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Ralph Peters, Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars

The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves...

I'll forgo the reefer, but the champagne and blues are much appreciated, Vitruvius.

Personally, it's Old Style Pilsner, Gloucester
cheese, and blues for me tonight, Charles ;-)

Slo-mo camera with incredible colour. Kind of neat.
http://www.break.com/index/amazing-camera-shoots-1000-frames-per-second1.html

Vit is this in recognition of 4/20?

Yom Hashoah Day: Interview with a Nazi SS Officer

These videos are difficult to watch, but you must. It's one thing to hear of the atrocity in broad historical strokes, it's quite another to hear the executioner describe in devastating detail the horror and unspeakable machinations of unimaginable evil.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/04/yom-hashoah-day-interview-with-a-nazi-ss-officer.html#comments

Once when I was out sailing the skipper asked me
to reduce the area of our #2 jib. Not being familiar
with that sail, I said: reef'er? I don't even know 'er!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1904650

Hilarious. Might be NSFW due to content on the site.

Dennis Miller, on the accusation that the recent 'tea parties' were full of zealots:

"Zealots? Are you kidding me? I don't know about you, but I've seen more zealots in a line-up at my local deli!"

Never build on zealots below the high zea level.

wow, just wow Vit.

I'm glad you liked that, Marc. Muddy Waters is always great,
but the ending on that tune was particularly delightful, I thought.

(So, what were the last nine words of that tune ?-)

Allan, that was funny. I was going to recommend this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QyYaPWasos also from CollegeHumor. It's funny but that translation one had me in tears.

From Monday's Globe and Mail.

Canadian researchers have discovered that folic acid consumed during preganancy may raise the risk of cancer in the offspring.

Food manufacturers are required to add folic acid to enriched flour and grain products under federal regulations that came into force in 1998. The premise is to ensure that women receive adequate levels of folate in order to reduce the risk of birth defects in their children.

But now, scientific studies have found evidence that increased consumption of folic acid may trigger the onset of colon and other types of cancer.

In other words, the federal government, through its regulations, may be causing more people to get cancer.

That's the problem with blindly going along with every scientific study that comes along: another one discredits it a few years later. It's just one more instance of the bureaucracy expanding its scope to find work for itself and push people around.

Whether pregnant women or anybody else take folic acid or any other nutrient is up to them, not up to the government. It's time to abolish idiotic and possibly dangerous regulations like these.

The army of bureaucrats needed to write and enforce this nonsense are unproductive and a drain on the economy, and a major reason for the economic problems going on today.

Furthermore, given the Cooper v. Hobart ruling from the Supreme Court in 2001, regulators cannot even be held legally responsible if they slack off and don't do their jobs properly. So the nanny-state myth that we'll all be safe tucked into our beds while the government watches over our health and safety is a pile of garbage.

Fire. Them. All.

"Abolish idiotic and possibly dangerous regulations"?

Good luck: when has that ever happened in all history?

Vit, something a bit mischievous I suspect... although I remain very much against the actual use, import, or profit from, said mischievous substance.

Aha! Exactly not, Marc ;-) The last nine words of that
song are a walling off against further mischievousness.

You didn't really think I'd pick some cheap song with the word reefer in the title and post it at SDA Late Nite Radio, did you? I mean, we have standards here, y'hear! No, no, not at all, it's all about the last nine words.

It didn't take long...

I recently posted a simple blog entry about the Somali Pirates hostage taking. Someone named "Anonymous" left me a link to this rant by the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis.

I actually took the time to read it. Sure enough, it's full of the Left's usual talking points:
- The situation in Somalia is America's fault
- The pirates have been driven into poverty by America
- Thus the hostage taking was America's fault
- The Bush Administration was "bitterly anti-Muslim"

Will such mindless thinking of the Left never end?! Don't waste your time by answering that stupid question of mine!

What happens when a cable breaks on an aircraft carrier:

http://xo.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/video-what-happens-when-a-cable-breaks-on-an-aircraft-carrier.html

A lot of defensive actions taken, including the ejecting pilot, but especially, check out the guy in the yellow jacket who manages to jump the incoming -- 100 mph -- steel cable not once but twice: the second time, amazingly, he's facing the opposite direction, and therefore can't see what's coming, but he manages to time his jump perfectly.

Say three Hail Marys and a Hello Dolly for the guy.

Charles MacDonald, that was a superb article and I have picked out what I thought were some of his key paragraphs.

The roughly one-fifth of humanity that makes up the Muslim world lacks a single world-class university of its own. The resultant rage is immeasurable; jealousy may be the greatest unacknowledged strategic factor in the world today.

Our potential enemies believe that anything that might lead to victory is permissible. We are afraid that we might get sued.

For our part, we truly think that our enemies are kidding, that we can negotiate with them, after all, if only we could figure out which toys they really want. They pray to their god for help in cutting our throats, and we want to chat.

The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the “rights” and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion—were any additional proof required—that human beings are rational creatures.

While journalists and editors ultimately failed to defeat the U.S. government in Iraq, video cameras and biased reporting guaranteed that Hezbollah would survive the 2006 war with Israel and, as of this writing, they appear to have saved Hamas from destruction in Gaza.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours.

At present, the American view of warfare has degenerated from science to a superstition in which we try to propitiate the gods with chants and dances. We need to regain a sense of the world’s reality.

Of all the enemies we face today and may face tomorrow, the most dangerous is our own wishful thinking.

http://www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2009/16/peters.php

Well worth the read. A perfect example of Ralph Peters point is capturing the Somalian pirates then letting them go! There is a media feeding frenzy of the American captured pirate going on right now, insane.

Blue Like You.
...-

"Steinberg praised Canada for its groundbreaking decision to boycott the event.

“It’s the Canadians who went first,” he said. “Everybody has been following that.”

Thank you Prime Minister Stephen Harper for acting with courage and integrity, and showing strong leadership on the international stage."
...-

"Harper Government shows strong leadership on Durban II boycott

This morning’s National Post gives the Harper Government well-deserved accolades for making Canada the first country other than Israel to boycott the UN’s so-called anti-racism conference in Geneva - The farce of Durban II:

…It’s worth noting that Canada was the very first nation — aside from Israel — to announce it would be boycotting the conference, a decision that likely influenced the decision of other nations to not attend. It is hard to remember the last time that Canada exercised leadership on the world stage in such a decisive manner.

Even some of those nations that did send delegations have impressed us. Dozens of diplomats from Western nations walked out of the room on Monday, when Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the podium. Norway’s Foreign Minister, who spoke after the Iranian President, took the opportunity to slam his speech as “incitement to hatred.”

The Durban II conference is a farce. We congratulate those leaders and diplomats — our own Prime Minister first and foremost — with the moral clarity to realize this.

Even the Toronto Star has included a surprisingly pro-Canadian Government report of the story today, despite the snide headline - Told you so, Harper says as Iran stirs UN uproar:

…Harper noted the first UN racism conference held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, was viewed in many quarters as primarily an exercise in Israel-bashing and it ended in acrimony and disarray.

Although Canada was the first to decline attendance at this year’s conference, Israel, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United States were also conspicuous by their absence."
urlm.in/cdln

First, they came for the smokers...

"[Certain newsworthies claim] Fatties cause global warming"

According to the few comments I saw, some readers ain't buying it.

IggyLiberals are no longer the Natural Governing Party of Canada.

Don Martin knows it, IggyLiberals know it, and we know it.

We wish the IggyLiberals a long Opposition.

"What remains missing for the Liberals is a reason to exist beyond saying bad things about the government."
...-

"Don Martin: Liberals start to play the long game"
urlm.in/cdlt

Obama’s Spending vs Obama’s Spending Cuts — in Pictures.

This is what the 100 million savings look like relative to the size of the budget.
Don’t miss the dot on top of the big yellow ball.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/20/obamas-spending-vs-obamas-spending-cuts-in-pictures/

Why Antarctic ice is growing despite global warming

Or as I call it, Twisting oneself into a pretzel because people are starting to see that the emperor is naked

Global Sea Ice Area

http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/global-sea-ice-nasateam-algorithm-area.jpg?w=689&h=547

Global Sea Ice Area Anomaly

http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/global-sea-ice-area-anomaly-nasateam-algorithm2.jpg?w=695&h=546

[ Obviously people cannot make the claim that sea ice is being lost. It isn’t. The data shows that our trend is basically flat during this time of "unprecedented temperatures". It’s clear that there has been no significant change in sea ice area.

This is almost enough to make me turn in my Skeptic union card, but increased CO2 warming the earth makes some sense to me, the magnitude is in question. The fact that polar sea ice not melting is not an insignificant point. It is also important to realize that the changes are too small to fit with IPCC statements about the trend. Unlike trees, ice does make a good thermometer. I can’t say this strongly enough— This is a strong indication of substantial errors in the computer models and temperature data which needs to be addressed before we throw what’s left of our global economy to the wind. How would Earth’s total sea ice ignore such substantial warming? It’s a good question which deserves an answer. ] WUWT

"You plant, you cultivate, you harvest. Over time, the seeds that were planted here are going to be very, very valuable."

Who said it? Chauncey Gardener or Barrack Obama?

Or unless you actually go check.....reading the newspaper, yeah that'll help....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_go_co/climate_legislation_6

"If carbon dioxide were brown, we wouldn't have the same problem," said Gus Speth, who organized the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970. "But it's a subtle issue. ... The problems are chronic not acute, and it is largely invisible to people unless they're reading the newspaper or checking the glaciers or going to the South Pole."

The NDP and Durban 2

"but increased CO2 warming the earth makes some sense to me"

It would be a strange planet indeed if it didn't. The question is about feedbacks. We pretty much know the raw number in a dry atmosphere, what we don't know is the magnitude on our planet of the warming. Global Warming is short cutted in a lot of ways. Think of water vapor rising in an Everglades thunderstorm, for example, carrying heat to the troposphere where it is radiated directly into space via infrared when the vapor precipitates.

Think of the unknown effect on cloud cover. A 1% increase in cloud cover would swamp a doubling of CO2.

Think about the oceans absorbing heat. It is possible that as the oceans warm, because at some temp ranges water density increases with increased temps, that the heat is being sunk into the deep ocean.

Think if you took the Hockey Stick at face value, and there was no "blade", no human warming. Perhaps we would already be in an ice age with mass starvation as a consequence.

None of this is easy to think about. Complete denial of the impact of warming is not a rational response, any more than the belief that all change is bad by definition and the "flat climaters" belief that we would live in a climate Camelot if we hadn't discovered coal and oil. That position is religious, not scientific. It is based on the central Christian tenet of "the fall" from the grace of Gaia, I mean God, and being cast from the Garden of Eden, err, I mean the pre industrial wooded planet of the 15th century. These ideas are deeply rooted in Western Culture and won't go away anytime soon.

Liberal Ignatieff meets Tamil Tiger terrorists in Ottawa. (cfranews).

The answer to the the question: Cui prodest. Who profits? Who gains? "Whom does it benefit?" has been answered.

The Liberals Party and Ignatieff hope to gain politically/oust a sitting government by meeting with the murderous Tamil Tigers.

STOPIGGY.

*
"I keep trying to imagine Defense Minister Bin-Laden giving the new
Islamic state's keynote address... at the United Nations."

*

The next big scaremongering?

Are We Ready for a Solar Katrina?

It's official Liberal policy: aligned with murderous Tamil terrorists.

Liberal Ignatieff and other Liberals meet with the murderous, outlawed Tamil Tigers.

The purpose: to embarrass PM Harper and his government.

Ignatieff and his Liberals are supporting murder/terrorism.

STOPIGGY.
...-

"April 21, 2009
Michael Ignatieff meets with members of Tamil community: calls for access to humanitarian efforts and dialogue."
http://www.liberal.ca/story_15744_e.aspx

"Animal rights activist on FBI's 'Most Wanted Terrorists' list

April 21, 2009 - 3:25 PM

The FBI for the first time has placed an animal rights activist on the bureau's "Most Wanted Terrorists" list."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2234566/posts

now the enviro-weenies are crying about hockey fans driving around flying team FLAGS!

Canadians fOr the lOve* of O.

Where is the lOve of O nOw?
...-

"Napolitano's comments about Canada's border sparks diplomatic kerfuffle

WASHINGTON — A diplomatic skirmish has broken out over suggestions by the U.S. homeland security chief that terrorists routinely enter the country through Canada - including the perpetrators of 9-11.

Janet Napolitano's remarks in a recent Canadian television interview have angered MPs who are in Washington to participate in a border conference.

The comments have also frustrated Ambassador Michael Wilson, who is once again trying to dispel the 9-11 border myth nearly eight years after the 2001 attacks.

Wilson says Napolitano's handlers have assured the embassy that she doesn't believe the 9-11 terrorists entered the U.S. through Canada."
urlm.in/cdpb
...-

*"Canadians paying up to show their support for Obama
20 Mar 2008 ... The poster takes the issue beyond mere support for Obama and says "Canadians love Barack Obama. So why did we hurt him, Mr. Harper?
www.canada.com/vancouversun"

Wretchard at Belmont Club:

"Modern Times"

"The Gray Lady has now adorned itself with five more Pulitzers, which can join the one earned by Walter Duranty."
urlm.in/cdpg
...-

"Was Walter Duranty ’credulous’?

by Roger Kimball

Walter Duranty, star reporter for The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, stooge of Joseph Stalin: was he too credulous, poor chap? That’s what David P. Kirkpatrick, writing in the Times, said yesterday. Reporting on the Pultizer Prize Board’s decision not to rescind Duranty’s award, Kirkpatrick described Duranty as "credulous" but not culpable. Really?

In the early 1930s, when he was head of the Times’s Moscow Bureau, Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer for a series of 13 articles on the Soviet Union. In 1932, the great famine began. The horror and brutality of that episode can hardly be exaggerated. The famine was not simply a natural disaster: it was planned and prosecuted by Stalin and his goons. Millions died in lingering agony. The whole story is ably told in Robert Conquest’s classic The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.

With peasants dropping like flies everywhere around him, Duranty cheerfully cabled back to New York that although there were some occasional food shortages, there was "no actual starvation." That’s good news, Walter! Just what we wanted to hear. Have a Pulitzer. We knew we could count on you to tell the people back home about the wonderful strides Joe Stalin is making--no need to exaggerate the dark side of things. Progress is hard work: idealists need all the help they can get!

There was some hope that Duranty’s mendacity might finally have caught up with him. Recent protests in the Ukraine reached the Pulitzer Board. They convened. They deliberated. They decided. In an official statement, the Pultizer Board said that although Duranty’s work fell short of "today’s standards for foreign reporting," there was "no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception."

It took me a while to stop laughing, too."
urlm.in/cdpi

The Tamil Tigers/Iggy&Liberals have formed a coalition.

LiberalIggy:
I am now a member of the dying murderous Tamil Tiger party.

*""We see the potential for major developments in the next 48 hours," said Michael Owen, acting deputy assistant secretary of state."
...-

Meanwhile:

"But the Sri Lankan government has refused to heed those international pleas to halt the fighting, saying it is on the verge of crushing the separatists and putting an end to the 25-year-old war.

>>>>> The U.S. government appears to agree with that assessment."

*"US releases satellite photos of Sri Lankan war"
urlm.in/cdqo