All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
Scottish trade unions have called on supporters of Celtic to wave Palestinian flags at Europa League home match tonight against Israel's Hapoel Tel Aviv in "solidarity with suffering Palestinians".
But the Glasgow club, whose fans often wave Irish flags because of their historic ties with Ireland and the Roman Catholic community, urged their supporters to ignore the call.
It is nearly a year since Israel's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
"We hope that Celtic fans will join with us in a demonstration of support for a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine based on a secure Palestinian homeland living side by side with Israel," Dave Moxham, deputy secretary general of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, said.
Interviewing Bob Dylan several years ago, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner kept badgering the legendary artist to admit that the world is going to seed and things look grim. Dylan demurred, asking Wenner just what he was getting at. "We seem to be hell-bent on destruction," said Wenner, who then quizzed Dylan if he worried about global warming.
Bob Dylan, a clever enough fellow that he once attained the amorous affections of Raquel Welch despite looking like a homeless person, refused to take his interlocutor's bait. "Where's the global warming?" he asked Wenner. "It's freezing here."
That exchange came immediately to mind when the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) announced Monday that Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall will serve as the theme song for the historic global climate change conference that gets underway next week in Copenhagen.
The UN is putting out a short film called Hard Rain that sets the Dylan classic to a montage of striking photographs meant to highlight the perils of fossil fuel use and global warming: Bangladeshi refugees, barren Haitian forests, the melting Greenland ice sheet, an oil-soaked bird on a Brazilian beach, etc. Accompanying the film is a specially commissioned essay entitled "The Urgency of Now" written by green activist Lloyd Timberlake. UNEP is also distributing a book of the photographs. This is all part of something called the Hard Rain Project, which aims to "reinvent the world so it's compatible with nature and human nature."
The project largely is the, er, brainchild of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The UNEP press release quotes him saying, rather loftily, "If Hard Rain is a photographic elegy, it is also an impassioned cry for change. Forceful, dramatic and disturbing, it is driven by what Martin Luther King called 'the fierce urgency of now' -- and I believe the call for a truly global response to climate change is an idea whose time has finally come."
At first listen A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall would seem to be right up the alley of those invested in warning about the impending eco-apocalypse. The lyrics make reference to dead oceans, sad forests, a child beside a dead pony, a newborn surrounded by wolves, and a woman on fire. One line has the singer describing the depths of a black forest, "where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters."
It is an unsettling song and, frankly, an inscrutable one. But that hasn't stopped the masters of environmental hyperbole at UNEP from deciding that Dylan is speaking the gospel of planetary doom.
"The dark and evocative lyrics of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall echo the kind of impacts the world faces if climate change continues unchecked," said Achim Steiner, UNEP's Executive Director.
The only problem is that there's no reason to think this interpretation of Dylan's classic is correct. A constant complaint in Dylan's interviews over the years is that people often misinterpret his songs. Originally people thought A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall was about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nope, he wrote and performed it a month before that 1962 saga. That didn't stop a generation of folks believing the hard rain referred to nuclear fallout.
Dylan tried to put that notion to rest in a famous interview conducted by Studs Terkel: "No, it's not atomic rain, it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen." Whatever that means.
But clearly all that lingo about the despoiled environment is about, well, environmental destruction, right? Maybe not. As Dylan himself explained, "In the last verse, when I say, 'the pellets of poison are flooding their waters', that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers."
Oh.
A curious thing about Dylan is that he is regarded by many as the embodiment of the spirit of protest and raised consciousness of the 1960s. Yet he has always seemed uncomfortable with that role. In his own eyes he's just a musician. He writes and performs songs. That's what he does.
So the notion of enlisting Dylan to be the voice of a new green generation is a little silly. The guy did a commercial for Cadillac's gargantuan Escalade SUV two years ago, after all. That, like the Rolling Stone interview, is just another clue that Dylan might not be marching in lockstep with fashionable society when it comes to global warming groupthink.
The earnest alarmists at the United Nations are undeterred by the silliness of this campaign. Dylan and his music are iconic, and should be put to use in the furtherance of a noble cause. Or as Mr. Steiner put it, "Bob Dylan had another song. One that reflects a strong and positive Copenhagen outcome that puts the world on a low-carbon path -- The Times They Are A-Changin."
Groan-inducing to be sure. But while we're at it, perhaps Steiner, Gordon Brown, and the rest of the Hard Rain brigade might consider mining the Dylan songbook a bit further. They need to come up with something to describe the virtually nonexistent prospects of getting a landmark international agreement at Copenhagen, despite the labors of PM Brown, President Obama, and other world leaders. May I suggest Blowin' in the Wind?
The attitude of the left about those who SERVE..SERVE is a ghastly reminder of the erudition they see only in themselves, and the utter and disgusting contempt with which they hold both those who SERVE and those who ADMIRE THEIR EFFORTS TO SERVE.
These are the kind of men in that 'enemy territory' Matthews:
Ira Gilliand recalls his night on the ridge, Guadalcanal, Sept 12, 1942
It's tough to talk about this stuff. It's been fifty-eight years. It gives me the chills thinking about it.
The Japanese were trying to outflank us and looked like they were going to overrun our position. I remember their screams. They screamed a lot, especially when they were charging. It made you alert in a hurry even after being up for two days and you're ready to fall asleep.
They kept charging, but that's where the grenades came in. We threw grenades all night long. I remember rolling the grenades down. We were up on the hill and they were below us. They kept feeding us boxes of grenades. I remember the sound of Plante's BAR. He kept it going all night long. A lot of guys spent a terrible night out there.
The 1st Parachute Battalion was with us. I remember one of the paratroopers got shot. The corpsman came over because of his cry for help, and he [the corpsman] got shot right through the heart. His name was Smith, so when I saw Smith go down, I grabbed him and carried him down the hill. I didn't think he was going to die. When I got him down to the first aid station, I saw one of our doctors cry. [chokes up] Old Smitty was my friend, a real nice guy, and I broke down also.
So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM.
2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.
3. Hats off to The Daily Express – the first British newspaper to make the AGW scam its front page story.
The piece was inspired by another bravura performance by Professor Ian Plimer, the Aussie geologist who argues that climate change has been going on quite naturally, oblivious of human activity, for the last 4,567 million years.
4. BBC finally gets round to reporting – sort of – that Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia may have been up to no good. It’s true that this report on their website is so hedged with special pleading for the temporarily suspended director Phil Jones the man might have written it himself. But on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, I did hear the newsreader reporting it as more than just a routine theft story. Which is a start.
5. Legal actions ahoy! Over the next few weeks, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is concerted efforts by the rich, powerful and influential AGW lobby to squash the Climategate story. We’ve seen this already in the “nothing to see here” response of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the jet-setting, troll-impersonating railway engineer who runs the IPCC and wants to stop ice being served with water in restaurants. This is why those of us who oppose his scheme to carbon-tax the global economy back to the dark ages must do everything in our power to bring the scandal to a wider audience. One way to do this is law suits.
At Ian Plimer’s lunch talk yesterday, Viscount Monckton talked of at least two in the offing – both by scientists, one British, one Canadian, who intend to pursue the CRU for criminal fraud. Their case, quite simply, is that the scientists implicated in Climategate have gained funding and career advancement by twisting data, hiding evidence, and shutting out dissenters by corrupting the peer-review process. More news on this, as I hear it.
6. Watch out Green Dave! The Independent reports on the growing backlash within the party to Cameron’s libtard-wooing greenery. Turning to the Independent for a balanced report on environmental matters is a bit like consulting Der Sturmer for a sensible, insightful view on the Jewish question. Still, for once, the house journal of eco-loonery seems to have got it right and the point made by Tory backbencher David Davis is well made:
“The ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country.”
Sarah Palin, evidently, posted this true letter on her Facebook page. I haven't seen it there, an American friend in Florida emailed me this powerful peace that needs to be read and spread. I checked www.snopes.com and it is legitimate.
November 20, 2009
Dear President Obama,
My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man. So here goes.
I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish. I can’t figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:
"We’re no longer a Christian nation.”
"America is arrogant” – (Your wife even announced to the world,”America is mean-spirited."
Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.) I’d say shame on the both of you but I don’t think you like America nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.
After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.” Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British ? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers,husbands,and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around because we stand for freedom.
I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.
Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man. Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.
And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts who was putting up a fight ? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.
One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.
You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president. You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.
One of my oldest and, deservedly ten times over, most respected friends, a combat veteran, a journalist, a frontline refugee aid worker, a man of the cloth, a professor, major scholar, a mentor and example to generations, wrote me this email below. He offers insights based on real experience that is lacking in mere scribblers in media and blogs who haven't ever been on the front-lines of life, death, and hope and effort despite odds due to undefeatable faith.
My friends email, to all of you:
From a column by David Ignatius: "When I asked Obama if the Taliban wouldn't simply wait us out, he was dismissive: "This is an argument that I don't give a lot of credence to, because if you follow the logic of this argument, then you would never leave. Right? Essentially you'd be signing on to have Afghanistan as a protectorate of the United States indefinitely."
Are Germany, Italy, South Korea, Philippines, and the horn of Africa protectorates of the United States? Maybe he thinks so. Maybe this explains his treatment of the Poles and the Czechs on missile defense. As for never leaving: Well, we would "never leave" if (a) it is impossible to defeat the Taliban, or (b) we shouldn't even try to defeat them because we never should have been there in the first place, the Taliban will eventually be the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, and this is just a face-saving way for us to leave. I think Obama believes in and has opted for (b). It's David Ignatius, not Obama, who refers to the Taliban. Obama in his speech never mentioned the Taliban as the enemy we were fighting. Only Al Qaeda. In fact, he spoke of certain Taliban participating in the government. Remember a few months ago when the White House was leaking hints that we could live with the Taliban back in power? They have convinced themselves that there is a significant difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and this whole strategy is designed not to turn it around, as the surge did in Iraq, but simply to get us out and shift the blame. And if the Taliban return? Who cares? Their problem. We can live with what the Iranian government does to its people, why not the Taliban?
Obama doesn't believe that any war can ever be legitimate. Read his speeches from Cairo, Normandy, or Berlin. He has talked about the progress of American blacks from slavery to his presidency, without ever mentioning the civil war. It just didn't happen. It was like the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was no military involved, no "cold war," people just "came together" and the wall fell.
Charles Krauthammer: I thought it was a rather strange speech. It was defensive and it was a lot of hedging. the president said at the end that our resolve is unwavering. He said in August this was a war of necessity. And then he gives us all of the reasons that we need to start leaving in a year and a half. And among the reasons he gave was that it was a very expensive war and we have a bad economy and that’s at least of equal importance. It’s not exactly the kind of speech you would have heard from Henry V or Churchill.And it’s not exactly the kind of speech you heard from George Bush when he announced his surge.
Stephen Hayes: The most important role of a president is Commander in Chief. This felt very small to me. The president in one sentence called this the common security of the world is at stake. And literally in the very next sentence he said we’re going to get out in July 2011. If it is the case that the common security of the world is at stake you don’t say that we need to figure out the problem in 18 months or we’re out of here.
Related…STACLU writes: “Message to Obama: A war cannot be ended — a war is either won or it is lost.”
This is one of those posts that I put up every once in awhile where I have to warn you that many will not agree, and some will be downright offended. As per usual, when I post such a post, this one includes the A word; abortion. However, this post is more likely to offend the anti-abortion crowd than it is to offend the pro-Abortion crowd.
Have fun. Don't get too angry.
Oh hell, go ahead, get angry. If no one got angry, it wouldn't be IBA.
Here is something I found in the article that rings true:
It's not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama's party. Indeed, the stronger the right's role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use the Republicans to express their discontent.
He goes on to lament socialism's prospects. Tough year for him. Tough decade in fact.
Here is what I see happening from watching the ebb and flow of politics from the last 20 or 30 years. The socialists get in and wreck the economy. Rs fix it. Then they think because they got in they have a mandate for moral crusades. The Terry Schiavo case was particularly egregious. The Rs get sloppy with their financials. Out they go. The Ds get in wreck the economy. Then the Rs come back.
Except we have a bunch of new anti-economic laws that NEVER get repealed. Sarbanes-Oxley is killing venture capital. So we get a ratchet effect.
Let me just outline a few of the ongoing effects (as evidenced by past and current moral crusades) of the Moral Socialism that periodically puts us in the hands of the socialists.
The Stalinist public school system (and mandatory attendance) was championed by Protestants as indoctrination centers for Catholics and Jews.
Alcohol prohibition was another moral crusade. Billy Sunday ring a bell? Fortunately that didn't last long.
Drug prohibition is on going. But that is failing too - politically. Medical marijuana got 58% of the vote in Maine vs 53% for traditional marriage.
Sooner or later moral socialism fails just as economic socialism does. For the same reason. Government can no more make us moral than it can make us prosperous.
I have nothing against moral crusades. Done in the private sector. It is when the moralists get the bright idea that with he help of government guns they can FORCE people to do the right thing.
Not in America. We are a nation full of people willing to break laws we don't agree with. Which is why drug prohibition with 95% compliance is such a failure.
So let me tell you what I see coming. Abortion. Not just restrictions which seem reasonable. But a total ban. Are there enough people who don't agree with this to form an abortion underground? No doubt. And then policing gets hard.
Access to women contemplating abortion is no longer frequent - because no woman wanting an abortion even if only fleetingly is going to want the fact known. Who wants to be investigated by the police?
Doctors may fall out of the practice but today we have drugs. RU-486 can be imported from France (drug dealers will handle it) or birth control pills could be used. So of course tighter restrictions on birth control pills will be required (and that will give us an increase in undesired pregnancies and thus increase the demand for illegal abortions - yipeee - we can then demand harsher laws and more of them to fix the problem).
Moral socialists suffer from the same defect that economic socialists have. They think: "once I have a law the law will be obeyed in the way I contemplate and voila a better world."
But it never works that way.
So what do I think should be done about abortion:
1. Kick the fn socialists out of government and get the economy moving again. Many abortions are for economic reasons. And stop staying home on election day because the fn R Party has served up some RINO. We at least have the ear of the RINO (Harriet Meyers?). The Communists are not going to listen.
2. End the drug war asap. Why are there so many abortions in the black community? Because we have a significant part of that community (about a third of all males) in jail or in the criminal justice system for prohibition violations. And we keep them there long enough to be sure to destroy any family they may have once had.
It also explains "Girls gone wild". And where to go to find the wild women. Hint: look for places where the ratio of women to men is above 1.05 or more. Above 1.5 and you are in (you will pardon the expression) slut city. We are not being afflicted in this nation by declining morals and a culture of evil. We are afflicted by bad demographics. So how do you fix that? Beats me. Maybe we just have to learn to live with it unless we encourage differential abortion of females. No. I don't think so. Absolutely not.
3. More intensive teaching of birth control. The Baptists COULD do this. They just don't have the nerve. But if they were really sharp they could slip in a morals lesson or three while showing how to put a condom on a banana with your mouth.
4. Information - how well do crisis pregnancy centers work? Is there a better way? In fact more information on all programs that reduce abortion. Then the private funders can get the most bang for their buck.
There are probably more things to be done. Those come to my mind.
But for God's sake. Keep it out of the hands of government. That includes government funding.
I'd love to hear some major Moral Socialist come to his senses and say: "You know, what I want is of such intrinsic goodness that I don't need any government help to promote these ideas. And not only do I not need any help - I don't want any. There doesn't have to be a law. Social pressure can do the job. After all look at what changes to cultural attitudes have done for tobacco consumption. The only people who still smoke that stuff are hard core schizophrenics."
The only way government can accomplish anything is with sticks and stolen carrots.
Who do you want to steal from to accomplish your goal? Who do you want beaten with sticks?
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. - H. L. Mencken
Government functions by committing what in other contexts would be called crimes. It has a certain utility. But is a danger and ought to be strictly limited. Government can make you a slave - through taxation or though imprisonment. And slavery is against the law. Except for government.
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Geo. Washington
Is it worth increasing the number of criminals in our society (nearly permanently) in exchange for being able to say: "It is against the law." Of course followed by (from a different sort of person): "I know a guy who knows a guy......."
I guess it all depends on what kind of world you want to live in.
Because we are too fat, lazy, complacent and risk averse to do the simplest task to look after ourselves
U.S. to stop counting new missiles in Russia
The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line.
The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.
Republicans are worried by the previously undisclosed agreement between the Obama administration and the Kremlin in October, which formalizes the inspectors' departure this Saturday. This, they warn, would cripple Washington's ability to police Moscow's compliance with agreed reductions in its nuclear arsenal.
Democrats, on the other hand, insist they were "stuck" with an agreement reached late last year between the Bush administration and Moscow but not made public. This, they said, left the Obama team no choice.
The U.S.-staffed Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility operates under the terms of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, about 600 miles east of Moscow -- the site where all Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are built.
What are we to do about the professional acumen of these people in charge today? If the Russians will not agree to continue, WE BEGIN THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING NEW WEAPONS. WEAPONS THEY CANNOT COUNT. WEAPONS WHICH CAN BE LAUNCHED WITH ALMOST NO WARNING. WEAPONS THEY CANNOT DETECT.
I don't care about what Bush did at this point (if anything). This is up to today's administration to deal with. I just don't want to hear some excuses from a bunch of 8 year olds who think they got a raw deal in the playground.
Not EVEN COUNTING weapons whose use can only be against us or China is TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE
As I write this, its my 4th (or 5th) consecutive night with partial insomnia. My work load is on the increase and there is so much going on in the world that I feel incapable of giving my brain some rest.
Climategate, Dubai financial crisis, Swiss minarets, Copenhagen, Iranian nukes, etc etc etc. There is a lot on my mind and I really think I need sort of a "vacation".
On top of catching up on sleep and getting some peace of mind, I would also like to spend some quality time with my fiance.
So keeping all of this in mind, I have decided to not blog for a week or 2. Those of you who are constantly blogging about how crazy the world has become, I think, can relate to what I am going through right now.
I am scared of my insomnia and "constant thinking" getting out of control so I would request people here to pray for my health and those that don't believe in God, well, just wish me luck.
They call it "support", and state that such help is "vital to Democracy".
We have gotten to a place in history where it we are not surprised to find our government telling us it is vital to Democracy that news organizations be bribed.
What kind of news will we get if the government is paying for it? Can anyone say, "Pravda?"
WASHINGTON –The head of the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday the agency will study whether government should aid struggling news organizations, which are suffering from a collapse in advertising revenues as the internet upends their centuries-old business model.
FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz's comments came during day one of a two-day "workshop" sponsored by the agency that became a forum for arguments among the heads of a diverse array of news organizations over the future of journalism.
Mr. Leibowitz said his agency will examine whether government should change the way the industry is regulated, from making news-gathering companies exempt from antitrust laws to granting them special tax treatment to making changes to copyright laws.
Mr. Leibowitz said the FTC would hold more public workshops next year, and would work with the Federal Communications Commission to revisit "cross-ownership restrictions" that prevent a company from owning newspapers and television stations in a single regional market. He said the FTC would also examine the possibility of extending government subsidies, such as those currently received by public broadcasters, to commercial news organizations.
While cautioning that changes in the news business must be much better understood before any policy changes are made, Mr. Leibowitz said: "We should be able to take action if necessary to preserve the news that is vital to democracy."
The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line.