On the anniversary of the evacuation of Kabul

The anniversary of the botched evacuation of Kabul in 2021 brought back memories. My honored alma mater, the 82nd Airborne Division was called in at the last second to enforce the final stage of the pullout. Lack of leadership resulted in the loss of 13 heroes despite the best of efforts by the servicemen and women performing that evacuation, plus the disastrous rescue of thousands of US citizens and locals who helped us for the past 20 years.

I was attending the 75th annual convention of the 82nd Airborne Division Association in the days before this epic ending of our war in Afghanistan, in Houston where my brother from my time at Bragg in the mid-80's is currently the Chairman of the local Houston chapter that hosted the convention that year, and put together this little video about what it felt like when we heard the news break:

 

Baltimore Meltdown: How Easily Witnesses Can Cause Yet Another Riot Under Analysis

Out of nowhere we are treated to breaking news about yet another Baltimore police shooting only days after the Freddie Gray funeral and riot. Since the turmoil there has been only temporarily mitigated after a few days of curfew enforcement began, the waters are still roiling with unrest, agitation, and hostility. This appears to be something that will cause the Md Nat'l Guard to put those boots back on again: So a very cool, calm, Mike Tobin from Fox News is reporting that he actually witnessed a young African American man get shot in the back by a Baltimore policeman on the street in broad daylight. Mike's eyewitness testimony references a handgun that fell when the African American started running away from the policeman. The on site testimony of a different supposed witness was a lot more emotional in what she thought she saw. She even started crying and was visibly distraught: Sounds pretty horrific, doesn't it? This young woman sounds ready to lead the charge herself against City Hall and beyond. But then we hear the correction. It turns out that this young African American wasn't shot in the back, and that he was provided hospitalization at the taxpayer's expense just to check him over for possible injuries. No one was shot: It's these kinds of things, which happen every day across America and the world, which make you appreciate the act of giving pause before rushing to conclusions. Especially if you're also the type to start swinging a bat and throwing Molotov Coctails. But when you see things like this that even dispassionate eyes see incorrectly, the type of witness who rushes past the facts to design the response...it's hard to imagine a great outcome for Baltimore anytime soon.

A Lesson To Ralph Stanley

I was broken-hearted when I saw this ad for the first time in the Fall of 2008. A regional legend by the name of Ralph Stanley, bluegrass hero to millions of us from the Appalachian Mountains and beyond, actually endorsed Obama for president. If you know anything about the coal-mining territory in those mountains, it isn't surprising to learn that Democrat politics appeal to these poverty-stricken communities.

Despite living a rugged agrarian life in rocky terrain, forced to supplant their meager incomes by raising their own livestock, growing their own corn, and even by selling moonshine, many of these folks secretly yearn for any kind of government relief in whatever form it might take: a welfare check, food stamps, etc.

For those of us who have looked out past the horizon, though, we know that relying on government handouts is the road to ruin. The same politician who says, "I feel your pain", and offers no more than a 16 dollar increase in annual welfare payments to a family of four is also the same politician who wants to destroy your coal mining jobs.

When a misguided Ralph Stanley sits here and says, "I think I know a little something about the families of Southwest Virginia,...and we need a change from the past 8 years", I sadly shake my head and say, "Ralph, Ralph, Ralph. I hardly knew ya'. Don't you know that you're getting in bed with the devil?"

Coal Regs Would Kill Jobs, Boost Energy Bills

By Paul Bedard

Posted: June 8, 2011

Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.

Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion, warns a trade group.

“Many of these severe impacts would hit families living in states already facing serious economic challenges,” said Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “Because of these impacts, EPA should make major changes to the proposed regulations before they are finalized,” he said.

The EPA, however, tells Whispers that the hit the industry will suffer is worth the health benefits. “EPA has taken a number of sensible steps to protect public health, while also working with industry and other stakeholders to ensure that these important Clean Air Act standards—such as the first ever national Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants—are reasonable, common-sense, and achievable,” said spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. [Read Rep. Darrell Issa: Obama's Bad Policy, Harmful Regulations Add to Gas Prices.]

What’s more, officials said that just one of the rules to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions will would yield up to $290 billion in annual health and welfare benefits in 2014. They say that amounts to preventing up to 36,000 premature deaths, 26,000 hospital and emergency room visits, and 240,000 cases of aggravated asthma. “This far outweighs the estimated annual costs,” says an official on background.

Still, the EPA did note that the two new antipollution rules are “pending” and that the agency has “accepted and are considering feedback” from the industry.

The industry says the costs and potential to lose four jobs for every new clean energy job created isn’t worth the rules, especially in a job-starved economy.

Referring to the analysis of the EPA regulations from National Economic Research Associates, Miller said they would be the most expensive rules ever imposed on power plants.

Coal-fired energy plants currently fuel about half of the nation’s energy supply.(source)

The Left's Pitiful Attempts to Rewrite The History Of Reagan

The other day I heard a caller on CSPAN's Washington Journal trumpet the Left's proudest example that CONSERVATIVES ARE RACISTS: the Neshoba County speech of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The under-educated caller spewed, "Well everyone knows that Reagan chose to start his presidential campaign where those three civil rights workers were killed in 1964." For him, the proof was in the pudding: a white Republican talking to whites in Mississippi equals a Klan meeting. If the speech doesn't come right out and say, "When it comes down to good whites like you and those blacks, we're with you", then there has to be some coded phrase or tone that means the same.

This sad instance of looking-for-a-racist-under-every-rock is typical in today's impoverished understanding of history. With hateful people in our universities who are intent upon brainwashing the last three generations of teachers, this is the natural result. The entire beauty and grandeur of America has been reduced to a Howard Zinn bumper-sticker.

Here is a column from David Brooks which details the facts about Reagan's speech in Neshoba County, MS, in 1980 (but, unfortunately, for simple-minded haters like Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman, never let the facts get in the way of a good fairy tale):

History And Calumny

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

In reality, Reagan strategists decided to spend the week following the 1980 Republican convention courting African-American votes. Reagan delivered a major address at the Urban League, visited Vernon Jordan in the hospital where he was recovering from gunshot wounds, toured the South Bronx and traveled to Chicago to meet with the editorial boards of Ebony and Jet magazines.

Lou Cannon of The Washington Post reported at the time that this schedule reflected a shift in Republican strategy. Some inside the campaign wanted to move away from the Southern strategy used by Nixon, believing there were more votes available in the northern suburbs and among working-class urban voters.

But there was another event going on that week, the Neshoba County Fair, seven miles southwest of Philadelphia. The Neshoba County Fair was a major political rallying spot in Mississippi (Michael Dukakis would campaign there in 1988). Mississippi was a state that Republican strategists hoped to pick up. They’d recently done well in the upper South, but they still lagged in the Deep South, where racial tensions had been strongest. Jimmy Carter had carried Mississippi in 1976 by 14,000 votes.

So the decision was made to go to Neshoba. Exactly who made the decision is unclear. The campaign was famously disorganized, and Cannon reported: “The Reagan campaign’s hand had been forced to some degree by local announcement that he would go to the fair.” Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin urged him not to go, but Reagan angrily countered that once the commitment had been made, he couldn’t back out.

The Reaganites then had an internal debate over whether to do the Urban League speech and then go to the fair, or to do the fair first. They decided to do the fair first, believing it would send the wrong message to go straight from the Urban League to Philadelphia, Miss.

Reagan’s speech at the fair was short and cheerful, and can be heard at: www.onlinemadison.com/ftp/reagan/reaganneshoba.mp3. He told several jokes, and remarked: “I know speaking to this crowd, I’m speaking to a crowd that’s 90 percent Democrat.”

He spoke mostly about inflation and the economy, but in the middle of a section on schools, he said this: “Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level.”

The use of the phrase “states’ rights” didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd, but it led the coverage in The Times and The Post the next day.

Reagan flew to New York and delivered his address to the Urban League, in which he unveiled an urban agenda, including enterprise zones and an increase in the minimum wage. He was received warmly, but not effusively. Much of the commentary that week was about whether Reagan’s outreach to black voters would work.

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.

Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion, as honest investigators ranging from Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the Reagan administration and is the author of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” to Kevin Drum, who writes for Washington Monthly, have concluded.

But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff. (source)

The CSPAN caller can't be blamed by himsef, of course. Listening to Pied Pipers like Bob Herbert obviously kept the man from thinking for himself. Here is an example of the kind of propaganda that the NYT has been pushing for years, now (ironically, you are about to witness an African American mention a Jewish person without the same Crown Heights-type hate and animosity that accompanies much of African America's regard of them today):

Righting Reagan's Wrongs

Let’s set the record straight on Ronald Reagan’s campaign kickoff in 1980.

Early one morning in the late spring of 1964, Dr. Carolyn Goodman, her husband, Robert, and their 17-year-old son, David, said goodbye to David’s brother, Andrew, who was 20.

They hugged in the family’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Andrew left. He was on his way to the racial hell of Mississippi to join in the effort to encourage local blacks to register and vote.

It was a dangerous mission, and Andrew’s parents were reluctant to let him go. But the family had always believed strongly in equal rights and the benefits of social activism. “I didn’t have the right,” Dr. Goodman would tell me many years later, “to tell him not to go.”

After a brief stopover in Ohio, Andrew traveled to the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi, a vicious white-supremacist stronghold. Just days earlier, members of the Ku Klux Klan had firebombed a black church in the county and had beaten terrified worshipers.

Andrew would not survive very long. On June 21, one day after his arrival, he and fellow activists Michael Schwerner and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies wouldn’t be found until August. All had been murdered, shot to death by whites enraged at the very idea of people trying to secure the rights of African-Americans.

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Congress overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Congress overrode that veto, too.

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.

To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words like “states’ rights” in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the Reagan presidency.

Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary keys to his political success.

The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.(source)

New AG Holder Calls Whites Cowards

February 19, 2009

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." (source)

We can't have a conversation about race because of the built-in damage done by the Democrat Party. Imagine trying to converse sincerely with a person who is filled with hate and rage because they realize how deficient they are compared to the person across the table from them.

We say things like, "I'm tired of affirmative action for people who still hate my race", and are told by the pc police that "that isn't being productive".

So where can the conversation go from there? We have sincere feelings about harmony and right behavior, but are constantly told to stifle.

Do you know how hard it is to have a sincere conversation with all of the double standards that stand between us? Blacks have had so many rules bent for them in the American society that the rest of us don't know where to begin.

You see, when white people have a family member that gets pregnant at 14, we have the emotions of shame and regret that dominate our conversations: "How could you have done that, Debbie? We taught you better than that", and so on, so forth.

The sincere emotions that we express with our own kind are seen as racist and intolerant if we were to expect the same to be said to an African American. We have been told for a couple of generations now that our emotions and expectations out of ourselves is "living in a white world", by the leaders of the African American community.

Well, when you tell people like us whites something like that, we're actually embarrassed. We look hard at ourselves and try to correct what came from the black accuser. We don't suddenly get our back up at a person and try to "flip the script" on them. We actually try to self-improve, and avoid that kind of sentiment from coming up again.

So the conversation dies there.

Meanwhile, we try to teach our young the same principles that another segment of our population doesn't take as seriously. Years go by, kids grow up to become the next generation, and the problem continues to grow.

Today, African Americans commit 70% illegitimacy in their community. Whites are at 29% here in America.

It's hard to have a conversation on the weekends when every effort you've made to be good to the African American community is thrown back in your face as "racism".

If we let you go to your own schools for an education, we're told that we're racists because we graduate more people than your schools do.

If we force bussing and desegregation to have your black children next to our white children in school, you call us racists because our white kids do better.

If we dumb down the class curriculum so that your black children can finally keep up academically, you say we're racists because they still fail the SAT exams for college entrance.

If we dumb down the SAT so that you can score better, you say that we're racists because the colleges try to teach us about "dead white men".

If we dumb down the college experience so that you can feel more comfortable, you call us "racists" because there aren't as many scientists, doctors, and engineers who are black.

Whites aren't cowards because we don't seek you out on the weekends. We're simply exhausted with trying to keep up with your latest accusation.

The Israeli Chessboard: Pieces Are Set

August 31, 2008

Fair warning: Iran is 18 months away from having nuclear weapons.

Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability and if time begins to run out, Jerusalem will not hesitate to take whatever means necessary to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear goals, the government has recently decided in a special discussion.

According to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, whether the U.S. and Western countries succeed in thwarting the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether a US strike on Iran is eventually decided upon, Jerusalem has begun preparing for a separate, independent military strike.

Ephraim Sneh a veteran Labor MK who has recently left the party, has reportedly sent a document to both US presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. The eight-point document states that "there is no government in Jerusalem that would ever reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran. When it is clear Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, an Israeli military strike to prevent this will be seriously considered."

"The window of opportunity Sneh suggests is a year and a half to two years, until 2010." (source)

COLD WAR 21: Russia Tests ICBM

August 28, 2008

Last night Russia tested a stealth ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile), and reported that it was a successful endeavor. International experts say that the test was meant to alarm the West, and the World.

“The RS-12M Topol, designed to dodge defence systems, has a range of 6,125 miles — enough to reach Britain — with a 550-kiloton warhead capable of devastating a 14-mile wide area.” (source)

Coming on the heels of the Russian-Georgian war, this test fire has produced mixed reactions from around the world.

The UK says that no one wants to start a nuclear war with Russia.

Curiously, the Chinese are condemning the test fire last night as an unnecessary show of force against Georgia: The SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), made up of China and Black Sea states, said: “Relying on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a settlement of local conflicts. We urge the sides to solve problems peacefully.”

When the Chinese criticize their Russian comrades for demonstrating force, it is time to be suspicious. Is it possible that the Chinese are secretly aligned with Russia’s goals of imperialism, and are acting as pseudo-brokers of peace in order to give the Bear UN Security Council cover for accomplishing it’s goals?

ISLAMOPHILE 082708: Jihad On The UNC Campus

August 27, 2008

Naturalized US citizen from Iran, Mohammed Taheri-Azar.

A former student at the University of North Carolina was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison for plowing his sport utility vehicle into a crowd on the Chapel Hill campus in a self-professed bid to avenge the deaths of Muslims overseas.

The driver, Mohammed Taheri-Azar, pleaded guilty this month to nine counts of attempted murder in the March 2006 attack at a popular outdoor gathering spot known as the Pit. One person had a head injury and several had cuts and bruises, said District Attorney Jim Woodall of Orange County. Mr. Taheri-Azar, 25, is a naturalized citizen from Iran who grew up near Charlotte and graduated from the university. (source)

Cold War 21: The West Says, "Back Off"

August 28, 2008

UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.

"Speaking during a visit to Kiev, David Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, called on the European Union and Nato to prepare for "hard-headed engagement" with Moscow following its military action in Georgia.

"Russia must not learn the wrong lessons from the Georgia crisis. There can be no going back on fundamental principles of territorial integrity, democratic governance and international law," he said." (source)

The rest of Western Europe is nervously watching the Bear's activities, too. G7 countries have roundly criticized Russia for its Georgian war, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned that the situation was "very dangerous" because Russia might now be considering other targets such as the divided state of Moldova and Ukraine, with its strategically important Crimean peninsula.

In typical Russian style, the Bear slashes and rips at its victim, then turns to a defender to claim, "you made me do it." As the EU prepares for an emergency summit on the Georgian crisis, Russia's response is to urge the west not to damage broad mutual ties.

According to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili: "This story is no longer about my small country, but the west’s ability to stand its ground to defend a principled approach to international security."

Cold War 21: Our Pawn Moves Up One

August 27, 2008

President Bush has reacted to Russia's escalation of superpower tensions from yesterday: he deploys our military Coast Guard to rush in humanitarian supplies to thed war-torn people of Georgia.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Dallas at Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi, Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008. The U.S. military ship on Wednesday docked at the Georgian port carrying humanitarian aid. The Dallas, had originally been slated to dock at the Black Sea port of Poti, which is still controlled by Russian forces. But instead it arrived in Batumi, a port well south of the zone of fighting in this month's war between Russia and Georgia. ( AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

We have NATO on our side, of course, but the USA is the first to send in substantial help to the Georgians. Unilaterally. That's leadership in the grown-up world of superpower politics. No time for an untested boy to seize control of the wheel.


"Can NATO - which is not a state located in the Black Sea - continuously increase its group of forces and systems there? It turns out that it cannot," Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was quoted as saying Wednesday by the Interfax news agency.

To recap: Russia kills hundreds if not thousends of Georgian civilians in a hostile takeover of region in a bordering soveriegn nation. The rest of the world reacts with shock and horror. While there is much European nail-biting and rethinking of everything they knew, the US saddles up and risks it's military men's lives to send much-needed aid to the Georgians. And beacause we are navigating between their naval blockade in the Black Sea to bring Georgia this help, Russia calls us "devilish." (source)

Your move, Old Bear.

The Board Is Set: South Ossetia and Abkhazia In Place

August 27, 2008

The nation sits distracted with our Changing Of The Guard ceremonies in Denver, just as the world sat distracted with Beijing a few weeks ago for the beginning of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. During both times, we saw the worm turn. What was a decade-plus of new friendship with Russia turned quickly into a geopolitical shift in concern and priorities. Our State department is suddenly changing plans and making emergency trips to Eastern Europe a lot. We are suddenly having to draw lines in the sand for the same foe that butchered tens of millions of people and said that the problem was really with us.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia is recognizing the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Clever ploy the Russians deployed years ago: Instal clusters of Russians in the satellite republic of Georgia when your federation is falling apart. Consider these players as "pawns" in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Instruct them to agitate their parent nation, Georgia, and even spark low-level assaults on the Georgian military and police force. Have them do this for years in order to demonstrate the justification for rushing in to "recognize their grievances".

"We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War," Medvedev said yesterday. (source)

He ordered Russian Foreign Ministry to start establishing diplomatic ties with the secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Who can't see what's next: Russia will consider the recognized breakaway regions as "part of Russia now", and declare these Georgian regions fair game for the picking.

Yes, we condemned the act. Yes, so did the rest of Western Europe (Eastern Europe is bracing for more, and silent). Still yet, Russia dares to "flip the script" on us, saying that even though Russia killed Georgian civilians needlessly, the keys to stopping the madness is up to us: "everything depends on the position of our partners".

Eight years went by before Putin pulled this move on us. Is it possible that he did this, knowing that a lame duck President Bush will not be able to commit a response to effectively face down this annexation of Georgia? And what does that say for how much they fear whoever is next? Is this anytime to elect a weak judge of character into office?

The Axis Of Evil: North Korea

August 26, 2008

We’ve known that North Korea has always been a despotic hellhole for 50 years. That’s why the truce has never matured to a declaration of peace. When my grandfather was stationed there, a group of US infantrymen were beaten and killed in their sleeping bags. When I was there, a border massacre on the DMZ had just taken place.

Years later, in the mid 90’s, it was time for the Democrats to steer our country through the foreign policy minefield that Reagan, Bush, Nixon, and Eisenhower had superbly navigated. How did Bill Clinton direct our stance against communism? He sent Madeline Albright to give away the farm.

Madeline Albright negotiated [read: asked what could we do to erase our previous hard stance against evil] with the N. Koreans, and ended up with a GREAT deal for them, and another bunch of lies and empty promises for us. She “negotiated” to give Kim Il sung the know-how and help to build them nuclear reactors.

Albright barked back at those of us here in the US who said that they will use these “power plants” to make enriched plutonium: “Diplomacy takes time, and trust”, she said. Ten years later we find out that--surprise--the N Koreans had successfully tested an underground nuclear bomb.

As the grown-ups took control of our relations with N. Korea, they tried to put guardrails up to contain this monster. President Bush actually achieved an agreement with them to demolish their reactor, along with 11 other disablement measures in order to be removed from the famous list we keep of “terror-sponsoring countries”.

Finally, this past June, the North Koreans blew up their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

We thought that this MAY be the start of something good. But, almost two months later, they showed their true self again. Today the tyrannical regime announced that they were halting their disablement program.

Why, you ask? Because our president had the audacity to ask Kim Jong-il (Kim Il Sung's son) to clean up his human rights problems. The North Koreans are a regime that can only be trusted by the blind, or the suicidal. Which one are Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton?

Sliding Into The Next Dark Age

August 25, 2008

Evidence of a sea change is taking place right now. We are seeing the equivalent of a polar shift in Earth’s tilt towards the sun. Have we experienced such changes in the past? Yes. Do we know what it’s outcome will be? No.

Condoleeza Rice is set to recommend to President Bush that we recall a nuclear plan we had structured with Russia in the last few years. It was a program designed to share nuclear materials and fuel between the two former adversaries, as something of a safeguard against rogue nations acquiring the same. (source)

This move is not one-dimensional: For the UN (and the US) to have any affect on isolating Iran and their drive to become a nuclear superpower, we needed to work through Russia. With the way that Russia has exposed itself in the last few years, culminating in their invasion of Georgia two weeks ago, all deals are becoming void.

This should be alarming for all who watch world affairs and concern themselves with the survival of Western Civilization. The bonds we sought to establish with this former monster are dissolving in front of our eyes. Their goal is becoming more clear with every tank, naval blockade, and assassination they thrust upon us.

The kabuki dance going on right now between the US and Russia is the distraction. Watch Israel, Syria, and Iran for proxy wars between The Bear and us, The Last Great Hope.

ISLAMOFILE 082108b

August 21, 2008

There has been a push from the world of academia here in the West to sanitize the religion of Islam. After 9-11, UNC Chapel Hill incorporated a semester-long course in Quoranic studies as a requirement for all students. Is there an equal requirement for New Testament studies, or Old Testament, or Upanishads studies?

Hardly.

But the same crowd who likes to demonize all things Christian has practically tripped over itself to embrace the “religion of peace”, Islam. For some reason, we here in the West seem to forget the 1300 years worth of Islamic terror, expansionism, and “convert-or-die” mentality. Far from it’s mythological image of today, the Crusades were a series of efforts to combat the imperialism of Islamic savages.

It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten the episodes of Moors, Barbary pirates, and IslamoFascism happening every day around us.

That is why I am starting this chronicle of examples of how Islam is practiced around the world: the bombings, the honor killings, and the attempt to shame those of us who say, “enough”.
If there were enough “moderate” Muslims who were trying to reign in their zealot brothers and sisters, I wouldn’t have to do this. What right does any Muslim have to shame America for trying to bring this insanity to a close? To me, the Muslims who get angry at the West because we call this practice what it is-barbarism-are simply cowards, and stone-age troglodytes.

They know they can beat up on the West because we’re an easy target around the globe. We open our doors to any malcontent in the world, give them a safe place to lay their head, start a family, earn a decent living, and what do we get in return? Screaming, riots, and lawsuits over perceived prejudice, whether it's a cartoon or something insignificant, even.

Today, I learned about a recent case of honor killing that took place in Saudi Arabia. A young girl converted to Christianity, and just like the young girl in Columbine who was asked by her assailant if she still believed in God, this little Saudi Arabian girl received the same fate.

Except this killer wasn’t some self-absorbed, emo punk on mood drugs. This little girl was killed by her own father. When he found out that she had converted, he first cut out her tongue, then held a “debate” with her. Then he burned her alive. (source)

I hope and pray that there is a special place in hell for people like her father.

ISLAMOFILE 082108

August 21, 2008

The Taliban bombed the Pakistani Army’s main ammunition factory near Islamabad yesterday. The terrorists waited until a shift change was taking place at the facility, in order to inflict the highest amount of casualties on the civilian workers. (source)

Mullah Omar, the spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said the attack was a response to yesterday's airstrike in Wana, South Waziristan, that killed at least eight al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. (source)

Mullah Omar, spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are the subject of increased tensions between the Taliban and government officials. Pakistani authorities are continually trying to reassure their nation that the Pakistani military is fighting the Taliban to prevent their seizure of these weapons.

Military operations have recently been conducted in Swat and Bajaur, threatening the Taliban organizations there. Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban, had previously threatened wage "jihad" and turn the provinces of Sindh and Punjab "into a furnace" if the operations did not cease.

Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban

The Dark Heart Of Russia

August 21, 2008

The South Ossetian village of Mul burns following Russian assault (EPA)

When a nation sends its army, navy, and airforce to do battle in another country, never does it hold something so improper as a concert 13 days into the occupation. Whether its going well or not.

In fact, the only reason why you would go to the trouble of high security for the concert participants, the attendees, etc, and the diversion of troops to accomplish it...is to make a big show for the residents, the nation, and the world. This is something you do when you know your hand has been overplayed, so you try to "flip the script", and accuse the accuser of provoking you in the first place. "You pushed me to it! You made me do it to you!" This is many times acted out during an alcohol-driven rage between husband and wife. The Russians are known for their drinking.

On this day, the Russians have announced a cease fire 7 times; every day continuing to blockade naval ports, burn villages, and kill civillians. How could they stop in the middle of this carnage, death, and Stalin-esque behavior to hold a symphony concert?

A statue of former Soviet Communist dictator Joseph Stalin is seen from a window shattered by bullets in Gori, Georgia. Russian forces were continuing their occupation of the city, despite a ceasefire document demanding their withdrawal (AP)

If you understand the macabre, you understand the Russian. There is a certain quality that allows leader after leader for hundreds of years to practice similar acts of madness, without a protest from their people. As if it is as much a cultural experience as any other peoples may have. (Or because no one dares utter a word, lest they be sent away.)

And cultural it was. From the conductor himself, Valery Gergiev, who is the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and a South Ossetian. He was conducting in London one moment, then flying into Georgia the next to conduct this, "victory concert."

Valery Gergiev conducts in the ruins of Tskhinvali.

And to add more irony, the conductor continues the propaganda with his own design on how this entire war went down:

Gergiev arrived on stage with a group of children and said that he had come to Tskhinvali “to see with my own eyes the horrible destruction of the city”. He told the audience that Tskhinvali reminded him of pictures of Stalingrad, the city where Soviet troops began to turn back the invading Nazi army. He flatly blamed Georgia for the destruction and repeated earlier Russian claims that 2,000 people had died, which led the Kremlin to accuse Georgia of genocide. (source)

Apparently, from his estate in England, he missed the finer details on just how this thing went down:

A bloodied woman after the Russians bombed Gori, whch is not in either of the breakaway regions.

A Georgian woman is left in tears as her apartment burns after being hit by a Russian shell in Gori (Bela Szandelszky/AP)

As part of Russia's tough response to Georgia's action in South Ossetia, troops moved into Orjosani, between the Georgian capital Tbilisi and the strategic town of Gori (AP)

[Notice even AP categorizes Russia as "tough", while also careful to paint Georgia as the original aggressor. The AP is purposely misleading in this caption. Georgia is not the one who began this conflict. This feud between South Ossetia and it's parent nation, Georgia, has seen the two trade rounds on a regular basis for years now. And all of a sudden, Russia chooses a friday, the first day of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, to claim that they just can't stand by anymore and watch the harrassment of their precious expatriots. Because Russia cares about people.]

During the Russian operation following the start of fighting, the main railway link between eastern and western Georgia, near the town of Kaspi has been destroyed (Reuters)

The conductor should have talked to these folks before he started to warm up the woodwinds:

Syria Lurches Further Into The Dark

August 20, 2008

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad entered into a series of military agreements with Russia today. “Our position is that we are ready to co-operate with Russia in any project that can strengthen its security,” the Syrian leader told Russian newspapers at the start of his two-day trip. “I think Russia really has to think of the response it will make when it finds itself closed in a circle.” (source)

As highlighted on this site before, Syria is a key partner of Iran, allowing for the funding, training, and supplying of Hezbollah and Hamas, two agents of Tehran, to take place on their soil.
The recent turbulence in this region of the world could result in the disturbance of oil flow for Europe (and Turkey). If this happens, then Iranian oil becomes even more of an asset. This plays well for Russia, who’s foray into Georgia could easily result in the sabotage of the BTC oil pipeline.

In recent years, the world community, along with Israel, have levied economic pressures on Syria to break its ties with Iran. In fact, Syria has been holding indirect talks with Israel in search of a peace deal because of their suffering economy.

But now, Russia may give Syria both economic and military cover to halt these low-level talks with Israel, and galvanize their anti-Israel, anti-West alliance with the Bear and Iran.
To further deepen the chasm between Israel and Syria, the Georgian conflict of late has an Israeli component: reserve Brigadier-General Gal Hirsh, well-known for commanding a division of Israeli soldiers during the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Hirsh is serving as an advisor to the Georgians.

This small fact was used by al-Assad to assert Syrian relations with Russia: “I think that in Russia and in the world everyone is now aware of Israel’s role and its military consultants in the Georgian crisis,” he told the Russian newspaper Kommersant. “And if before in Russia there were people who thought these forces can be friendly then now I think no one thinks that way.”

Poland Signs The Pact

August 20, 2008

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left, and Polish President Lech Kaczynski shake hands after a meeting in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008. Rice came to Warsaw to sign a deal with Poland that will see a U.S. missile defense base built in northern Poland. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

As Russia claims yet another cease-fire with Georgia while continuing to drop rounds, kill civilians, and annex South Ossetia, Poland agrees to allow us to construct a missile defense base in their country. We are also giving them many Patriot missiles, as a safegaurd against short-range attacks from Russia.

At this moment, NATO is answering the Russian whinning that they feel threatened by our missile defense system. NATO, in essence, is responding, "nonsense". (source)

The Iranian Chess Board

August 19, 2008

This is a reproduction of the 9th century set found in Nishapur, Persia (now Iran).

The recent saga unfolding in Georgia is but the latest move in a chess game that has been going on for many years. As you recall, Russia has defacto agreed to back Iran if tensions ratchet up to a point of nuclear hostility. By Russia warning Poland last week that its missile defense agreement with the US and western Europe could very well bring on a nuclear response from the Bear, the possibility of Russia stepping in to the current Israeli-Iranian saber rattling is more likely.

Because we have publicly cited Iran as our primary reason for deploying missile defense systems in Poland, it is by implication possible to believe that Poland could launch an attack on Iran, either as a response to a nuclear attack from Iran, or as a pre-emptive strike.

With Russia already eager to retaliate with Poland, an Israeli attack on Iran could easily escalate to a Russian attack on Polland.

The Ukraine, as well.

THE POSITION OF THE PIECES TODAY:

Given the knowledge that one of the key ingredients of a nuclear bomb is enriched plutonium. The process to create enriched plutonium is long and complicated, but ep happens to be one of the by-products of nuclear power plants. If a country has nuclear power plants, it has one of the precious ingredients needed to arm a nuclear bomb.

Russia is helping Tehran build Iran's first nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which will be ready to go online later this year. An Iranian flag is seen outside the building housing the reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The United States on Friday set a weekend deadline for Iran to answer an international offer to freeze its nuclear drive and warned of new sanctions if it rejects the package.

Iran has already touted their desire to be a nuclear player in recent years. The West has reacted with alarm and caution, as Tehran has made explicit calls for the eradication of Israel in the last few years, and the destabilization of the Middle East. As a belligerent nation with a death pledge towards another country, the world community has roundly criticized Iran for beginning a nuclear program.

Besides having Russia to back their nuclear aims, Iran wages proxy wars with Israel regularly through regional attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas. These low-level attacks provoke Israel into constant bouts of respond-or-don't-respond, weakening their standing in the Middle East and with many anti-Semetic nations around the world.

The links of Iran to Hamas and Hezbollah can be seen here. They depend on the willing cooperation of Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Ahmadenijad.

Today, Iran announced that they will build many more nuclear power plants (source). Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (centre) and unidentified officials are pictured at a space station at an undisclosed location in Iran on August 16. Iran has said that a home-built rocket sent into space in a move that triggered US concern over possible military use will be able to take a satellite into low orbit around the earth.

Even Kadhafi has seen the light enough to warn Iran of it's missteps.

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi is pictured after he received an honorary doctorate during a ceremony held at INSAT university in Tunis. Kadhafi on Tuesday warned "arrogant" Iran that it faces military humiliation on the scale of Iraq for its refusal to respond to western powers over a nuclear impasse.

What is our response?

The U.S. response has been to avoid dire warnings of dangerous Israeli attacks, while instead showing support for non-violent solutions, such as economic sanctions and political pressure on Iran.

Washington believes economic and political pressure are the best ways to dissuade Iran from seeking atomic weapons, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday, following an appeal by Israel's defense minister to keep "all options" on the table. The comments followed a closely held meeting at the Pentagon Monday between Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

This policy of the US means that candidate Obama has got to seek out something different to define himself with, so he undermines the nonviolent method of sanctions and political pressure, to instead warn Iran of Israel's plans to bomb them. (source)

Barrack reassured Israel that "America must always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself against those who threaten its people". He needs to court them. Israel seems quite anxious about a President Obama. Very uncertain, in need of his special attention.

Presumptive US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama, seen here on July 28, 2008, believes Israel will launch a military strike on Iran if nuclear sanctions fail, ABC News reported Wednesday.

Obama with former Israeli PM Shimon Peres.

What Now?

August 18, 2008

Pakistani President Musharraf has resigned from his post in order to avoid impeachment. Largely seen as a secular Muslim when he seized power in 1999, Musharraf's rule has been fraught with turbulence in a nation that regularly assassinates its leaders.


Candidate George W. Bush was asked about this new leader on the campaign trail in 2000, and even though he could hardly pronounce Musharraf's name or explain the significance of Pakistan's military coup, the two leaders would become very close for the next eight years.


President Musharraf has won re-election, survived at least 2 assassination attempts, and prevented Pakistan from cascading even deeper into a theocracy...yet he is so threatened today that he must flee in exile after resigning. Here is a timeline of his tenure as President.