Barrel Strength

One of the issues that has diminished the efficiency of the cleanup is the reluctance on part of Obama to suspend the Jones Act,  which Bush did after Hurricane Katrina and Rita.   This reluctance is obviously in deference to his union base.  This week we will find how closely he is bonded to his union base as this foreign ship makes its way to Gulf of Mexico.

With no assurances it will be allowed to join the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup, a Taiwanese-owned ship billed as the world’s largest skimming vessel was preparing to sail Friday evening to the scene of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The ship — the length of 3 1/2 football fields and 10 stories high — is designed to collect up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through 12 vents on either side of its bow. It docked in Norfolk en route to the Gulf from Portugal, where it was retrofitted to skim the seas. The ship and its crew of 32 were to leave Virginia waters Friday evening…

Its owners claim the ship could gulp oily water at a daily rate that nearly matches the skimming total to date in the Gulf.

What other interpretation can you give to the following item?
 

“Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

“In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.”

Whatever you may think of the Saudi royal family, they at least can tell who the wackos are in their neighbourhood, and it is not Israel, which they know already possess nukes sufficient to turn Mecca and Medina into glass. The heirs of Mohammed, the guardians of the Hejaz, and of the sacred places of Islam, are making themselves as agreeable as possible to the needs of the Israeli Air Force on its way to bomb Iran.

Does this not tell you something very deep about the real constitution of the world? Does this not say that the Sunnis fear and loathe the Shi’ites more than they do the Jews, and by a long mile?

(Apologies to the over-sensitive for referring to the Israelis as the Jews, but we have to consider the issue from an Islamic and not from a liberal point of view).

The current debt crisis within Greece, in a roundabout way, will ensure that Turkey never becomes a part of EU.  Turkey simply doesn’t share any of the culture heritage of Europeans but their application was strongly supported by Bush Jr.  This is a country that has never admitted to the Armenian genocide, lacks freedom of speech, continues to have territorial disputes with neighbours and has adopted a radical islam-oriented foreign policy.  Is this a country that shares European values?  Hell no, and thankfully the current events have ensured that Turkey is unlikely to be accepted in EU.

The Greek debt problems will require some creating thinking to resolve.  Defaulting on debt, will mean that Greece cannot borrow money in the future, which will lead to deep cuts as the option of running a deficit disappears.  That is not an option.   The other option is to make deep spending cuts.  As the rioters have made abundantly clear, that is not a viable option either.  What other possibilities are there?

The best option is for Greece to withdraw from EU.  EU is a “rich-man’s club” and its monetary policy is designed as such.  The EU monetary policy is simply not viable for Greece.  The reintroduction of Drachma will allow Greece to devalue their currency and allow it to grow unhindered by EU.  The withdrawal will have to be voluntary, because EU does not have a provision to boot countries out, although after this sorry episode they wish they did.

If Greece is unable to work within the confines of EU, then can one really expect Turkey to do the same?  When comparing the two countries it is instructive to compare the economic, political and  social institutions of the two to ascertain the “fit”.  Hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call to those who continue to be enamored with Turkey, and that includes Bush Jr. and some on this blog.

In the guise of his Whitehall counterpart, as shown in “Yes, Prime Minister”:

Problems with playback? Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kbDE8WCiIk

At least this one gets the comeuppance he richly deserves.

Perchance to dream.

at least when it comes to destroying the US-UK “Special Relationship” that has been a linchpin of freedom for Western democracies. While the British Commons committee report cites policies during the Iraq war that strained the relationship (many of which are still practised by The One’s administration), it was drafted in the aftermath of Obama’s profoundly rude treatment of Gordon Brown and His tendency to treat Europe more as a speech backdrop than as allies. Contrast His eagerness to show off TOTUS in Berlin with His concessions to Moscow on missile defence.

And His reward for this? Getting the diplomatic equivalent of a wedgie from the Russians over the START treaty, among others. Who could have foreseen the image of an American president being held over a toilet bowl by global thugs like Putin and Ahmedinejad for a swirlie, to be followed by the theft of his lunch money?

The German government tells Greece to sell off some of its islands to pay its debts.

See what Ignatieff has to say about abortion in this clip from his press conference:

When Obama agreed to scrap the missile defense shield for Poland and the Czech Republic, he hoped that this would generate concessions from Russia.  Instead of negotiating away the missile defense shield, Obama simply gave it away without anything concrete in return.   The hoped for dividend has been snubbed by Russia with the real Russian President saying this today.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned major powers against intimidating Iran and said that talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic was “premature”.”There is no need to frighten the Iranians,” Putin told reporters in Beijing.

As printed in the Washington Post, so it’s not spin from the VRWC MkII:

… U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of one man, Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, who is pushing for normalizing relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted for war crimes.

[...]

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration, who was appointed in March. “Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.

[...]

Ghazi Salahuddin, a close Bashir adviser, praised Gration for “trying to be even-handed.” During a stop in this Darfur capital, Gration was greeted like a rock star by hundreds of cheering Bashir supporters in a conference hall plastered with posters of Bashir with Obama, poorly joined together using a computer.

Oh. Dear. God.

From MSNBC today:

President Obama will travel to Copenhagen to make a pitch for Chicago’s Olympic bid, White House officials have confirmed to NBC News.

Obama will leave for Denmark Thursday night, hours after his wife Michelle departs for the vote. The president made the final decision Saturday night after returning from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

From Washington Times today:

The military general credited for capturing Saddam Hussein and killing the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq says he has only spoken to President Obama once since taking command of Afghanistan.

“I’ve talked to the president, since I’ve been here, once on a VTC [video teleconferece],” General Stanley McChrystal told CBS reporter David Martin in a television interview that aired Sunday.

“You’ve talked to him once in 70 days?” Mr. Martin followed up.

“That is correct,” the general replied.

Your correspondent earlier equated the Obama presidential run to mass hysteria in UK  after Diana’s death.  That analogy can now be extended to this shallow celebrity-president who is in love with his own image as others have noted.

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
George Orwell
1903-1950

I have come across a copy of Foreign Affairs,vol 68, no 1. 1989. Soviet Communism was in the process of collapsing. The satellites were flying off in their own directions. Within a year the Russian state would sign the Treaty of Paris, [Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, November 1990] signifying the end of its pretensions to overthrow the international order, and its return to the comity of nations, after having rejected the same in the Bolshevik Revolution.

So what are all the learned international relations and political science profs writing in Foreign Affairs in the winter of 1989?

Professor David Holloway of  Stanford University was writing a chapter on “Gorbachev’s New Thinking”, mentioning the end of revolutionary faith in the Soviet Union.

Professor Robert Legvold was writing about the “Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy”. They no longer thought about conquering the world.

Professor Charles Gati was writing about “Eastern Europe on its Own”.  The dictators were having as much trouble assimilating Gorbachev as the learned professors.

The normally highly sagacious Richard Nixon was  describing Gorbachev in that issue and changes in Soviet policy as “changes in style and rhetoric” not to be confused with “shifts in substance and policy.” (at p.200)

But one article you will not have seen in Foreign Affairs or anywhere else for that matter, was a confident statement beginning with “1989 will see the demise of Communism as a serious political idea, and the end of the Soviet Union as an effective regime.”

No article in 1989 began “It’s over”.

Yet it was happening before our noses. In 1989 I was 39. I had been for years firmly anti-communist. I had no illusions about the nature of communism: the essential rubbish of Marxism, the tens upon tens of millions killed to sustain the lie and make the way for the new soviet man; the thuggish brutality, the deliberate destruction of Russia’s productive farmers, the endless slaughters in the prisons of the KGB.

Yet none of us got up and said: communism is over. It is finished. The house of cards will collapse within 18 months. Not one person on this side of the Iron Curtain. My friend the Dark Lord recalls listening to  a Hungarian taxi driver in 1986 or thereabouts telling him “it is finished” in such definitive terms, but even the Dark Lord failed to grasp the dimensions of the taxi driver’s remark.

Which brings is to the present day. What do we fail to see that is before our noses?

Islamic demographic take-over of Europe?

Mark Steyn in “America Alone” and Christopher Caldwell in “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” are slowly creating awareness among the well read on this issue.

The world getting colder instead of warmer?

Failure of regulatory oversight of markets? Too late for that barn door!

You get my drift. Orwell reminds us that a constant effort must be made to see the obvious. It is not enough to speak of economic cycles. You have to be ready to sell out of the market before the crash, even as you endure the opprobrium of many for being a bad sport. You have to be ready to state the obvious in public places, even as the faithful are scandalized. And if I am slightly more apt to scandalize the faithful (global warming alrmists) I am no better at predicting the future than Joe Average.

An American president stands before a Russian audience and denies his nation’s primary role in winning the Cold War:

Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

Just when you thought the man could push the envelope of narcissistic self-delusion no further.

The One’s new tone of accommodation towards the Islamic world isn’t playing in Peshawar, much less Peoria:

A message attributed to the deputy leader of al-Qaeda has denounced Barack Obama as a “criminal” on the eve of the US president’s Middle East trip. Ayman al-Zawahiri said Mr Obama’s “bloody messages” would not be concealed by “polished words”

[...]

He called Mr Obama “that criminal who came seeking, with deception, to obtain what he failed to achieve on the ground after the mujahideen ruined the project of the Crusader America in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia”.

[...]

[Obama] will travel to Egypt on Thursday, where he will make a speech at Cairo University. In the audience will be 10 senior figures from the banned Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, the BBC’s Christian Fraser reports from Cairo.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is equally charmed by the prospect of that visit.

So is the Salafist troglodyte community.

George Friedman is head of Stratfor, a strategic forecasting firm whose analysis may have passed by your desk from time to time.

Friedman has written a most entertaining romp through the next hundred years. Whether right or wrong he helps open one’s mind to the larger picture. Friedman’s intellectual base is in demography, geography and technology: geopolitics. Religion figures little in his view of the next century, whereas I think it is already the prime driving force of the next confrontation, in the form of Islam.

Major predictions:

• The rise of the United States is only beginning. As the only power to bestride the sea lanes between Europe and Asia, with command of both shores, and of inner (near earth)  space,  it is going to continue to rise in importance through the next century.
• China will implode.
• Europe is decadent.
• The Islamic challenge never will amount to much, though Turkey will become a major power by the middle of the century.

Major observations:

• Population growth is crashing everywhere, to be followed by population loss in almost all major countries, with the United states least affected.
• Global warming is irrelevant.
• The computer will continue to reshape economic activity.

My take-away was from his early chapter, on the distinction between barbarism, civilization, and decadence.

• barbarism is the belief that the mores and virtues of your tribe or village are what all of humanity should embrace, and you are ready to take fire and sword to your neighbours or foreigners to make them agree.
• Civilization is the acceptance that the world is full of barbarians and that one needs to fight  selectively, if barbarically, to save civilized codes of conduct.
• Decadence is the belief that there is no real distinction between civilization and barbarism, and if there is, it is hardly worth fighting for.

On the computer, he says that it causes us to de-emphasize all aspects of reality and of our engagement with it that cannot be quantified – the contemplative, the playful, the religious. The corporation is the creature of the quantitification of the computer, and no one can compete with the United States who does not embrace the methods of the computer. To the extent that the computer does not allow for any values other than its own, it is barbaric in the sense of the term used above, and the corporation is a barbarian: exclusively focused on the goals, rules and mores of its own tribe.

I recommend it for a fast read.

The President’s recent approval of the rescue mission for an American merchant captain is a laudable start but it must lead to a genuine campaign to end the scourge of Somali piracy. Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had the fortitude to take real action. So here’s my three-point plan in their tradition:

1. Treat pirates as pirates
   No more nonsense about “irregular combatants” or poster children for the Geneva Conventions. These people are brigands and there is long precedent in admiralty law for dealing with them. Uncooperative vessels in designated waters are fair game for lethal force. Rope, yardarm, pirate: some assembly required.
    
2. Letters of Marque
   Queen Bess’ Sea Hawks did admirable service against the perfidious Spanish and bounty hunting is a storied American tradition. Give Blackwater a chance to redeem itself after its failings in Iraq. Share the wealth, America.
    
3. Shock and Awe Mk 2
   So these pirate chaps have a lair? Time to liven it up with Operation Quarterback 3, hosted by the B2 Spirit bomber. Really, who doesn’t love an airshow?

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