Schaesberg

Haiti

2011-06-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

HAITI?
1/24/2010
A news article written by Romain Raynaldi yesterday from Park City,
Utah tells us that the "catastrophe merchants" are still at it. An outfit called
Sundance Films is going to show a movie made by Michael Nash called
"Climate Refugees".
What motivated the filmmaker appears to be his deeply held belief about
man-made global warming and its so-called inevitable dire consequences for
humanity.
Based on the assumptions made by his frenetic mind he sees millions of
people forced to leave coastal areas because of sea levels rising, while other
millions will be drifting into the US looking for food and water and locals will be
forced to find shelter away from home because of more hurricanes, tornadoes
or mudslides.
Mr. Nash visited the recent Copenhagen conference which he thought
quite frustrating because nobody wanted to listen to his concerns about
migrations. Maybe he was at the wrong conference, because Copenhagen was
dealing with another perceived catastrophe, global warming, which is now
having its own very hard time about being believable.
I am sure Mr. Nash means well by agitating for the creation of yet
another organization, not the UN, to take care of humanitarian needs caused
by environmental disasters. You may well be right in thinking that this all
seems a bit redundant for organizing the distribution of funds directly to people
hurt by a disaster of some kind. The logistics at such a time just aren't very
helpful.
Finally, he condemns humankind in toto for the Haitian calamity
emphasizing that people in Haiti have been living without food for the last 3
years. Shame on us, he says.
One can have deep sympathy for the Haitian people in their utter misery
and hopelessness, yet at the same time insist that the world should help in a
way that will more effectively stop the continuation of poverty, illiteracy and
lack of opportunity in that strange little country.
Apparently, Mr. Nash is totally unaware of the billions of dollars in
contributions and time spent by many thousands of volunteers over a period of
decades, which efforts have never been able to really stabilize the country. But
notwithstanding this international largesse, self-serving activities by outsiders
have often perpetuated local corruption rather than the opposite.
Haiti is indeed a singular tragedy in more ways than one but is not
caused by a cruel world anymore than is Switzerland. It is mostly a self-made
series of tragedies.
One only has to look at the Dominican Republic next door to see what
could be made of Haiti if it decided to accept a strong, capable leader, possibly
educated abroad. The Dominicans also went through a long history of
dictatorships, strongmen, revolutions and annexations and finally put that
chapter behind itself about 30 years ago. But Haiti hasn't learned the same
lesson yet and the results are predictable. It cannot feed itself, support itself or
defend itself. It needs a strong and constructive guiding hand.
In my mind Haiti is currently politically and economically unviable and
really would be better off under another country's disciplined tutelage for a
long period of time. Afterwards and if results are convincingly attractive, give it
a choice of annexation with another country or independence. As a condition of
such long term assistance, most expatriated Haitians need to return home and
commit to rebuilding their country.
Nothing else will work there.
Agitating for the creation of yet another "do-good" organization as
proposed by Mr. Michael Nash just isn't the answer. That's all been done in the
past, many times. Mr. Nash would do the Haitians a real service by not
dramatizing the current tragedy there as a means to make other countries feel
guilty about something over which they have no control while pushing to create
yet another expensive and mostly ineffective bureaucracy onto a selfperpetuating
problem.
Sundance Films isn't helping either. It's time to call a spade a spade

Our determined enemy

2011-02-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

Original date 11/1/2010

The USA faces a determined enemy.

It would be imprudent not to realize that little by little our murderous enemies, radical Islamists, are increasing their attacks on the US Homeland week after week.

And little by little, this pressure will build with the hopeful result that we might finally begin to realize in our country that we really are under siege, just like the people in Bagdad, Kabul and other such places.

Also never forget that, in the radical Islamists’ opinion, we are the “big Satan” and consequently we are the ultimate target.

The question is: “what are we (our Government) doing about this growing threat”.
In essence, not very much, it seems.

Sure we have improved our intelligence gathering somewhat, but as the recent 3 attempts at mayhem here have shown, they were nipped in the butt at the last minute by luck, more than by design. We are now forced to suspect most, if not all flights with a direct or indirect flight-plan from a foreign location. I question whether we have adequate, up to the minute intelligence to guide us to a problem flight. And what about cruise ships?
Now there’s a target!

Add to this not only chemical and biological threats but what of the noise levels in the media lately about Russian EMP weaponry, known as CLUB-X, that will shortly be available to any rogue state. These weapons can be concealed in trucks, ships, containers, RR cars etc. One might conclude that somebody, Russia, might believe there is a market for the use of these things. Potential targets: Israel and the United States. No one else counts.

Our dedicated enemies and their weapons’ suppliers are ready to execute, provided the money is available. May be we have more enemies than we realize and a government that is scared and unqualified to deal with these existential threats to our existence as a nation. So what options do we have? Few actually.

With only a mere handful of Arab speaking intelligence professionals we are utterly dependant on foreign sources, many of which of questionable loyalty and competence.
So far and more importantly, our Government has utterly failed to begin a systematic information campaign to bring the public up to speed about the rapidly growing fifth
column activities right here at home and what we should do about it. While there is no question about the fact that Islamic Radicalism, an offshoot of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia is determined to conquer the Western World for Islam, it is still a term few people are familiar with and may not even associate with our fighting in the Middle East. Everybody knows about terrorists, al-Qaeda types or Taliban types and the Muslim Brotherhood, but not where this fanaticism comes from. And until our government spells it out and connects the dots and the media regularly and truthfully report on this international evil, we will not be successful in coping with it definitively, at our peril.

The public at large does not have any idea about how much radical Islamists have already penetrated our US homeland. Many Governmental departments have relationships with Islamic front groups, like CAIR, who merely serve as the manageable tip of a potentially explosive radical Islamic volcano.

Some people ask, “if Islamic radicalism is so threatening why aren’t there people in the Muslim community who stand up and say that publicly”? The reason is simply that the better part of the Muslim community in this country is already under Sharia law which allows the radical men to make sure nobody complains and thus they maintain a “peaceful” façade to their American environment. This has been going on for many years already and may be seen as a growing fifth column brigade being made ready for the day when they all have to play their part in “conquering” the country. Our country.

And don’t believe that this is a preposterous idea! Our enemies are past masters at obfuscation and working underground, out of sight for many years to eventually gain their nefarious ends. Many years before, as well as during WW II, the Russian communists did the same thing by placing spies in places of interest to them in the USA, resulting in all the new nuclear technology we were developing in Chicago, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos etc. to reach Moscow in short order. No wonder it only took Moscow a few years after the war to explode their first A-bomb.

Today radical Muslims are spreading more deeply into our government’s most critical places not to forget the idiocy of NASA being charged to make nice with Muslims. Our government doesn’t want to hear anything critical about Islam. Why not? Because key people in our Administration protect Islam from criticism. That’s why you do not hear that Islam’s radicalized people are a threat to any western society and that it behooves us, to deal with this threat aggressively.

The head man of our enemy, Osama bin Laden, declared war on us in 1996 but our Government, does not think it sufficiently important to make sure that everyone knows the score. America is not the attacker but radical Islam is, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its various offspring, the Taliban and al-Qaeda operations that have been our deadly enemies for many years already. Those people are determined to destroy us and maybe themselves as well, although that doesn’t bother them. They “love death” they claim. Peculiar, unreliable and dangerous people and contrary to what many of our leading politicians have been saying their form of Islam is not peaceful.

We are now forced to suspect most, if not all flights with a direct or indirect trajectory from a foreign location. Because we only have a rare few qualified Arabic speaking, American intelligence gatherers in the Middle East we are very dependent on local English speaking sources, many of questionable loyalty and competence.

May be we have more enemies than we realize and a Government that is scared to tune in to these dangers because they would have to think about defending us against them. And that’s one subject our Administration does not consider important.

Not a pretty picture. Maybe the coming elections will shift the political power situation in Washington a bit to nudge the Government in doing what really needs to be done which is to publicly realize who our enemies are and take all necessary measures, domestically as well as internationally.

Immigration update

2010-10-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Immigration aspects. 6/13/2010
Rev.10/29/2010

Forbes’ June 28 issue carried a trio of articles on Immigration that caught my attention because of its range of views about this critical subject, from the bizarre to the realistic.

As a former immigrant myself (1953) I have been particularly sensitive to and chagrined by the abuse of our borders together with the slow but steady loosening of our cultural disciplines.

Why? Because the early 20-ieth century United States of America was a country with a deep belief in the lessons of its history going back to Founding Days. We lived within a growing, distinct and unique cultural environment.
A cultural environment that guided, not always successfully, our social, educational, political and economic activities. It molded its citizens into Americans. It was a very powerful national experience and became the envy of the world.
Natural born American citizens as well as new immigrants all wanted the same thing. To work hard, be honorable and generous to those who might need help while improving oneself. Immigrants assimilated within one generation and gained a better economic and social future for themselves and families. Welfare did not exist but charity flourished.

The world had never seen anything like it. For many in the outside world it seemed like paradise and the place to go. Including myself.

Shortly after the end of WW II, this country’s disciplined and unique cultural profile was still operational in America, our land borders were reasonably unmolested while the coasts were well guarded. I went through exhaustive interviews, tests (language, medical, background, education) to just obtain a 1-year visa for study in the USA in 1950-’51. Afterwards, in 1953 when I immigrated, the FBI also got into the act. And justifiably so, since I requested to enter the USA it had every right to determine if it wanted me as a prospective citizen. I have never been offended by this process and still believe every immigrant should be so treated.

Unfortunately, improving economic conditions in the post WW II period slowly began to attract seasonal labor from South of the Border. Those borders were essentially wide open and certainly Mexico made little effort to keep its citizens inside its own territory. As an aside and apart from very recent activities, actual border control was attempted systematically for the last time during the Eisenhower administration as far as I remember. The rest is history.

In a recent Forbes (6/28/’10) article a commentator failed to mention the fact that what made America so successful and attractive was its very special 200 year culture. Today, it is easy to ridicule its fundamental beliefs and social practices but they were essential in melding its immigrant population into a cohesive national whole. America’s recognized generosity of spirit and action, its pride in improving itself through hard work and decent behavior became legendary and a magnet for more and more foreigners intent on finding a way to participate in this opportunity. This was a winning situation for both sides, the country and its immigrants but only as long as the immigrants were desirous to assimilate in this culture as soon as possible, by learning the language and working hard at any job, just to be here and improve oneself and the country.

Two developments spoiled this critical condition.
The 1930-ies Depression followed by WW II and our unique post war economic growth.
After WW II, this country’s admirable culture, compared to most others, started a slow and fundamental change. Exactly those aspects of it that might be considered most critical in molding millions of immigrants into a body of principled and dedicated citizens gave way to increased permissiveness and a loss of personal accountability. For instance, improving economic conditions slowly removed the need for children to earn money in support of the family’s needs or just for personal spending purposes thus diminishing the appreciation for hard work and sociability. Newspaper routes and mowing lawns went out of style among a variety of changes, and many parents increasingly could afford for their children to have a good time, do sports and have “fun”, allowing personal “hard work” to become unpopular.

In my old country there is a well known saying that goes like this: “it takes strong legs to support any wealth”. We did not heed this truth and the results are all around us.

Meanwhile, in the USA our shifting economic and social conditions encouraged immigration, particularly from south of the border, because that’s where cheap labor was plentiful and willing to pick fruit, mow lawns and do all kinds of other stoop labor. Most of it was illegal, because no one was watching the border and the immigrants became essential to several industries.

Eventually, well meaning people started programs to help these “immigrants” because they were “poor” in our eyes and particularly the children became objects of concern. As long as the total numbers of immigrants were small and seasonal, this condition, from a national security point of view, was essentially ignored. But by the time many of those immigrants turned into permanent “visitors” and second and third generation offspring invaded our traditional social, educational and business landscape, it became clear that their own political demands and social preferences were creating national political, economic and social conflicts.

Today, many people decry the fact that we did not control our borders when we should have. And I agree that as a country we were too busy with other priorities for many years to realize the problem we were growing in our midst as a consequence thereof.

From where I sit, as a former immigrant who went through all the necessary checks to qualify for a green-card, this whole “illegal” immigration problem is in fact a self-made dilemma. While it could have been prevented, possibly with harsh means in the beginning together with tough, bi-lateral agreements later, we failed to do anything effective.

But for a long time, post WW II, if I had been one of those poor and hungry people living so close to the accessible American Garden of Eden I would have gone for it too. And why not? Again, from a potential immigrant’s point of view it seemed that the people running the place did not to worry about it too much that foreigners were waltzing in and out of the place at any time.

But now that we have tens of millions of Hispanic immigrants, a large percentage of which never learned to speak decent English, including some 12 million “illegals”, there is a hue and a cry to turn back the clock. But that’s never possible and we better realize it.

If our American culture is to survive in the best tradition of its basic objectives we need to admit to having lost sight of some fundamentals and therefore make ourselves use the next election to choose representatives who have spine, understand economic fundamentals and together with honoring traditional American values are prepared to admit our own fault.

We need to admit that we made a very bad mistake years ago by neglecting our borders but now, in order to re-establish “control” of the current and future situation, we will have to make amends to most of the immigrants here now and willing to work. Although it bothers me to recommend that “law-breakers” will get away with it we really have no choice. To begin with we must ask ourselves: “are these people really “law-breakers or merely opportunists”??

Who wouldn’t have done the same thing given the prevailing circumstances. We left the door open and they came through. Can you blame them?? Maybe not! Maybe we should blame ourselves and get on with it.

So what do we do now.??

1 To make amends, we must provide a path to amnesty and potential citizenship for “illegals”, as of a certain date, but:
2 We demand that everyone who is here, legally or illegally, learns to speak and read decent English within 3 years or else will be repatriated without a second chance.
3 Kids will be required to go to school, all the way through high-school. Dropping out will be reason for repatriation permanently.
4 Offspring of legal marriages of immigrants will not be granted US citizenship even after parents have successfully become citizens. They will have to apply themselves later on at age 18. Only military service might make a difference. Only children born from US citizens will automatically become US citizens upon birth.
5 Spanish will be eliminated from all school texts and as a requirement of government and businesses to “facilitate” communication. Schools may continue courses in Spanish, but only for native Americans as a second language requirement. Immigrant children will learn English and nothing but until they are fluent. Government will do away with all Spanish in government operations, including all forms and rules requiring Spanish as a second official language.
6 English will be formally adopted as the national language of the USA.
7 We need to make immigrants understand that a path to citizenship must be earned and will not be “given”.
8 Immigrants who develop a criminal record will automatically forfeit any chance to become citizens and will be repatriated permanently.

The same commentator mentioned above suggested that all USA borders should be open at all times. But this is not a serious thought. Just opening the door to everybody who wants to come here? In other words, opening te door would significantly change the dynamics of new immigrants arrival here because all restraints would be off. We would be inundated and back to the days of the early 19th century when neither passports, nor health certificates were required te enter here.

We would be overwhelmed and in relatively short order lose our American identity. The new arrivals, from heaven knows where, would coalesce into “tribal” configurations just for reasons of survival. Becoming Americans would be the last thing on their minds. But government help, à la Europe, would be expected and bankrupt us financially, politically and culturally.

There are billions of very poor people out there who would find ways to come here. Remember the Vietnam boat people. America is a desirable place to emigrate to because for a long time we enjoyed more personal freedom and the best opportunities for education and personal accomplishments. Although we are currently in the process of destroying some of these fundamentals, that may just be a temporary issue.

Given the options, let's resolve this issue in a common sense way and accept the fact that we must owe up to our own failure to prevent it from happening in the first place. We need to right this terrible immigration wrong, once and for all and we know how to do it if the will is there. Woe to us if we fail!!

Bully Pulpit

2010-10-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

5/3/2010

Bully Pulpit?

The President of the United States probably has the best and also loudest "Bully Pulpit" in the country. When he says something it is guaranteed to hit the media, the blogosphere and all of its off-spring. His messages come through loud if not always clear. Even so, it's a great way to get your thoughts across. Of course there are multiple occasions, practically every day, a President needs to communicate his views or his decisions to the public or to more specific venues. All of these communications are just part of the job.

Naturally, it is expected that the President never loses his cool, in public. He is also expected to set a high standard of comity when dealing with others, foreign as well as domestic because his public behavior sets the tone for the way people communicate with each other, it reflects the media's manner of getting its stories across and for many of us also sets the tone for civil discourse.

But, during the past 16 months we have learned a few things about this President that were not obvious before, neither during the campaign nor in the early months of his Administration.

With the exception of the impact of natural disasters this President very much sets his own priorities, virtually ignoring issues considered by many to warrant his serious attention. And when he picks what motivates him he tells his staff to get things done. He doesn't really like to have to get into the hurly burly of a legislative controversy, he really expects his staff to handle it. But when actually necessary he is not afraid to get into the fight and use whatever methods to get his way. He brooks no contradiction and surely becomes more than testy during the process. "Obama Care" is the prime example.

Yes, the Obama Care process was a live demonstration of a President with 2 tin ears, neither really listening to opposite political views nor willing to pay the opposition the respect our political system has always accorded it. Whenever the opposition talked he ignored them. Similar approaches are to be expected with the coming Cap & Trade legislation, Green Energy, Immigration, Middle East conflicts, Nuclear proliferation or Free Markets.

In each case our country is or will be told what he wants and the executive system he has created in Washington is expected to do what he tells them to do. Never mind the confusion of legislative involvement or other contrary activities by opponents.

Mr. Obama doesn't really appear to be committed to our, albeit imperfect, political system, nor does he seem to care very much for its underlying historic uniqueness, nor our traditional tolerant, give and take approach to many national issues demanding attention and resolution.

He has a personal political agenda and his priorities stem directly from how he believes he will be able to change our political system as fast as possible into what he considers a more desirable one. A system with highly centralized political power, dictatorship?, a system that will be transformed economically to support his own political priorities and do away with fuzzy, self-serving things like "free markets". Control is the secret code.

To me, enough evidence is now available to understand why Mr. Obama has become testy, exhortatory, confrontational and abusive and with a growing tendency to demonize those who disagree with him. This is not the mark of a President of the United States. May be this plays well in Chicago but it should not be exercised nor tolerated in Washington D.C. or anywhere else for that matter.

It also tells me that Mr. Obama is not in fact a real leader. He is just a "party boss" with tough talk, impatience, if not intolerance and where different views and civil niceties have no place. His nature and attitude is to operate alone, above the fray, by making his unquestioning staff members do what has to be done to accomplish his objectives and never mind civil, legal, organizational or traditional objections, resistance or disagreement. What he wants is the only thing that counts. America be damned.

So without putting too fine a point on it, this is the first time in the history of the USA that the principal pulpit in this country is indeed occupied by a dangerous "bully".

.

What's Mr. Obama up to?

2010-10-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S MR.OBAMA UP TO? 1/16/'10

As you can see I wrote this piece last January, mostly to vent my spleen. Now it seems that much of what I feared has been happening and we haven't seen the end yet. Woe on those who voted for Mr. Obama. 1/16/10

Al-Queda is in the business of killing Christians, apostates, westerners and particularly Americans. Everybody knows that by now.

By reluctantly sending fewer troops to Afghanistan than his own generals asked for many months earlier, the President might sacrifice additional soldier's lives unnecessarily because we will be undermanned for a variety of missions. Will anyone remember?
Every day we read about more car bombs exploding and military personnel killed or wounded in random, yet planned, attacks on the local political system for the purpose of wearing us out and persuading us to leave the territory so the Taliban and al-Queda can again dispense some more of their own mercy.

But when you think about it, how many of us draw the conclusion that if and when we surrender the Middle East to the terrorists it will make it that much easier for them to repeat their special guerilla warfare right here at home. So under-manning the Afghanistan effort is really irresponsible. Yet, the prospect doesn't seem to bother the current Government?

And maybe it doesn't bother our current Administration either that Muslim friendly organizations in the USA, and there are many now, have been preparing the
" USA battlefield" for years already. They are getting brasher and more intimidating if not threatening by the day. There are any number of instances on the record about Muslim leadership complaining about our school menus, bathroom facilities, overt references to Christianity etc. that "must" be removed or remodeled so Muslim pupils can function the way they want. It is outrageous but true. Sharia financial rules are available at many banks today.

But the question should be, why do we allow this to happen? We have our own very good rules and everyone must abide by them. If that bothers somebody, he or she should be advised to leave again. Because immigrants take an oath that they are desirous to adopt our whole country and its laws, rules and culture, or, otherwise no visa or citizenship.

Strangely, it seems our Government believes that it is better for us to acquiesce maybe.?

But wouldn't that create a conflict with our Constitution, which the Government must at all times uphold and defend. Since we were and still are, although somewhat less maybe today, a Christian nation it is one thing to be tolerant of other "religions", but not if those are clearly focused on a confrontation with our national culture and religion.
The longer term consequences of this constant radical Muslim agitation on our own society and its cultural and religious conduct is putting us on the defensive. Which is just what the Muslims radicals want. What is even more astounding, they are now getting a helping hand from our own government doling out money, via-via, to a variety of Muslim friendly organizations.

Broadly speaking, I am afraid this government is on a tear to ruin our culture, our healthcare system, our national currency, our economy and our position in the world as the best policeman this globe has seen for over 60 years. It is an "abomination".

We are being abominated constantly now and if you do not believe it, you haven't been paying attention.

(The latest is the President's frantic gamble to go to Massachusetts on Sunday to see if that might prevent his Party losing a crucial Senate seat. )

What most people appear to believe is that the previous government of George W. Bush was the cause of the recent financial disaster. But that is not quite true. What is true is that the many repeated warnings made by President Bush in most of his State of the Union addresses to the Congress about inadequate financial regulation of credit issuers would lead to high inflation or worse. The Congress, particularly Messrs. Barney Frank, Schumer and Dodd would have nothing of it. Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were doing just fine. As Mr Barney Frank famously said at one point: " I want to roll the dice once more". Well he did, and the whole house of cards came tumbling down. It was the Congress collectively that refused to accept the responsibility for curtailing the home mortgage credit markets. The one major mistake of Mr. Bush was his decision to maintain Mr. Greenspan as Chairman of the FED or at least to not have told him to start tightening up on the cost of money.
A second and virtually unmanageable problem for Mr. Bush, at the time, was that he needed the Congress to support his Iraqi war issue which cost him most of the leverage he otherwise might have had to force the Congress to curb the financial bubble from exploding eventually.

So what does Mr. Obama do, having the Congress in his pocket? He starts throwing money out the window to create jobs??? Well, that doesn't work and we know it. A government cannot spend money unless it taxes free people's earnings sooner or later.
Remember George Washington begging the fledgling government of the brand-new fighting USA in 1777 that he really needed some money to buy ammunition and blankets for his freezing troops!!. At least all the sacrifices then were made for a very good cause.
Which obviously is not the case today.

In stark contrast, our modern new Government throws money out the window that they don't have!! Don't they know that jobs are created only by the free market as it produces value! That’s what creates additional wealth and makes the economy in all its many facets grow and become more competitive. Then the government can take its share.
But, government money thrown at uneconomical wind mill farms, bio-fuel operations, solar power projects or carbon trading schemes is wasted in the grand manner. The government shouldn't be competing with business in the first place. The free market exists because people take risks with their own money to pursue ideas that may or may not pay off over time. If they do, excellent and nobody has to pay more taxes if they fail.

But whenever the government throws money, our money, at risky, and probably questionable operations, often promoted by "quick buck artists", it is the citizenry that in the end pays the bills when the project collapses. The government after all can only use taxpayer's money. It's the only money they have that's legit and any other government financing scheme is ipso facto based on the taxpayer's collective credit.

All this "free" money that is now being thrown around is bound to grow our national debt at an incredible rate and as a result we will have to pay much higher taxes for years to come to pay off all those people and countries holding this debt, like China. It will also make our industry less competitive, our military less robust and ready, our schools and hospitals less able to grow and improve their respective national functions of defense, education and medical care.

In its totality and with the dogmatic fervor of a fanatic, Mr. Obama is trying to force the Congress to bend to his Will. It is an unseemly performance, not just by the way the President operates but by the illegal arm-twisting that's going on to force Senators to vote "Aye" instead of using their own judgment of the moment. This is a far and unacceptable cry from rational, democratic political gamesmanship.

What it proves is that there are many people in high and powerful places in the government today who are willing to follow the leader believing that any infractions of the applicable rules of law and honor will be overlooked as long as they get the results wanted by the Boss-Man. This is no longer democracy as we knew it, this smacks of the way Adolf Hitler used the Reichstag after he became Chancellor
in 1933. Never mind the rules, HE made the rules. And we know where that ended.

It certainly seems to me as if Mr. Obama is trying to ruin the country in short order just so al-Queda doesn't have to do it later!! What else to conclude?

All kidding aside, we have embarked on a perilous path, it seems to me, with a government that borders on the incompetent, coupled with a philosophy that will literally wreck our country. Its flouting of proven and Constitution driven standards of governmental conduct, together with its obvious lack of a patriotic approach to our country's future and position in the world and with its contempt for free market principles this Government should give all of us pause before this show gets completely out of hand.

We are warned!

We are warned!

One man's opinion about immigration

2010-07-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

7/9/2010
One man’s opinion about Immigration

What makes the immigration issue so intractable?

Simple. People refuse to look at the facts and accept the only conclusion that’s feasible, rational and necessary.

What are the facts?

1 Our southern border has been wide open for more than 60 years.
This has been a grievous failure of our Federal authorities. They have the responsibility to protect our borders and didn’t.
2 America’s post WW II growing unwillingness to do menial work, picking fruit, mowing lawns.
3 Millions of people south of our border were poor, hungry and more than willing to do all the menial work.
4 Little by little small groups of seasonal workers became a stream of foreigners that settled and stayed to become a mammoth political issue.
5 And now many Americans are adamant that the cause of the problem is the “illegal” immigrants rather than our Federal Government and everybody else who willingly used the “illegals” to do work but wanted to be rid of them when work was done.

Observation.

That’s not how the real world works. In many respects “people” flow like water, that is down-hill. Down-hill meaning they will go where it is easier and more remunerative to make a living than where they are. In order to improve their economic condition they tend to work at anything. If necessary they move temporarily or permanently; they seek opportunities wherever they might be and eventually most of them settle down to raise families and become good citizens.

For decades, north of the American border there was a great need for simple labor, mostly of a seasonal kind. The border was wide open so what do you expect to see happen.?

Question?

What would you have done if you were hungry, poor and living next to a huge market where your willingness to work hard was needed, paid for and available?

All of us Americans created this problem for ourselves. We didn’t take the trouble to nip it in the bud, when we should have and could have done so. We took the easy way out.
So instead of blaming the illegal immigrants we should really blame ourselves.

And finally, should we call these people “illegal” immigrants or economic opportunists?

Consequences and options.

To become an immigrant myself 60 years ago I had to go through all the bureaucratic requirements to obtain a “green card”. Hence plausibly, I could insist that everyone desirous to work and live in the USA should follow the same procedures as I did, no exceptions. That would be logical and desirable but not really practical today for those who merely made desperate use of the huge opportunity to get jobs thanks to the American Government’s failure of not protecting our southern border. What would you have done under the circumstances?

Time for action.

In my judgment we need to recognize the above facts and draw the following conclusions from them.

1 First of all, the borders must absolutely be closed and controlled. Until we do that we cannot in good conscience blame those who use the opportunity to cross into the USA, “illegally” only because they want to work and become responsible citizens.

2 We must swallow hard but accept the fact that making amnesty part of the
solution under the circumstances is our only honorable way to solve
this problem.

2 After a certain date, we must establish annual quotas of qualified immigrants from all countries, not just some European and other countries.

3 The people who have been here for more than a year, who work for a living and have no police record will be issued a “green-card”, with the following provisions:

A the individual and family must learn to speak adequate English within 3 years or will be deported, for keeps.

B these special immigrants will not be provided with blanket medical care, without paying proper dues. Neither will they qualify for retirement benefits until they become citizens.
Nor will they have any voting rights whatsoever.

C children of legally and credibly married immigrants will not automatically become US citizens but will have to apply for citizenship upon reaching age 18, or obtain a Military Service waiver for exceptional conduct.

All so-called “tourism babies” will not automatically become US citizens, while all those in that category during the past 10 years should have their citizenship cancelled.

4 The US Federal and State Governments will instantly stop the use of Spanish as an aid to Hispanic speaking people. Bilingual education and communications in any way shape or form should be cancelled. It is not helpful and costs money. English is our National Language and should be so recognized.

Immigrant children will be taught in English, at school. They will not be allowed to take Spanish or any other foreign language as a course until they are fluent in English.
Failing this will eliminate their own opportunity to become citizens.
I had to learn English so why shouldn’t they?.

When all is said and done I firmly believe that the arrangement I propose will resolve and remove this very truculent and long suffering problem from our national conscience and body politic.

Message: Citizenship shall not be given but can and must be earned.

Immigration Dilemma

2010-06-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

Immigration Dilemma 6/13/2010

Forbes’ June 28 issue carried a trio of articles on Immigration that caught my attention because of its range of views, from the bizarre to the realistic, about a critical subject.

As a former immigrant myself (1953) I have been particularly sensitive to and chagrined by the abuse of our borders and the slow but steady loosening of our cultural disciplines.

Why? Because the early 20-ieth century United States of America was a country with a deep belief in the lessons of its history going back to Founding Days. We created and lived in a distinct and what became a unique cultural environment. An environment that since 1789 has guided, not always successfully, our social, educational, political and economic activities. This powerful and unusual national experience molded our citizens into Americans and a nation, becoming the envy of the world.

Natural born American citizens as well as new immigrants all wanted the same thing. To work hard, be honorable and generous to those who might need some help while constantly improving yourself. Most immigrants assimilated within a generation and gained a better economic and social future for themselves and families. Welfare did not exist but some charity flourished. The world had never seen anything like it. For many in the outside world it seemed like paradise and the place to go. Including myself.

Shortly after the end of WW II, this country’s disciplined and unique cultural profile was still operational in America, our land borders were reasonably unmolested while the coasts were well guarded. I went through exhaustive interviews, tests (language, medical, background, education) to just obtain a 1-year visa for study in the USA in 1950-’51. Afterwards, in 1953 when I immigrated, the FBI also got into the act. And justifiably so. Since I requested to enter the USA it had every right to determine if it wanted me as a prospective citizen. I have never been offended by this process and still believe every immigrant should be so treated.

What Mr. Legrain in his wide ranging but shallow article omits to recognize is the fact that what made America so successful and attractive was its very special 200 year culture. Today, it is easy to ridicule the country’s fundamental beliefs and social practices but they were and still are essential in melding its immigrant population into a cohesive national whole.

America’s recognized generosity of spirit and action, its pride in improving oneself through hard work and decent behavior became legendary and a magnet for more and more foreigners intent on finding a way to participate in this opportunity. This was a winning situation for both sides, the country and its immigrants but only as long as the immigrants were desirous to assimilate in this culture as soon as possible, by learning the language and working hard at any job, just to be here and improve oneself and the country.

Two developments spoiled this critical condition. The 1930-ies Depression followed by WW II and our unique post war economic growth.

After WW II, this country’s admirable culture, compared to most others, started a slow and fundamental change. Exactly those aspects of it that might be considered most critical in molding millions of immigrants into a body of principled and dedicated citizens gave way to increased permissiveness and a loss of personal accountability. For instance, improving economic conditions slowly removed the need for children to earn money in support of the family’s needs or just for personal spending purposes thus continuing the appreciation for hard work and sociability. Newspaper routes and mowing lawns went out of style among a variety of changes, and many parents increasingly could afford for their children to have a good time, do sports and have “fun”, allowing personal “hard work” to become unpopular.

These improving economic conditions in the post WW II period slowly began to attract seasonal labor from South of the Border. Those borders were essentially wide open and certainly Mexico made no efforts to keep its citizens inside its own territory. As an aside and apart from very recent activities, actual border control was attempted systematically for the last time during the Eisenhower administration as far as I remember. The rest is history.

Cheap labor became plentiful, willing to pick fruit, mow lawns and do all kinds of other stoop labor. Most of it was illegal, because no one was watching the border and the immigrants became essential to several industries.

Eventually, well meaning people started programs to help these “immigrants” because they were “poor” in our eyes and particularly the children became objects of concern. As long as the total numbers of immigrants were low and seasonal, this condition, from a national security point of view was essentially ignored. But by the time many of those immigrants turned into permanent “visitors” and second and third generation offspring invaded our traditional social, educational and business landscape, it became clear that their own political demands and social preferences were creating national political, economic and social conflicts.

Today, many people decry the fact that we did not control our borders when we should have. And I agree that as a country we were too busy with other priorities for many years to realize the problem we were growing in our midst as a consequence thereof.

From where I sit, as a former immigrant who went through all the necessary checks to qualify for a green-card, this whole “illegal” immigration problem is a self-made dilemma. We allowed our own laws of territorial sovereignty to be broken with impunity. While it could have been prevented, possibly with harsh means in the beginning together with tough, bi-lateral agreements later, we failed to do anything effective.

And for a very long time, post WW II, if I had been one of those poor and hungry people living close to the American Garden of Eden accessible to the enterprising, I would go for it too. Why not? Apparently the people running the place had reasons not to worry about it too much that foreigners were waltzing in and out of the place at any time.

But now that we have tens of millions of Hispanic immigrants, a large percentage of which never learned to speak decent English, plus some 12 million “illegals” there is a hue and cry to turn back the clock. But that’s never possible and we better realize it.

If our American culture is to survive in the best tradition of its objectives we need to admit to having lost sight of some fundamentals and therefore make ourselves use the next election to choose representatives who have spine, understand economic fundamentals and honor traditional American values.

We made a very bad mistake years ago by neglecting our borders but now, in order to re-establish “control” of the current and future situation we will have to make amends to most of the immigrants now here and willing to work. Although it bothers me to recommend that “law-breakers” will get away with it, we did it to ourselves. We must pay the price, not those who took advantage of our self-serving carelessness. One might ask, are these people really “law-breakers” or just “opportunists”?? Who wouldn’t have done the same thing given the prevailing circumstances. We left the door open and they came through. Can you blame them?? We should blame ourselves and get on with it.

However, the door must now be closed and lawbreakers henceforth should be dealt with harshly. The Mexican Government should be put on notice that we expect them to take serious and effective measures to prevent illegal border crossings into the USA. Consequences of ignoring our request will be severe for those flaunting them.
So what do we do now.??

1 To make proper amends, we must provide a path to amnesty for current “illegals”, as of a certain date, but:

2 We demand that everyone who is here, legally or illegally, learns to speak and read decent English within 3 years or else will be repatriated without a second chance.

3 Kids will be required to go to school, all the way through high-school. Dropping out will be reason for repatriation permanently.

4 Offspring of legal marriages of immigrants will not be granted US citizenship even after parents have successfully become citizens. They will have to apply for that themselves later on at age 18. Military service might make a difference. Only children born from US citizens will automatically become US citizens at birth.

5 Spanish must be eliminated from all school texts and as a requirement of government and businesses to “facilitate” communication. Schools may continue to teach courses in Spanish, but only to English speakers as a second language requirement. Immigrant children will learn English and nothing but until they are fluent. Government will do away with all Spanish in government operations, including all forms and rules requiring Spanish as a second “official” language.

6 English will be formally adopted as the only and national language of the USA.

7 We need to make immigrants understand that a path to citizenship must be earned and will not be “given”.

8 Immigrants who develop a criminal record will automatically forfeit any chance to become citizens and will be repatriated permanently.

It seems to me that Mr Legrain cannot be serious about just opening the door to everybody who wants to come here. I question his statistics particularly because most non-hispanic immigrants need to come through Canada or directly into the US. Few non-hispanics use our “open” southern border. In other words, opening the door would significantly change the dynamics of new immigrants’ arrival here since all restraints would be off.

We would be overwhelmed and back to the days of the 19th century when neither passports, nor health certificates were required to enter here.
We would be inundated and in relatively short order would lose our American identity. The new arrivals, from heaven knows where, would likely coalesce into “tribal” configurations just for reasons of survival. Becoming Americans would be the last thing on their minds. But government help, a la Europe, would be expected and bankrupt us financially, politically and culturally.

There are billions of very poor people out there who would find ways to come here. Remember the Vietnam boat people! Mr. Legrain would be too young to have any personal memories of that. His is a very bad and very un-American suggestion.
America is a very desirable place to emigrate to because for a long time we enjoyed more personal freedom and the best opportunities for education and personal accomplishments. Although we are currently in the process of destroying some of these fundamentals, it may just be a temporary issue.

In my view Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Helman currently see things much more realistically than Mr. Legrain and their reservations should weigh heavily in our considerations to right this terrible immigration wrong as soon as possible, once and for all.

Frederik Engel

Connecticut's problem

2010-02-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

2/20/'10

Dear Mr. Powell,

Mr. Chris Powell's diagnosis of Connecticut's fundamental problem is right on the money, of course. You have spoken and written about the same problem persuasively and repeatedly and to anyone interested in turning Connecticut around, politically and economically, we know that there still are people in Hartford and the State in general who know what needs to be done and are willing to do it.

You are, of course, to be commended for your ongoing crusade to bring this issue to the general public's attention. So what does it take, today, to make the public really understand the critical nature of our State's condition and future?

Looking at the national scene we can only hope that the recent spontaneous activities of the Tea Party movement will continue to reconfigure the Congress in the Fall.

Is it too much to wonder whether a similar effort in Connecticut could not be successful in helping to secure the election of the right candidates in November? If Massachusetts can do it with Senator Brown, why couldn't we look forward to a similarly effective campaign strategy by Connecticut Republicans?

Or are we still suffering from the Republican Party's dire results in 2008, when we couldn't even re-elect Chris Shays? If so, I can only hope there is still someone who is willing and able to undertake this crucial and essential task to save the State from itself. I wish I was 40 years younger!

Please accept my sincerest appreciation for keeping your mind and efforts focused on the essential issues. You wouldn't be human if you didn't have some doubts about it all, once in a while. Let's just remember George Washington and Abe Lincoln when they were faced with more horrible odds. They had their doubts, I'm sure, but they were clear-minded, like you, persevered and succeeded.

signed,
Frederik Engel

Post Copenhagen thoughts

2010-01-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

12/31/09

Post Copenhagen thoughts

For many global warming skeptics the recent unraveling of Copenhagen's best laid plans might hold some promise that public media may be rethinking the need to finally grant them a greater modicum of attention and credibility.
There is no question in my mind that the subject of climate change certainly needs serious scrutiny by the media in general and it should be done by people well qualified to explain the fact that there is no catastrophic warming in evidence that would warrant exorbitant efforts and money to mitigate and achieve---nothing.!! It must be obvious to a lot of people in our modern Western world, so often so preoccupied with ideological issues of perceived greater importance, such as, for instance, environmentalism and its global warming offshoot or the injustices of having rich people as long as there are so many poor. We know that impending catastrophes sell more newspapers and TV time than an explanation to the public that the science of global warming is not yet settled.

But to me there is a much more important message to the Western world as a result of Copenhagen. It is a message that reminds us of what we are, namely-"corruptible human beings"! It is a message also that says that the social fabric of our Western society has been put at increasing risk ever since we decided to ignore, more and more, our appreciation for and adherence to the basic moral tenets of our Christian beliefs and political convictions.

It may well be, at least in my opinion, that the slowly dawning realization of an all powerful USA post-WW II had an intoxicating yet destructive impact on our social structures. At that point in time we could do anything! But what happened?

The fairly formal and certainly civilized mores of the day, 60 years ago, slowly gave way to the experimentations with women's lib, 2-breadwinner families, pre-schooling of little kids in order to create more work time for parents resulting, among other things, in more rapid maturing of children, a loss of good manners, a rise in self centered conduct together with "guilt-complex" pay-offs to children by parents for leaving them to fend for themselves for longer hours.

And this is saying nothing about increasing stresses and strains within families, broken families, one-parent families, "do-your-own-thing" feminism families and all the miseries this has caused the country since. Schools were never equipped to parent children, but many parents expect them to do so nevertheless, which is just an excuse by parents to blame someone else.
And blaming someone else has become the country's common coin in social behavior. When you cause an accident, try to blame the other party and on and on.

What's worse, reduced parental time with growing children is sensed by them intuitively as being robbed of something they need and which belongs to them. So we shouldn't be surprised that cheating, in school, on the sports fields, in business and in politics and now in science as well, has hit us big time.

I am afraid that, rather than seeing the issue of the cheating scientists, as an isolated affair, it really is part and parcel of our overall deteriorated western cultural condition. Looking at it that way, it doesn't take a genius to realize that political and social leadership needs to make itself heard loudly to remind everyone that such conduct will no longer be condoned anywhere in our society and will be punished severely. At the same time, the Damoclean sword of tort law should be sheathed in order to return to the simple, common sense concept that everybody re-takes responsibility for his or her personal actions.

The basic lessons here are that our complex technological Western world is unlikely to survive very long, neither economically nor politically without on the one hand, a dedicated top level scientific establishment that lives by the old honor code and on the other is guided by a dedicated political establishment that believes in the oaths of office it commits to for the execution of its myriad duties and responsibilities on behalf of all of us.

Although others may already have uttered similar thoughts I have not seen any other expressions along the same lines as the above, neither in the press nor in any of my other news and information inputs. But I believe it needs to be said.

The wrong approach to energy security!

2009-10-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

8/30/2008

Mr. John W. Rowe
Chairman & CEO
Exelon Corporation

Dear Mr. Rowe,

The article in this morning's WSJ about "Renter-companies" provides sad testimony to the state of political affairs in our once great country.

Playing a purely political game, as you have apparently decided to do with respect to the ill-conceived government plan to reduce CO2 emissions, may seem like a practical solution under the circumstances, providing Exelon with a bit of a leg-up compared to your competitors.

But since you know as well as I do that the whole government CO2 scheme is a gigantic boondoggle, you are in effect aiding and abetting very bad national energy policy for which all of us will pay dearly, starting soon.

Wouldn't it be very much more real American, for your company to have maintained your Chamber of Commerce membership and, together with all other members, bring to the public's attention what our government is trying to do.

The public by and large, doesn't understand the economic implications of most governmental actions but the way things have been going so far this year it seems quite clear what Washington is up to. Our economy can neither grow competitively nor in size without a constant, predictable flow of all kinds of energy. Instead, you are condemning us to the opposite result, shrinkage and more unemployment, etc.

Is that a corporate objective to be proud of? It seems to me that in this day all of America's industries must work together to prevent the slow strangulation of socialist economic thinking from taking over our splendid economy.

Sincerely,

Quo Vadis USA?

2009-08-18T04:06:00.000-07:00

Quo Vadis USA? 5/28/2006
Ed. 8/17/09
Ed. 7/10/10

In a hopeless and threatening situation, otherwise sensible, intelligent, hardworking people will believe almost anybody, when desperate enough and looking for a savior. Someone who appears to be a leader and knows what is required to get them out of their miasma. Think of FDR and our own USA, Hitler and Germany, Churchill and England and de Gaulle and France come to mind.

After America's succesful involvement in World War II, at considerable cost in treasure and sacrifice, it didn’t take but a few years before we listened to Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and their various liberal henchmen of the post-WW II macho environment, that the “good life” was everybody’s right and that the government would provide it. And it sure did. !!!

Unfortunately, during the late 50-ies and 60-ies, no one foresaw the insidious damage this "good life" practice would do to our country. The slow deterioration of our basic moral and cultural principles had far reaching consequences for the country. A growing permissiveness of well established societal rules and disciplines became popular and a sign of individual freedom to do whatever one felt like.

Increasing numbers of people did not realize that these changing moral and educational conditions and a diminished level of patriotism among the young, thais new “good life” was made possible only thanks to the sacrifices of previous generations. Sacrifices willingly made to preserve our unique national culture, warts and all.

Of course, this sacrifice should never be forgotten, it should be a permanent part of school curricula and kept current by editorial writers and authors of history texts to guide the public and the media to keep minds and eyes of our younger generations open to what happened before, and why. Unfortunately, what too many kids have been learning in school about history is a hodgepodge of disjointed historic events that frequently suggest only how badly Americans treated others in foreign lands as well as their own natives in North America. That's really brain-washing.

In my view, all of this has played a role in developing our current, somewhat unprincipled, self-centered and in many ways arrogant youth culture we only know too well. Thank heaven there are still a lot of kids and families who deplore the current conditions as much as any sane American does, but it is difficult to defend oneself against this tsunami of bad taste in advertising, national self-flagellation by the media together with the worship of multiculturalism, egalitarianism and “anything goes have a good time” dogmas of most of the educational establishment.

The fact that it is impossible today, politically incorrect as they say, to show the great contributions the USA has made to the world while too many other countries still have dreadful cultural and political systems, is an indictment both of our current ignorance as well as proof that maintaining a civilized society, in the western sense of the word, requires constant work and intelligent dedication to its principles. By slowly abandoning the careful preparation of young minds during the past 50 years or so, we are reaping a potential hurricane of confusion and loss of pride and purpose and character that could have disastrous national consequences, sooner rather than later.

In sum, the western world’s loss of ethical behavior, its current failure to “educate” its own children, the disgusting public presence of pornography in all its forms together with other corrupting influences has created generations of Americans who have no clue about the historic struggles of the western world with itself as well as with other political and religious entities during the process of trying to find a way to live humanely, decently and constructively.

It seems to be totally unclear to many contemporaries why we now have huge immigration problems, educational problems, moral controversies and political disunity in a time of war.

By all indications we are, if not collectively, certainly many of our political leaders and followers are, unaware of the painful lessons of history. We are just trying to live better, play more, let everyone do whatever he or she wants because there are few rules left, we are all the same bad Americans, with our unsavory culture, which every foreigner supposedly hates, yet many of them wish to emulate (immigration!!!). We have little pride in ourselves anymore so we might as well enjoy what we can today. Millions of people believe that the government will provide (communism, socialism) so while it lasts let’s just grab the fruit from the tree and have a ball.
Except, they do not realize that this fruit is poisoned.

Most of the media are generally ready to excuse every bad foreign behavior, except Israel. The USA and Britain created the UN, which is based on Western values. Sadly, over time out-of-their-depth “tribal thinking” third world countries were allowed to take it over. As a result, the organization is basically a sham. It's just a jobs program for thousands, mostly foreigners. Its leadership demonstrates an appalling lack of guts, sense, experience, wisdom or foresight and neither is its organizational talent to be admired and what's left is prone to corruption, good living and avoiding the instructions of the original Charter..
There is little honor among thieves, nor ability or morality. Why did we let this happen?

Because during the creation of the UN, good but somewhat utopian American thinking led to an organization where any country, good bad or indifferent could become a member. That was a fatal mistake. Membership should have been qualified, it should have had to be earned !!!.

The idea was based on sophisticated western cultural political principles. Unfortunately, so as not to kick our former Communist partners of necessity during WW II in the shins, the UN Charter became a deceptive cloak of legitimacy for every rogue regime in the world. Since we were then about to deploy our first A-bomb over Japan we might well have been able to control the USSR, although treachery here at home soon put paid to that, remember the Rosenberg trial. Hence with the cat out of the nuclear bag and the Soviets in the UN with separate seats for some of their communist satrapies, they made the UN a forum of effective anti-American agitation, corruption and intelligence gathering. The USSR obviously did not reciprocate in the spirit for which the UN was created. We should actually not have expected them to do any differently, being the rogue regime they were for 30 years already.

Lessons like these have been forgotten by most people, particularly those who did not live through the decades of their occurrence. So now we have a UN operation that is mostly a constant problem for the US and the Western world . Meanwhile the USA has to pull chestnuts out of many fires, at huge expense to the US treasury, for which even many of our traditional allies rarely express any thanks.

How can these lessons of history help us understand our current confrontation with the war on terror and the consequences for our whole western civilization?

Lesson # 1:

The first thing to do is look at the available facts pertinent to what President Bush carefully calls the “war on terror”. And he is right to do so, because the fanatic Islamist inspired terrorists constitute a smallish percentage of all Muslims. They do all the wanton killing and murdering, of their own people (apostates) as well as our soldiers and civilians. They are the fanatics driven by Osama bin Laden’s original call to arms in the 1990-ies

Bin Laden and his followers have stated unequivocally that they consider themselves engaged in a religious war with Christendom and that anything goes in terms of killing westerners as well as their own apostate people if the latter do not follow the strict Sharia rules insisted upon by bin Laden. Many western authors have touched upon this aspect of our confrontation, but we must not be in any doubt that they are deadly serious about it and have demonstrated this many times already. We are indeed at war and should conduct ourselves accordingly.

Lesson # 2:

Consequently, as a country and a key member of our large western cultural area we cannot afford to fight amongst ourselves, certainly not in the public arenas of Washington politics and media opinionating.

We must demonstrate unity of purpose in order to convince our enemy that we are, collectively, determined to defeat them sooner rather than later. No holds barred. They declared war on us and not the other way around as some of our unrealistic liberal citizens like to promote, ostensibly because they don’t like our current President, for instance. That's dangerous poppycock.

Lesson # 3:

Most of us do not really know our enemy and history teaches us how dangerously shortsighted we are in that. And contrary to this casual attitude on our part, our enemy has worked hard and is fully conversant with the way the West works politically and in some practical respects also economically. It is making good use of this knowledge by using our own systems, like the Internet for their own inimical purposes. They are also quite aware that significant groups of people in the USA, but also most Europeans, really do not want to fight anybody, for any reason.! We are thus clearly showing our weaknesses and if the terrorists know anything it is how to exploit weakness in an enemy.

While it is completely egotistical, utopian and fatalistic thinking on the part of many of our citizens who feel that way, maybe that could be explained because they consider wars and its associated unpleasantness to be the stuff of uncivilized people. Nevertheless it exists in the West and is being manipulated by the terrorists. You just needed to know how and they figured that out nicely.

More importantly, all this antiterrorism stuff interferes with the routines of many of our own people's daily lives and upsets their golf games and other personal activities. Well, of course it does, and they are right about that, but don’t these people realize that history tells us that it is really dangerous to ignore what is threatening us, possibly fatally?
It is essential that all of us should be willing to make some sacrifices when it is made clear we are in somebody’s gun-sights. How dense can we be?

Lesson # 4:

History will undoubtedly verify that President Bush fundamentally understood the nature of the threat better than most of us after 9/11. The proximity and horror of it managed to galvanize the country for about 3 months. But once past that point most liberal politicians considered further cooperation with a much detested President to be more distasteful and unnecessary than maintaining a unified political front in the eyes of the self-declared enemy and the world. If we had conducted ourselves wisely, we would have done justice to our responsibility as the free world’s undisputed leader and gained enormous credibility. Furthermore, we would have impressed upon the fanatic Islamist terrorists persuasively that the USA is not to be trifled with. But we didn't and it was a bad mistake.

Lesson # 5:

Unfortunately and because we demonstrated such political confusion and lack of unanimity at home at the time that most western countries decided not to participate in the actual fighting, instead adopting the same anti-Bush attitudes as our partisan Democratic politicians and liberal voters. This sorry performance on our part was not lost on the terrorists and resulted in very few countries joining us in this critical, dangerous and costly struggle to put the Islamist genie back in the bottle.

A divided nation will find it very hard to win this kind of struggle, because the enemy knows us well, knows our weaknesses and exploits them daily, whereas a critical number of Americans really couldn’t care less and prefers abusing our current President and his administration rather than putting their shoulders to the common wheel to regain control of our future.

Only once this fight is won, if it ever is, may it be soon enough to start bickering and carving up those who have the elected responsibility to defend our country, but in the current case it is the height of folly on the part of any thinking American to indulge in this destructive partisan conduct. In an earlier and more soul-searching time this kind of conduct might have been considered treasonous. Now it seems of no consequence, hence we are in many respects again an immature political unit, like 200 plus years ago, but, although still powerful, behaving more like a spoiled and irresponsible pseudo democracy than the resolute, experienced leader of the Western World and the Defender of Western Culture and the Rights of Man that we should be.

I asked the question, at the beginning, where we are going? I do not know the answer to it, but I do know that what we need desperately is another Ronald Reagan for President. So I fervently hope someone will show up in the near future to take our trembling country under his competent wings and set us back on our feet to the future. Nothing less will suffice.

Meanwhile, God help us, because we will need all the critical help we can get.

Chicken Little Obama

2009-06-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

OPEN LETTER TO Mr. OBAMA from:

June 23, 2009
BO5

The President of the United States
Mr. Barack H. Obama
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

With all due respect, Mr. President, but the recent announcement of the pending publication of your Administration's "Climate Change" report may be the beginning of the end of your once promising Presidency.

The brutal fact of the matter is that you are being set up by a large and rather fanatic coterie of "Greens", a handful of misguided scientists, the UN, a large portion of the Western media and many among our professional politicians who all want you to sign off on a wastefully expensive, completely ineffective, totally unnecessary and nationally destructive "plan to save the planet".

This deal is a scam! CO2, which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, has at best a peripheral impact on global warming. Instead of being a pollutant, it is the gas of life, without which nothing can live on this earth. The recorded warming periods during the past 200 years are mistakenly and irrationally promoted as proof that mankind's production of CO2 is the primary cause of this warming. To the contrary, these warming periods are very much a part of natural and normal climate changes, the latter primarily caused by solar brilliance and magnetic field variations. Consequently, there is NO cause for alarm. Humanity is not the cause of climate change.

Mr. President, if you would allow half a working day worth of your time to study the real facts of the so-called global warming issue, you would understand why there is NO PROBLEM. Then you could tell the country that it has been misled by some "over-enthusiastic" people but that you are going to spend whatever money we would have wasted on a climate boondoggle on more realistic and important issues, such as infra-structure, education, more conventional energy, and nuclear power plants.

I am sure you are aware of the political reasons and utter mendacity of the people behind this brilliantly conceived CO2 driven effort to destroy our economy, only because its proponents do not like coal, fossil fuel or nuclear energy and the way we have made use of it. In fact, they are motivated by this pseudo-religious fad which, if allowed to become the law of the land, would make you, Mr. President, a "Chicken Little" executive.

It is my sincerest wish, Mr. President, that you will recognize the threat of this alarmist effort to our country and our position in the world, for what it truly represents. I cannot believe that you would consider the world to be better off without our imperfect but unparalleled USA.

So please do not sign any legislation in support of it but instead call for an exhaustive study of all verifiable facts in support of the world's true climate status.

Respectfully,

Frederik Engel

Global warming hoax

2009-02-14T18:19:00.001-08:00

Energy Policy Held Hostage by Global Warming Dogma

Hans Labohm & Fred Engel

The man-made global warming hype is second to none. This hoax has survived for some twenty years and still features high on the national and international political agendas given the views recently given by President Obama. The subject still seems to enjoy broad support among some members of the scientific community, politics, part of the business sector, international institutions as well as the media and the public at large. Nevertheless, it is really a great amount of ado about nothing at all.

In promoting the global warming scare, the media stubbornly stigmatize carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Apparently, those who promulgate that idea have forgotten what they have been taught at school. After all, carbon dioxide plays a crucial role in sustaining life. Without it the earth would be a dead planet. CO2 is indispensable for plants, animals and people to flourish. Consequently, environmentalists should actually love CO2. But because of a relentless flood of misinformation about CO2, portraying it as the culprit of an imminent climate disaster, they don’t.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acts as the world’s unique provider of knowledge on climate change to governments. It has narrowed down the definition of climate change to man-made climate change, mainly caused by the anthropogenic emission of CO2 from burning fossil fuels. From a scientific point of view this is not just peculiar, it is fundamentally untenable.

Once every four or five years, the IPCC takes stock of the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the climate field, which results in reports of thousands of pages, that no policymaker is able to digest. Therefore, it also publishes a more easily accessible summary for policymakers of a few tens of pages, which is supposed to present the crux of the findings of the underlying reports. However, the summary is not a purely scientific document, but rather a political document, because it has to be approved line by line by people, who do not act as pure scientists, but more importantly, who also have to take account of the views of the governments they represent.

The IPCC consists of three working groups. Working Group I deals with the physical science basis. Working Group II focuses on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Finally, Working Group III reports on mitigation of climate change. It should be underlined that the Working Groups II and III, take the conclusions of Working Group I for granted. It will be clear that if Working Group I would prove to be wrong, all the work of the other two Groups will be pretty pointless.

The IPCC’s quasi monopoly position is quite unusual. In many instances and particularly in science, we value "second opinions" on matters which are of vital importance to us. But in the field of climate science dissenting views from thousands of eminent and well-qualified scientists have been systematically ignored by governments, even when they came from experts who are attached to the most prestigious universities and scientific institutions in the world.

Many national governments and scientific institutions which are dealing with various aspects of climate change, are working on the adjustment of their national policies in line with the findings of the IPCC, presuming that climate change will be the major challenge of the future. Like the IPCC’s Working Groups II and III, they do not dispute the outcome of the findings of Working Group I. They just slavishly accept the man-made global warming dogma and act accordingly. In doing so, prevention of climate change gets an overarching priority, which is supposed to permeate into every relevant policy area, thereby pervading every nook and cranny of the tissue of our societies and, ultimately, inducing profound changes of our economies and the life styles of our citizens.

Perhaps more than any other policy field, energy policy will have to bear the brunt of the ‘fight’ against climate change. For many years already, it has been held hostage to the global warming dogma, the latter seeking a transition to a sustainable future of the world economy, without CO2.

Traditionally, energy policy has been aiming at affordable prices and security of supply. Today these objectives have to give way to reductions of CO2 emissions, since climate policy dictates the promotion of solar and wind power. But these alternatives are far more expensive and far less reliable than conventional energy sources, including nuclear.

All this implies economic retreat, including a lower standard of living with high price levels for fossil fuels and electricity. It goes without saying that this would put the economy in a tailspin, creating even more uncertainty for the population and turn our current recession into an endless depression.

Why is it that people don’t resist this illusory climate behemoth? The answer is clear: 20 years of misleading climate propaganda has suppressed critical thinking about the issue, even among some scientists.

As things stand today, it is quite unfortunate that the great majority of the population has no clue whatsoever that the global warming dogma, as promoted by the IPCC as well as Al Gore and his acolytes, has been convincingly falsified. The dogma is just not supported by facts, observations and measurements. Consequently, it is belief but not science.

Perhaps the most comprehensive and most authoritative critique of the man-made global warming paradigm can be found in the report: ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’. It has been a common effort of dozens of eminent scientists, coordinated by Dr. Fred Singer, the well-known American climatologist. The report, which has been published by the Heartland Institute, can be downloaded from the Internet.

One picture can explain more than a thousand words. The graph below shows (i) satellite measurements of the worldwide average temperature of the lower troposphere, (ii) measurements of the surface temperature of the earth, and (iii) a constant rise in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. All figures are taken from official sources. The temperature curves look pretty similar. While CO2 goes up, they wobble up and down with sharp declines in 1998 - 1999 and since 2007. If CO2 (irrespective of its origin: natural (96%) or man-made (4%)) would be a major climate forcing, it should be visible in this graph. As a matter of fact, it isn’t. The complete lack of any correlation between temperatures and CO2 is striking.

Unfortunately, this picture, which defies the man-made global warming hypothesis, is sorely lacking in all ‘official’ publications. What would happen if, for instance, companies would withhold such a crucial piece of information in their reports to shareholders? They would be taken to court – and rightly so.

Isn't it about time to substitute facts for beliefs?

Hans Labohm is a Dutch independent economist and author. Together with Dick Thoenes and Simon Rozendaal, he co-authored ‘Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma’. He is an expert reviewer of the IPCC.
Frederik Engel is a retired American executive. He has an abiding interest in two of our country's most challenging subjects, i.e. energy and global warming.

How to throw away a good country

2009-02-14T18:07:00.000-08:00

Re: Geert Wilders 2/8/2009

How to throw away a decent world

Recently, a stalwart and historic member nation of the Western Democratic coalition, one with a long history of tolerance and common sense, decided to breach one of the most basic tenets of democratic governance, "Freedom of Speech". Consequently, the real possibility exists now that Western civilization as we knew it, may be in serious peril of extinction. Little worse could possibly befall our world if this were to happen barring our total physical destruction.

Regardless of the details of Mr. Wilders' exact offense, it clearly is questioned by the authorities on the basis of "Freedom of Speech", which is fundamental to the historic values of our country, the USA and the whole western world.

To impugn Mr. Wilders for making critical, offensive (in whose opinion??) remarks at the address of the many practitioners of radical Islamism is ludicrous and certainly illegal under our code of law. It may well be offensive to the extremely thin-skinned Islamic radicals but a few things are easily forgotten in the hullabaloo created by this incident..

The uninvited Islamic radicals who claim to be so offended, have made it a habit themselves to be offensive and insulting, critical and abusive to Jews, Hindus, Christians, Christianity and our whole western civilization for centuries. Millions of these people have freely and willingly migrated into western Europe during the past 40 years under the guise of various professed reasons or excuses but they actually have done precious little to demonstrate their interest in assimilating in our western culture. They seem to like using our social provisions and financial support structure but not our work ethic. They are well aware that now they have the right to worship the religion of their choice without impediment. But, with the exception of a few individuals they have just become a loud, insolent political force in many European host countries, the governments of which have not had the courage nor conviction to deal quickly and effectively with this threat to their own political and legal systems and their own stability.

Strangely, it appears that European politicians in particular seem to have lost touch with their own western culture of tolerance, hard work and respect for people to be able to live fruitful and peaceful lives. These politicians have become more and more intimidated by a group of radical Islamic interlopers whose objective is completely counter to what western culture is all about. These people insist that their host countries allow them to do whatever their version of the "Quran" demands of them which is to live under their own set of religious laws known as Sharia while ignoring the local system of laws and civility. They claim the right to insult anything and anyone who says or does something that offends them while they allow themselves the right to kill, maim, abuse and destroy anything western that gets in their way.

I believe we have observed this cancerous spectacle long enough in the western world to know that this must be stopped quickly or western civilization will have entered its last century just a few years ago. Let's not forget that if a cancer isn't treated promptly and effectively it will overwhelm its victim.

The experience, knowledge, convictions, spirit, commitments and sacrifices that have made Western civilization the magnet of many millions of people for hundreds of years, now needs to take a cold bath and come to its senses.

Except for a few courageous and critical Muslims who have sought refuge in the West
over the years to escape certain death in their homelands, nothing much of cultural, educational or spiritual value has emanated from the Middle Eastern countries for a very long time. If the western world had not discovered and developed their oil bonanza the Arab countries would still be camel riding Bedouins today. As it is, the current problem could become a conflict of cultures.

Oil has made all the difference in this conflict by financing the originally small group of King Saud's Wahabbi tribe radicals. During the past 7 or so decades their poisonous, militant, anti-Western and "anti-everybody who's not a Muslim culture of death" version of the Quran, has now become a major threat to our civilization.

Mr. Wilders merely used his freedom of speech from his high office in the government to say the obvious things: "enough is enough, we need to return these misbehaving, unwanted, disloyal people (disloyal to their freely chosen western environments) to the Middle East and brook no negotation of the subject". Europe, and actually every western country that has a radical Islamist problem, should do the same thing. We need to recapture our own cultural heritage before it drowns in a radical Islamic tsunami.

There may well be some political and economic repercussions as a result of executing such a program but the Middle East needs to sell its oil to maintain its own operations, hence a common ground can undoubtedly be found to make this happen. Once the radicals have been removed from the scene, the remaining Muslims should be willing to commit their loyalty to the Western country of their choice and residence, learn the local language and its social rules well in order to seek the shortest path to full assimilation and citizenship.

If we fail to accomplish this, western civilization probably will be in jeopardy. That's what Mr. Wilders seems to be trying to tell his landsmen but they are not listening very well. The same is true for other countries which need to pay serious attention to this issue for their own respective sakes. In sum, the worst thing the Dutch government could do under the circumstances is to prostitute its own sacred rules, laws and history by prosecuting Mr. Wilders for trying to save Western Civilization from itself. For shame!!

Now looking at the problem from Mr. Wilders' position to get his point of view across to the public and particularly to the media and politicians it seems to me that he should try to become more educational rather than confrontational. Facts, historical and political, will prevail where opinion fails. He needs to illuminate the critical nature of the problem of radical Islamism in the western world more fully and he needs to formulate an effective and credible response to it. That strikes me as a first priority, explaining in some meaningful depth the historic growth of this dangerous phenomenon. The background of Islamic radicalism, originating in the 14th century was a desire on the part of some fundamentalists that Islam should go back to its 7th century basics. The issue was allegedly first documented by Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Halim Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328) and subsequently taken up by the Wahhabis (King Saud's tribe) and others. The message Mr. Wilders is attempting to convey to the public is indeed a painful one in its consequences for our western world and therefore needs to be delivered completely and persuasively but not in the manner of a loud accusatory ramble.

Only solid historic facts and their logical political implications must be presented to make the public realize the dangers we are facing. Governments need to accept and prepare for the difficult task of permanently removing the undesirable elements from its midst and work to regain their own cultural inheritance. Failure to face up to these 2 requirements would mean much more than the end of western culture.

Sinister Plans?

2008-11-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

4/23/2008

Sinister plans

Just for the heck of it, let's indulge in some speculation about global political and strategic options of certain Middle Eastern countries.

If you are a country with a singularly aggressive and increasingly intolerant "religious" culture and have been living for many centuries at a mere subsistence level, what would you want to do, now that untold riches have been coming your way which finally might make the fullfilment of your fundamental cultural/religious objectives possible??

You are very intelligent and you want to find a way to overcome other cultures with as little physical damage as possible. You do want the spoils!!! That could very well mean a fifth-column approach of infiltrating your enemies and using their own political and economic system against them to gain your ends. Subversion in other words.

Subversion, in the target countries, but under the aegis of equality of established local rights and options. That's the ticket. Use the enemy's own laws, rules and weaknesses to your advantage and also demonstrate and publicise your own ruthless behavior in other places to intimidate the general population of those targeted countries.

Given time, you might so demoralize your enemies that they will succumb without much
fierce fighting and you will own the world.

Crazy idea??

It's exactly what the thinkers of the famous Muslim Brotherhood have been saying for decades already. The scary thing is that it looks to me, at least, that the Saudis and their allies while financing these militant groups yet appearing supportive to us, have also been playing a double game. What they are doing in effect aids and abets the ultimate plan of Radical Islam to conquer the world. Let's not forget that the Saud family are Wahhabs and it is the Wahhabi dogma that's driving many madrassas where children are inculcated with the self-sacrificing spirit of suicide bombing and terrorism. The Saudi family have been financing this operation for more than 80 years already.

Because the Western world is the ultimate enemy of radical Islam what have these efforts produced so far for the achievement of their cause?

Just review a few items:

I) Immigration of Muslims to Western Europe and now North America continues to grow.

II) Muslim populations in the West are growing at a furious rate compared to native populations.

III) Supported by their local numbers and in tune with how Western towns function politically, Muslim communities in the West increasingly pose demands on their local environments to achieve special arrangements dictated by their religious disciplines.

IV) Muslim leaders increasingly insist on imposing Sharia law on their own communities in defiance of established relevant western rules and laws.

V) Growing numbers of mosques are being built in many towns and areas and it is not really known what is being peached there, but we can guess.

VI) Muslim women are persuaded, if not forced, to adopt radical Islamic dress codes.

VII) Muslim women are intimidated by their men with respect to their duties as a subordinate species.

VIII) Brutal Sharia laws concerned with female mutilation are practised with actual impunity in western countries wherever the authorities do not wish to cause trouble for themselves. In effect Western communities are surrendering established law and conduct for an imported barbaric custom, thus making respect for our own western legal system a farce.

All these elements of immigrant Muslim behavior are part and parcel of the brutality of radical Islamic religious dogma. Thus does central radical Muslim leadership force acceptance of their barbaric behavior by many western countries and channel it into the formation of "in-place fifth column" operations, ready to pounce on their befuddled western neighbors when the time comes.

In parallel with these subversive developments, Islamic countries have achieved enough economic leverage on a world scale to be able to start doing serious damage to western economies. Think about it:

1) Supporting Environmentalism in the West has pretty much made the USA and Western Europe beholden to the Middle East and Russia for major portions of their fossil fuel requirements.

2) OPEC has been manipulating crude oil prices for years already and because it is such a dominant player on the international oil market it can raise prices without too much trouble. Tellingly, in today's (4/21/08) WSJ there appears a news item that Saudi Arabia has shelved the development of new oil fields indefinitely. This supports their policy of raising international crude oil prices nicely.

While the remaining Western oil companies also sell their oil at these prices it is only a short term boon to their financial condition. They are not in control of their own product pricing anymore, which is contrary to good business practice.

3) While Russia, China, India and Brazil are aggressively developing their own fuel resources they are also trying to capture control of foreign oil resources wherever they can. In contrast, the USA has shackled itself to the Environmentalist waggon of doom and almost given up on restarting new energy exploration in North America.

4) I am surprised that the Middle Eastern oil countries haven't made a bigger splash about the fact that the Western generated idea of disastrous global warming is really a scam. Satirizing the claims about doomsday global warming scenarios certainly would support further expansion of the oil markets and reduce respect by western populations for their gullible governments, thereby encouraging the ongoing rise in crude oil prices.

But such an effort may still come when the Middle East considers the timing most propitious. They are very clever and very dangerous.

So what are we going to do about this??

The answer appears God-given. We are going to take serious the renewed interest in the biggest oilfield ever discovered in this country 50 years ago already. The so-called "BAKKEN" area in eastern Montana and the Dakotas.

Our government will explain that no matter how fast we manage to come up with really competitive, non-subsidized, energy alternatives only much more fossil fuel will keep our economy running in growth mode for the next several decades. We will build dozens of nuclear plants, and construct necessary infrastructure such as the electrification of our railroads.

We will be able to disengage ourselves from the exploitative overseas oil suppliers, clean up our economy, regain our national selfrespect, re-educate ourselves in the civic virtues of the past and continue to be the country foreigners would consider their best bet to keep the world at peace. We will also continue to fight and eliminate Islamic radicalism for as long as it will take but we will more aggressively engage the people in those Islamic parts of the world who also want to be rid of it. That's the secret. We must again learn to accept that the maintenance of freedom is invaluable and from time to time costs precious lives and resources in its defense.

All these good things are within our grasp as a nation if we can find the leadership to get us on our way shortly. November is only 7 months away!!

That is what we should do.

Because it is the only honorable thing for us to do as the United States of America.

Letter to Senator McCain

2008-11-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

July 17, 2008

The Honorable Senator John McCain
Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.

Dear Senator McCain,

I don't know whether you ever were given the chance to read my June 23 letter to you, which also was in response to one of many requests for more funds. As I said then, I would like to give you my vote but I hesitate to make further contributions because on at least one important topic we do not seem to agree at all.

Thanks to the current $4/gallon gas price, the whole country is becoming aware of the dreadful job the government has been doing during the past 30 plus years of hamstringing our energy industry to do what they needed to do to ensure a viable, competitive energy market.

In my view, the government in its political correctness approach to life and the world, actually caused the current energy dilemma. Its unreasonable catering to irrational environmentalism and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) adherents has resulted in grievous harm to the country's infrastructural ability to provide plenty of energy at reasonable and competitive prices. Instead of exploring and exploiting the enormous coal, fossil fuel and nuclear power options at our disposal, the Government basically forced the energy industry to buy ever more liquid energy from foreign suppliers at prices over which they no longer have any control. More importantly, and I do not have to spell that out to you Senator, this condition is now seriously affecting our strategic and political position in the world. We cannot allow this condition to fester, it needs resolute action.

I am confident, that you have realized for some time that Mankind is not the cause of global warming, nature itself is. There is a lot of sound scientific evidence available to support my statement. You could do worse than inviting
Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, to brief you on the subject in order to refocus your position on this very critical issue. For at least the next 30 years we will still need to be a fossil fuel economy, whether we like it or not. We can no longer condone any selfish and feel-good actions by those whose personal interests run counter to our national and global ones nor can we afford a further deterioration in the performance of our economy and military capability. If a Presidential decree of National Emergency is necessary to fix this stand-off, so be it.

Consequently, as our potential future President I would expect you to state now, unequivocally, that you do not plan to start spending trillions of dollars on false and impotent schemes to solve a non-existing global warming problem and thereby wreck our country and its future. The hubris of the idea that mankind can control the climate is like King Canute trying to hold back the tides.

In my judgment, the USA's international posture has become seriously compromised by our inability today to act and operate in the international arena independent of "awkward" suppliers of fossil fuels. And that is to say nothing about the detrimental effect this condition is increasingly having on our balance of payments and the value and credibility of our currency.

To top this off, now that the public is beginning to realize that this is really another man-made Washington failure, our politicians can only come up with schemes to punish the industry even more, like really insane schemes such as cap-and-trade and windfall profits taxes.

Therefore dear Senator, my preference would be for you to stand up and proclaim the utter folly of these schemes. Just speak simply and clearly about the urgency to solve this whole dilemma in a practical and common sense manner. Tell the country and the world that you will get the energy industry unshackled and given marching orders to execute their own growth plans, with alacrity, while telling them also that the government, being the people's servant after all, will help and support all their efforts, instead of frustrating them. As a result, not only will you find a lot more people willing to make further contributions to your campaign but the dollar will improve and the cost of gas will drop. I am aware that you recently gave some grudging support to off-shore exploration, but that just is not good enough. We are dealing with our country's near and long term future and to have one we need plenty of energy. If we fail, there may not be much of a future for the whole western world.

I apologize for being blunt Senator, but I much prefer to see you come out on the right side of these key issues and conceivably lose, instead of fudging them in the possibly erroneous belief that you might gather more votes. What this country needs today, is strong, sensible and uncompromising leadership based on a clear voter majority cast on the merits of your approach to the job and your admirable and unquestioned dedication to the country's future. I think you could win this race.

Respectfully and sincerely and may God bless America,

Candidate choice 2008

2008-11-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

Here's an example of bias in our media. A few weeks before election day I contacted one of our national newspapers requesting the article below be published. I was told a response might take from 3 to 10 days. No reply after 10 days so I contacted them again reminding the editor of the time limitation involved. No response. But the day AFTER the election I received a reply telling me my request was denied, but I was free again to contact others. Neither a professional nor a civil response, just very political. So much for some of our high class media.
This is what I wrote:

10/21/2008

How to judge Presidential Candidates?

A year and a half ago I wrote a memo about what we should look for in a Presidential candidate's make-up, a) character, b) experience, c) personality and d) political philosophy. To date there is still no basic Presidential candidate profile the average voter might use as an aid to making a reasoned choice, something like a critical roster of fundamental parameters of competence and suitability.

I raise this issue primarily again because our world is becoming more difficult to deal with, our allies fewer, our economy more fragile and the political focus of the media very much on partisan contrasts rather than on the merits of the really fundamental problems the USA is faced with today. Our basic problems are all major in scope and potential risks to the country's security and economic well-being. In order to deal with these challenges we do need to probe into a candidate's real persona much more than we have in the past.

a) Character.

Senator Barack Obama, a relatively young enthusiastic politician, a relative newcomer to national politics with a fresh face and a matching approach. One who loves to talk and speaks well. What's more, what he talks about appears to resonate with many millions of people, thus building enormous public awareness of his candidacy and its aims.

His unwavering, unabashed and seemingly fresh and appealing behavior in often tough, competitive candidate selection performances, helped to make a great impression on the public, carrying him to the top of the ticket. It showed him to be resilient, persistent, even tempered and good at functioning in the national spotlight. All essential characteristics.

On the other hand, Senator Obama's earlier associations with people not known for their support of American values, cast a serious shadow over his ability to judge people critically, since good people judgment becomes ever more critical as one's range of responsibility grows.

His opponent, on the other hand, is a well known Senator with the reputation of being a "maverick" politician. An experienced individual though with a great and courageous personal record of service in the Navy and the Congress. He clearly has shown what his character is made of under the most trying circumstances. We know he's not afraid to stand up for what he believes is good and right for America. In this day and age that's a very valuable aspect to know about a candidate.

b) Experience.

Senator McCain has travelled a lot during his career and seen the trouble-spots our country has been dealing with several times, first hand. Senator Obama on the other hand, just recently visited the Middle East for the first time and cannot claim the personal connections or experience his opponent has with foreign leaders, our military leadership, our armed forces as well as the "government system" at large.

While Senator Obama so far has had little relevant experience in the national political arena it might be argued that organizing and funding a 2 year national political campaign qualifies as executive experience, which may be true. Although its focus is on self-promotion under the guise of eventual service to the nation makes it somewhat questionable. The President of the USA is its Chief Executive so it would seem highly desirable for a candidate to have some real sense of what executive experience is all about.

Senator McCain has had executive experience by virtue of his long Congressional career.

Neither candidate has a thorough grounding in economics although Senator McCain certainly has been through a lot of it during his Senate days.

c) Personality.

Senator Obama has an engaging personality, he appeals more readily to younger people, is closer to them and understands how to deal with them. His enormous popularity shows wherever he goes.

John McCain is a more staid and older individual. No glad-hander, a serious, courageous and experienced individual with a proven record in terms of character and objectives.
Also someone who is no orator but states what he thinks, why he thinks it and leaves the clear impression that he really means what he says.

d) Political philosophy.

Senator McCain's whole intellectual and moral world is anchored in the fundamentals of the American political experiment, our constitutional base and our Christian heritage.
He has studied our history intensively and seen enough of the abroad to realize that America is capable of representing Western civilization at its best and that no other country in the world has done more to try to get our fundamental ideas of individual freedom and economic success adopted by any other country. And really with stunning success to date, we might say. Unfortunately, with this kind of success also come unforeseen problems, national as well as international.

Senator McCain is thoroughly familiar with these events and has dealt with them for years. He knows what needs to be done and is on familiar terrain. A comforting aspect for the electorate. Since humanity has not changed in many thousands of years it is likely to respond to political and economic pressures and challenges the same way as it has in the past. Only experience can be a good guide here. Rash changes could be dangerous.

Mr. Obama on the other hand is an educational product of the post-WW II world, the politically correct and multicultural world. A world where one talks and makes allowances for whatever the other fellow may demand or propose. Everything is negotiable, even honor and reputation it seems. Nothing seems valuable enough to become nasty about, better to give in. Not quite the attitude of the terrorists who deeply believe in their own murderous cause and practice their beliefs at our expense. All in all, a philosophical concept that makes a lot of people very worried about our future as a nation. As one example of this concern, here's what Senator Obama said in Fayetteville, NC on 3/19/08: " I will end the Iraq war because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer". No one who has studied mankind and its history would make such a statement because it flies in the face of The President's foremost responsibility namely, to guard the nation's security. One can only walk away from a fight by surrendering and committing national disgrace once again and this time the self-proclaimed enemy will be on our doorstep sooner rather than later and the fight, to the end, will get bloodier than anything we have seen before.
Together with the Senator's penchant for bigger government it should make us pause and think before voting.

May be some of these thoughts will help others to reach a decision on the merits rather than on the basis of emotion and popular and media driven appeals for support of one or the other candidate.

.

PLAN USA

2008-05-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

PLAN USA

Action Plan for USA Energy Independence

It might focus our collective minds if we develop a Manhattan type project about energy independence. Call it Project USA, but this time with the government actively supporting it, not controlling it. Our energy industry is more than capable of doing what they have been waiting to do for years already. The primary objective is to rapidly increase production of fossil fuels as well as nuclear power, clean coal and any other energy source that could be competitive without government subsidies on the North American Continent.

A few things need to be kept in mind.

1 We must remember at all times that the doomsday scenarios painted by the eco-crowd are false and can be ignored.

2 We must remain sensitive to the long term need to use energy much more efficiently.

3 Our economy, as it exists, needs to be kept operating at full tilt on the conventional fuels of today, i.e. many years yet.

4 Currently popular and heavily subsidized "alternative" energy sources should be phased out or turned over to unsubsidized private investors. These alternatives are not the answer today. Only conventional fuels will save our economy, industry and defense posture, whether we like it or not.

5 To increase fossil fuel production and refining and to build many more nuclear and clean coal power plants and their associated infrastructure will take many years and huge investments. To get really moving on this project, permitting processes would need to be significantly improved and speeded up. NIMBY objections, except in extreme cases, should not be allowed to hold up construction plans.

6 It goes without saying that we must have more than adequate fuel stocks for our military, our airlines as well as our economy at large. None of these operations should be put in jeopardy because of short-sighted or ill conceived governmental edicts.

For those who believe we do not have the requisite fossil fuel stocks required for such a program let me remind them of a few facts.

The United States market currently uses about 20 million barrels of crude oil per day of which domestic production supplies 10%, with about 15% coming from our neighbors in Canada and Mexico while roughly 75 % is imported from overseas. Since US economic viability and growth are critically dependent on readily available energy supplies, the urgency of reducing our dependence on over 75% of our current expensive imports is obvious.

Relatively recent confirmation of enormous new oil finds in the Saskatchewan, Montana and Dakotas area, estimated at 500 billion barrels of readily available good quality crude, together with projected finds in Pennsylvania and Alaska and of course the large potential off-shore finds, add up to many decades more of domestic fossil fuel to drive our economy while we rework it to prepare ourselves for new energy sources after 2040-2050 or thereabouts.

The whole North American continent also has considerable sources of geothermal, hydropower, oil sands and gas, not to forget roughly 1000 years of coal deposits. This suggests the possibility from a purely market and economics point of view, that there may be merit in creating a North American energy market, benefiting an overall population of 450 million people.

For all these reasons and considerations, to rapidly realize energy independence is a justified and essential priority for the USA. And here is another reason we should do so.

China and India and Russia and Brazil are all doing exactly what I propose and with a vengeance. They know that energy independence is a must, politically and strategically and consequently are spending big bucks to grow their domestic options as well as acquiring as many foreign points of supply as possible. Currently and in contrast, our large and still growing dependence on foreign sources of supply makes us increasingly vulnerable to arm-twisting at some point, if not blackmail on an international scale.

Therefore a complete overhaul of our thinking is necessary to deal with the issue effectively, sooner rather than later. And it seems appropriate to do so now because America's citizens need to understand clearly what the stakes are in order to make the correct choices come next November's election.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the reasons why we have been fighting in the Middle East for 6½ years already, which conflict, by the way, may last considerably more time yet in order to achieve the Western World's strategic goals, it does not change the necessity of starting a major domestic campaign towards energy independence now. Only then will we stop sending our money abroad to buy foreign oil at inflated prices. Reducing our dependence on this off-shore oil will help to stop the further deflation of the value of our dollar. We just cannot export ourselves out of this mess because foreigners do not buy enough of our products and services to make up the difference. A real run on the dollar therefore could become a possibility. Not a pretty picture.

To recap, our economy is currently winding down, in part as a result of irresponsible financial operations by some banks and other financial institutions associated with the housing market, but also exacerbated by the manipulations of certain foreign oil suppliers. Our current economic and political situation is fundamentally a result of our national indulgence in misleading and unrealistic environmental concerns which have virtually stopped the necessary expansion of our own energy industry during the past 40 years. We are now paying huge penalties for our earlier economic follies and lack of appreciating the dilemma we were placing ourselves into vis a vis off-shore energy suppliers. The chickens have finally come home to roost.

The time for action is now!

National Insanity?

2008-05-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

National insanity? 5/27/2008

A comment made by our President, George W. Bush, a while back when he urged the USA "to get off oil", strikes me as bizarre, coming from our Government's Chief Executive. It was a poor choice of words, I'm sure, because we can no more "get off" oil than we can "get off" food. Then the news article went on to say, correctly, that we must do this because we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That indeed is the crux of our problem. So why haven't we done that years ago already and what has been holding up this parade.??

The relatively short answer to this question is the current political and media power of those who believe that Western civilization has been ravaging Mother Earth and needs to be stopped. They claim that mankind is bad for nature and causing the world to warm up as a result, although there is no convincing scientific evidence that this is so, notwithstanding the loud cries to the contrary by the "Earth-Firsters" who claim to know better. That's all sales talk.

But during the past 30 years or so they have found ways to impose ever broader restrictions on our society under the banner of saving the environment, including the air we breathe. Who can disagree with that? But what their efforts and claims really amount to and what is ultimately their final objective, is to make us severely reduce the use of fossil fuels, coal, nuclear power etc. which make modern civilization possible. This is not based on any reputable science, it is their deeply held but misguided belief, like a phony religion. Such attitudes make reasoning difficult.

Because the rich Western world has plenty of people who can dedicate their time and efforts to such a cause, "environmentalism" became the early weapon to this end and has since merged with the global warming crowd.

These environmentalists, you might call them the eco-crowd, have been extraordinarily clever and successful in thwarting our power industry's efforts to stay one step ahead of growing demands for energy for our expanding population. When global warming came along the eco-crowd were quick to steer the media and many sympathetic politicians in the direction of a less "polluting" and simpler way of life by severely reducing coal and fossil fuel use.

But, we now may have reached a moment in time when we literally put ourselves on the road to political impotence as a great power, since we put ourselves more and more at the mercy of our overseas oil suppliers to the point where the President of the USA has to pay visits to the oil Sheiks asking them to please open the oil spigots some more. And then he is REFUSED. If this is not embarrassing to a great country that uses its own military to defend those oil barons from some of their unsavory neighbors, I don't know what is?? And now the European Union, another one of our stalwart allies, is moving once more to force the USA to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Obviously there is more at work here than meets the eye. If we do not turn back from this Kyoto Protocol nonsense it will tie us down like Swift's Gulliver.

This, in my and many others' opinion is the real cause of our current dilemma. Because so much personal effort and time of all these "greens, media honchos, politicians and global warmers" has gone into this effort they will stop at nothing and do almost anything to prevent their losing this ball game. Only very strong political leadership may be able to put this genie back into the bottle! And the sooner the better.

Major parts of our western population have been thoroughly misled for years already by certain intellectually dishonest scientists, politicians and media figures. The public has been subjected for so long to one scary, doomsday scenario after another that it probably does not believe anybody anymore. It sits and waits for whatever to happen. But that is no future for a great, fundamentally good and powerful country to contemplate. We Americans must realize that we are being had by a big bunch of very self-serving, power-hungry people, interested only in driving the USA into the One World embrace of the United Nations.

We will be shackled, impotent and despised for ever. Is that why our Founding Fathers created the USA? Shame on us.

5/26/2008

Action plan

We must develop a Manhattan type project about energy independence. Call it Project USA, but this time with the government supporting it, not controlling it. Our energy industry is more than capable of doing what they have been waiting to do for years already. The primary objective is to rapidly increase production of fossil fuels as well as nuclear power, clean coal and any other energy source that could be competitive without government subsidies on the North American Continent. We have lots of all of these!!

1 Our economy, as it exists, needs to be kept operating at full tilt on the conventional fuels of today for a long time yet.

2 Currently popular and heavily subsidized "alternative" energy sources should be phased out or turned over to unsubsidized private investors. These alternatives are not the answer. Only more conventional fossil fuel will save our economy, industry and defense posture, whether we like it or not.

3 To increase fossil fuel production and refining and to build many more nuclear and clean coal power plants and their associated infrastructure will take many years and huge investments. To get really moving on this project, permitting processes would need to be significantly improved and speeded up. NIMBY objections, except in extreme cases, should not be allowed to hold up construction plans.

Presidential candidate qualifications

2008-05-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

3/12/2008

Presidential Candidates?

It seems to me that the world is still a dangerous place and getting worse every month, at least I haven't read anything sensible lately that seriously disagrees with that observation.

Assuming that this opinion, at least for argument's sake, is somewhat valid then it baffles me that there is so much discussion already about presidential candidate personalities without the benefit of some kind of plausible analysis of the world arena in which they and we will operate.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of agitation against the fact that we have been in the Middle East for almost 5½ years without a clear story book victory over the bad guys.
The only explanation for the fact that may be half the country would vote for withdrawal must be that President Bush has been unable to make clear to the public how high the stakes really are and not only in the Middle East.

It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from what could be a fatal dose of multiculturalism or something like it, because to our liberal brethren in particular, it seems anathema to defend ourselves against what is clearly a fanatic and well organized attack against western civilization.
For those who do not believe that this is so, I would refer them to any number of sage analyses published during he past 5 years that persuasively spell out what should be obvious to anyone who values our western culture, warts and all, over any other one.
(Try the following: "Knowing the enemy" by Mary Habeck, "The Foreigner's Gift" by Fouad Ajami, "Between war and peace" by Victor D. Hanson, "America alone" by Mark Steyn, "Islam unveiled" by Robert Spencer, to name a few).

There are millions of people in the world who cannot just leave us alone even if we do not invade them but who decided, for their particular reasons, to declare us their enemy. Under their own religious code of conduct and belief this decision gives them an untrammeled license to murder any Western citizen, particularly Americans, as well as all those who are considered in our camp, so to speak.

We have seen too many examples of the seriousness of their intent during the past 30 plus years and even more so during the past 6 for anyone to question that these people mean murderous business. This is a war of a totally different kind than the conventional conflicts of the past. Civilian populations are combatants in the eyes of our self professed enemies and we better take them seriously or, before long, you will not be around to march in parades calling the President names.

Therefore, unless a "presidential candidate" begins his quest by setting out a comprehensive and persuasive vision of how he sees the world today, there is no way the electorate can make an intelligent decision about the candidate's necessary qualifications.

After all, running for president is fundamentally no different than trying to find a promising and responsible job in any large organization. The difference is that the people interviewing the candidates for a job, whether in business, education or elsewhere, know precisely what the environment is like in which the job candidates would work to help solve some known problems or expand some promising opportunities.

But electing a political president of the USA is done without most people having a clue as to what a candidate needs to bring to the job because we, as the electorate, only have our own view of what the world is like and what the primary threats and options really are. Because a president must work in the real world, not some idealized or fictitious world, the electorate deserves and needs to know how the individual really looks at the global issues. Our national, and our cultural existence may well be at stake here.

Consequently, I would recommend that we all put our minds to work about how we can come up with a convincing analysis of today's very complicated world that would help us decide which candidate might be most appropriate for the job.

In my humble opinion, domestic politics, at this stage, should take a back seat to dealing with the murderous threat coming our way from the fanatic Middle East. It is time to put some backbone into our political and media world and make them realize this is no time for cheap politics, nor for power hungry personalities who have neither the stomach nor the capabilities for leading the Western world to a successful defense of our precious national inheritance, for the preservation of which millions have given their lives in the past. Unfortunately and historically it is again a time for testing our national resolve in order to defeat those who hate us for their own reasons and want to eradicate us and our democratic way of life.

Glib pronouncements by a number of current Senators and Congressmen that we must stop all this Middle East warfare and get out now, only proves that they are totally unaware of what the Western World is really faced with today. Only their willful ignorance and lack of seriousness is saving them from being labeled cowards and incompetents, if not traitors.

The terrorists are very astute in their ability to read the US political scene and from their point of view they have us half on the run already even though they may be seriously hurting themselves.
It makes sense for them to throw every last body into this fight to kill as many innocent civilians together with all military personnel they can right now, because it is a matter of faith on their part that the West is more likely to crack than they will. Hence, while we have a preponderance of organized military power at our disposal, we seem to lack the broad support here at home which would make a winning outcome for us more probable.

While it certainly can be argued that serious mistakes were made in the post combat phase of the Iraq campaign, a fully supportive media and Congress would have approved any promising action the President would have proposed. Instead, the Congress and large parts of the electorate decided to play for short term electoral gain, aided masterfully by gross Republican incompetence and weak leadership.
This is a shameful situation and of our own making.

The consequences of not getting control of the Middle East issue will have very painful and long-term consequences for the USA and the West in general, in my opinion.

So what kind of individual seems most promising to get us out of this box?

Surely a TV and Media personality contest is not going to do it. We have been lucky with the President we have because his instincts are correct. He knows WHAT needs to be done but the Executive and Legislative parts of our government have failed him badly.
Because I have lived through a lot of history including WW II, I have a distinct "déja vu" feeling about our current predicament. When it finally dawns on us that the enemy really means business, 9/11 being considered unconvincing to many, we will go all out and fight but we will be incurring much greater costs and casualties than would have been required if we had just nipped the evil in the bud while we could. We are putting that possibility virtually out of reach now because the existing, primarily liberal, anti-Presidential animosity and its disloyal and unprincipled treatment of our current Administration's war efforts, make success in Iraq and Afghanistan pretty tenuous right now.

It is a time for serious soul searching but not of the handwringing kind, but of national pride in the principles which continue to make our country the envy of most of the world and which principles need defending from time to time. challenging current generations to show their mettle and willingness to do what their fathers and grandfathers did for them in the past.

To believe that "we have a right" to live our lives any way we like is not only puerile selfishness but plain stupid, because the world will continue to be a dangerous place for a long time to come. Tall trees catch a lot of wind as they say hence we will continue to be in somebody's gunsights whether we like it or not. As a consequence we must be willing and able to defend ourselves whenever and wherever the enemy strikes, including pre-emptive operations.

In sum, the enemy is at our gates and we better stop arguing amongst ourselves and get ready to take a lot of unpopular actions to salvage our civilization and it's future. Most importantly, this is not the time for a Presidential candidate's popularity contest but a time for critical assessment of the individual's character, ethics, previous experience and an ability to project persuasive actions to win this war we are in and give the world another chance at improving, rather than destroying, itself.

Energy 2

2007-10-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

These thoughts are in reference to an article which appeared on October 2, 2007 in the Wall Street Journal about BIOENERGY by Juan Enriquez. The article is more a review of what has been going on in various laboratories and other places as well as a wish list of things that might happen, rather than a hard, practical roadmap to seriously improving our current energy infrastructure.

What is clearly omitted from the article is a statement about the fundamental strategic priorities the USA needs to maintain to guarantee its political and economic position in the world today and during the next 30 years or so.

Only currently available and competitively priced and readily available supplies of energy can drive our economy and defense posture. Consequently, we must first of all give top priority to making sure we (the USA) adequately control our sources and delivery methods of energy generally.

Unfortunately, shortsighted, though possibly well-meaning efforts since the early 70-ies, exclusively focused on reducing damage to the environment and as a result created impossible political and regulatory strictures on our conventional energy suppliers. These strictures in turn created a stagnating energy processing and distribution system, largely dependent on uncontrollable and frequently anti-American suppliers. As a result we have not only lost control of a major portion of crude oil supplies, we have also become limited in the amount of crude we can process after it arrives. Worst of all, we have become entirely dependent on foreign countries and their government-controlled organizations to set the price of crude oil at any level they want. And they exercise that ability with barely disguised glee to suck as much money out of us as possible while making sure our economy does not implode, killing their gold spigot.

While we have enough coal for a thousand years, we have mostly made it impossible for local suppliers to produce because of the downstream difficulties at powerplants that MUST clean up their exhaust acts because our politicians and Green People demand it. Simple as that. Nice for a politician if you can create these things without having to worry about feasibility or cost. At least you can brag about it and get re-elected.

Finally, nuclear energy was condemned the same way 40 years ago and as a result we are really at the mercy of some very unpleasant foreigners when it comes to energy independence.

So instead of building lots of nuclear plants, clean coal processes and drilling a hell of a lot more oil wells from Alaska to Continental shelf etc, we buy crude from abroad and put it in a Piggy Bank, a big hole in the ground known as our strategic reserve!!! I would have preferred more little holes in the ground and each one making its own contribution to our crude oil inventory and importantly, under our own oil company's controls.

This is a long preamble to the question as to my opinion about the article but I always try to put these kind of things in a broader perspective because unless you do so you have no basis for prioritizing anything.

While there seems to be some kind of unspoken agreement that we really should become energy independent, the popular media and political world do not have the guts and possibly neither the brains to spell out what that means in practical terms.

Because of the currently inordinate length of time it takes to plan, arrange permits and sites it means that we cannot do very much about it for a number of years, say 5 to 10 years before anything would be built. Obviously, this process needs to be simpolified and in addition all other shackles under which our energy companies have been laboring for so long, will have to be essentially removed. If not, we will most certainly become a second rate country before the middle of the current century. The choice is ours.

The idea of bio-energy is not new. Modern science will be able to work out some spectacular new ideas, but it will take many years and much money to bring them to practical applications. But this cannot be done by political mandate. It is our energy companies, which know their business, that should be given the task to make us energy independent, each in his own area of advanced expertise.

Within such a mostly free-market framework, bio-energy processes will be appreciated the moment they show real promise. That's the way good things always work. It wasn't the government that decided whale oil was a bad idea, it was the early oil and gas companies that changed that.

Basically, I have no problem with Mr. Juan Enriquez' article, but it is only an idea and wish list. Unfortunately, we need a lot of time to develop some of the things he mentions, test them in terms of production costs and end use consequences before anybody can really benefit from them on a large scale. Upscaling a successful laboratory process very often doesn't quite make it in the real world. In the mean time we do need to keep things rolling more conventionally, hence the urgency to expand all methods of enlarging currently available energy sources by removing silly restrictions based on misguided fears that energy companies do not respect nature. Poppycock. But it does need a strongwilled President and a responsible Congress to do all that, notwithstanding some howling from the liberal sidelines. The protesters have no responsibility for anything except for having created a culture of political delays and misinformation that could very well create a national disaster before long.

And that brings me back to my starting point that most of the article's recommendations are purely academic if we do not first of all work with what we now have to create the independence we need to provide the time it will take to move into better energy conversion and use patterns than we currently enjoy.

Unfortunately, that will take a lot more than our current political climate is capable of delivering in my view, so I have my doubts that anything sensible will be undertaken shortly. But there will be no end to people coming up with interesting ideas to produce "clean" energy, like windmills!!! Sadly, they all miss the point.

Political Correctness II

2007-07-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

Original date 4/5/07 rev6.

What really is Political Correctness?

Simply put, my definition is that PC is a miserable excuse for not calling a spade a spade. And particularly when it comes to human behavioral or performance issues. Its consequences for the quality of life in our country have been disastrous.

In order to deal with the destructive impact of PC on our American, if not Western culture, we should try to agree on a definition of it. Without a clear understanding of what this concept really means and what prompted it to become so popular in the lives of many people, we cannot expect people to drop it again. But some of us should begin by condemning its further use as the crutch it has become to hide their whining, selfish, unethical and unpatriotic conduct.

In my recollection, the root cause of this infamously bad concept goes back to the post WW II period, although the seeds of its birth may well be anchored in the years of the Great Depression. I believe it started in the 1930-ties when our valiant WW II soldiers grew up in a time when daily life was really tough for millions of Americans, there was real poverty, food was often scarce and expensive and unemployment exceedingly high.

Nevertheless, their youth was characterized by decent rules of conduct, respect for teachers, doctors, clergy and most politicians. They grew up in an economically unpromising yet disciplined environment. They learned right from wrong and had a good social sense of propriety.

When these millions of WW II soldiers came home in 1945/46 having survived years of combat, many of them were imbued with a strong desire to make sure there never would be another war. The GI bill allowed millions to go to college, with the result that after a few years, many of them qualified for jobs they could only have dreamed of aspiring to before.

The economy boomed, jobs were plentiful, many got married and started families. And they all shared the desire to see that their own children would have a much better youth than they themselves had experienced.

This noble and understandable attitude included, among other things, a more relaxed concept towards raising children. Maybe the famous Dr. Benjamin Spock had something to do with it, but having had little time to be loved and fussed about earlier when growing up, our new parents were going to make up for it with their own kids. Their new parental philosophy was high on love and permissiveness, ignoring to some extent the fact that kids are always probing the limits of it. As a result, innocent but basic rules of behavior and conduct were relaxed to the point where kids became adept at manipulating their parents and getting what they wanted almost any old time.

Whining, crying and shrieking were proven tactics. Old-fashioned punishments were discarded. No slaps on the butt, no standing in corners, no writing lines etc, etc. Eventually, prompted by changing parental notions of education, many schools followed through by relaxing their rules of conduct and later pretty much eliminated disciplining students except in egregious cases of misbehavior.

Unfortunately and starting in the 1960ties, when many of these kids started going to college, their attitudes towards life and society had become totally different from their parents notwithstanding a nasty, relatively brief, war in Korea from 1950-1953, which, by the way, did not dampen anyone’s spirit because in essence life was good and could only get better. Because parents had catered to and spoiled their kids for at least 18 years already the youngsters were used to getting their way, even if a lot of this was traditionally considered pedagogically unsound.

This tolerating, forgiving and excusing of bad behavior, of slacking off, of allowing questionable social behavior finally exploded in things like Woodstock rallies, draft dodging for Vietnam, the urges to experiment with all kinds of things from communal living to drugs, to terrorism (US Weathermen Underground etc.) to loose morality, loss of educational momentum and a lot of parental grief and all the long term misery associated with these senseless and debouching activities. It set the standard of behavior for a lot of youngsters for the next 40 years.

There was, and still is, too much self-indulgence. Bad language, sassiness and violence coupled with a responsive Hollywood apparatus producing more and more movies about rape, suicide, drugs and all kinds of other very unsociable activities became the new standard for everyday communication and learning among many young and some not so young people. We are on the downward slope of a coarsening civil environment and the bottom may not have been reached yet.

The spreading social and moral trends of this increasingly obnoxious behavior were not limited to college age students. It also started to poison marital relationships, affecting the traditional sense of commitment required for successful family life. Divorce rates soared and many children became victimized as a result. Single parent families have become common in many segments of our population, much to the detriment of the children. That in turn created increasing demands for special aid teachers in schools, who had to deal with failed parental responsibilities for which schools just are not qualified and should not be held accountable, on principle.

But there also came a point when it began to dawn on a lot of people that the painful consequences of this “life-style” of the “new” generation’s participants showed them often not having the strength of character to admit they made mistakes. Yet they mostly refused to make basic adjustments to their non-performing relationships. Instead their plight was politicized by persons of "independent" mind and spirit and before long the new mantra gained ground that no one could be or should be blamed for any of this. The right "to do your own thing", regardless of consequences to others, became the credo of the age. It was called "Women's Lib".

The basic issue here is a fundamental conflict between personal, individual aspirations to find out what one might be able to accomplish in the outside world as an individual operator and the traditional, almost hidden world of domestic bliss in marriage and family. Unfortunately, these two “modes of life” do not combine well without exceptional organizational and fundamental commitment skills on the part of the parent logically responsible for most of the nurturing needs of children. The opposite was more likely the case, leading to conflict, drama and often tragedy.

In this new age of both single and dual breadwinners pursuing careers, bigger houses and higher paying jobs, many parents, but particularly women, failed to manage work and family adequately. The result has been increasing numbers of children suffering serious behavioral and emotional consequences. Although it has been known for an age that small as well as growing children need a nurturing environment, the result was that many grew up in very competitive homes instead, where parents, if there were two, were always struggling with each other for time to spend with the family. Things were worse of course in single parent venues.

This pattern became so widespread that society has turned a blind eye to the misery this practice engendered. It conveniently forgets that it was adopted years ago for the purpose that everyone could do his or her "own thing", but now insists that it wouldn’t be nice to blame those parents although “we know it is wrong but we don’t really know how to get out of it”.

But much more than traumatizing family life was involved in this spreading web of cultural decay. Politics, media, up to a point business, sports, entertainment all became infected with mores that earlier generations would not have condoned, and for good reasons.
As an example, many people today “commit” to do things, like calling you back on the phone for instance, but forgetting or ignoring to do so. When reminded they just shrug and claim other priorities. This is basically very impolite, but today pretty much accepted as part of the more selfish way in which people deal with each other. In other words, the person or issue from whom you may derive an immediate benefit will get time, others are ignored until they are needed or can no longer be avoided.

We must realize that it is the PC culture that allows so many among us to get away with this atrocious behavior. It depreciates civilization. Courtesy on the road, gaming any system in the broad sense, cheating, whether in school, government or business is practiced with abandon and starts at an early age. And all of this as a result of the earlier tolerance of bad, selfish behavior, but now condoned under the cloak of Political Correctness.

Naturally, with increasing tolerance for poor performance, the quality of education deteriorated across the board. Today, many people cannot do basic math, they rely on pocket calculators, nor can they write longhand legibly, nor communicate succinctly. General knowledge about the world, historic, scientific, social or economic is at a dismally low level. Of course, this poor level of education makes it harder to find a job and forces businesses to do their own upgrading of yet willing young employees.

In school and college, it carries over into the low levels of interest in subjects like the hard sciences, history, economics etc. and certainly affects those who aspire to public service and politics. There are no exams required to run for office for instance. In a somewhat exaggerated sense: as long as you can talk fast, glibly and project a popular image, a lot of people are elected on those questionable merits and become members of state or federal government. But many are neither qualified functionally, nor ethically.

As a result, of course, we see a lot of bad legislation from self-serving politicians wasting and spreading billions of dollars around to make sure they get re-elected, yet who have little or no understanding of the fundamental problems with which the country is faced nor a sense of commitment to reduce costs and make the country work better.

Government has become an ever-growing jobs machine for the benefit of its participants. The public is taxed and burdened to keep the government growing while the country increasingly faces intractable conflicts that have festered for years, problems that will take strong, principled and intelligent action by legislators to correct. But then the country finds few principled and intelligent legislators to deal with them. Nobody likes losing his or her cozy government job for non-performance reasons so priority one for every incumbent politician by and large is doing what it takes to keep the job. Interestingly, about 95% manage to keep their jobs forever in this spoils system we call democratic government. On top of it all these non-performing people are almost immune to criticism. Personal pride in real accomplishments barely exists and honor is strictly among the thieves of government largesse. Ultimately I believe it's a consequence of what we now call Political Correctness.

Tragically, we now live in a social and moral environment where anything goes but where nobody, from high to low, old to young, left to right can be blamed for anything. There is a national loss of character evident in all this, particularly in politics, but also in education, entertainment and media. I am not at all saying that every single American is infected by this condition. Thank heaven there are many solid and sound families and citizens around us. But too many others operate in a manner that defies traditional American values which continues to put our whole country at risk.

When it comes to our current Middle East problem, this lack of character, a consequence of Political Correctness so prevalent today, has given us many political leaders in Congress who only know how to just quit, retreat or hide their heads in the sand. They neither have the guts to deal with, nor the understanding of, the fact that we may be involved in a fight to the death, with a totally unscrupulous, barbaric, suicidally dedicated and well financed enemy. An enemy not fighting conventionally, but in the darker recesses of our own societies, using our remaining freedoms to subvert us and if possible destroy us. A one-way declaration of war is in existence since 1996 when Osama bin Laden made it official. Why did he do that?

The fact that the Western world found the Middle East oil, developed it and then "gave" it to the respective local governments, creating a steady and ever growing flow of money into local coffers, has created no good-will towards the West. On the contrary, it has fomented and allowed to come into existence the most radical, murderous, anti-Western bunch of fanatics the world has ever seen. A hundred years ago very small numbers of these people existed and were considered weird but not dangerous. Today, a goodly portion of the proceeds of the oil wells has produced many thousands of these people, totally radicalized by their religious mentors and prepared to sacrifice themselves for the ultimate cause of destroying the Western world. THEY HATE US, period.!

While many in the West throw up their hands unwilling to accept that dogma of so much irrationality the jihadis plot, execute and destroy. It doesn't make sense, our people claim. Of course not, in OUR way of thinking. But in THEIR minds it makes perfect sense. And that is the fundamental and threatening difference between them and us. Hence the enemy’s decision to make us their supreme objective of hate and eventual elimination.

It should be clear by now that ignoring this real threat, or surrendering a battle to the enemy, will only make the next round in this conflict that much more painful and costly.
The current congressional insanity is a perfect example of the small minded, immature and shameful political conduct taking place, in view of the whole world, while we are fighting 2 wars on behalf of the whole civilized world. At the same time we are unconscionably risking the lives of many thousands of our military by shamelessly dragging them into the Washington “scape-goating” process. If this isn’t treason I don’t know what is. Blame Political Correctness for this!

“”We harvest what we sow. “” We now practice the attitude of trying not to criticize or offend anyone. But this attitude is coming back at us in a most unexpected and vicious manner. We know things are wrong but instead of standing up and admitting our failures and fixing things, which would be the traditional American way of dealing with it, we have politicized the issue because everybody does it! This way we can blame the whole country and its history for our ills. Like drunks, we wallow in self-accusations and blame ourselves for what our forebears did to the Indians, we tell every foreigner how much better his or her culture really is than the American way of life. And most foreigners have joined this chorus.

Not currently equipped with a decent understanding of our own, nor world history, too many of our people are unaware of the good and constructive things the USA has done during the past 100 years to save the world from its own self-destructive ambitions, for which effort we get scant understanding nor recognition today from many of our own people nor from a majority of foreigners who were the real causes of much of the 20th century’s problems. We should be proud but at the same time humble about these national achievements. Unfortunately, the Europeans still cannot stomach this state of affairs and go on trying to reconcile (rewrite??) their political roles with their own miserable 20th century history and are only too happy to have Uncle Sam to blame instead. And then we blame ourselves for that. Ridiculous. So much for not knowing one’s own history. Pathetic.

But now we are at a stage where we have developed our own fanatics at home, people who would love to start blowing the place up if they could get away with it. We already see this in more and more school shootings and other insane and destructive acts of violence against innocents. But also in the increasing numbers of plots that are being uncovered and squelched by our Intelligence agencies so far before they manage to do their dirty work. But the Jihadis are at it and sooner or later one or more will succeed. We harvest what we sowed.

When we stopped punishing people at an early age for bad behavior and allowed them to indulge themselves endlessly in the playing of violent video games, many did not mature properly and therefore continue to carry immature urges of destructive juvenile behavior into daily life, with disastrous and perplexing results. Surely Political Correctness, as we now call it, had something to do with it.

The USA harbors a relatively small, but fast growing, group of Muslim people, around 5-6 million, according to the World Almanac. For some time now they are being radicalized by their religious leaders in many cities. Increasingly, they are making outrageous demands for special treatments and special arrangements while demonstrating that they really have no intention to assimilate into our American political and cultural mainstream, which they now consider the source of all modern evil. We are the Great Satan after all. You might ask, why do these people come here then? Conceivably, the ones that came earlier really wanted to get away from their own barbaric environment but today have been turned into silent fifth-column groups under new leadership by late arriving radicals. That is probably why today they show so very little respect for the country where they currently live, but are forever complaining and whining about the fact that they are not being treated properly etc.

In the USA, they certainly do not demonstrate against radicals in their midst, probably because they are just plain scared to stand up and be counted in fear of reprisals by these new radicals. Fine situation we are allowing to grow here and fester in our own back-yard.!!!

Instead of pulling the plug on this growing and insulting problem there are still people among us who cater to terrorism at home and condemn the violence in Iraq.
So what do we do? Wimps that we are, we change the school menus, we provide all kinds of special options for them and on and on. WHY? Because we are already intimidated by the barbaric, brutal manners they display in the world and are afraid they might do something hideous to us right here at home. This is shameful and irresponsible behavior on the part of our spineless state and federal governments.
But it seems permissible in the world of Political Correctness.

Question? When do we draw a line in the sand and tell these radical Islamic people, who are really guests here, that we like our culture, that we will not change it for any foreign group of complainers and if they do not behave, their visas will expire, after which they will be expelled if they haven’t left already.

Of course, there would be condemnations from pseudo allies and all kinds of Middle Eastern regimes and mobs wherever, as well as from local do-gooders, but it is time to call a spade a spade! We really must stop appeasing these offending and insulting cultural barbarians and accept the consequences. WE are not making the world more dangerous to live in, THEY are !!!!

Just to have to make this point, already demonstrates the sorry state we are in, fearful of consequences of criticizing foreigners who, in our own country, are beginning to tyrannize our society with their inappropriate demands while threatening us with dire consequences if we do not immediately accept their dictates.

This is spineless surrender and of a piece with all those Members of Congress who want to cut and run from the Middle East.
Who else is going to stop these maniacs if we don’t. The Europeans? The Russians? The Saudis? Give me a break.!

But in the end do blame Political Correctness for our ills.

Global warming

2007-06-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

February 2007
Global warming

Quote: "The scientists said global warming was very likely caused by human activity".

A phrase that allegedly translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that it is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels. It was the strongest conclusion to date, by a number of dedicated proponents, making it "politically incorrect" to say natural forces may well be to blame.

This sentence shows up as a news item in one of our local newspapers and to my mind demonstrates perfectly the limited horizon these scientists seem to have in trying to understand what really drives the phenomenon now popularly called "global warming".

The same scientists all appear biased towards finding human made evidence that might contribute to the problem of global warming, if it really is a problem. They put the blame squarely on the economic and social exuberance of Western Civilization as the sole culprit. They appear to have a personal agenda, which colors their views and politicizes their opinions. But sadly, if not mischievously, there seldom is any mention of the overall energy changes in our solar envelope which, while certainly not man-made, could nevertheless have a critical impact on climate change.

Instead, the subject is invariably limited to the subject of GHG, greenhouse gases, of which CO2, carbon dioxyde, would be the best known contributor, although the primary one really is water vapor. To be sure, there is more carbon dioxyde in the atmosphere today than 100 years ago but now it is claimed that the resulting increased temperature, at the earth's surface and in the atmosphere, ipso facto is the result of wasteful western economic and social behavior. Supposedly it will have disastrous results unless we cap greenhouse gases, specifically CO2, very drastically and soon.

What this self-fulfilling reasoning actually does, apart from confusing the public at large, is to reduce the economic and thereby, military and political power of the United States of America. But what is most disturbing in our hi-tech world is the display of allegedly clear-thinking scientists endorsing the causes of climatic changes based on half-baked climatic science. Because, once this statement has been made, rational thinking is usually thrown overboard and doomsday scenarios follow and proliferate, every one of which with the most dire consequences for mankind. Lastly, these proponents drive another nail into the coffin of western capitalism and its greed culture, by indicting anybody driving SUV's, pleasure boats and airplanes and claiming that those are the ultimate causes of all the misery in the world. The USA is really the biggest bad boy of them all.

This completely politicized "discourse" on the subject of global warming has taken on a life of its own and cannot be gainsaid by any rational commentator, it seems. Most politicians and media have fallen for this junk-science based nonsense and are now agitating to have us use subsidized corn based ethanol, drive small cars again and generally go back to living the way our grandparents did 100 years ago.

Today, our doomsday proponents ignore any remaining open questions because enough media noise has now been created that looking at the facts is a waste of time. Enough political momentum has been generated to start organizing for the action phases of reducing the use of fossil fuel consumption as fast as possible by getting state and federal governments to mandate more fuel efficient vehicles of all kinds, to mandate immediate improvements in the operation of coal fired power plants, to disallow any further drilling and exploration for oil in North America and further mandate enormous subsidies for renewable energy such as solar, wind and wave. And finally, to raise the price of a unit of energy significantly, whether kwh of electricity, gallons of propane or barrels of crude and to continue to deny the need for building more nuclear power plants.

Our marvelously efficient national market, which has proven to be the only agent capable of arranging the adequate supply and demand for products needed by 300 million Americans and many foreigners, will go into a tail spin resulting in more government mandates that will have ever more deleterious effects. While any rational person would call this a ridiculous scenario, which it is of course, it is nevertheless a dogmatic belief by all our anti-Americans and they will do anything to realize their "Alice in Wonderland" dreams.

So, as a result of all this hullabaloo we are urged to take our economy down by several notches to help save the world and all the poor people in it. How they would be so much better off without our helping with every catastrophe they experience is not explained. Our fanatical and liberal anti-American friends and citizens will do anything to bring down this bad and wasteful American Empire and its Middle East war-making.
So now that we know what drives the people pushing for this horrible scenario lets take a step back and consider.

Because THERE REALLY IS ANOTHER SIDE TO THIS COIN.

Nobody denies that there may well be a measure of global warming, but CO2 is not the culprit. That subject has been exhaustively studied and a cause and effect relationship is only speculative, not proven.
Well, my personal view is that there are 2 plausible causes:
1 global heat balance variations
2 solar and space energy flux variations

1 As to the first possibility, we all know about the El Nino problem and its associated impact on certain weather patterns, storms and marine life changes etc. Scientists admit they do not really understand the ENSO phenomenon, the El Nino Southern Oscillation issue and no two El Nino seasons are ever the same. While we know a lot about what happens to the air once Pacific Ocean surface temperatures increase, I have seen no serious treatments of the question about what might conceivably drive this phenomenon. Could it be variations in the heat dynamics of the earth's core?

If one realizes that the earth's crust is really paper thin, may be 20 miles on the average and ocean bottoms very much less so, on the order of may be 3 to 5 miles at the deepest points of the Pacific Ocean, then heat penetration from the core to the cold water of the deep ocean becomes plausible. We are talking here of very large heat fluxes over lengthy periods of time but on a somewhat random basis with only a marginal opportunity for prediction as long as we do not have appropriate monitoring equipment in place.

When you think about it and because it is a Pacific Ocean event, why would it be far fetched to investigate the source of its heating as coming from some of the deepest oceanic trenches, like the famous Mariana trench, 36,000 feet, or about 7 miles, deep. Much work on this subject has been done for years already by scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz, under Professor Lay. Others, like Hamlund in Paris, Garnero in Arizona and Thorne in Alaska have made significant contributions.

There is much to be learned still about how the various cores of our globe interact and what effect this has on the surface. But there is no disagreement that we are looking at a huge heat machine some of the energy of which finds its way to the earth's surface. Those heat incursions on our surface very likely will be found where the crust is thinnest, which is in a number of places in the Pacific Ocean basin. Question: why could this not drive the El Nino storms?

Furthermore, the somewhat irregular heat or energy fluxes from the core to the surface might also provide an answer to the glacier melting dilemma. Some are melting and some are getting thicker. Only an irregular energy exchange, not tied to one uniform global or solar source, could be considered a plausible candidate. Hence, more attention should be paid to our earth's core physics and dynamics.
The earth's crust may well be thinner in places where the ocean is very deep than elsewhere, hence from time to time the ocean floor in a variety of places is likely to warm and cool as a result of the variations in the effective hot magma flux in the outer core of our globe. The energy imparted at certain times to the ocean's water is possibly not much on the level of solar energy exchanges, but it may well be quite adequate to ruin our weather patterns for a while, with all kinds of consequences.
If the magma energy release to the earth's surface is increasing for a while, as it probably has done many times in the past, we should attempt as quickly as possible to find ways to measure and monitor it and extrapolate its consequences for the weather and heating phenomena we observe on the earth's surface today. One of these consequences may well be the gradual increase of the earth's surface temperatures, only a few degrees will really upset a lot of things, but unfortunately, the phenomenon is still hard to track and measure.
A quick review of Pacific Ocean temperature research (ENSO, TONG-TAO programs) during the past 20 or so years, suggests that a good understanding of the basic Pacific Ocean surface dynamics is in hand. But thorough and ongoing monitoring of deep ocean heat sources does not seem to be available at this time. Notwithstanding the fact that particularly the central Pacific Ocean has very deep troughs with permanent heat vents together with marine life peculiar to that environment, it makes little sense, in my opinion, to expect only obvious heat sources to be possible causes. Significant sections of the ocean's floor might warm up a number of degrees Centigrade for months, if not years, to drive warm water plumes to the surface with results now well documented.
If it can be made plausible that this could be the actual cause of the El-Nino problem, then why couldn't a slightly more intense phenomenon be the real cause of our planet's current "global warming" issue??

2 The second possible, and possibly more probable, cause of "global warming" may be related to the varying energy exchanges between the earth and the sun as well as other energy fluxes coming to us from outer space. While the earth is sending back energy into space at night it should not be lost sight of as atmospheric and surface conditions slowly change.

Paraphrasing some comments from a recent report on global warming it had this to say: "What causes variations in Earth temperature? The answer may be fluctuations in solar activity. Comparing 11-year moving averages of surface temperatures during the period of warming known as The Little Ice Age with solar magnetic cycle lengths for the same period show that even relatively short, half-century-long fluctuations in temperature correlate well with variations in solar activity. When the cycles are short, the sun is more active, hence brighter, and the earth is warmer. These variations in the activity of the sun are typical of stars close in mass and age to our sun".

Until we really understand the totality of global energy exchanges between the earth's surface, from inside our globe as well as from space, we are ill advised to conclude that we already understand enough to take costly actions that could be disastrous economically and fruitless environmentally.

Many competent and dedicated people have been working hard to throw light on a complex subject which affects us all. As with so many difficult to understand subjects in the public domain, too many politicians and the media end up exploiting them to show how concerned and enterprising they are as soon as the subject takes on a political life of its own.

This is gambling with the country's future, economically, culturally and politically in the worst way, not to say anything about the failure of some people in power to avoid critical thinking.

Fifth Column Crusades

2007-04-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

April 2007

Fifth Column Crusades

Recent information that a number of schools are dropping the teaching of the history of the Crusades from their curricula, is very disturbing.

The ostensible reason for doing so has been given as the need to avoid offending pupils, and their families one must presume, who are Muslims. The cause for this decision ostensibly is based on the infamous idea of Political Correctness as are so many other self-destructive decisions and behavior patterns.

To me this kind of decision is very wrong and counter-productive for several fundamental reasons.

1 Teaching history is essential to humanity's future existence because it allows us to avoid committing the same mistakes made in the past that led to murder and mayhem, instead of to a better world.

2 If omitting the teaching of a distinct part of history is decided upon because it may offend a given group, it is then bound to offend another group or groups in consequence.

3 Such selective teaching very likely will create a new animus between the people involved rather than a better understanding of humanity's common interests in promoting a civilized, educated world, where real tolerance is practiced routinely and not dogmatically.

In my view, Islam's inherent lack of tolerance goes back to a socio/religious concept of life and community that prevents the male individual from having to struggle while growing up, in our sense of that concept and as a result fails to become a really mature and civilized person. This process also fails to teach them how to conduct oneself confidently and respectfully towards others. Instead, Islam imposes a group concept of behavior and thought that allows no individual variants. The results, predictably turn out to be more Spartan than Greek in their historic consequences.

There have always been people who tried, and often succeeded, to take charge of their human environment and while achieving political control, making themselves dictators and despots in the process. By and large, that kind of arrangement discourages the development of honorable and mature individuals because to survive, the intelligent and enterprising citizens need to follow the "leader". To do otherwise would lead to very unhappy results. We have seen too many instances of this all through history.

Whereas Christianity developed as a mission and a religion of peace and forgiveness 2000 years ago, Islam was promulgated by the sword allowing its followers no choices at all. It required total submission and no doubts permitted. A very poignant companion of this arrangement was the automatic political control it conferred on its leadership.

Even though tolerance is mentioned in the Quran, it is always qualified and practiced conditionally, if at all. More distinctly, it did not foster open minded intellectual growth by raising questions, by reviewing the real world together with the history of its own religious origins. Sadly, this uncritical approach has thus far failed, in some parts of the world, to develop Muslim communities of mature, tolerant, wise and inquisitive people.
We all know, that Christians, notwithstanding their illuminatingly poignant New Testamental religious base, have committed horrible things during the past 2000 years, but by and large this very painful struggle with itself and its history has created a well understood, practical and admirable mode of civilized life for those who are interested in that, which in turn has led to great prosperity for more people than ever before in history.

Unfortunately, the very prosperity of Western civilization also developed some significant moral decay in its own ranks, which together with an undesirable tendency toward living the so-called "good life", has made many people lose sight of the sacrifices that created this human paradise in the first place. There are also many people who see the need to take a step back realizing that this selfishness on the part of many "modern" people is undermining the very structure that allows us to have our differences without reverting to "fisticuffs". Contrary to those who claim that religiosity is completely passé, mankind will fail to become more civilized by ignoring our Biblical admonishments. We are not wise, nor humble enough, to steer our own course to paradise.

But against this background of the modern western world's condition and status, modern Islam is mostly at war with itself. A growing number of its own people are chafing under the narrow minded, dogmatic, intolerant, religious blanket they must accommodate. In many areas education is limited to Quranic indoctrination by a well financed "clergy" interested only in their own political power and the destruction of anyone and anything they consider an enemy, which is basically the rest of the non-Muslim world. Tolerance is not at all in their daily vocabulary when dealing with infidels.

The current international confrontation between militant Islam, Jihadism, and the tempting West in particular, is not just a sudden reaction of disgust, intolerance or envy, but is the final explosion of super intolerant behavior instigated as long ago as the 13th and 14th century by the Islamic intellectual Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halim Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). This strain of barbaric and fanatic pseudo-religious behavior finally has come into its own in the late 20th century because of lavish financing of such single-minded Islamic adherents as the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. They have embarked on what they believe to be the right thing for them to do, namely to subjugate the whole world to the dictates of their Allah. They now have the financial wherewithal which, coupled with their "death cult" may achieve this result having absolved themselves from any compunction about killing, murdering or maiming as many infidels, men, women and children as they can during the pursuit of this "holy" objective.
For us Westerners, not to take this effort seriously would be pure folly and guarantee the end of our civilization.

Western civilization, anchored as it is in Christian principles of ethics and morality, provides strong incentives for individual and community growth and tolerates dissent about anything. This often creates conflicts of various kinds but more fundamentally it encourages an enormous societal dynamism where individuals can reach for their own stars. In contrast with this Western way of life, many in the Muslim world hate us because they are torn between their desire to adopt many of our best societal features but cannot, for fear of physical, social and/or economic reprisals in their own communities. One is just not allowed to experiment with anything that conflicts with the letter as well as the spirit of increasingly archaic Quranic teachings.
Male and female psychological frustrations, as a result of severely restrained opportunities to grow up in a more natural coed world, have led to an utterly chauvinistic male dominated society where men do not really trust themselves in their relations with the other sex, resulting among other things, in the female part of their society hiding in head to toe garments showing eyes only together with denying their women education, travel and participation in their own society, outside the home.

Because they do not know how to ease up on their religious strictures and dogmas, a growing number of young Muslims try to compensate for this by opting for Jihad in order to remove the intolerable temptations posed by the West and the rest of the world.

The bottom line is, that because they cannot make themselves change, they will try to make everybody else become as intolerant and dogmatic as they are. They are very serious about this and if we consider this ridiculous and irrational we are right, because it fundamentally is. But the Jihadis consider themselves the real believers in their dogmas and if we cannot regain enough confidence in our own vastly superior civilization to realize that we must bring ourselves to the point where we will take effective action to eradicate this threat and accept whatever sacrifice it will require to survive as a civilization, the Islamists will subjugate us. No question about that because it is their one and only objective in life. And they are more than ready to sacrifice themselves for this purpose whenever they are told to do so.

By the way, contrary to what many younger Muslim people are told to believe, the Western, American civilization has done more good in the world than any other.

Therefore, everyone in the West must become familiar with this Islamic threat to our society and that means studying history, all of it.

2 Right now our children are being taught that Christians were the invaders of Muslim lands during the Crusades. It is true that at that time the former Christian Holy Lands were occupied by Muslims. But it must also be understood that it was the sword wielding Muslims who, under the banner of a militant Islam, ravaged and conquered the lands around the Mediterranean all the way to northern India from the 7th through the 11th century.
Large segments of this area had been Christian for hundreds of years, including the area we now know as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and even parts of Arabia.

Because Christians have a much older, by more than 600 years, claim on the area from a religious point of view, and because of the many early Christian historic sites and monuments in that part of the world, Pope Urban II, in 1095 urged the West to mount a retaliatory campaign in an effort to regain control over the region, restoring Greek-Orthodox control over Asia Minor (Turkey) and Catholic Christian control over the Holy Land. This effort succeeded for almost 100 years until Saladin, a Kurdish Muslim ruler defeated the Christians in 1187. A number of additional crusades were launched in succeeding years till 1291, but the area was never returned to Christian control.
Hence, to call the Crusaders invaders is factually incorrect and no excuses need to be made to the Muslim world about it. They were the invaders, not the Christians.
Only when we do not know the facts of our own history can someone else gain an unfair advantage.

As things are, unfortunately, most of us really do not adequately understand the issues, so our current attitude towards Muslim complainers is to let them have their way rather than to tell them that since they desired to immigrate into the USA and we accepted them on that basis, we expect them to learn the language, to learn the rules of daily life and as long as they are guests in our country, they must abide by those rules and not complain. But if, after 5 years they do not succeed to qualify for citizenship, their visas should be cancelled and told to leave promptly. Under no condition should we allow Muslim guests or immigrants to pose demands on their US social environments that would in effect set them apart as a non-American group of outsiders, uninterested in American society as such. In that case they would have borne false witness to the immigration authorities about their intentions for coming here. In the latter case they should be expelled immediately.

Hence, we should not allow those people to set up their own schools unless they teach a curriculum of which we approve. But in reality these people do not wish to assimilate. They wish to ignore our society and only use the social and political benefits it bestows on immigrants for purposes quite contrary to our national benefit. In effect they are creating the beginning of 5th-column activities right under our own noses.

So when you ask me, am I offended by these shortsighted decisions made by school boards??
You bet I am.

What is your view of terrorism?

2007-03-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

3/17/2007

What is your view of terrorism?

Terrorism, as we have increasingly experienced it during the last 30 years or so, is a deliberate and murderously focused effort to destroy Western Civilization.
First of all, for this statement to be credible one has to become thoroughly aware of what has happened within Sunni Islam since the 19th century and before. Actually, the 14th century Islamic scholar, Ibn Tamiyah, was the first intellectual to formulate the need for Muslims to go back to the strict roots of their religion by mercilessly exterminating anyone who did not adhere precisely to the doctrines of their faith as promulgated by Mohammed and his followers.

It is the conviction of Tamiyyah as well as later Islamic scholars, such as Masuddi, Hassan-al-Banna, starter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammed-al-Wahhabi purifier of the Sunni sect and the most recent dogmatist and others that the Quran does not allow for any other interpretation except the most dogmatic one they prefer.

These scholars have made it their life's work to selectively interpret the Quran in a manner that provides cover for their convictions that all deviant Muslims must be killed as well as all infidels, meaning Christans and Jews. They urge the Islamic world to subdue the whole world till everyone is either converted or dead. When 80 years ago, serious oil money started to put enormous resources at the disposal of the Wahhabi tribe and its clerics, they could finally organize their narrow Quran- based education and organize their murder squads to follow through on their fanatic beliefs.

This is no metaphoric fancy but a deadly serious business. It is because of these religious underpinnings that so many Muslims have been persuaded to become terrorists, because the Quran tells them to murder infidels whenever and wherever they can. It's explained as being the purpose of their lives and it also explains why so many of the 9/11 group of terrorists were so dedicated yet relatively well educated. They grew up with the "modified" Quran and deeply believed its many inimical tenets.

It is a cult of death, not a religion in our sense of the word. But it explains the kamikaze attitude of so many of their followers, which has proven to be such a horribly effective way of fighting a powerful enemy (the West) with relatively small resources of their own. Their biggest resource may well be the willing martyrs and their utter will to destroy anyone in the way of establishing Muslim hegemony in the world.

Yet, we need to make a distinction between Muslims who do not subscribe to this death cult interpretation of the Quran and the Jihadists who do. Because fear of religious reprisals has increasingly led ordinary Muslims to keep quiet and their heads in the sand. For a long time already militant Imams have used their mosques to spread their version of fanatic Islam and so far there have been few instances where a mosque congregation has been able to rid themselves of these fanatic preachers. The preachers make sure they have a number of bullies among their followers to intimidate the unwilling.

It reminds us of what Hitler and Stalin and their bullies did in the 30-ies to intimidate themselves into the greatest menace of the 20th century. Having learned the price and cost of those lessons we should not be reluctant to prepare for an all out war against Muslim radicalism today.

This is a long way to explain why our being in Iraq is an essential step in this effort to regain our international footings and protect our homeland as much as possible from more terrorist attacks.
Taking the fight to Afghanistan and Iraq has provided us with a Middle Eastern battlefield which has been attracting many thousands of Jihadists to come in and try to kill Americans and their coalition partners. At a significant sacrifice of our own people we have eliminated many thousands of their fanatic fighters and as a result kept them away from western targets of opportunity. So far.

At the same time and to the extent possible this effort may provide an opportunity to create a more open, partially secularist, political system with the promise of peace and economic growth for the region. There are many in the Middle East who want this to happen, but like Hitler's Germany the good people cannot destroy these fanatics without outside help. That's why we are there, because not doing this, bailing out in other words, would eventually cause us to meet these Jihadists here at home to fight them on our own soil while they have, by then, a long string of successful ventures behind them and all the resources they need. We will have lost the opportunity to save Western Civilization and instead will have delivered the world back into the hands of barbarism.

I wonder what Washington, Adams, Franklin and Jefferson would think of that epitaph. !!?

Another lesson of history

2007-03-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

1/17/2007
Another lesson of history

While I am no sociologist, the historic record, available to anyone who’s interested in it, indicates that the people of the Middle East continue to be strongly divided into tribes, clans and sects as subgroups under the Shia or Sunni religious umbrellas. Much, if not most of Middle Eastern political life, continues to be largely based on these age old divisions hence what is happening in Iraq is a first, painful attempt at bridging some of these historic schisms. As an example, Iraq was brutally “governed” by the Tikriti for a long time, since Tikrit is where Saddam Hussein and some of his closest collaborators came from. They were Sunnis but really a secular political power. Only during the 1990-ies did Hussein try to give his regime a minor semblance of religion by building some mosques, etc. in order to gain favor with the Shias. The Shias, although the single largest population contingent in Iraq, hated Hussein and didn’t participate in the government and were sometimes brutally repressed.

Saudi Arabia has been the personal fief of the Saudi family since the 1920-ies. The Saudis are also Sunnis from the Wahhabi tribe. It is this tribe, based on the atavistic dogmas of some Sunni intellectuals like Sayyed Qutb, al-Banna and Muhammed Rashid Rida, that developed the current anti-Western, anti-Christian movement in the Middle East which has been spreading far beyond in the form of very dedicated but extrememly dangerous, radical and militant terrorist gangs.

The current multi-party Iraqi government, if it holds together, would be one of the key achievements of the American involvement in Iraq, notwithstanding the ongoing insurgent carnage. A considerable number of intelligent and dedicated people have realized that this may be their only chance, for a long time, to bury the worst of the old enmities and to try to create a more modern country able to grow and mature economically and socially in order to achieve a much better future for itself and its neighbors.

What Iraq is doing in the face of the visceral dislike for it from these neighbors, requires a significant extension of US military protection. The development of an effective Iraqi military, police and intelligence apparatus and the reorganization of the Iraqi economy to pay for it all will take time and much US (and European?) support. The alternative to this cannot be on the table, except in the dark, cowardly and uncomprehending minds of some of our politicians and much of the media and educational establishment.

Because of the fact that the neighboring countries are also basically still tribal or clan affairs they also feel threatened by this potentially promising Iraqi example, but that’s exactly one of the things that are so fundamentally wrong with the Middle East.
We must not forget that Europe went through similar stages of political growth many hundreds of years ago, but we grew out of it, very painfully. It is these lessons of history that the West is trying to convey, without much success so far, to many countries in the world that are struggling with the creation of multi party, secular political systems strictly apart from religious control but culturally imbued with the ethics and morality in their operations of what we know as Judeo-Christian ethics, the equivalence of which could be adopted by anyone.interested in running a halfway decent government.

But without that kind of cultural premise in place, it is virtually impossible to grow the sort of vibrant, creative and productive (both good and bad) social and economic structures that will provide people with opportunities for decent, rewarding and honorable lives. Until those western experiences sink into a country’s political system there is little hope for their future. China and India are the current major examples of how successful such changes in political systems can be.

General education needs to become a key priority of struggling countries. But too often, either the money isn’t there or the government educates only its own elite children to perpetuate itself in power. That’s still tribalism. Instead, all minds, rich and poor need to be educated as much as each individual one is capable of. While that will take many years to accomplish, even the West still has its problems with it, a wise government will forego many expenditures in order to focus on education.

Another major drawback in creating a vibrant Middle Eastern economy is to deny half the population the right and opportunity to get educated and participate in the economy and/or manage a growing family, if preferred. But to exclude a majority of women from getting educated is narrow minded, male chauvinistic foolishness.

The third major problem in many Muslim societies is the way boys and girls basically grow up separately, with the boys clearly being favored over girls. This Spartan approach to, particularly, teen-age growth and beyond, has led to exactly the same results as in the days of Athens and Sparta. Too many men grow up overly sensitive about their masculinity, develop unbridled aggressiveness because their sense of pride is always at a hair trigger, always ready to draw the sword so to speak, which together with their habit of overly and loudly exaggerating everything they do, suggests a basic sense of inferiority and fundamental immaturity. The much vaunted, but essentially worthless Spartan culture lasted almost 500 years. This current Islamic attitude about the rest of the world has just about run the same period of time. The big question is, will Western culture prevail this time or will we fail, like Athens eventually failed during the Peloponnesian Wars.

History is there to tell us what happened and it is not pretty.

A lesson of history

2006-10-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

10/20/2006
A lesson of history.
Today’s modern Middle Eastern Islam is a very prickly version of its older self. In Islam’s heyday it tolerated other religions and their churches or synagogues although as a non-Muslim one was taxed as a result and excluded from many important political functions. There never was real tolerance for different views.
Allowing other religions to exist, at a price, was an important economic source of funds for the Muslim ruler of the day.
Today’s Islam is increasingly and violently intolerant and the way I see it, mostly as a result of the failure of their own political, educational and social growth to understand that populations and countries cannot grow and mature and become economically successful, without allowing reason to become part of religious belief. That was the subject of the Pope’s recent speech and which, predictably, erupted in mayhem.

There are many highly educated Muslims who understand this problem but it cannot be whisked away by magic. It will need a few very clever, benevolent, yet strong and ruthless dictators to control this totally self destructive modern tendency among militant Islamists.

Unfortunately, while on the one hand many of the younger people in Iran, for instance, are well educated and distinctly unsympathetic to the current theocratic regime, there is little they can effectively do because a modern state can squash dissent very easily and effectively. I have had some experience with that during WWII.

Hence, outside help is probably needed to start the ball to change rolling. But how and without starting a horrible additional war with nukes or poison gas or the spread of bacterial agents or something of that kind? Yet something has to be done to destabilize the area and make room for regime changes. The world will avoid dealing with this issue at its peril.

On the other hand, general education in Iraq is less advanced, and in Syria and Saudi Arabia it is dismal. Education is frequently total indoctrination of Quranic content while nothing is done to make young boys grow up in an emotionally stable manner. They all become completely frustrated while the girls can’t even live outside the house and eventually are married off to some bloke they don’t even know. That kind of social structure creates some very unpredictable males. The results are obvious and in the hands of some very clever, power hungry political fanatics. We know the rest.

It may well cost the West a lot more in lives and resources before this problem can be brought under some semblance of control, but we have no choice in my opinion, and must first, all of us, try to really understand the issues and then together allow our government, hopefully with European and other allies, to nip this evil in its not so small bud as soon as possible.

The alternative of walking away from it will be suicidal for the West.

The trouble with an irrational Middle East

2006-09-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

9/16/2006

The trouble with Islam and an irrational Middle East

I don’t know how it is with you but I am getting really tired of the display of supine, spiritless and yet insincere, apologies displayed by so many people who say something in public that doesn’t please the world of Islam.

The latest example is the Pope’s straightforward and historically accurate statement that the Prophet Mohammed encouraged his followers to spread their new faith with the sword if necessary. Unfortunately.

The more radical and impressionable part of the Middle East irrupted in insults and venom at the address of Christianity and the West in general, fully expecting the Pope to apologize for his statement.

I hope and expect that he will not do so. Why should anyone apologize to the people who constantly insult the West about all the ills in the world while they themselves have done nothing in 500 years to improve it, not even the lives of their own people. Whatever improvements have been made in the Middle East during the last 80 years or so, with few exceptions, are the result of oil money flowing into the region after the West found and produced the oil bonanza. The river of oil money resulting from these Western initiatives were essentially given to them.

Unfortunately, this money has been the life blood of the growth of Wahhabism which doctrine has grown thousands of Madrassas where most young people learn to memorize the Koran but very little else. They end up basically illiterate and unequipped to help improve the socio-economic conditions of the region they inhabit. As a matter of fact, the Wahhabi dogma doesn’t want “improvements” of local conditions. In fact, it prefers to go back to the local primitivism of the 7th century of the Christian era.

Thousands of young Islamists are totally frustrated by a mode of life that represses their normal emotional and social growth and at the same time learning that their condition is really caused by the Great Satan, the Western World, USA # 1. As a result they cannot cope with the temptations which many aspects of western life and the media show them. Thence it is only a small step to radicalism and terrorism, well financed and meant to provide supreme political power for the self-serving leaders, using whatever means will get them to ruling the world soonest. I kid you not, that’s their objective.
A-bombs, poisons, epidemic diseases would really help.

Yet, these people, and particularly many of their elites, really like the West for its many attractions, educational, economic and emotional. Many of them also really like to live it up in the fleshpots of the West which makes them just a big bunch of religious hypocrites.

And now these people demand that we apologize for saying some things that are true, but may not be agreeable to them?? Who is kidding whom? They are constantly insulting us and never apologize for anything. Many of them are just a rude, uncivilized mass of useless and very dangerous people. Unfortunately, there are also very educated and perfectly rational Muslims, but they are keeping a rather low profile in many countries. Any wonder that our war in Iraq is not a simple affair!!!

Against this background, it is not only incumbent upon us to defend our own civilization, which while not perfect, is certainly a promising, tolerant and productive, civilization, it is also necessary to realize that we are in a real but un-conventional war with these radical people. It is likely to be a long drawn out affair which will test our mettle to the utmost, create divisions among our own people about the need and wisdom of fighting and sacrificing, but if history is any guide we just have no choice. No choice whats-o-ever.! Unless you want to surrender to the barbarians, which is really what the Islamic radicals are----BARBARIANS.

The Wahhabi cult of death inspires boys, girls, men and women to blow themselves up and kill as many infidels as possible. This random killing of innocent people doesn’t take real courage, it just takes some Semtex, an old van and a warped, maniacal intent to self-destruct. Couple that with the open, vulnerable western societies we inhabit and you, as a radical Islamist, have a first class opportunity to add your corpse to the many previous murderers of innocent people.

Notwithstanding the fact that we consider all this sort of thing murder and mayhem, many “leaders” in the Middle East consider it admirable, well done guys!! We are dealing with really sick people and as a result we should allow our government a lot of leeway with their overt and covert methods of trying to find these people before their murderous plots erupt in our own streets again. Let the government tap telephone conversations and check any suspicious bank and other financial transactions they deem necessary and squeeze the culprits they do catch as much as necessary to find out what they possibly know about other terrorists or their plans for the future. I would say, go for it Mr. Bush.

And when all is said and done, let’s stop apologizing and instead provide some history lessons to the Middle East every time they have a problem. And do they have a problem. Unless and until they come to terms with the very undesirable aspects of their religion there is little hope for a renewal of their way of life that would allow them to join the rest of the world in a cooperative and productive fashion.

Hence, the fanaticism that is still tolerated by the governments of many Middle Eastern countries does not bode well for the future. We have a long way to go.

Immigration

2006-07-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

IMMIGRATION

It would appear that during the mid term elections the topic of immigration will finally be a national hot button for many voters. Because I was an immigrant for 9 years before I became a naturalized US citizen, this subject resonates with me.

Most of us know that for people in the US West and Southwest immigration has been a bone of contention for many years already, but increasingly its growing impact is affecting some very fundamental national parameters, such as secure borders, sharp increases in healthcare expenditures, agribusiness labor issues and the sanctity of laws, to name a few. Maybe the basic reason this issue has reached this fever peak now has to do with the fact that a large percentage of Hispanic immigrants, mostly illegal ones, appear to have no interest in assimilating into the American cultural environment. They may not even try to learn to speak much English, are not eager to get much of an education but do increase the level of petty and serious criminality, wherever they settle down in substantial numbers.

If this observation, for argument’s sake at least, might be considered reasonably accurate, then it behooves us to make sure we understand the reasons for this dismal attitude among so many who frequently and sometimes repeatedly risked life, limb and treasure to get here.

They came because economic conditions are supposedly much better north of our border with Mexico. Once they get here, mostly illegally, they manage to get a menial job somewhere through the large network of established, Spanish speaking, earlier immigrants. No questions asked. Before long they have secured an array of false documentation, giving them access to all kinds of public services, including schooling. With fake driver’s licenses, but no training and no insurance, they are more likely to become a menace on the highways in California and elsewhere, while a certain percentage of them ends up with police records, if not jail time. While they earn cash money, in many cases, they do not pay taxes, yet expect the use of public services they need, including medical.

For a long time now a large number of Americans have been promoting illegal immigration because they feel the USA owes our Hispanic immigrants for perceived past sins, such as taking large parts of the Southwest away from them years ago. These Americans frequently believe the USA to be but a brutal and undeserving country and consequently they justify their expiatory conduct for these national sins by aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Their counsel to immigrants may include not to try to learn English because they won’t need it where they work, nor should they make any efforts to try to assimilate into the American culture because it isn’t worth it. What with bilingual laws still on the books, resulting in Spanish being spoken in educational and public services as well as in stores, telephone companies and other businesses, there is no serious need to even think about assimilating. They are just here for the “easy” money, for which they nevertheless work hard.

These revelations may strike new immigrants as a bit strange but why should they argue with whatever is said as long as they are being cuddled by those misguided, guilt ridden and often very liberal individuals among our American citizens.

As a result, today millions of immigrants form an alien worker contingent in our country that by sheer numbers represents a very serious cultural and political problem. After 30 years or so of this, the sheer size of this alien population in the southwest of the country, often uninterested in and unwilling to assimilate except possibly at no cost or sacrifice to them, yet costing the country billions every year, has reached crisis proportions. In the relevant local areas our own American culture, loud, yet basically friendly, helpful and economically exciting, is in danger of being overwhelmed by them. Many schools have a majority of Spanish speaking students, many of whom may have little interest in learning to begin with, to the detriment of the few local American students who want an education.

When I decided to leave Europe, 8 years after the end of WW II to emigrate to the USA, the American Consulate put me through all kinds of hoops and checked me out thoroughly, including FBI background checks, medical records, education, ability to communicate in English and fingerprints.

So today, I must admit, I certainly detest the fact that millions of people can just breach the border with relative impunity, get jobs here and live reasonably well, at least compared to where they came from. These people have been breaking our laws for years but WE have let them do that. Since the 1950-ies, as far as I know, only one successful program at immigration control was executed under President Eisenhower. But after he retired the effort was pretty much abandoned. We know the results.

The most illuminating and persuasive analysis of this whole problem, that I am familiar with, is contained in a small tome, titled “Mexifornia” written by Victor Hanson Davis, Ph.D. It should be must reading for every thinking American, and every one of our politicians.

The why of this immigration fiasco is now basically irrelevant. The question is: “what do we have to do to regain control of our own borders, regulate this enormous influx of immigrants”.? Simultaneously we need to modify our approach in order to convince those immigrants that becoming US citizens is both in their best interest as well as our country’s. We should also explain to them that immigration implies a desire to become a citizen and requires special effort to assimilate in the culture of the USA. Temporary work-visas would answer very nicely for those who do not wish to become American.

But one of the first things to help young immigrants along is to remove bi-lingual education from all schools. Instead we should offer free English language lessons in those schools during evening hours with the objective of passing minimum proficiency tests as a requirement for obtaining permanent driver’s licenses for instance. American driver’s licenses should not be handed out to anyone who does not speak enough English to read and understand road signs or is incapable of understanding the rules of the road. As a visitor to the USA in
1950-1951, I acquired a US driver’s license but I certainly spoke enough English to qualify on that score. Why not today’s visitors and immigrants?

The idea of bi-lingual education has done immense harm to those prepared to learn a new language after their arrival, but denied that opportunity by well-meaning but disastrous educational methods. This idea of bi-lingual education is now finally being phased out I believe, but many of its proponents are not yet prepared to admit to its failure.

As we now know, the dogmatic, utopian approach of dealing with these “poor”, but enterprising immigrants has been a complete failure far beyond the realm of Hispanic immigration.

In other words, to get our immigration process back on track it needs to contain an effective educational component. For those who work during the day it will mean night school, heavy on language and less so on ways to teach the participants how the country works on a day-to-day basis.

For children of school age who do not speak any English, immersion courses would be desirable and as soon as they can communicate they should be put in grades consistent with their prior schooling. This might well create some problems with older immigrant pupils in the same classes with younger American kids.
But over time these changes should have a beneficial impact on young immigrants as well as our own children who will find in the schools what they expected this country to be all about in the first place. Later on it will be natural and desirable for them to become good US citizens.

It goes without saying that teachers should refrain from opinionating in school about the political aspects of this process. They should be instructed to teach their subjects and to leave their personal biases at home.

We should agree that as a country we have, in effect, basically caused this current Hispanic immigration problem, through misguided policies and philosophies in the past. Hence, we should realize that some concessions, in law, attitude, immigrant processing and politics need to be made.

Consequently and to get back on track we should be magnanimous and extend a one time dispensation for all illegal immigrants already here and employed and invite them to register and receive legitimate entry visas and papers. Fingerprinting etc. should be very much part of the registration process. All illegal immigrants might be invited to pick up forms at the nearest post office to establish their name, date of original registration and personal particulars to be sent to the State’s immigration authorities. The whole process will probably take months but that is to be expected.

Special legislation should be passed to tell all “illegals”, without police records, that they will not be deported but need to be properly registered over a period of time. They may have to pay a fine and be required to enroll in special classes to learn English and re-take driving tests. When applying for driver’s licenses or renewals they will have to submit to a basic language test. We should issue them green-card equivalents but with the stipulation that they can make only a very limited number of short duration trips abroad every year. If they end up in jail they will forfeit their cards and be deported, for ever.

What we should not do in my judgment, under any circumstances, is to hold businesses responsible for determining whether a job applicant is legal or illegal. That is grossly unfair and irrelevant to a business’ responsibilities and it would put a very expensive and time consuming and unreliable burden on the economy that could have nasty consequences.

I believe that a prospective immigrant employee, if offered a job, should be required, as a condition of employment, to get a current statement from the local police department, that would confirm his immigration bonafides. But let’s not burden businesses with what is clearly a governmental responsibility.

These recommendations are necessary to re-establish the basic self-help approach and attitude to life and personal development that made this country the envy of the world and which still is the reason why so many want to come here and escape their current unattractive circumstances wherever they live now.

As a former immigrant myself I can only hope that our politicians will get their act together soon and resolve an issue which has become an embarrassing and national nightmare.

Was Santayana right?

2006-05-31T06:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, in what may seem to be a hopeless and threatening situation, otherwise sensible, intelligent, hardworking people will believe almost anything and anybody, if desperate enough and looking for a savior. Someone who looks like a leader and seems to know what is needed to get them out of their dilemma. Think of FDR and our own USA, Hitler and Germany, Churchill and England and Napoleon and France come to mind.

After we successfully disengaged ourselves from World War II combat, at considerable cost in treasure and sacrifice, it didn’t take long before we listened to Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and all their liberal henchmen thrown up by the post-WW II macho environment that the “good life” was everybody’s right and that the government would provide it. And it did. !!!

Except that no one foresaw, during the late fifties and sixties, the insidious damage this would do and eventually would result in the slow deterioration of our basic moral, societal and political principles. Because we abandoned the rules and disciplines of thought, work and decent behavior. Changing moral and educational conditions, coupled with a diminished level of patriotism among the young eventually resulted in the failure to understand that the “good life” was based on the sacrifices of previous generations, willingly made to preserve our unique national culture, warts and all. This sacrifice should never be forgotten. Instead it should be a permanent part of school curricula and kept current by editorial writers to guide public media and history teachers to open minds and eyes of our younger generations. Unfortunately, what kids have been learning in school about history is a farcical hodgepodge of disjointed historic events that frequently suggest only how badly westerners treated others in foreign lands as well as their own natives in North America.

All of this has infused our society with a large dose of somewhat unprincipled, self-centered, egotistical and in many ways arrogant cultural aspects we only know too well. Thank heaven there are still a lot of kids and families who deplore these current conditions as much as any sane American does, but it is difficult to defend oneself against this tsunami of bad taste in advertising, national self-flagellation by the media together with the worship of multiculturalism, egalitarianism, political correctness and “anything goes have a good time” dogmas of most of the educational establishment.

The fact that it is impossible today, politically incorrect as they say, to lay out the historic facts that many countries in the world still have dreadful cultural and political systems, is an indictment both of our current ignorance as well as proof that maintaining a civilized society, in the western sense of the word, requires constant work and dedication to its principles. By slowly abandoning the careful preparation of young minds during the past 50 years or so, we are reaping a potential hurricane of confusion and loss of pride and purpose that could have disastrous national consequences, sooner rather than later.

The western world’s loss of ethical behavior, its failure to “educate” its own children, the disgusting public presence of pornography in all its forms together with other corrupting influences has created generations of Americans who have no clue about the historic struggles of the western world with itself as well as with other political and religious entities during the process of trying to find a way to live humanely, decently and constructively.

It seems to be totally unclear to many contemporaries why we now have huge immigration problems, educational problems, moral controversies and political disunity in a time of war.

By all indications we are unaware, if not collectively, certainly many of our political leaders and followers are, unaware of the painful lessons of history. We are just trying to live better, play more, let everyone do whatever he or she wants because there are few rules left, we are all the same bad Americans, with our unsavory culture which every foreigner supposedly hates, yet many of them wish to emulate (immigration!!!)!We have no pride in ourselves anymore so we might as well enjoy what we can today. Too many people believe the government will provide so let’s just grab the fruit from the trees and have a ball.

Except, they do not realize that the fruit is poisoned.

We are always excusing every bad foreign behavior. We created the UN based on Western values but then allowed out-of-their-depth “tribal thinking” third world people to gradually take it over. As a result, the organization is basically a sham, a jobs program for thousands. Its leadership demonstrates an appalling lack of guts, foresight and organizational talent and what there is is prone to corruption, good tax-free living but no action that counts.
There is little honor among thieves, little ability or morality. Why did we let this happen?

Because during the creation of the institute, good but somewhat utopian American thinking led to an organization where any country, good bad or indifferent could become a member. That was a fatal mistake. Membership should have been qualified.

The idea was based on western cultural and sophisticated political principles but so as not to kick the communists in the shins, who were partners of necessity during thw war but were soon to be enemies, and because Roosevelt naively believed he could deal with “Uncle Joe Stalin”, the UN Charter became a free cloak of legitimacy for every rogue regime in the world. Since we were then about to deploy our first A-bomb over Japan we might well have been able to control the USSR, although treachery here at home soon put paid to that, viz: the Rosenberg trial. Hence with the cat out of the nuclear bag and the Soviets in the UN with separate seats for some of their communist satrapies, they made the UN a forum of effective anti-American agitation, corruption and intelligence gathering. The USSR obviously did not reciprocate in the spirit for which the UN was created. We should actually not have expected them to do any differently, being the rogue regime they were for 30 years already.

Lessons like these have been forgotten by most people who did not live through the decades of their occurrence. But now we have a UN operation that, apart from a few of their humanitarian activities, is a constant problem for the US in that some of its more antipathetic members have been using it to continue to claim the mantle of world legitimacy whenever it would seem advantageous to them and difficult for the USA. Meanwhile we have to pull chestnuts out of many fires, at huge expense to the US treasury, for which even many of our traditional allies rarely express any thanks.

How can these lessons of history help us to understand our current confrontation with the war on terror and its consequences for our whole western civilization?

Lesson # 1:

The first thing to realize is the necessity to look at the available facts pertinent to what President Bush carefully calls the “war on terror”. And he is right to do so, because the fanatic Islam inspired terrorists constitute a small but fanatic percentage of Muslims. Those who do all the wanton killing and murdering, of their own people as well as our soldiers and civilians, are zealots driven by Osama bin Laden’s original call to arms in February 1998.

Since 1996 Bin Laden and his followers have stated unequivocally that they consider themselves to be in a religious war with Christendom and that anything goes in terms of killing westerners as well as their own people if the latter do not follow the strict religious rules insisted upon by bin Laden. Many western authors have touched upon this aspect of our confrontation, but we must not be in any doubt that they are deadly serious about it and have demonstrated this many times already. We are indeed at war and should conduct ourselves accordingly.

Lesson # 2:

Consequently, as a country and as the leading member of our large western cultural area we cannot afford to fight amongst ourselves, certainly not in the public arenas of Washington politics and media opinionating.

We must demonstrate unity of purpose in order to convince the enemy that we are, collectively, determined to defeat them sooner rather than later. No holds barred. They declared war on us, not the other way around as some of our unrealistic liberal citizens are telling us.

Lesson # 3:

Most of us do not really know our enemy, which is dangerously shortsighted.
But our enemy is fully conversant with the way the west works politically and
economically, they know our weak spots. They are fully aware that significant groups of people, including most Europeans, really do not want to fight anybody for any reason. On our side, this is completely utopian and fatalistic thinking, as well as narrow minded and egotistic on the part of those who profess wars and other unpleasantness to be the stuff of uncivilized people. And even more ambiguous, it interferes with their daily lives and upsets their golf games and other personal activities. Of course it does, but don’t these people realize that history tells us it is dangerous to ignore what is threatening us, possibly mortally?
So all of us should be willing to make some sacrifices when it becomes clear we are in somebody’s gun-sights, at our peril! How dense can one be?

Lesson # 4:

History will undoubtedly verify that President Bush fundamentally understood the nature of the threat better than most of us after 9/11. The proximity and horror of it managed to galvanize the country for about 3 months after which time most liberal politicians considered further cooperation with a much detested President to be more distasteful and unnecessary than maintaining a unified political front in the eyes of the world. If we had conducted ourselves wisely, we would have done justice to our responsibility as the free world’s undisputed leader and gained enormous credibility. In addition we would have impressed upon the fanatic Islamist terrorists persuasively that the USA is not to be trifled with. We failed in this.

Lesson # 5:

Unfortunately, we demonstrated such political confusion and lack of unanimity at the time that most western countries decided not to participate, instead adopting the same anti-Bush attitudes as our partisan Democratic politicians and liberal voters. This sorry performance on our part was not lost on the terrorists and resulted in very few countries joining us in this critical, dangerous and costly struggle to put the Islamist genie back in the bottle.

A divided nation will find it very hard to win this struggle, because the enemy knows us well, knows our weaknesses and exploits them daily, whereas a critical number of Americans really couldn’t care less and prefers abusing our current President and his administration rather than putting their shoulders to the common wheel.

Once this fight is won, if it is, it will be soon enough to start bickering and carving up those who have the elected responsibility to defend our country, but in the current case it is the height of extreme folly on the part of any thinking real American to indulge in this destructive partisan conduct. It might be considered treasonous if we weren’t such a spoiled and irresponsible democracy in many ways. God help us, because we need all the critical help we can get.

In the end, we should admit to ourselves that we have allowed the foibles of human nature to get in the way of moral and intelligent behavior during the past 60 years. It should be no surprise therefore that we are faced with a darkening future. Unless we come to our senses collectively we will prove Santayana right. It would also dishonor all those Americans who came before us and who gave us the tools and the historic experience to avoid sliding further into this unworthy, shameful future of self-indulgence, political immaturity and irresponsibility thereby putting Western civilization at risk of annihilation.
Santayana would cry.

Climate

2006-03-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

I was just reading about Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla)and his attempts to get some order and sense into the effort to determine what exactly this Global Climate change means. On the one hand, most environmentalists and other people easily persuaded by advertizing, claim that current evidence of calving glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland "prove" that the earth is warming. And neither Senator Inhofe, nor yours truly, are disputing that evidence.
What we are reluctant to do is: to assume that those occurences are ipso facto the result of man-caused activities. We dispute simply that anyone really has enough correlative and reliable evidence that for instance, glaciers sliding faster and dropping some of their loads into the ocean are exclusively the result of mankind's puny energy output into our earth environment.
There are massive energy exchanges within our solar system that we do not understand enough to know their specific effects on our earth and on top of that their are additional energy variables beyond our immediate solar system that may well have their own impact on our little, precious globe.
We do know that historically there have been several colder as well as hotter periods, long before mankind could produce enough CO2 to do any harm. But we don't even know the exact causes of those temperature variations.
So rather than politicize this poorly understood phenomenon we should combine and concentrate our efforts to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of what is really going on. And we may not be able to do this persuasively yet. But the action word here is persuasive.
And that is really what Senator Inhofe is trying to accomplish. That's a tall order, particularly when there are such well funded and media supported organizations with personal agendas that brook no disagreement with their belief that humanity is causing this warming. While they may well represent a well-meaning effort to save us from our own follies, it is more likely a political ploy providing employment for a lot of dedicated envoronmentalist types, who do not question what they are told and just go out to promote the party line.
But that sort of effort hardly deserves the name of serious business.
It is interesting to recall that some of the "older" promotors of today's global warming, like Jeremy Rifkin, were just as vocal in the 60-ies and 70-ies about global cooling.
That does not provide a level of comfort when one considers the serious options available to tackle a mammoth problem such as adequate global energy supplies.
In my opinion we should encourage really knowledgeable people to keep measuring and analyzing global data that have a bearing on this topic and from time to time we should hear their progress explained lucidly and without political overtones or personal bias.
Then we decide what we need to do, if anything.

ENERGY

2006-03-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

7/9/06

ENERGY II

People worry about energy availability. Well they might and with the understanding that we are concerned with adequate energy availability in the form and shape we need to fuel cars, planes, fireplaces, electric stoves and lights, etc.

During the past 150 years or so, with the discovery, processing and distribution of petroleum products, the development of electric power and light, the much more efficient use of our large coal reserves and finally our development of nuclear power, it became possible to change and vastly improve the world’s life styles in many countries. We have literally made day out of night whenever we want and thus extended the useful length of the day which in turn has had a major impact on our modern way of life that we have grown so unashamedly fond of. And rightfully so, in many respects.

The companies that have built our whole energy infrastructure, except for the nuclear portion, have done so with great skill, determination and private money.

Since the onset of the wars in the Middle East and now also the unrest in Nigeria, not to forget the radicals in South America, many of our politicians, instead of keeping their cool and a dignified united national front, make public caricatures of themselves by lambasting our current Administration on the one hand for wanting to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, with private money, (all of 2000 acres out of a total of 1.5 million acres, or the equivalence of 2 acres out of 1500) because allegedly it would destroy the surrounding pristine wilderness (it won’t), while on the other hand the Government promotes, with public money, the building of thousands of awkward, marginally useful windmills in places where they are very obtrusive and really ruining the landscape as well as certain animal species.

What the above might suggest to those of us seeing through the obvious, while for the time being ignoring the many nay-sayers and perennial do-nothing-crowd, is that we are, as a country, very capable of creating new and different and probably much more efficient, less polluting modes of transportation and energy use and all that without the government telling us what to do. How’s that?

Well, the companies that today provide us with gasoline, diesel fuel, propane gas, electricity and coal are a major national asset. Those companies are our real experts. Not the government. !! And they deserve to be treated accordingly.

These companies are and for more than a hundred years have been in the business of producing energy in forms that are useful to all of us and all our needs. What’s more, our wonderful capitalistic system is at work here and as public companies they have stockholders who expect those companies to continue to exist for a very long time to come and pay dividends. They are more than capable to handle the energy issues that confront us, as they have so splendidly done already for over a 100 years. But they should not be fettered or handcuffed by the government under one excuse or another. Admittedly, there is the occasional oil spill or refinery mishap or a train that derails or an airplane that crashes. But that’s no more reason to demonize an industry than it would be to demonize average Americans because they produce in the order of 40,000 fatal road accidents every year. It is part of life, not done intentionally, these things happen as a consequence of the billions and billions of actions people take every day doing what they are doing and then sometimes we goof, sometimes fatally. But what we don’t need is for certain self-serving politicians to exploit these kinds of unfortunate events to advance their personal career agendas.

We need politicians who will study these events, with malice towards none, to determine what the government could do, if anything, to possibly reduce accidents or other general problems. But they should not start the blame game every time there is some untoward event catching everyone’s attention for a moment and then handing out more edicts and court orders for the companies to pay huge fines while thumping their chests in front of TV cameras.

Hence, to guarantee our energy future, our political leadership as well as our legislatures would be well advised to get out of the way of those who do the real work in the world. Instead of wanting to impose excess profits’ taxes, they should express their hope that the industry use its current enhanced profits wisely to ensure long-term energy availability which will require enormous investments for many years. The Administration has every right to insist that the companies respect the environments they operate in and as far as I can tell, by and large they do so. The tenor should be supportive, not adversarial like it so often is today.

Today, too many of our politicians do not seem to understand that it is our capitalistic society that has made our modern mode of life possible. To me it is one of the greatest gifts western mankind has bestowed on itself and today is copied more and more, even by countries that until recently preferred to behead a capitalist rather than give him room to do his thing. So we must be doing something right. Why then are so many of our citizens and a goodly number of politicians so anti-capitalistic that they think like monopolistic communists and believe only the government has the answers? Why don’t they look at history instead !!!

In my view, the great motivator for society is its natural tendency for man and his creations, such as his industrial support structure, to stay alive and focused on the efforts of all of us to try to live better and more prosperous lives in the years to come.
A little guidance from a mature government structure may at times be beneficial to this end but let’s keep government out of our lives as much as humanly possible. After all, it is the biggest single cost item on our national budget!!

The government should set appropriate and acceptable rules of the game in close concert with industry, nationally if not internationally. But it most certainly should not do what is now happening in Russia with their new government monopoly in the energy field.

We need to realize that our primary energy and manufacturing industries are very basic, complex, international big business operations requiring highly sophisticated technologies, huge capital investments and supremely qualified people at all levels to run such enterprises. Virtually every large oil company needs to operate in many countries in the world, not a few of which have quite different ideas about how to run a business than we do, Yet we have to deal with all of them, because most of the crude oil is located there.Therefore, any American company able to play in this sandbox needs to be able to make deals that they consider best for themselves , their customers and our country, without being “Monday-morning quarterbacked” by the media or anyone else in the public arena just out of spite or to make trouble for the country.

We also need to keep in mind the fact that while the world’s population tripled during the past 100 years or so, the US population essentially quadrupled. With most of our people living in urban and suburban locations today, any serious and ongoing interruption of basic needs, like food, power, water and fuel, would rapidly lead towards marshal law and worse. It does not take a lot of imagination to realize that without an adequate availability of today’s energy resources people would literally starve after a while, and our societies might well break up into roaming bands of gangsters and robbers searching for food and neighbor fighting neighbor.

Consequently we need to allow oil development in all areas of our national territory that show reasonable promise as hydrocarbon energy sources, for 3 reasons, i.e.: to give ourselves the necessary time to fully develop products capable of using alternative energy sources efficiently, secondly: to reduce our dependence on foreign oil supplies and thirdly to avoid a potential fatal collapse of our society because of short sighted thinking today.

Having said all this, it needs to be recalled that we have been inundated by the media about the fact that we, the world, will eventually run out of cheap non-renewable energy. That’s absolutely true, on the face of it.

But it is also terribly misleading, because it assumes, snidely, that we live in a static world and that the industry will uncharacteristically do nothing imaginative, so that we slowly but surely shall consume the last drop of oil in our big gas-guzzling cars and disintegrate as a civilization. And what is more insidious is our liberal political friends crying for the government to take charge of this impending doomsday scenario. That would almost make it a certainty. It would be too late anyway.

To sum up. What we should and must do, is to let those who really know about energy tell us in broad terms what needs to be done and, subject to proper vetting of their recommendations, tell them to get on with it.

A review of our energy options would not be complete without a clear understanding that our overall strategy for the future needs a mandate to go out full bore with renewed construction of many nuclear power plants. In order to switch the demand for many petroleum based operations and products to electric energy sources we need nuclear power plants and therefore time. In particular because we have already wasted many decades and done nothing. We have been listening far too long to incompetent and self-serving politicians and other prophets of fantasy-land persuasion, instead of following the advice of those Americans who know how to keep our country strong in all respects.

The alternative is most discouraging. Look at how we came to this irrational situation, where otherwise sane and reasonable people, have become fanatic about keeping our oil in the ground because supposedly it’s fouling the world. But that scenario is sure to really foul the world. Let’s not pay attention to them.

The above is meant to aid those who do not normally concern themselves very much with a basic topic like energy and suggest to them that continuing inaction is sure to make happen what we all want to avoid. We must get our collective act together and consequently strongly support our President and his administration in this.

God bless America.

The free world's dilemma

2006-02-24T02:58:00.000-08:00

February 24, 2006

The civilized world's situation is not improving lately. We are prominently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and after 3 odd years and the expenditure of precious life and treasure the whole western venture in that part of the world may yet blow up in our faces.

Ever since 9/11 we have been doing the right thing! We have, under President Bush's leadership, gone after those who want to destroy us, in their home territory. With some success. But we have been doing it with one hand tied behind our back. And as a consequence we have been, and still are, losing our credibility in the realm of stamina and determination to get this job done. And done properly.

Unfortunately, the enemy within our own country, to wit: most of the Democratic Party's senior political leaders and their many naive followers, together with most of the media, have been singularly destructive of this overall effort to eliminate the cancer of terrorism.

Instead, their irrational hatred of President Bush, because he became our President in January 2001, rather than the unattractive Mr. Gore, has blinded them to do the responsible things for which they were elected. This condition has become the most debilitating political dynamic in our national political life so far in this new century.

To me, from a broader perspective, the really scary thing about this situation suggests that our educational chickens are finally coming home to roost. If, during the past 50 years, we would have been diligent in comprehensively and thoroughly teaching our children the painful lessons of mankind's history, with an emphasis on the past 250 years, we might today have a more responsible political leadership and general public than we are in fact saddled with.

In stead, we have Senators blowing off intemperate spite, every day practically, about whatever our Administration proposes or does, just to get their faces on TV to obstruct the reasonable and necessary activities of our Government.

The jungle drums of those in favor of bailing out of the Middle East betray a complete lack of understanding of why we are there in the first place, namely that being there is our best opportunity to keep our own country as safe as humanly possible while slowly but surely squeezing the life out of the radical islamic terrorists.

But understanding our options requires a minimum amount of knowledge about human nature, about its history and its costly yet essential lessons of developing civilized societies and a realization that we all live in a real world and not some utopian fantasy land where one must quickly forgive every poor terrorist for murdering innocent people and blaming onself for his irrational anger.

It is the many of our own wel-meaning but completely misguided politicians and citizens who are the irrational ones.

Admittedly, if one considers onself to be a "civilized" rational person then it makes no sense at all to settle perceived disputes with force of arms. And they are right to think that way because that is considered barbaric in their world view and consequently deserving of constant vituperation, character assasination and obstruction of the President's efforts to fight our international enemy, modern terrorism. Unfortunately they are also living on another planet, but they don't know it.

Sadly, it betrays a total disconnect between those who feel that way, and the real world outside in which we all have to live and try to survive. They do not (yet?), realize that we are engaged in a real war, to the finish, a war which only one of us may survive. It's either them or us.

What our misguided fellow citizens do not see, is that our western world has had absolutely no say in the fact that radical islam has declared this war on us. Unprovoked by us, in the conventional sense that is. Radical, Waihabi islam, declared this war on Christianity and the western world for reasons of their own.

During the last 175 years or so, the Waihabi sect of Islam, subsequently funded royally by the Saudis (the first king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, was a Waihabi) has developed their irrational hatred of Christianity as evil and in need of total destruction in complete accord with what the Koran teaches Muslims to do about infidels. As I understand it, this is all nothing new to those in the west who have been studying and following developments in the Middle East since the early 1930-ies.

But it is still "terra incognita" for most Americans and many Europeans who continue to believe that appeasement, throwing some more money at the problem (as if the Arabs don't already have more money than we do, so to speak) is the sensible thing to do. It is not. Those days are over.

With Iran now sliding into a terror mode, although many Iranians are appalled by what is happening in their own country, those Iranians may not be able to stop this slide into disaster anymore than the good Germans were able to stop Hitler or the good Russians the coming of communism. At least the last ones tried while unsuccessfully aided by the western powers. The consequences are there for everyone to see and yet it is happening again. Don't we ever learn??

To sum up, the western world's dilemma is indeed very straight forward, in my opinion. We must learn from our own history that to save our precious, tolerant and enviable way of life needs the temporary suspension of some of our civil rights and protections to allow our Government and military to fight this real war. Because that's what we are engaged in. Real war. With fighting, killing, torture, murder and many innocent victims as well as the loss of life of many of our own soldier citizens who have committed themselves, as the professionals they are, to put their lives on the line for our country's defense in faraway places.

That attitude on the part of our military, of being willing to die for their country, which they so deeply believe in, should inspire all of us and deserves our unflagging support for our soldiers. It also proves once more that without a code of honor among military professionals and submitting themselves nevertheless to their fractured civilian and political leadership is a societal condition without which no true civilization is possible. It shows once again how precious our civilized way of life is, still surrounded as we are by many malevolent dictatorships of secular as well as religious character.

But the military arm of our government is not the only institution that needs to live by a clear code of honor. This is equally neccessary for our politicians, government personnel, business people and every one else who believes in this great country of ours. Unfortunately, talk of honor makes most politicians squirm while few have any sense of shame about what in fact they are doing to put our country at greater risk than necessary. Without naming names, there is no shame among those people who constantly obstruct the right and necessary activities of government and who, in a time of war, demonstrate no allegiance to the office of the President of the United States, if not to the individual who occupies the Oval Office.

That is indeed shameful and dishonorable conduct. So, let us UN-ELECT them in the fall and put real Americans in their places. The country and the world deserve no less.

politicians

2005-11-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

11/2/'05
Our lovely country seems to be slowly sinking into a political stupor thanks to the increasingly inane and destructive actions of Democratic politicians. As a group they haven't done anything constructive, benefitting the country since George Bush became President.

That fact alone appears to be driving their every day political actions to just destroy him and his administration, no matter what the cost to our country and the world.

Because the world indeed is going to suffer even more, as will we here, from the well financed and growing terrorist threats to our existence. All this has nothing to do with Americans not being nice enough to people in the Middle East but everything with a fanatical, religiously driven effort on the part of militant Islam to wipe Israel off the map and car-bomb us back to impotence.

Militant Islam decided WE were THEIR enemies, not the other way around and if we let them do that we will take most of the world with us. The Democrat politicians do not seem to understand that fundamental happening. They are too focussed onto their immature political games of badmouthing and character assassinating Republicans and obstructing the proper and responsible working of the Congress and the Executive Departments. It is shameful and in the end hopefully self-destructive of this Democratic effort. The USA cannot afford this home-grown obstructionism anymore. We saw what happened in Vietnam where we won militarily but lost politically only because a Democratic Congress stopped funding the Vietnam military after 1973.

We now have a new Iraq fifth-column trying to get us out of a war prematurely, but which we need to finish properly for the benefit of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

As Tony Blair said the other day, talking about Iran after the Iranian prime minister said they should wipe israel off the map: "Can you imagine such a state with such political leaders and would you want them to have nuclear weapons??"

Because that's what would also happen if we did not put Iraq and its people back on their feet sooner rather than later. Democrats don't see this or don't want to see this but do believe they know better about these things. History is against them. President Wilson said he wanted the USA to stay out of WW I when he was running for re-election in 1916, but changed his mind 4 months later. Roosevelt didn't want us in WW II, but decided Lend-Lease was necessary although it took Pearl Harbor to wake him up to the real danger. Truman pulled us out of Europe prematurely with disastrous results. Kennedy flubbed the Bay of Pigs and got us into Vietnam which Nixon got us out of against his better judgment because the country didn't understand the essential need for the conflict as a result of endless Democratic mismanagement and public relations.

Now we are in Afghanistan and Iraq and need a cohesive government that understands this could be a fight to the finish between radicalized Islamists (not all Muslims feel paranoid) and Western Civilization, which has done more good for the world than any other, bar Rome. Our Democrat politicians should grow up, admit they lost 2 elections for good reasons and get back on the team. We need everybody's help to make that happen. How about you?

Pakistan's disaster

2005-10-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

The earthquake disaster in Pakistan is likely to be 10 times bigger in terms of people killed than our 9/11 horror. Ever since that date Pakistan has been quite helpful assisting the United States with its efforts to find and eliminate the terrorists who committed that crime.
We are now looking at one of nature's efforts to make life hard and tragic and it behooves the USA to be generous and very prompt in extending effective help to Pakistan. We can use a bit of goodwill in that part of the world so let's show them that we can do a lot more than hunt terrorists.

deer ticks and dying woods

2005-08-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

For those of us who live in some suburban or rural areas infested with white tailed deer, Lyme ticks and deer depradation and road kills, are nothing new. We have learned to live with the miseries of repeated antibiotic treatments to prevent the eventual devastating consequences of Lyme disease and its even worse concomitants, Ehrlichiososis and Babesiosis.
But what most people do not know is that the overabundance of deer has been having an increasingly destructive effect on the long term survivability of our woods in New England and elsewhere. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago one could walk in the woods and hardly ever see a deer, that was obvious in hindsight, because the understory of the forest was densily grown with all kinds of plants from ferns to laurels. etc. Today one can see clear through the woods as far as the terrain allows. There is no necessary understory left containing new tree growths, or the flora in which small ground animals nest and incubate their offspring.
Various state departments of environmental protection have done admirable work researching this problem during the past 10 plus years. But there is still a lot of resistance to taking effective action from the side of people who look at many animals anthropomorphically with the result that unpleasant facts are ignored and governments, often local, are thwarted in their efforts to do something about it. Every conceivable technique of deer herd reduction has been studied and tried, from contraception to herding and transporting to mice control. Unfortunately, none of these approaches work and only good hunting, whether with bow and arrow or rifle can do the job. When it is understood that there are areas in the country where deer density is more than 100 animals per square mile while only 5 to 7 per square mile can be supported by the forest habitat, it is clear that we have reached a point where something serious has to be done, particularly because deer proliferate at the phenominal rate of 15% per year.
Please support the efforts of state and local governments to lengthen the hunting seasons, eliminate the ban on Sunday hunting and donate your time and money to help the people who are spending untold leisure hours in the woods trying to catch a deer.

government's intrusion in our daily lives

2005-08-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

It's a minor item but oh, so typical.
Yesterday I ran into the government, again!! Trying to buy a replacement for an old 2 gallon fuel can at the local hardware store I was acquainted by the owner about the fact that our well known fuel cans, for home and garden use, were changed since May. The new cans come with short rigid vented spouts. No separate vent opening. I need to fill up the minuscule tank of my Stihl lawn trimmer, which is on the side of the unit. There is absolutely no way that one can put a litlle fuel mix into an inch and a half opening without making a mess of fuel spilling all over coming out of a rigid spout. Flexible spout, directable, were common before. But the government, in its arrogance to protect us from ourselves decided, unilaterally to change waht used to be good basic fuel can designs.
You wonder how many government bureaucrats spend all their time thinking about new rules, regulations and designs just to justify their existence. No one asked them to do these things. Aren't we, as citizens supposed to have a voice in things that affect us all??
Anyone interested in pursuing this item, please let me know. I wrote the governor of our state about it yesterday.

9/11 Memorial Heist by the International Freedom Center

2005-06-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

No greater contrast could exist between 2 Editorial Page articles in the Wall Street Journal on June 7 and 9 respectively this week. The subject: the 9/11 Memorial project .

Richard J. Tofel, president of the International Freedom Center, attempts to justify the creation of a gigantic medley of “voids”, huge man-made waterfalls, surrounded by a forest and all of this to decorate the International Freedom Center and finally a somewhat smaller Memorial Center Museum. Not to forget the spectacular new transit hub designed by Santiago Calatrava. But the “heart” of this odd construction is designated to be the International Freedom Center.

My question is simply: what has all this to do with an appropriate memorial area for the victims of the 9/11 disaster?

My personal view of such an appropriate memorial would be to rebuild the towers as soon as possible, albeit structurally capable of withstanding even a collision with a jetliner but otherwise visually identical on the outside with the original towers. What better way to honor those innocent occupants of the building as well as those who lost their lives trying to rescue them, than to put the Towers back where they stood for so many years. Naturally, as part of the rebuilt Towers an area should be made available as a suitable venue for commemorating in a respectful and tasteful way the names of those who gave their lives that day, together with a photo-gallery of the day’s actual disaster and it’s aftermath.

Instead we are being told by a variety of people, from architects to politicians that they have come up with the perfect memorial concept. Don’t you believe it.

The promoters of this proposed Memorial Concept, because that is what they are, intend to make the World Trade Center Memorial into a brainwashing exercise where native American Genocide and KKK lynchings are found side by side with Hitler’s Third Reich and Soviet Gulags. What all this has to do with 9/11 is not clear and people would probably wonder what kind of Madison Avenue stunt they had been euchred into. I consider it an effront to be told we must equate the reasons for and the creation of the United States of America well over 200 years ago, with “democratic revolutions around the world” today. Where does the author of that idea think his worldwide revolutions of today would have been if the USA had not, for so long, fought for and demonstrated the superior attractiveness of its own moral and socio-economic success under the banner of Freedom. As a matter of fact the International Freedom Center, the biggest promotor, admits that it will not define Freedom as such, nor what people ought to think about it. It just wants them to think! If one doesn’t teach a child what is good and what is not, the child is not likely to appreciate the difference for a long time and becomes a tool in someone else’s political games, like Hitler’s Reich, Mao’s China or the Saudi’s Arabia. The same holds true for our concept and practice of freedom. Why is it that our “promoters” of the Freedom Center have a problem defining Freedom but neither the Vietnamese or Cuban boat people nor thousands of other escapees during the past 60 years from behind various political Curtains did not and knew precisely what it was. The promoters also seem to have a problem defining terror and the conditions which make it possible, yet the subject certainly should be treated for some serious reflection in the eventual memorial. But that doesn’t seem to be important to them but “a wish to base our society on free will in the context of a pluralistic public sphere” they consider vital. Whatever that means!

On the other side, the article by Debra Burlingame makes a moving and persuasive case for stopping this current effort on the part of the International Freedom Center to hijack the 9/11 Memorial project for their own anti-American, anti capitalist and anti military purposes. The sooner this message gets broad recognition the better it will be for the Country and future generations. The current proposal is frighteningly misleading and un-patriotic and should be stopped.