A Literary Malaise?

According to his recently released screed Palestine: Peace not Apartheid former president Jimmy Carter is concerned about "apartheid" as practiced by Israel. As we know, Israel does not consider ones religion or gender with respect to the suffrage, court testimony or driving autos but Carter ignores such considerations when practiced by his friends the Saudis. Can it be due to the millions of dollars donated to the Carter Center by his keffeiya wearing friends?

Peanut farmer and ex president Jimmy Carter is absolutely correct, there is apartheid in the Middle East. But for some not totally unexplainable [sic] reasons he named the wrong country rigorously involved in this vile practice. The correct discriminatory country is--no surprise!--Saudi Arabia, the same country which is funding hate filled textbooks in Moslem schools around the world, the country where yesterday tourists were murdered for the crime of traveling on a Saudi highway limited to Moslems only.

The area the group was traveling in is restricted for Muslims only. Non-Muslims are barred from the area around Medina and neighboring Mecca, the holiest cities in Islam.

And to guarantee dhimmi (second class) infidels clearly understand the message and don't defile the holy area, Jim Crow highway signs are vividly posted in several languages steering "Muslims only" to Makkah (Mecca); alongside another one which sternly commands "obligatory for non muslims" to follow the direction of several bold arrows.

How about a Saudi Arabia Apartheid Week on American and Canadian campuses this week? Or perhaps a new Jimmy Carter book entitled Saudi Arabian Apartheid is similar to Georgia's Past Apartheid?

The truth would be refreshing but is unlikely to be given a voice by Mr Carter who continues to refuse any debate on his book's many distortions and inaccuracies. Could this be part of the "national malaise" referred to by Mr Carter in 1979?
By the way, don't expect the French surrender monkeys to protest this outrage too loudly.

Venezuelan XXIst Century Socialism

CHAVEZ'S XXI CENTURY SOCIALISM

Hugo Chavez has been in power since 1999. When he was first elected president, the price of oil was around $20 a barrel. Since 2001, it has tripled to more than $60 a barrel.

This has allowed Chávez to spend billions of dollars to keep Cuba's economy afloat and to buy politicians in Central and South America that are willing to participate in his "anti-imperialist" crusade, in exchange for Venezuela's petrodollars. He has also spent billions of dollars buying arms from Russia, Spain and other countries. In 2005, Chavez spent $2.17 billion to acquire Russian assault rifles and helicopters, Spanish transport aircraft and missile-capable corvettes, and Brazilian turboprop light attack aircraft. That figure increased in 2006.

But has the oil bonanza benefited Venezuela's poor? Judge for yourself.
Source

Venezuela: Zimbabwe Redux?

Now that the Venezuelan petroleum industry, broadcast media and soon the food retail enterprises are to be controlled by the future President-for-life Hugo Chávez, will the once prosperous South American nation follow the pattern of other cleptocracies such as Zimbabwe?

The collapse of Zimbabwe's economy has finally taken its toll on President Robert Mugabe's regime. It is facing a disintegrating army and police, a wave of strikes, power black-outs and the breakdown of every essential service.

With inflation running at 1,281 per cent – the highest rate in the world — Mr Mugabe finds himself locked in a vicious circle. Zimbabwean children have stopped going to school because of a steep rise in fees

It takes only a few weeks for the value of every pay rise given to civil servants to be wiped out. But the bankrupt regime can only cover the cost of further wage rises by printing money – which fuels inflation still further and creates pressure for yet more pay increases.

Tension on the streets of the capital, Harare, is mounting as people scavenge to earn extra money for food and transport. Some of those fortunate enough to have jobs cannot even afford bus fares.

In what was once one of Africa's most prosperous economies, a 35-year-old primary school teacher with six years' service earns $26 a month.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "My take-home pay is not enough for transport to work, so I am not going to school this week."


She is not on strike, although many of the 110,000 state teachers have started a "go slow" and are absent from classrooms. This has left parents to fill in as home-teachers.

Zimbabwe's four largest hospitals are crippled by a seven-week strike among junior doctors, who earn only $12 a month after deductions. All civil servants received a 300 per cent pay rise in January – but inflation has already eroded this gain.

Cholera has broken out in Harare because the water treatment plants are collapsing. Power black-outs are increasing and one town, Chitungwiza, gets only four days of electricity a week.

Mr Mugabe responded by saying that any protests "will not be tolerated".

But he relies on the army and police to suppress challenges. Sources in the army say that soldiers – while far better paid than teachers or nurses – are still enduring "desperate" conditions. Most of those below the rank of colonel earn less than $1 per day – the international measure for absolute poverty.

"There is plenty of indiscipline because we are hungry," said one captain.

Mr Mugabe's elite Presidential Guard, which has extra perks and higher salaries, is also disgruntled, according to the military source.

But the economic collapse has created opportunities for the corrupt elite around Mr Mugabe, who have already benefited from the seizure of white-owned farms.

Senior figures in the ruling Zanu-PF party can buy US dollars from the Reserve Bank at the meaningless official exchange rate – and then sell them on the parallel market at a 2,000 per cent profit. They can buy fuel from the state at one twelfth of the market price. This gives a powerful core of Zanu-PF figures a vested interest in keeping Mr Mugabe in power.

The president, who turns 83 later this month, gambles that by keeping this wealthy handful happy, he can survive the economic collapse and extend his 27-year rule.

Splits in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have made Mr Mugabe's task easier. But continuing this balancing act indefinitely may not be possible, especially if discontent spreads in the vitally important army and police force.

"I have never seen a crisis of this depth before," said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare. "There seems to be no solution in sight." Daniel Ndlela, another economist, said: "This is an unsaveable situation. It is by far the worst since independence.

"It will collapse, as the government will talk a lot but it won't change its ways. When and how this collapse will happen, that is the question."

It has taken 27 years for Mugabe to destroy the country's economy and political infrastructure and he had no oil resources to rely on. Hugo Chávez has considerable oil resources and is ginning up fear of "Yanqui Imperialism". Place your bets. Today's "official" exchange rate: USD $1= ZD 250,000.00
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Remember??

"The Cooling World" - by Peter Gwynne
April 28, 1975 Newsweek

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.

The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon. [Photo]
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

[Photo] To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. [Photo]
[Photo] [Photo]
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

[Photo]Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies. “The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

DYSB (Different Year Same Baloney)

Next Step: Ration Books!!

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 16 "Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls."

By George Reisman

Venezuela’s collectivist dictator Hugo Chavez is surprised by the fact that there are shortages in Venezuela. Despite the fact that the science of economics has been explaining it for over two hundred years, he didn’t know that inflation of the money supply serves to make prices rise. Again, despite the centuries-long teachings of economics, he didn’t know that when the rise in prices is prohibited, the effect of inflation is to increase the quantities of goods that people want to buy, but not the quantities available for sale, and thus results in precisely the situation that is described as a shortage, i.e., people attempting to buy more of a good than is available for sale.

Chavez doesn’t know, and probably doesn’t want to know, that if he wants to end the shortages, all he has to do is abolish the price controls. The rise in prices will serve to reduce the quantities of the various goods demanded to a point within the limit of the supplies available. He doesn’t know and probably doesn’t want to know that if he then wants the rise in prices to stop, all he need do is stop the inflation of the Venezuelan money supply.

Finally, Chavez doesn’t know, and undoubtedly doesn’t want to know, that if he would then want prices actually to fall, and for goods to become more and more affordable by more and more of his countrymen, what he would need to do is make a 180-degree turn in the rest of his policies. What this means is that he would have to replace his policy of socialization/nationalization with privatization, and his policy of ever increasing regulation and controls with economic freedom. These are the polices that would provide the incentives and opportunity to rapidly increase production and thus make goods more and more abundant and thus lower-and-lower-priced and ever more affordable.

But all of this is way too much to expect. Because this is, after all, the same Hugo Chavez who apparently slept through the collapse of the Soviet Union and of socialism almost everywhere in the world but Cuba and North Korea, where it’s still maintained by dictatorship in the face of starvation. As such, he’s a man who gives new meaning to the expression “out of it”—he’s so far out of it, so incredibly ignorant, that one may wonder what century he’s in and what planet he’s on.

Apparently, Econ 101 is not taught in the barracks of La Guardia Nacional in Venezuela.

What stops the antics of this collectivist throwback from being laughable is the fact that many people are suffering from them and soon will probably suffer a lot more. Large numbers of Venezuelans may even be killed before this buffoon leaves office.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Follow The Money!

We are frequently chided by our leftist and global warmista friends with the allegation that "Big Oil" corporations are "funding " the studies by heretical scientists who question the efficacy anthropogenic climate change. Recently two US Senators wrote a threatening letter to the CEO of ExxonMobil for issuing grants to organizations engaged in studies casting doubt on the man made causes of climate change.
In accusing ExxonMobil of giving "more than $19 million since the late 1990s" to public policy institutes that promote climate holocaust "denial," Senate Inquisitors Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller slandered both the donor and recipients. Moreover, this is less than half of what Pew Charitable Trusts and allied foundations contributed to the Pew Center on Climate Change alone over the same period.

It's a pittance compared to what U.S. environmental groups spent propagating climate chaos scares. It amounts to 30 cents for every $1,000 the United States, European Union and United Nations spent since 1993 (some $80 billion in all) on global warming catastrophe research. And it ignores the fact Exxon's grants also supported malaria control, Third World economic development and other efforts.

Scientists who use climate change to explain environmental changes improve their chances of getting research grants from foundations, corporations -- and U.S. government programs that budget a whopping $6.5 billion for global warming in 2007. They also increase the likelihood of getting headlines and quotes in news stories: "Climate change threatens extinction of rare frogs, scientist says." Climate disaster skeptics face an uphill battle on grants, headlines, quotes and job security.

Environmental activists use climate fears to raise billions of dollars via direct mail and foundation and corporate grants -- to promote government control over resource use, technological change and economic development. Recent developments promise greater rewards.
Environmental Defense is collaborating with brokerage giant Morgan Stanley, to promote emission trading systems and other climate change initiatives -- giving ED direct monetary and policy stakes in the banking, investment and political arenas, and in any carbon allowance or cap-and-trade programs Congress might enact.

ED designed and led the disingenuous campaign that caused many health-care agencies to ban DDT, resulting in millions of deaths from malaria. Along with Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists and other groups, it still posts deceitful claims about DDT online, perpetuating the disease. By blaming climate change for malaria, they deflect criticism for their vile actions.

Climate cataclysm claims also enable activists to gain official advisory status with companies and governments -- and make it "ethical" for them to oppose power generation in Third World countries, where few have access to electricity.

Ponder the British environment minister's latest prescription: World War II rationing, no meat or cheese, restrictions on air travel, no veggies not grown locally. Imagine Africans with little solar panels on huts, while kleptocratic dictators get huge payoffs for trading away their people's right to generate electricity.
We should improve energy efficiency, reduce pollution and develop new energy technologies. But when we act in response to exaggerated or imaginary crises, we railroad through unworkable programs with horrendous unintended consequences.

Meanwhile the global warmista bandwagon rolls on with Al Gore and the world's politicians cracking the whip.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

By Any Means Necessary

Under pressure from global warmista groups the Bush administration plans to list the polar bear as an endangered species. This is despite the present polar bear population in excess of 20,000 and growing.

While acknowledging polar bear populations are not currently in decline, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne stated in a news release, "we are concerned that the polar bears' habitat may literally be melting." If the bear is listed as threatened, it will be the first time a species was placed on the Endangered Species list based on the threat of global warming.
Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council had previously sued the Bush administration, attempting to force it to list the species as threatened.

Environmental activist groups have offered anecdotal evidence that four polar bears drowned while swimming in Alaska's Beaufort Sea, and that three polar bears attacked and ate other polar bears, allegedly due to hunger.

In addition, environmentalists contend human activities are causing global warming and that such warming will melt most of the ice at the North Pole within 50 years. If that happens, they argue, polar bears will be unable to hunt seals, their preferred prey, without the polar ice.

Since the 1970s, while much of the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically, from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 bears, a higher polar bear population than has existed at any time in the twentieth century. Scientists believe polar bears thrived in the past in temperatures even warmer than at present--during the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago and during the Holocene Climate Optimum between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are approximately 22,000 polar bears in about 20 distinct populations worldwide. Only two bear populations--accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total number of bears--are decreasing, and they are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region.

By contrast, another two populations--about 13.6 percent of the total number--are growing, and they live in areas where air temperatures have risen, near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea.

Analysts see the proposal to list the polar bear as threatened as not so much about the welfare of the bears themselves but as an effort to force the Bush administration to adopt regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. "If the administration admits that the bear is dying due to climate change, it may be forced to start energy rationing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the Endangered Species Act. This is what the environmentalists filing the lawsuit had in mind all along."

In other words, the global warmistas will use any means necessary to force their agenda on the hapless human population of the planet.

Pacifism, Brotherly Love, and Hypocrisy

The following was shamelessly stolen from ¡No Pasarán! as it is so illustrative of the collectivist/Euro left mindset:

by Joe Noory

Another great moment in Euro-double think: Austria defended the sale of 50 caliber sniper rifles to Iran (which has nothing to do with the insurgents in Iraq, natürlich!).

American troops have recovered more than 100 "Steyr .50 HS" rifles in Iraq, part of an Austrian consignment of 800 such weapons delivered to Iran over American protests that they could be given to insurgents, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The Austrian government approved the sale of the rifles, made by precision weapons maker Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, after it concluded in 2004 that they would be used to fight narcotics smugglers.

They called the sale “unimpeachable” – whatever that was supposed to mean in this context.

Imagine, if you will anyone actually believing that any of this fine Austro-Iranian weaponry would actually be used in close-quarters work like drug interdiction and not an infantry setting or channeled directly to their mass-murdering “partners is peace” to pick off coalition troops and their armored equipment.

As usual, European industry and society has whored itself just to make a few bucks. How much of their strange little lives is spent trying to rationalize this stuff and consolidate it with what they like to think their societies hold up as virtues.

Private ownership of these items is banned in ALL European "countries" as well as several states here in the US, notably Kalifornia. To my knowledge none have ever been used in a crime in the US.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

"¡SOCIALISMO O MUERTE!"...

The slogan decorates many of the billboards in Havana and other Cuban cities and translates "socialism or death". The reality is more likely "socialismo es muerte" (socialism is death).


An example of the "great health facilities" that Castro has built for the Cuban people

On May 20, 1989, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro inaugurated the new maternity ward at the Julio Trigo Hospital in Arroyo Naranjo, near Havana. It was a very modern facility with 425 beds. Here is what he said at the time:

"Well, I think we have a magnificent hospital facility. It was finished a few weeks ago and has already started to render services, except the inauguration was delayed a little. That's fine though because we are still on time. I was saying that it is a magnificent hospital facility. I asked the public health investor: How does it compare with other maternity hospitals? He said to me: Undoubtedly, this is the best one in Cuba. This is logical because I think that every new thing we make should be better.... As with every one of these hospitals, there will be something that will be amended, there will be things that are perfected. Even though they are similar projects, there is no doubt that each one will be better than the other. Here, however, we have the best maternity-infant hospital in the country."...If we use the advantages of socialism, everything is possible. You can see yourselves here. You are all mixed--construction workers, doctors, students. We have mixed health, construction, and politics. Fatherland or death, we shall win"

That was in 1989. The photo above is how "the best maternity-infant hospital" in Cuba looks now.

Get In Line!!

With most of the current crop of next year's presidential hopefuls in the Democratic party signing on to the socialized medicine bandwagon it is appropriate to examine the results of adopting such a program.

Canadian citizen Lindsay McCreith’s Medical History

In January 2006, Mr. McCreith suffered his first seizure. The Newmarket Hospital diagnoses his seizure as epileptic and prescribes anti-seizure drugs. Mr. McCreith has a MRI scheduled for May 27, 2006.

During the month of January 2006, Mr. McCreith continues to suffer from headaches and seizures on an almost daily basis. Mr. McCreith decides to seek a second opinion.

On February 2, 2006, Mr. McCreith contacts Timely Medical Alternatives and the next day has an MRI in Buffalo, New York USA and is diagnosed with a brain tumour.

On February 13, 2006, Mr. McCreith returns to Buffalo for a specialist consultation.

On March 6, 2006, Mr. McCreith returns again to Buffalo for a scheduled biopsy, during which time doctors decide immediately to perform surgery and remove tumour.

On March 14, the pathology report concludes that Mr. McCreith’s tumour was malignant.

On May 23, 2006, OHIP rejects Mr. McCreith’s application for refund of medical costs of $27,600 ($US) that he paid out of pocket to the Buffalo hospital.

In November 2006, Mr. McCreith is cancer-free and agrees to begin process of filing lawsuit against Ontario provincial government.

Mrs. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is a Swedish citizen and has a sister that recently was allowed to undergo a colonoscopy after a 5 month wait. For those of you who have "enjoyed" such a procedure, imagine having it done without benefit of anesthetic. That "frill" was too costly for the Swedish taxpayers to underwrite.

UPDATE 14 Feb 2007 09:05

London's Observer (3/3/02) carried a story saying that an "unpublished report shows some patients are now having to wait more than eight months for treatment, during which time many of their cancers become incurable." Another story said, "According to a World Health Organisation report to be published later this year, around 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer each year -- three times as many as are killed on our roads."

Despite the long waiting times Canadians suffer, sometimes resulting in death, under federal law, private clinics are not legally allowed to provide services covered by the Canada Health Act.

Some of our politicians hold up the Canadian and British nationalized health care systems as models for us. You can bet that should we ever have such a system, they would exempt themselves from what the rest of us would have to endure.

Unintended Consequences

For half a century, Western guilt made the lives of the poor even worse by propping up despots and corrupt bureaucracies through foreign aid. A new form of Western guilt, environmental fundamentalism, is making the lives of the poor even worse in Mexico after triggering a huge rise in the price of corn -- the chief component of the tortilla -- thanks to a government-induced increase in the demand for ethanol in the United States.

This constitutes poignant evidence that the drive for carbon reduction can be costly. And not just for the poor: Many European countries, who attacked the United States savagely when it refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, will not meet their goals in terms of reducing emissions by 2012 because they have discovered what a high school student could have told them: Life is one constant trade-off. Meeting the Kyoto goals would mean sacrificing the economic well-being of many Europeans at a time when fewer and fewer people are sustaining an ever-growing number of retired citizens.

Environmental fundamentalism has made it a sacrilege to even raise a brow at some of the premises of those who predict an apocalypse if massive carbon reductions are not made mandatory. Even though a number of scientists indicate that global warming is not as bad as is generally assumed and that historical precedent points to recurring patterns, it is now very hard to argue that a much more thorough debate is needed before any drastic action is taken and that governments need to carefully weigh the consequences of the mandatory caps that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is proposing.
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Political Power

Noting the earlier and earlier onset of the presidential campaign season each election cycle many are expressing surprise and puzzlement . With the accretion of so much power in the hands of government it is inevitable that those wishing to wield power over their fellow human beings will double their efforts to obtain it. It has even become apparent that those wishing to seize power will even resort to the expediency of subverting the national interest as well as national security. The libertarian Dr. Ron Paul is especially prescient in this matter:

Political Power and the Rule of Law

February 5, 2007

With the elections over and the 110th Congress settling in, the media have been reporting ad nauseam about who has assumed new political power in Washington. We're subjected to breathless reports about emerging power brokers in Congress; how so-and-so is now the powerful chair of an important committee; how certain candidates are amassing power for the 2008 elections, and so on. Nobody questions this use of the word "power," or considers its connotations. It's simply assumed, in Washington and the mainstream media, that political power is proper and inevitable.

The problem is that politicians are not supposed to have power over us-- we're supposed to be free. We seem to have forgotten that freedom means the absence of government coercion. So when politicians and the media celebrate political power, they really are celebrating the power of certain individuals to use coercive state force.

Remember that one's relationship with the state is never voluntary. Every government edict, policy, regulation, court decision, and law ultimately is backed up by force, in the form of police, guns, and jails. That is why political power must be fiercely constrained by the American people.

The desire for power over other human beings is not something to celebrate, but something to condemn! The 20th century's worst tyrants were political figures, men who fanatically sought power over others through the apparatus of the state. They wielded that power absolutely, without regard for the rule of law.

Our constitutional system, by contrast, was designed to restrain political power and place limits on the size and scope of government. It is this system, the rule of law, which we should celebrate--not political victories.

Political power is not like the power possessed by those who otherwise obtain fame and fortune. After all, even the wealthiest individual cannot force anyone to buy a particular good or service; even the most famous celebrities cannot force anyone to pay attention to them. It is only when elites become politically connected that they begin to impose their views on all of us.

In a free society, government is restrained--and therefore political power is less important. I believe the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else. In other words, the state as referee rather than an active participant in our society.

Those who hold political power, however, would lose their status in a society with truly limited government. It simply would not matter much who occupied various political posts, since their ability to tax, spend, and regulate would be severely curtailed. This is why champions of political power promote an activist government that involves itself in every area of our lives from cradle to grave. They gain popular support by promising voters that government will take care of everyone, while the media shower them with praise for their bold vision.
Political power is inherently dangerous in a free society: it threatens the rule of law, and thus threatens our fundamental freedoms. Those who understand this should object whenever political power is glorified.

Hat tip Free Republic

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A New "War" on Climate Change

As if the "war on drugs" the "war on terror " is not enough, we are soon to be treated to a new "world wide war on climate change" if the Intergovernmental panel on climate change IPCC gets its way. The former "wars" have been so successful in increasing the power of politicians and lining the pockets of special interest groups that the newest strategy is sure to please a whole new gaggle of parasites. One of the major players who plans on benefiting from the latest outrage is the San Francisco (where else?) based eco nazi organization by the name of AS You Sow.

When it comes to health and environmental issues, As You Sow – whose slogan is “Planting Seeds for Social Change” –­ is clever. It doesn’t mire itself in time-consuming debate about whether scientific data indicate that particular consumer products may be harmful to health or the environment, or whether product benefits are outweighed by whatever risks they may entail.

Bypassing scientific controversy, As You Sow pretends as if no debate exists in targeting business prey that would rather quietly – and, ultimately, futilely – appease the group than risk attack. In 2005, As You Sow filed a shareholder resolution on global warming with the financial services giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. In return for withdrawal of the resolution, the bank announced that it would lobby for global warming regulations. Though the CEO apparently thought that settling with As You Sow would make the controversy vanish, a shareholder group that I am affiliated with spotlighted the embarrassing capitulation at the bank’s annual meeting and forced the bank to reverse its position on global warming lobbying.

UPDATE!!

New Council of Nicaea

If there was heretofore any doubt that the emergence of a new religion is proceeding apace one need only compare the political drama playing out in Paris in the issuance of the recent summary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week to the First Council of Nicaea convened in AD 325 by the Roman emperor Constantine. The Council of Nicaea resolved the the Arian vs Trinity schism in the Christian Church by a consensus in much the same fashion that a "consensus" has emerged that climate changes are driven by human activity. Politically designated Representatives "from 113 governments reviewed and revised the Summary line-by-line during the course of this week before adopting it and accepting the underlying report". In other words, no new data were presented. Only old data were re evaluated and adjusted to coincide with pre existing conclusions. There has not been rapid enough governmental action regulating human activity due to the challenges to the conclusions by skeptical scientists who have as yet not been bought off or intimidated by politicians. Like the Council of Nicaea's dealing with the Arians, the IPCC has designated the skeptics as heretics.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, as the warmista religion has been revealed to be, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in 21st century Marxism as well as United Nations climatology and environmental "science" (the new religion) other strategies in dealing with dead horses will be implemented including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a United Nations committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to qualify as a dead horse rider.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Pass legislation declaring that "This horse is not dead." e.g. Senators Snowe and Rockefeller
9. Unilaterally declaring, "No horse is too dead to beat."
10. Blaming the horse's parents.
11. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
12. Do a Cost Analysis Study to see if government or UN labs can ride the horse if provided with additional grant funding.
13. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
14. Revise the performance requirements for horses.
And when all else fails declare the debate "over", and silence opposing views via prosecution for "heresy".

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Multiple Ways to Flay Felines

The death of a high-level Iranian nuclear scientist, Ardeshir Hassanpour, was announced by Radio Farda and Iranian state television Jan. 25 — a week after his death occurred. The Radio Farda report implicitly related the cause for Hassanpour’s death to exposure to radioactive rays, though the details were murky. Stratfor sources close to Israeli intelligence have revealed, however, that Hassanpour was in fact a Mossad target.

Hassanpour is believed to have been one of Iran’s most prized nuclear scientists. Some reports claim he was named the best scientist in the military field in Iran in 2003, that he directed and founded the center for nuclear electromagnetic studies since 2005 and that he co-founded the Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, where Iran’s uranium-conversion facilities are located.

Decapitating a hostile nuclear program by taking out key human assets is a tactic that has proven its effectiveness over the years, particularly in the case of Iraq. In the months leading up to the 1981 Israeli airstrike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor — which was believed to be on the verge of producing plutonium for a weapons program — at least three Iraqi nuclear scientists died under mysterious circumstances.
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