those who actually believed a key agreement with Washington was worth the paper it was written on.

B.O.’s foriegn policy looks more and more like Carter’s 2nd term.

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Economy Recovering or Not so Fast?

Probably not…First the optimism:

Recovery Rally Rolls On

Bernanke, Data Boost Stocks

The markets received a rhetorical lift from Bernanke, who after giving a speech said, “the recession is very likely over at this point.”

“He’s a man who is very cautious in his commentary. He tends to really avoid extreme statements,” said Kenny. “If he’s saying we’re out of the recession, then we’re well out of the recession. This is the most positive he’s been.”

How solid is this? Apparently not too solid.

…Bernanke also warned that “it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time.”

Meanwhile, on a less optimistic note, are these reports from across the big pond of some things that are contra-indicators of an incipient economic boostsomehow overlooked in the US government-affiliated mainstream media:

US credit shrinks at Great Depression rate prompting fears of double-dip recession

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said US bank loans have fallen at an annual pace of almost 14pc in the three months to August (from $7,147bn to $6,886bn).

“There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s,” he said. “The rapid destruction of money balances is madness.” The M3 “broad” money supply, watched as an early warning signal for the economy a year or so later, has been falling at a 5pc annual rate.

Similar concerns have been raised by David Rosenberg, chief strategist at Gluskin Sheff, who said that over the four weeks up to August 24, bank credit shrank at an “epic” 9pc annual pace, the M2 money supply shrank at 12.2pc and M1 shrank at 6.5pc.

“For the first time in the post-WW2 [Second World War] era, we have deflation in credit, wages and rents and, from our lens, this is a toxic brew,” he said.

And the point is?

US banks are cutting lending by around 1pc a month. A similar process is occurring in the eurozone, where private sector credit has been contracting and M3 has been flat for almost a year.

Mr Congdon said IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is wrong to argue that the history of financial crises shows that “speedy recovery” depends on “cleansing banks’ balance sheets of toxic assets”. “The message of all financial crises is that policy-makers’ priority must be to stop the quantity of money falling and, ideally, to get it rising again,” he said.

He predicted that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will be forced to engage in outright monetisation of government debt by next year, whatever they say now.

Debt monetisation is basically using newly created money to pay of previously existing debts. In other words, HIGH inflation.

Another more obscure sign that the U.S. and global economy both are all not operating up top speed, and will not be for a while yet:

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination – and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year.

You have to see this article to get a real feel for what they’re talking about, so take alook.

The photos of the laid-up ships looks like the D-Day invasion fleet, which impression is reinforced by satellite position location charts.

This is interesting, and the logic is inescapable…if the goods aren’t being shipped NOW, they won’t be in the stores for Christmas, and if they aren’t in the stores for Christmas, then obviously they won’t be sold. Doesn’t look too good for consumer demand. This CANNOT change…the orders haven’t been placed, and the ships are out of service as a result.

Worth noting once again that none of this is being currently covered in the US state-influenced Main Stream Media.

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UK: How “Death Board” Rules Really Function in Gov’t Health

Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today.

This is the real deal: her’s how it actually works in a government health rationing plan…and don’t be deceived…the plans proposed by the Donks of the administration and the Congresscritters of that ilk all force various forms of rationing of care.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

NOTE: This is not the Chief’s warning…this is from the Doctors working where the rubber meets the road…go to the article & check out the sad details.

The picture presented “ain’t that pretty at all” (to quote a Warren Zevon lyric), but nonetheless it’s what B.O. & the gang have in mind for you and I.

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B.O.’s 1st-stage of Einsatzgruppen?

Obama’s spies monitoring Jews house-to-house
‘They try to mingle with us to get more information on what we’re doing’

The Obama administration has set up an apparatus to closely monitor Jewish construction
in Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank to the point of watching Israeli moves house-to-house in certain key neighborhoods, WND has learned.

Obama has called for a complete halt to what he refers to as settlement activity, meaning Jewish construction in eastern Jewish or the West Bank. Obama’s edict extends to natural growth, or accommodating for the housing needs of existing local settler population centers. The demand is an apparent abrogation of a deal Israel struck with the Bush administration to allow natural growth.

Hmmmm. Think, think…hasn’t stuff like this happened before somewhere/somewhen? Oh yeah, those lovely folks of the 3rd Reich Marching and Singing Society with their spiffy uniforms started with stuff like this in the 30’s.

Yesterday marked the second time the past three weeks Israel’s ambassador has been summoned by Washington to protest Israeli conduct in eastern Jerusalem. Last month, Oren was summoned by the State Department to demand a Jewish construction project in eastern Jerusalem be immediately halted.

The construction project, financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just yards from Israel’s national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country’s prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.

OK – the Foggy Bottom Boys at the State Department are DEMANDING to control what Israel is building in their own country?!

Netanyahu strongly rejected the State Department demand, telling a cabinet meeting Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion. “Imagine what would happen if someone were to suggest Jews could not live in or purchase [property] in certain neighborhoods in London, New York, Paris or Rome,” [emphasis added] he said just after his ambassador was summoned.

“The international community would certainly raise protest. Likewise, we cannot accept such a ruling on eastern Jerusalem,” Netanyahu told ministers.

By the way…if you don’t know what Einsatzgruppen were, start here. I know…it can’t happen here…can it?

On the other hand, when B.O. calls for establishing a civilian domestic security corps, as large as, as well trained as, and equipped as well as the military…this was done before in history…it was called the S.S.