Lots of heated articles on Climate Change lately.

Some lightly educated aspiring journalist declares American is destroying the world, its too late, and we’d better act fast, or something:

If all the people of the world had the same living style as the average American, the holocaust would have already visited us…

…To describe climate change as serious is now generally accepted to be an understatement - catastrophic is more like it. It is variously described as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and a threat worse than terrorism or nuclear war…

…It is already too late to avoid major consequences because of the inertia of the ecosystem - even if no more CO{-2} or other greenhouse gases are emitted by humankind from tomorrow, the earth will continue to warm up for some decades, the sea will continue to rise for some centuries and the ice sheets will continue to adjust for thousands of years…

…Reality takes time to sink in, but it is happening. Comments such as “in the years to come this issue will dwarf all the others combined. It will become the only issue” and “40 years from now George Bush will not be remembered for Iraq, but will be remembered in near apocalyptic terms. He’ll be the denier-in-chief who failed to acknowledge, much less confront, the coming ecological catastrophe” are no longer considered outlandish…

…Many would wonder what makes the denier-in-chief such a denier in the face of such tremendous challenge from the environment; in the face of a scientific consensus so wide that a review of all - more than 900 - peer-reviewed articles on climate change published over a 10-year period ending 2003 did not throw up a single one that contradicted the IPCC position on human-induced global warming. Such a denier that he would go to the extent of pressuring scientists of federal agencies to fudge climate science in their reports. The long and short answer to the question is corporate profits.

Some idiot spoiled brat from Boston recently got paid $20,000 to give a speech on the same topic:

The crowd that nearly filled Virginia Tech’s 3,000-seat Burruss Hall Auditorium to hear environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak probably had an idea about what he thought of the Bush administration before he took the podium…

…”Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on,” he said…

…”We’re living in a science-fiction nightmare in this country … because somebody gave money to a politician,” he said.

I sort of agree with that last point so far as the “fiction” part is concerned.

And surprise, surprise, someone at the UN thinks all this means we need to raise taxes or else (proceeds payable to you know who):

A group of 18 scientists from 11 countries is calling on the international community to act quickly to prevent catastrophic climate change…

…(UN Climate Pannel member John) Holdren, however, says even these measure will achieve very little unless they are accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. “We don’t think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach,” he said.

I think this guy at a meeting of “climate change skeptics” has it about right:

“Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States,” Mr Evans says in the publication.

“It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth,” he says.

“The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary example of scientific fraud in the postwar period.”

And here’s a very well argued piece with lots of links to source materials:

The Left’s desire to hamstring the U.S. economy and force worldwide Kyoto Treaty compliance will, according to one United Nations estimate, cost the world economy $553 trillion this century.

Al Gore may be a comical dupe when it comes to climatology (in college, he collected a C+ and a D in his two natural-sciences courses), but the global-warming debate and the consequences of that debate are serious. To participate meaningfully, one must distinguish between fact and fiction ?- in addition to understanding the underlying political agendas.

Update (3/1/07):

Al Gore thinks the media is biased against his “spiritual” issue:

“I believe that is one of the principal reasons why political leaders around the world have not yet taken action,” Gore said. “There are many reasons, but one of the principal reasons in my view is more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly — and I say ‘rejected,’ perhaps it’s the wrong word. They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias…

…”I think if it is important to look at the pressures that made it more likely than not that mainstream journalists in the United States would convey a wholly inaccurate conclusion about the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.”

Gush Katif (Hebrew for “harvest belt”) was a group of 16 Jewish settlements on the Gaza Strip. Greenhouses there $200MM worth of fruit and vegetables in 2004, and employed hundreds of Palestinian Arabs. That represented more than half the GDP of the Gaza Strip.

In August 2005 the 8000 Jewish settlers in Gush Katif were evacuated as part of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The World Bank and EU put together $14MM to reimburse the Jewish farmers for their property.The farmers claimed the combined assets at Gush Katif were worth $24B. For comparison, that’s 8x US annual direct foreign assistance to Israel.

Operation of the greenhouses, which had contributed 15% of israel’s agricultural output, was handed over to the Palestinian Authority.

Within days of the Israeli evacuation the greenhouses had been destroyed by looters (ripping out copper wire, et cetera) and vandals.

Here’s a short documentary from the evacuation and its aftermath:

In October 2006 Reuters published this photo of an Israeli soldier next to a tunnel in being used to hide and move weapons:

The tunnel is clearly in the ruins of a greenhouse - here photo from a similar building before the Israeli evacuation:

Yesterday (2/27/07) the NY Sun reported on the repurposing of Gush Katif synagogues.

The ruins of two large synagogues in evacuated Jewish communities of the Gaza Strip have been transformed into military bases used by Palestinian Arab groups to fire rockets at Israeli cities, according to a senior leader of a Gaza militant group…

…”We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity,” (spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees) Mr. Abir said.

From a previous post:

“Everyone here is disgusted by what’s happening in the Gaza Strip,” said Shireen Atiyeh, a 30-year-old mother of three working in one of the Palestinian Authority ministries. “We are telling the world that we don’t deserve a state because we are murdering each other and destroying our universities, colleges, mosques and hospitals. Today I’m ashamed to say that I’m a Palestinian.”…

”The world is watching how the Palestinians are destroying their institutions and achievements with their own hands. They see how we are mercilessly slaughtering innocent people. We are losing the sympathy of the world. I’m afraid the world will now view us differently.”

ht: LGF

I don’t really give a damn about college athletics, but I have some family that went the the University of Illinois, and I am interested in unbridled hypocracy.

Chief Illiniwek, proud symbol of University of Illinois athletics since 1926, bit the ceremonial dust the other night, victim of an arbitrary paean to political correctness by the National Collegiate Athletic Association…

…Chief Illiniwek will now be absent from Illinois athletics, but Chief Osceola continues to wield his burning lance on the football field down at Florida State University…

…No sooner had the czars of college athletic regulation announced its campaign in 2005 then it granted an exemption to Florida State, home of the Seminoles. Why the exception was made isn’t entirely clear but it probably had something to do with the power and influence emanating from FSU and its vast tribe of alumni, who vowed to retain Chief Osceola by any means necessary……According to the Illinois athletic department’s Web site, Illiniwek “was the name of the loose confederation of Algonquin tribes that once lived in the region.” The university proclaimed the mascot to be “one of the most dramatic and dignified traditions in college athletics.”

Not much we can do about this, I suppose. Chalk up one more for the tyranny of a loud, angry minority.

The country that indicted writer Oriana Fallaci for writing now brings us this:

The capture of an alleged Islamist terrorist recruiter in Milan four years ago in an operation carried out by U.S. and Italian intelligence could have been a model for transatlantic cooperation in counterterrorism. Instead, it is becoming Exhibit A in how European politician s are working against the U.S., undermining the fight against Islamic terrorism and endangering the NATO alliance.

An Italian court 10 days ago indicted 25 CIA agents and a U.S. Air Force lieutenant-colonel on charges that they kidnapped Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr and illegally took him back to his native Egypt, where he was imprisoned and, he claims, tortured. Five Italians were also charged — including the top two officials at the military intelligence agency at the time.

Isn’t there some jurisdictional issue here? If some Italian security personnel authorize the CIA to do something later determined illegal under Italian law, shouldn’t their courts be focused on the Italians?

No one seriously claims, however, that the CIA agents were in Italy without the explicit knowledge and participation of Italy’s security services. This is the crucial point — and explains why the indictments are a hostile act against the U.S. By long-established international legal practice, the official agents of one country operating in another with that state’s permission are immune from prosecution. The status of forces agreement that governs U.S. troops stationed in Italy enshrines this principle at least for official conduct.

If the CIA agents did anything wrong, that’s up to American authorities to decide. Mr. Spataro, an independent prosecutor, can indict as many Italians as he wants. His pursuit of U.S. government personnel, however, makes him a rogue. Aggravating the harm, Mr. Spataro cited the 25 agents by name, possibly putting their lives in danger. The trial in June, presumably in absentia, would likely do further damage by exposing intelligence-gathering techniques. Call it a tutorial for al Qaeda on how to avoid detection.

Fortunately for the US the Italians we were on the other side in the last two wars involving us both. And although the idea of an “Italian court” might suggest some gravitas, with notions of Rome or the Renaissance, the present formulation of Italian jurisprudence, dating to 1948, is less time-tested than that of many 3rd world countries.

Anyone who thinks Italian peaceful sovereignty isn’t dependent on an explicit security guarantee from America, and that the 12,000 US troops deployed there now are sightseeing, should recall the mass graves filling up just 200 miles from the Italian border less than 12 years ago. Italy and its enlightened EU partners were unable to stop that on their own, so yet again the US had to intervene to calm the savage Europeans (without, by the way, Russian, Chinese, or UN approval).

We might consider cutting these countries loose to fend for themselves. Unfortunately that would likely mean either: their reversion some bloc of nations along the facist model they invented and to which they tend to revert; or watch them subsumed in some neo-Czarist or Caliph superstate. We’ll have to keep them as titular allies and partners, ignoring or excusing their intermittent adolescent outbursts.

Update (2/28/07):

No duh:

Washington would refuse any demand by Rome to give up alleged Central Intelligence Agency operatives to face criminal trial on charges that the agency abducted terror suspects, a leading US official said.

John Bellinger, legal adviser to the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, said in Brussels: “We have not gotten that extradition request from Italy. If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite US officials to Italy.”

I agree with this Bellinger felloow- let’s give these newcommers to 21st civilization some more time before we seriously consider sending our government officials to stand in front of their courts.

From the country where Osama is hiding and enjoys a 65% approval rating.

At least 11 people died and more than 100 people were injured at an annual spring festival in eastern Pakistan celebrated with the flying of thousands of colorful kites, officials said Monday.

The deaths and injuries were caused by stray bullets, sharpened kite-strings, electrocution and people falling off rooftops on Sunday at the conclusion of the two-day Basant festival, said Ruqia Bano, spokeswoman for the emergency services in the city of Lahore…

…Police arrested more than 700 people for using sharpened kite strings or firing guns, and seized 282 illegally held weapons during this year’s festival, said Aftab Cheema, a senior Lahore police officer.

How does one sharpen a kite string, anyway?

A 16-year-old girl and a school boy, 12, died after their throats were slashed by metal kite strings in separate incidents. Two people were electrocuted while they tried to recover kites tangled in overhead power cables, Bano said.

From another article:

According to All Pakistan Patang Mutasireen Committee (All Pakistan Kite Affected Peoples’ Committee), 861 persons have died since January 2000 after the kite string slit their throats and thousands of others severely wounded.

Wow - 861 persons. That’s 40x the number of civilians Human Rights Watch alleges were killed at the Massacre at Jenin.  Instead of wiping Israel off the map maybe the Muslim world would be content just banning kites.

What was that Michael Moore was saying about kids playing with kites in Iraq before Bush invaded to steal their oil?

ht: ACE

A Democrat* speaks rationally on Iraq:

We are at a critical moment in Iraq–at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America’s cause–the cause of freedom–which we abandon at our peril.

(*psych! Its actually “Democrat Independent” Joe Lieberman)

On October 7, 2002 Lieberman wrote eloquently in the WSJ why Democrats should support the Authorization for the Use of Force in Iraq. Just two years before he had been the vice-presidential candidate for the Dems, and that 27 of 48 Dem senators did vote with him on the Iraq authorization - at the time he wasn’t considered outside of the Dem’s mainstream.

Although I disagree with many other aspects of President Bush’s foreign and domestic policy, I believe deeply that he is right about Iraq, and that our national security will be strengthened if members of both parties come together now to support the commander-in-chief and our military. That’s why I have cosponsored the Senate resolution that was negotiated with the White House. It is time to authorize the use of our military might to enforce U.N. resolutions, disarm Iraq, and eliminate the ongoing threat to our security, and the world’s, posed by Saddam Hussein’s rabid regime.

Lieberman keeps speaking rationally, and there is no room for him in today’s Dem party.

Hirsi Ali on Real Time with Bill Maher (2/24/07)

7 mins worth watching. Bluntly speaking her mind, as usual.

We wrote about the problems at Airbus here a couple of weeks ago. Then we discussed what a disaster the A380 has been and how it its pulling the rest of the massive company down with it.

In the last week an American Thinker writer has printed two excellent pieces on the company, The Self-Humiliation of Airbus (2/20) and Brinksmanship at Airbus (2/26).

They’re both worth reading in their entirety. Some excerpts from the later:

When a political project like Airbus falters while competing with a commercial enterprise like Boeing, political considerations predominate in developing countermeasures. The turbulent events of the past week demonstrate that the European rival of Boeing is still guided by politicians unwilling to concede the need for painful but necessary remedies, and more interested in looking good to their constituents than in solving the problems at the company…

…The problems at Airbus now go beyond the row over which country will lose more jobs, and which country will build the next generation high tech model (with spillover potential for other high technology jobs)…Although France and Germany continue to paper over the developing crises, they cannot do so forever. An extraordinary set of problems is leading to a pattern of brinksmanship, deferring tough choices until they explode. Thereby magnifying the damage…

…Perhaps the most dramatic news to leak out of Airbus over the weekend following the Franco-German summit was notice that Airbus might ask its workers to put in a 40 hour week, instead of the 35 hours per week they have been working. For no extra pay…

…Retreating on the 35 hour work week would itself be a humiliating retreat for France and Germany, which have taken pride in their more civilized approach than the savage Americans. No doubt, vicious American competition would be blamed, but one wonders if other sectors of the French and German labor force would welcome such an increase in work at no additional compensation, just because their political leaders backed a grandiose airliner…

The article also discusses the collapse of the A380 freighter project, and highlights recent share purchases of Airbus’ parent company (EADS) by the governments of Russia and UAE, further complicating an highly political board.

We refer to our earlier Airbus post for discussion of how the collapse is impacting seemingly unrelated projects like the A400M military transport.

One of the sad things here is the impact on Europe’s previously dynamic aerospace industry. Dozens of smaller companies were jammed together to create EADS in a fit of socialistic central planning that had no economic rationale. Now the entire industry risks suffocation.

EADS is trying to manufacture incredibly complex A380 under a single corporate banner. At the same time Boeing has radically decentralized, outsourcing even fuselage manufacturing to subcontractors on other continents. May the best economic model win.

ht: SJS

From the AP yesterday:

A civil rights group asked a judge Friday to find it unconstitutional for the federal government to exclude a prominent Muslim scholar or anyone else from the United States on the grounds that they may have endorsed or espoused terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the papers attacking the policy in U.S. District Court in Manhattan…

…The group said the provision violates the First Amendment and has resulted since 2001 in the exclusion from the United States of numerous foreign scholars, human rights activists and writers, barred “not for legitimate security reasons but rather because the government disfavors their politics.”

The ACLU was prompted to get involved by the case of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Muslim scholar who allegedly gave money to groups that gave money to Hammas. Here’s his side of the story. Here’s another.

Is Ramadan actually a supporter of terrorism? For the ACLU the question is irrelevant - they are arguing that whether or not one has supported terrorism should not be considered when the State Department issues visas.

How is it possible for the US State Department to violate the First Amendment rights of a foreign national on foreign soil? Where in the First Amendment does it say anyone can visit the US at anytime for any reason. Does the US Constitution address any rights for non-Americans? From whence does a Federal Court get the authority to order the Executive Branch (State Department) to issue a visa?

Regardless of the merits of Tariq’s case, this whole thing seems patently rediculious. Lots (billions?) of people want to come to America, and it would be impossible to accomodate them all. Criteria for admission will necessarily be unfair to many, but the administrative responsibilty appropriately resides in the State Department.

I’d be interested in what the ACLU thinks of the Albert Speer visa case. Speer was Hitler’s personal architect and was the only Nazi at Nuremburg to plea guilty - not for direct involvement in any atrocities but for complicity as a high level administrator. The very fact that he was charged with war crimes surprised many - Speer had actually been appointed by the Allies to serve in the interim post-war government until he was arrested. During his 20 years at Spandau Prison he wrote Inside the Third Reich denouncing Hitler and Nazism. After his release he travelled around the world speaking on the horrors of Nazism, but was never allowed to visit the US. The State Department never commented publicly on the matter, they simply set aside his numerous visa applications. Would the ACLU claim the State Department was voilating Speer’s constitutional rights?

Tomorrow (Sunday 2/25/07) 60 Minutes will air a segment about something called the Appeal for Redress. The Appeal is a petition:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

The petition was prepared by The Center on Conscience & War (CCW), which was founded in 1940 with a mission “to defend and extend the rights of conscientious objectors.”

On January 16th 2007, representatives of the Appeal for Redress publicly voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq by bringing the individual petitions of over 1,300 active-duty and reserve members of the military to the attention of Congress. The Appeal for Redress, was started by active duty service members. About 60% of signees have served at least one tour of duty in Iraq. The service members who started this ongoing appeal felt that it was important for them to take a clear stand on the issue.

Although the story is getting a lot of attention its worth considering how few servicemen are actually involved here. Active-duty and reserves represent about 2.7MM people. So those “1,300 active-duty and reserve members of the military” who signed the petition are just 0.05% of the total.

And what exactly do these people have to do with “conscientious objectors”? My understanding of that term is as it applies to people who are excused from service during a time of conscription due to some religious or moral objection to any violent activity. Amish and Mennonite men have long been excused from military service on this basis. The special status was claimed by hundreds of thousands of men during the Vietnam draft, with something like 360,000 avoiding service without ever even having their cases formally reviewed.

But the people in this case are all military volunteers. Whatever their status, its seems tautologically impossible that they could be considered “conscientious objectors.”

The CCW seems to have a broader agenda regarding Iraq.

A co-founder, Marine Sgt. Liam Madden states, “Just because we volunteered for the military doesn’t mean we volunteered to put our lives in unnecessary harm and to carry out missions that are illogical and immoral.”

With all due respect to Sgt. Madden, putting his life on the line for anything the civilian leadership asks is exactly what he volunteered for. He also volunteered to give up broad swaths of his rights as a civilian, including most of the protections in the bill of rights and submission to an entirely separate judicial system. As an enlistedman, he even has fewer rights than he would have as an officer.

Madden has said a lot about Iraq since returning from his 7 month tour in Iraq. He told CNN, “I’m concerned about the reasons we went to war, about the profiteering,” and that he had doubts about enlisting in 2003, “when the current administration started inundating us with fear.” Is this guy really thinking on his own or is someone feeding him lines?

And that 2003 enlistment date is the thing that really doesn’t add up. Madden enlisted in February 2003, just one month before the war in Iraq started. US troops had already been in Afghanistan for 17 months. Congress had (overwhelmingly) authorized the Iraq war in October 2002. By February 2003 the US had about 300,000 troops in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf preparing for the invasion. SecDef Rumsfeld was speaking openly of his plans for the execution of the Iraq invasion. Just what did Madden think he was signing up for?

If Sgt. Madden and the other 1299 petition signers really want out of the service I say let them go. As civilians they can the go on to say whatever they want. I don’t really care, but anyone declining to do a duty they signed up for probably deserves a dishonorable discharge - there should be some penalty for backing out of such an important, albeit entirely voluntary obligation.

This petition reminds me of another Marine who, refusing to deploy to Iraq, was briefly a media superstar in 2004. Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes went AWOL ahead of his 12/6/04 scheduled departure from San Diego on the Amphibious Assault Ship USS Bonhomme Richard. At the time Paredes was the first serviceperson to openly resist deployment to Iraq. He returned to the base on 12/18/04 with media in tow and sporting a variety of bizarre anti-war tee shirts.

The Navy has gone easy on Paredes - he was given restricted duty but never spent any time in the brig and will likely be discharged normally when his tour is over. But there was one additional chapter in the Paredes, Bonhomme Richard story that didn’t get much coverage.

On 12/26/04, three weeks after Paredes went AWOL, the Indian Ocean Tsunami hit killing 300,000 people. The Bonhomme Richard was diverted to the Indonesian coast and was the first American capital ship on the scene. She brought 200,000 lbs of supplies generated 30,000 gallons of fresh water daily for the relief effort. Her hovercraft brought supplies ashore and her Knighthawk helicopters evacuated thousands of refugees, including several hundred to her own medical ward. While CNN and the NYT were profiling Paredes for his corageous dissent, his erstwhile shipmates were spearheading the largest foreign humanitarian effort in US history.

Many of our finest citizens are in places like Afghanistan and Iraq now. They’re risking their lives not only to defend us, but to build an entirely new, free societies on the ashes of centuries of feudalism and dictatorship. Their work is dangerous and often thankless, as petty domestic political disputes have converted half of our elected officials into a propaganda machine for the enemy.

Our military has enormous responsibilities that go far beyond fighting. Its a job for only the most willing, most prepared, and in many ways the best among us. Few (certainly not me) are qualified. The sooner the likes of Madden and Paredes self-identify as not up to the challenge, the better.