RightSpeak

The Hyenas Reach New Lows

2011-08-30T10:07:00.000+03:00

Just when we thought the pack of hyenas that make up the greedy,Kenya political class could get no worse, comes this story here from the Nation, showing that having been finally forced to pay taxes on their bloated salaries, the predatory parliamentarians have now raided the public famine kitty to compensate themselves. Sickening.

Obama Appoints New Ec onomic Chief

2011-08-30T10:02:00.001+03:00

Bloomberg News, firmly in delusion mode, writes:

With unemployment stuck above 9 percent, the U.S. needs all the job-creation expertise it can get. For that reason, President Barack Obama’s choice of Alan Krueger, an eminent labor economist, to head the Council of Economic Advisers is an inspired one.Krueger, a Princeton University professor, has built his academic career on the study of labor markets, wage structures and long-term unemployment. He also has strong policy-making credentials. During the first two years of the Obama administration, he served as chief economist at the Treasury Department, where he helped devise the first stimulus package, the cash-for-clunkers effort and the Build America Bond program.

Krueger has shown that he understands the need for a strong government role as an anti-recessionary force, especially after a contraction brought on by a severe financial crisis.

If this nominee was behind the cash-for-clunkers fiasco and part of the the giant Pelosi-Reid stimulus debacle, than I can hardly see how he can inspire anything but foreboding. Nice to know that after 3 years, Obama finally get's that it's all about jobs and not handing out green-energy salvation projects to Democratic donors. It is however amusing to see Obama embracing deregulation, broadly, and tax cuts (in effect), overturning Davis-Bacon and a number of other scared cows the left is going to scream over. At the heart of the matter it's just Obama and co playing the same old game....i.e. big government has the answer and can create jobs and distribute wealth fairly and better than the individual. What's new? With the track record this good professor has, I will sit on the fence.

2010-12-31T13:10:00.000+03:00

This blog is banned in China

Obama Teabagged

2010-11-06T16:55:00.000+03:00

Kenyans awoke on November 3rd and disbelieved their eyes. The party of their hero, Barack Obama, has suffered a huge defeat in the 2011 "mid term" elections. The Democrats that Obama heads have been be humiliated by Republicans. Incumbents have been thrown out like trash by angry voters. Obama's presidency, begun so brightly and with so much hope just two years ago has been checked f not wrecked.

One thing won't change - the woeful job of most Kenya media in explaining this to their readers and listeners. Many will echo the politically disastrous theme of the Democrats that many in the local media openly admire, as do the pre-internet big media in the USA. The 'Party Line' goes like this.

“The American electorate are ignorant, reactionary, angry and fearful, unable to appreciate the wonders of Obama and his Washington elite and are deeply tinged with racism and bigotry.”

This was the Democratic message since 2009 and the local media have dutifully acted the parrot. That "message" has infuriated American voters and made them vote Republican even when they are not members of the party.

Consider racism: the Democrats 2010 had 26 black Congressmen and25 stand in black majority districts where their re-election against whites is guaranteed. The Republicans have just 6 black candidates. Yet all are stood against whites in white-majority districts. Just who is the “race vote” here is not obvious.

Or Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio, a Republican Hispanic, trouncing white incumbent Charlie Christ. And if Obama was elected by whites a in 2008, just how did the non-racists then become racists now? Using racism as a template to describe Obama's debacle is delusionary.

How about ignorance? The day won't pass without some Karaja or Onyango in USA penning a letter to the media or blogging on how ignorant, narrow minded and so on Americans really are. If only they were clever and worldly wise like Obama and his cabinet, or like Europeans, they would elect the Democrats forever!

Naturally, these insults to the American people by their own and foreign elites have gone down as well as someone conducting an election campaign in rural Kenya areas and all he could do was tell the wanainchi that they were too stupid to act like Germans or Japanese.

Perhaps it's ingratitude? Americans are too blind to realize the excellence of Obama's healthcare act and his huge deficit spending to increase the size of government, so it is said. Yet, traditionally since 1776, Americans have, unlike Europeans and Africans, not wanted their government to grow too big, powerful and expensive.

They now feel the national debt and spending are wrecking their future. Voters elected Obama to change that, not to add to 'Big Government' and high taxes -and they feel betrayed.

Kenyans who are themselves poften wrapped up in ethnic politics that are driven solely by personalities and tribal loyalties ( as serious a problem as racism) need to know that in the USA, people are judging Obama on the failed economy above all. This he has not changed except for his party “eating” better.

Democratic policies of huge spending and increasing the size of government have stuck the deepest nerve in a freedom-loving people who value self-reliance and capitalist hard work.

There was a "Tea Party" in Boston in 1773 to kick-start the Revolutionary War against British colonialism. The issue then was the same as the Tea Party Movement that has helped doom the Democrats in 2010. Americans like to cut government down to size every now and then. Obama and his party are firmly in their sights. Unless he changes radically and fast, it will be "Bye Bye Barry" when Obama stands for re-election in 2012.

911 and The Koran

2010-09-12T13:12:00.002+03:00

From The Koran, selected passages:

1- The infidels are your sworn enemies Sura 4:101
2- Make war on The infidels who dwell around you Sura 9:123
3- When you meet The Infidels in the battlefield, strike off their heads Sura 47:4
4- Mohamed is Alla's apostale. Those who follow him are ruthless to The infidels Sura 48:29
5- Prophet, make war on The infidels Sura 66: 9
6- Never be a helper to The disbelievers Sura 28:86
7- Kill The disbelievers wherever we find them (Sura 2:191)
8- 9:29 [And] fight against those (Al-La-Zina) who - despite having been vouchsafed revelation [aforetime] -do not [truly] believe either in God or the Last Day, and do not consider forbidden that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth [which God has enjoined upon them] till they [agree to] pay the exemption tax with a willing hand, after having been humbled [in war].
9- 47:4 Therefore, when you meet The infidels (unbelievers), smite their necks until you overcome them fully, and then tighten their bonds; but thereafter [set them free,] either by an act of grace or against ransom, so that the burden oQuran 2:89 The curse of Allah is on disbelievers.
Quran 2:92-2:96 Jews are the greediest of all humankind.
Quran 2:98 Allah is the enemy of disbelievers.
Quran 2:99 Only miscreants will disbelieve.
Quran 2:193 Fight them until religion is for Allah.
Quran 3:28 Don't have unbelieving friends unless it is to decieve them. Remember the final goal is to Allah.
Quran 3:118 Don't be friends with Non-Muslims because they hate you and want to ruin you.
Quran 3:147 Defeat unbelievers.f war may be lifted:

An International Ignoramus Opines

2010-09-10T07:14:00.004+03:00

As President Obama's approval rating among US voters slip to George W. Bush levels, and as his Democrat prty braces for a humiliating trouncing in the November elections, Kenyans will be no wiser as to why if the go by Prof Ian Buruma's piece, "The Great American (populist) Tea Party" ( Daily Nation Sept 6th) and available here in the Lebanon Daily News version.

Buruma is an elite European intellectual from the commentariat of the international left. Such usually show abysmal misunderstanding of the USA coupled with sneering condescention and Buruma certainly does not disappoint. Buruma is ignorant of even the simplest facts, such as the Democrats of the USA many years ago surpassed the Republicans as the party of wealth and class and are able to outspend their opponents handily.

It can't be that Obama's Democrats have plunged the US into double the debt that Bush left. It's zero to do with Obama's debt rising higher every year until it will overwhelm the US economy. It has, for Prof Buruma, nothing to do with ramming "free" heathcare down US throats - despite every poll showing the clear majority of all voters did not want it.

The Lord help Kenyans if any believe that American traditional opposition to "big government" has the slightest to do with Obama's fall from grace. His Democrats rushed to expand every possible government payroll and create huge new burdens of bureaucracy - a bit like Kenyan MPs. Those dumb ,uneducated ,prejudiced "overwhelmingly white" Anmericans just don't understand how wonderful Obamanomics really is. Even those who still have a job

Lastly, despite the Democrats putting every single US citizen $44,000 into debt in unpaid government borrowing, the economy is stagnant, the stimulus has failed and unemployment is going up, not down. America's foreign policy is a mess and many of the US staunchest allies are perplexed. Neither does Prof Bururma educate us at all that the Tea Party movement against "big government" had it's roots before Obama took office, in the George Bush stimulus and bank-bailout of 2008.

For the "progressives" like Prof Buruma, none of these issues are real. Obama got elected with two "elite" degrees, a Muslim middle name and a black Kenyan father. Prof Buruma tells us those are hindrances to him, oddly enough. It seems they were pluses just two years ago, but Buruma is incapable of explaining this paradox. The fault lies not with Obama's policies since election, but in his dumb-ass low class opponents.

If Buruma was a visiting a psychiatrist instead of writing fatuous articles, he would be diagnosed as being in deep denial coupled with fantasies and projection.

Obama's opponents are thus simply racists,bigots,uneducated and populist. In a reverse of 'Amazing Grace', once they saw the miracles Obama was to bring to the USA. Now they don't like the results, they are blind. Kenyans relying on this narrative will be bewildered as US events unfold, and the good professor will not have taught them a thing.

60 Years of Socialist Health yet Britain Worse Off - BBC

2010-07-23T18:11:00.000+03:00

It's remarkable that after nationalised medicine was introduced into Britain after World War Two, we could now be in a position where the gap in healthcare is actually worse than in the dark days of the Depression. Or so say the BBC in a story found here.

The health inequality gap in Britain is greater than it was during the post-World War I slump and the Great Depression, a study suggests.........Researchers from Sheffield and Bristol looked at early death rates since 1921.

They found the current gap was greater than it was in the 1920s and 1930s, the British Medical Journal reports."

The only reason Obama has pushed socialist medicine in the USA down the unwilling population's throat is that it greatly expands the role and power of governing elites - not that it will have any good effect on American health statistics

You Can Make This Stuff Up

2010-07-23T17:44:00.004+03:00

Every herd of a "listserv"? It's a form of secret e-mail exchange club.. You have to be invited and get a password to participate. It was known a listerserv existed called "Journolist", of some 300 to 400 top journalists from Time, The Guardian, CNN, The New Republic, other papers and TV stations, Human Rights Watch , influential blogs, professors and NGOs.

An enterprising blog, the Daily Caller, managed to crack the Journolist codes and get access to archives of thousands of backdated emails. The results are explosive, but do not expect to be seeing them on your big media or TV screen very soon since so far they show:

Hundreds of the top names on journalism with some academics and NGO types collaborated to act cheerleaders for the Obama election 2008, spinning positive stories about Obama and negative ones about his opponents.

This included trying to bury the Rev Wright and his Obama connection and instead fabricate Republican racism. In the words of one famous journalist they should pick a top Republican, "any will do"(!), and accuse him of racism to divert attention from Wright.

Top journalists discussed how to get the government to simply ban or refuse to renew the licences of conservative news outlets like Fox whilst making very ironic noises and complaints about "fascism".

Journos were stymied as to how they could smear Sarah Palin's lack of experience without showing up that Obama clearly had no more experience than her. So instead.....

Discussed ways the media could destroy her image as an appealing, dynamic woman who might attract feminists.

And we are only on Day 3 of the Daily Caller revelations. Journalists are entitled to their opinions. Still, this proof of a big leftist push to co-ordinate huge sections of the US media is surely very similar to the tactics of Goebells. It shows why anyone who still uses only mainstream or leftist media as his or her information source really is a dupe...or a dope.

Conservatives have claimed for years there exists a bias in the big media and Journolist could not have handed them a smokier gun.

Bok Bumbling

2010-07-20T23:46:00.002+03:00

As predicted here, tweaking the Springboks produced hardly any positives as they went down again to the All Blacks 31-17 in Auckland. The game would have been closer but for skewed reffing by Alain Rolland, but even had he blown evenly, the Boks would not have won.

For the next Test against Australia in Brisbane where the Springboks have not won in 30 years, they needed radical surgery. The following should have gone to the bench as impact players: Spies,Habana,Smit, Januarie and Olivier.

These should have been promoted to starting XV: de Jongh, Hougaard, Ralepelle, Kankowski and Aplon. When the test XV was announced, Smit, Spies and Habana are still all there and weirdly, Kankowski has been called to play at flank, which is not his position.

The Bok coaches still resist the radical surgery, or prolonged rest (n you take your pick) that certain players who are "regulars" need to have. The Tri Nations was lost the minute de Villiers and his staff made no effort to seriously trim the team after the shocker of a first game at Eden Park.

This guaranteed they would lose the 2nd round, and probably does the same for this game against Australia on the 24th. It is cause for consternation when de Villiers announces, in his cryptic fashion, that he has studied the videos of the Eden Park test and is "mystified" why we lost as we played "very well."

Springboks Leap Downwards

2010-07-13T21:18:00.002+03:00

It's wonderful when you get to watch the elite or world rugby play frequently here in the Southern Hemi. Yet not so much fun when your side gets a whumping, as happened to the Springboks last weekend. I can't remember when I saw a side improve so comprehensibly as the All Blacks at Eden Park. Every one of the Boks considerable strengths were nullified. Even Matfield, the peerless no 5, was for the first time I have witnessed it, out jumped and worse ( he is a clever rugby man), outsmarted.

The All Blacks were all over the collision phase, wrapped round each other and driving like a black bulldozer - yes, it seemed like a single unit it was that tight. They slipped few tackles while the Boks shed runners like an old dog drops fleas.

They managed to not only contain the Boks driving maul, but split it legally. The backs were penetrative and Carter commanded the game. Only in the scrum did the Boks have some sort of parity. It was not a thrashing, despite the 32-12 scoreline but it was a real beating. Consider that the Springboks took the All Blacks 3 out of 3 last year.

Will anything change in Wellington for the second Test this Saturday? I doubt it. The Bok brass persist in choosing fat,slow Riki January at scrum-half, it must be a race quota thing. Super centre Jean de Villiers is stuck on the wing, where he looks uncomfortable. Newbie flanker Francois Louw was a mouse in Auckland and despite the snappier , faster Potgeiter being available, Luow is again starting.

Clunker CJ Linde comes in at prop, a ponderous, ageing yellow-card factory who is out of puff in 25 minutes. Jon Smit looks like he should retire. There are at least 4 hookers ahead of him on SA - Liebenburg, Strauss, du Plessis and Botha. So the Bok brass in their wisdom back him with Ralepelle who does not even start Super 14 games - another case of affirmative dreaming. Yet, better players of colour like De Jongh and Basson are not in the team.

In the old days, after 32-12 most of the Bok team would have been scrapped. Here, they are retained. 2011 for the Boks may well turn into will be shades of 2007, where England seemed determined to play everyone who had won in Australia in 2003 - bandages, metal hinges in their joints and false teeth as well.

Islamist Cowardice

2010-07-12T22:02:00.001+03:00

Al-Shabaab managed to do what its parent Al AQaeda could not and murder 76 soccer fans in Kampala, Uganda during last night's World Cup final. The bombing dead include many nationalities and numerous Westerners. This act will send a chill down the spine of all East Africans, since we have large Somali diaspora communities in the region. Minnesota and Canada seem to be entranced with these skinny sons of the desert. Perhaps an airlift can be arranged? Kenyans would contribute in droves to provide tickets for the half million of so Somalis that have inundated us.

Dutch Courage?

2010-07-12T21:53:00.003+03:00

More signs of the steady demise of coherent English came during the recent soccer World Cup. How many times did commentators use the words "dutch courage"? I lost count, but not one of them seems to have noted that the phrase is actually an insult meaning someone incapable of bravery unless fortified by drink! Then again looking at the beserker mood the Dutch played in during the final, perhaps I am missing something.

Arizona Madness

2010-07-07T10:30:00.003+03:00

Today Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General, announced the Federal government was suing Arizona over it's controversial illegal immigrant law. Arizona's law demands all aliens carry identification papers - exactly the same as Federal law - only Holder won't enforce it.

Holder thinks Arizona's law would "divert resources away from fighting terrorism"- like in bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed to trial in New York and repeatedly testifying to Congress that Islam had nothing to do with our 3 terrorists attacks in a year? The same Holder who allowed Mexico to join a lawsuit against Arizona - a foreign state suing an American state, in America.

When this case gets aired and the public learns that Arizona law has scrupulously followed Federal law and is even midler! This administration is a dreadful farce, "illegal-cenrtric", "enemy-centric" and "socialism-centric". Thank God by December they will be in shreds and tatters and by 2012, gone for good. Thanks Eric!

It's About Costs, Read Their Lips.

2010-03-16T01:28:00.002+03:00

kenmal says in todays Financial Times: "I just cannot understand why the US, supposedly the most civilzed nation in the world, cannot seem to get its head around the need for healthcare for all, regardless of means" but Obamacare is indeed regardless of means, the means to pay for it and the American people know it.

Rather than question their "morality", kenmal should have acknowledged their basic good sense.

Republicans and businessmen have offered many incremental cost solutions, including malpractise tort reform ( perhaps saving 15% of cost), opening up insurance to nationwide competition (currently restricted), consumer access to cost/result information for medical conditions (almost as unobtainable as kryptonite, yet every consumer knows 100 costs and benefits when buying a car or a TV set) and immediate help ( not years away as in Obamacare) for the truly indigent and unable to afford insurance.

kenmal should understand that the American people reject Obamacare as they see it for what it is: an attempt to grow Big Government and entitled Dmnocratic majorities. This is why Obama has zero interest in adopting any truly cost-cutting ideas.

Are Europeans more moral when for example in Britain horror stories from the NHS pile up daily? It's not about morality, it's the cost. Read the people's lips

A Suicide Pact?

2010-02-10T19:27:00.002+03:00

Doug on February 9, 2010 at 8:17 PM writes: Regarding those who say "Constitutional rights are not automatically granted to anyone who attempts to enter our nation,"..... A person who would make a statement like that obviously knows nothing about the Constitution.... The document plainly in clear and simple words that human rights apply to everyone, not just citizens.

Yes and no Doug. The US Constitution recognises, as does US settled law going back to 1776 (until the insane Boumedienne decision of 2008) only two forms of US justice. Full rights under civilian trial or lesser rights under military justice in times of war or great public distress.

US law never gave enemy combatants, let alone terrorist combatants who are prima facie planning or committing war crimes ( deliberate attacks on US civilians) full contituional rights - but it does give them to peaceful Jose who jumps the border from Mexico, or even criminal Frank who illegally comes from Italy and commits civilian murders in the USA.

The Constitution and the law make a distinction Doug and many others fail to make. War is war and peace is peace. Obama says we are at war with ALQ and the Underwear bomber was sent by ALQ to commit war crimes on US territory.

In WW2 when Hitler sent Nazis to land by sub and commit sabotage on US soil, Roosevelt had them all before a summary Military Commission and all ( save two) executed. When the Supreme Court made noises they might object, Rooselvely sent word he would execute them anyway as CIC.

In the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus.

The Nuremburg Trial was a modified Military Co mission from which there was no right of appeal, and limited but fair rights for the accused.

If you think your human rights are infinite, I suggest Doug you join the military and star abusing your CO in public. Get a few other to join you too. See how fast your infinite rights of free speech and freedom of assembly evaporate and don't ask for a civilian lawyer, either! You won't get one.

Doug, you perhaps do not know the difference between war and peace and between a jihadi on a war crime mission and the guy who just mugged granny in the park. But the US Consitution and all US courts, since 1776 have. The sad thing is that unremitting LAWFARE by the left and international anti-Americans have totally hamstrung us in this regard. Enemies of the US are now mainstreamed and given F. Lee Bailey, a civilian pulpit and we get info out of them by plea bargaining.

Here is a plea bargain coming your way soon: "OK, if we give you shorter time for the 763 Americans you just killed in the NYC subway, will you Mr. Abdul/Mohammed/Said (whatever) speak to your lawyer as you may escape a heavy sentence if you strike a deal and tell us where that suitcase nuke we know is in Boston has been placed."

Here is another: US forces capturing ALQ in Yemen or anywhere can't interrogate them, even if their own units might suffer further losses, until they are Mirandized and have a lawyer flown into base for them.

A Supreme Court justice once said the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But Doug and others, well meaning as they may be, are making it one.

Hard of Political Hearing

2010-02-07T17:39:00.004+03:00

To Randall Smith, Kenya Daily Nation US correspondent:

"Your Nation piece "Obama Easy Target" (Feb 5th 2010) sounds like a Democrat trying to be neutral and explain the collapse of Obama the way Obama tried to explain those who bitterly clung to "guns and bibles" when he addressed the bewilderati of San Francisco's Nob Hill in 2008: a form of primitive being to be condescended towards.

You describe the protests that emerged over summer as "orchestrated by conservatives or special interests". The "Tea Party" movement and angry town halls were essentially spontaneous, not orchestrated. You "get" this process about as well as Obama "got" the Scott Brown phenom when he said "Anyone can buy a pick-up truck, right?".

Obama thought Brown must have bought his battered truck as a political gimmick, because to a professional politician like him, why else? Brown had owned it for years.

You did not tell your Kenya readers America is a centre-right country, not a centre-left one. In voting for Obama, Americans expected to get a new face who was a centrist who would clean up Washington - not someone who would throw legislation to leftists Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to draft and also show himself, as many think, naive and weak in foreign affairs.

Obama inherited a mess from the Bush administration - indeed the accumulative messes of many previous admins coming home to roost, but the American people perceive his as having recklessly plunged into unprecedented spending sprees.

The question will eternally echo. Why did Obama, on a wave of immense personal goodwill and prestige, so squander his first year by not initiating his own reforms, but leaving it to the hyenas in Congress - whose ratings among the US people are far less than Bush ever plumbed?

Why did Obama play "double or quits" on health care when it became obvious the majority of Americans did not support it?

For what reasons did Obama insist on trying Kahlid Sheik Mohammed in New York and attempt to transfer Guantanamo detainees to US soil when both of which would infuriate most Americans?

If George W. Bush left most Americans angry at a 256 billion $ deficit, what made Obama imagine they would swallow one that will run as high as 10 trillion by the end of his second term?

As climate change", an increasingly debased science, ranks just dead last amongst most Americans concerns, why did Obama try to initiate costly "cap and trade" legislation?

Americans have shown over and again in their history that the really do not trust or want "Big Government" in their lives, starting with 1776. The American system is corrupted and bankrupted by both parties indeed - so why would Obama want to unleash massive government take-overs of huge sections of the US economy?

Obama is also suffering rebound from the almost complete abrogation of journalistic duty by swathes of the US media . They resolutely refused to examine the background of both Presidential candidates and gave Obama an unprecedented media free-ride, leaving the American people to discover they had voted "American Idol"-like for an unknown and inexperienced junior Senator whose major ability seems to be to speak well.

Alexis de Tocqueville said around 1823 that "the American Republic will endure until Congress devises a way to bribe the electorate with their own money". True words but the American people may be wiser than their rulers - it's just that nearly all Democrats and many Republicans simply refuse to believe this. "

Obama Gets It Right, For Once

2010-01-22T11:24:00.004+03:00

Credit to him, Obama's latest banking proposals to de-link commercial banks from investment banking is a step in the right direction and very much needed. The facts are that commercial banks are guaranteed with taxpayer's money - the FIDC deposit insurance being amongst the primary source of funds. But because banks have been allowed since the repeal of Glass-Steagall to take commercial deposits and speculate in investment banking, which they co-owned, they are effectivly paying themselves enormous bonuses on the taxpayer's dime.

Even the most ardent centre-right or libertrian thinker is aghast at the cluture of bonuses amongst bankers. Obama's porposals are a step in the right direction and should attract widespread bi-partisan support. lets hope Republicans do not oppose for oppositions sake.

Stocks have slid upon the news and we might end up with smaller banks if the reforms go through Congress, a big if, but they are absolutly needed in one form or another.

William Shakespere, Climate Denier

2010-01-11T11:59:00.006+03:00

"The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists", as one UK article is headlined..

Even members of the UN's notorious IPCC are jumping ship in inceasing numbers. The politicized "science" of the Warmists is dying. Copenhagen was the watch. Of course governments are sticking to the party line - think of all those taxes and controls they will have to rescind.

Expect the Obamessiah to do the same, How will Denocrats set up a new vote delivering machine based around "Cap and Trade" patronage (Better known as Cap n' Tax) if their main warmist narrative vanishes?. Warmism was nothing if not a neo-Marxist powergrab that stimulated the all left's political erogenous zones.

For the moment the Warmist hoax is fading. The world citizenry, led by the Anglophone common law nations (USA, Britain, India, Canada, Australia etc) etc have forefronted their citizenry in rejecting the claims of cranks and frauds. The deep roots of indivisual liberty in common law countries have made them deaf to the siren song of the politicians. Europeans, in contrast, with their historical acceptance of tyranny, have bought the warmism, but even their faith is fading.

The Warmists' computer models are incapable of predicting the weather a year from now, yet claim to predict it 100 years hence. The citizens have also seen off the reptilian polticians of the left who would seek to straijacket our lives into some weird asylum of "ethical green living" that gives them complete power over us.

Blow blow, thou winter wind. Thou were not so unkind as a poltician's powerlust.

Cheers for Chile

2010-01-07T02:07:00.004+03:00

The good news for countries that enthusiatically embrace capitalism,free markets and globalization is that Chile today became the first South American country ever to move out of the developing world as the OECD has noted in granting it membership.

Not Cuba, or Venezuela nor the powerhouses of Brazil and Argentina but Chile, a country that was saved by the reviled General Pinochet in the 1980's from becoming a communist banana republic under the Marxist Salvador Allende. One shudders to think what Chile would look like economically today if he had been allowed to carry out the "revolution" he planned before it was stopped by force, which was the only argument Allende understood. Pinochet was a reluctant democrat and a flawed leader, but he did allow liberal capitalism to take root and once Allende and his communist thugs were swept aside, Chile rapidly began decades of expansion that has culminated in the historic move into the OECD.

Chile had a long democratic tradition which Allende tried to overthrow. Once this was restored after years of Pinochet's iron control, social democrats, rightists and leftists alike have rekindled this tradition and kept to the liberal market policies that Pinochet approved of.

These facts have not stopped Allende from being turned into a leftist hero-martyr and Pinochet into a fascist villain.The more successful Chile became, the more rabied the attacks on Pinochetl ending in his farcical arrest in Europe long after he retired. Tthe longer view of history may well reverse these positions.

The Bright Line That Blinds

2010-01-06T02:18:00.005+03:00

Writing in the NYT Op-Ed section, guest contributor Michael Kinsley gives valuable insight into the garbled reasoning behind attempts to downgrade the War on Terror into a police action against criminls. Opines Kinsley:

We have nothing to be ashamed of, little to fear and much to be proud of in choosing to err on the side of treating captured foreign terrorists as we would treat any upstanding American who tried to blow up an airplane full of people.

There we have it. The foreign terrorists in wartime is the same as an American citizen terrorist who is oddly "upstanding" unless, like Timothy McVeigh, he is thankfully strapped to a lethal gurney.

Showing an ability to mush issues into a kind of bland ideological porridge, Kinsey confusingly declares

...why not draw the line to put an Abdulmutallab or a Shaikh Mohammed on the “war” side and treat him as an enemy combatant?....... recognize that the national border is a “bright line,” and if people captured within the United States are going to be treated as if they were somewhere else — provided that they are certified terrorists — things are going to get complicated quickly.

They certainly are complicated, Michael. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in Pakistan, not the USA. the only reason he is crossing the "bright line" into the USA is that Eric Holder and Obama have decided that Khalid is legally no different to say, John Gotti.

According to Kinsley's reasoning, the German saboteurs landed by submarine and caught on US soil in World War Two should have been lawyered up and given cit zens rights because they were caught on our side of the "bright line". Instead Rooseveldt ordered military tribunals that led to swift executions.

Kinsley perhaps has never read the US Constitution, despite having a law degree. Otherwise he could not fail to note it makes crystal clear that in times of war and even great public danger, military justice and tribunals that dispense with many protections afforded to US citizens are acceptable options. Indeed the Constitution only recognises two forms of justice in the USA. That of full rights for citizens and limited rights in military tribunals. It is Democrats who wish to triangulate this crystal clear position with a new layer of civilian-cum-wartime-semi-Mirandized-almost combatant-but-also-a-felon legal gibberish.

Damming arguments from a riposte to Kinsley in the National Review point out that combatants are launched by enemies of the state who also have external networks or even foreign powers either overtly or otherwise working with them, something that almost never occurs in simple criminality and which confounds normal law enforecement techniques.

We have a great deal to fear from the likes of Michael Kinsey and nothing to be proud of in the leftists' unremitting lawfare to overturn more than 200 years of US wartime justice. They are twisting what the Constitution intended, and until the ridiculous Boumedianne decision of 2009 and the vicious legal attacks on Bush's tribunal policies, had followed.

Still, this same confusion can be seen in the leftist approach to criminal justice in the USA itself. Usually, they blur the victim and the accused. Often the victim becomes the accused, an the perpetrator, like poor stressed Maj. Hasan at Ft. Hood, held up for examination as an object of pity and sympathy.

The ideas of the Robert Kinsey types, compared to the word of our Founding Fathers, make me worried.

Another Brick in The Warm

2010-01-06T00:37:00.008+03:00

The problem with debating Warmers, those who believe in climate change caused by human industrial activity, is that for many it's a matter of faith and not of reason.

Indeed, getting them to agree to examine contrary evidence is like trying to discuss vegetables with a hyena.

So here is scant hope any will bother with the very interesting news that world CO2 atmospheric levels may have not risen at all in 100 years according to University of Bristol research summarized in Science Daily.

Only faith can explain why so many sensational untruths are clung to ( polar bears are decreasing, sea levels are quickly rising, the world is getting hotter every decade, the UN's laughable 'hockey stick' climate graph is true and so on).

A religious type of belief can acxcount for why so many otherwise intelligent, and often well-intentioned people fail to grasp that there is an inherent difference between alleged global warming and pullution or envirnnmental issues. It is possible to bve dedicated to the latter issues without embracing the former.

To point out that polar bears are healthily increasing, that there has been no overall global temperature rise for a decade, that the sea rise of about 3mm a year is in line with historical levels and that the 'hockey stick' was devastatingly demolished by experts in statistics years ago, brings to their faces a moment of puzzlement.

However this quizzical glance is the look of people who are questioning why you are an obvious nut case - not the expression of those hoping to chew over new facts.

Climategate, the emerging fact that the notorious UN Intergovernmental report was censored and doctored between the scientifically agreed draft and the final published document or evn the delightful debacle of Copenhagen 2009 will do nothing to dent the faith of the Warmers.

Visitors

2009-12-31T11:47:00.000+03:00

eBay Auction

Sex,Lies and Climategate

2009-12-03T12:24:00.007+03:00

When Jon Stewart of Comedy Central gets involved, you know things are starting to unravel. Despite efforts by the unofficial party organs CBS, NBC and ABC together with the New York Times, BBC and Washington Post to ignore or bury "Climategate", Stewart, an ardent leftist and (former?) warming believer, has joined in mocking the "science" and the attempted cover-ups.

Stewart, as a comedian, is more respected (and watched) than our so-called "serious" media who are nothing more than operatives for the centre-left and long ago ceased to be news organizations, save for the Pravda type. The American people know who the real jokers are.

But how do climate alarmists and professional global warming "experts" react to the explosive posting on the internet of clear evidence of collusion, data twisting and fraud by the world's leading climnate alarmists, stretching back a decade or more in "Climategate"?

We are also talking in the UK case of possible criminal activity in scientists destroying information that was requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The University of East Anglia's "data" (all the source data has been destroyed, leaving only the "massaged" U of EA findings - how convenient) was the chief source of the nototrious UN IGPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that is universally relied upon by global warming alarmists to try and convice you, Mr. Working Taxpayer, to cough up trillions upon trillions of dollars and accept a lowered life standard for yourself and your children. All the while making global climate alarmists and allied politicians very much richer and more powerful.

Stephen Jones, one of the world's top "alarmists" and head of the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit has honourably resigned.

Dr.Rajendra Pachauri, the promoted railway enginner who runs the massive UN IGPCC ( for those who do not know the UN, putting a railway enginner in charge of climate matters is far from abnormal) the real problem, he explained, was that climate change alarmists have to be more "discreet" in future with their emails and comments. He wondered why those who hacked the U of EA emails and posted them on the internet might not be criminally investigated.

Dr. Pachauri famously wanted w to ban ice in drinks to help stop global warming.

Over in the USA, Senator Barabara Boxer from California,the only place on earth where environmentalism is a religion and economics a superstition, has called for "ciminal probes" against the hackers who have exposed the lies,fraud and collusion by the world's top warming alarmists.

Unbelievable - those who have exposed the huge scientific fraud with perhaps the biggest implications for the world's economy of all time, should face criminal probles. The lying scientists who broke the law destroying data should be more "discreet". That tells you more that enough of what you need to know about the entire global warming "industry", QED Barbara and Rajendra.

Notes On Global Warming

2009-10-22T00:19:00.005+03:00

The following headline gave me the muse to jot these notes down to a dear friend and ardent global warming believer. He wonders why the Arctic is breaking up.

'Germany breaks record for 'lowest ever October temperature'

Of course that the Arctic has less ice could be due to global temperature distribution i.e. some colder parts getting warmer, some warmer parts getting colder etc.

In the Antarctic for example, one side of the continent has ice increasing, whilst the other side has ice shelves breaking up. However, there is no difference at all in the total quantity of ice

Or it could be, as in the Medieval Warming, we are going through a post-Little Ice Age uptake. There is evidence of that.

The Arctic cannot be ice free in 2010 be due to global warming. There is no global warming in the past decade. The sum total of world temperatures has stayed the same. Some areas have decreased. Some have increased. That is empirical data.

All the global warming scenario is computer modeling on future projections or past interpretations, lacking more than fragmentary data. For example, scientists can see via Greenland ice drilling exactly when the world heated and cooled ( often rapidly) back to 100,000 years. But they have no incontrovertible data of to why - we can be sure man made CO2 cannot be the cause.

In the case of these global cooling and heating cycles, the temperatures of the oceans and especially the distribution of deep hot and cold spots that shift ( and many of which are barely discovered) may turn out to be the greater influence.. It could be solar related. There are numerous hypotheses. Politicians will go for the one that gives them power,money and control, via fear.

There is no status quo of the world's climate, never has been and never will be.

To imagine that the pet scientists (90% of whose hypotheses are traditionally wrong and discarded or superseded) of politicians, who wish to tax and control us, and a United Nations desperate for a source of legitimacy for transnational power grabs, have the single answer is laughable. Rather than sleep walk to disaster as you put it by ignoring global warming, I would call it "nose led".

People are blown up every day, but politicians tell us there is no real Muslim terrorists. We are meant to believe them. The world gets cooler and warmer every age naturally or mysteriously, and we are not meant to believe it.That's not very relevant but I would imagine despotism, wars, bad governance, mad economics and mass cultural shifts will be far more responsible for people dying in the next hundred years that 2.5 degrees Celsius. Why can we imagine the Israelis surviving global warming easily, but not the Arabs? The answer lies outside the clouds and winds, my friend.

We should accept global warming (but not pollution or no dirty energy replacements) as basically inevitable and divert the many trillions of dollars (one estimate, the cost of both World Wars x 5) that are going to be vainly and corruptly spent by politicians trying to avert the unavoidable, into directly improving the lives, defenses and education of the poor - who will then take care of their own warming in their own national consensuses.

Ping Pyong Diplomacy

2009-10-13T22:28:00.004+03:00

Today's announcement by Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetungula of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Kenya and North Korea, via a branch of the Norks full diplomatic mission in Kampala has raised a few eyebrows.

The Norks "embassies" are famous for dealing in drugs ( where they will find many of Kenya's elite to network with) and illicit wildlife products - hardly the stuff to put us on the tourist recovery path. Indeed the North Koreans routinely fund their foreign missions via crime, using the diplomatic pouch as their bagman.

Wetungula mentioned that Kenya was interested in nuclear power for electricity generation but could get that from a number of nations, not just North Korea. That would be a strange place to look for electricity technology since nearly all of the moonbat nation's nuclear effort goes into bombs and proliferation.

The Norks are flat broke and have nothing to sell Kenya. We have nothing they want either: our movie industry is not of the quality to attract Kim Il Jong. We lack uranium. Norks do not eat white maize and we are in a famine ourselves. Our local cognac is so vile it cannot be used for veterinary surgical spirit- so what gives?

As with recent visits to Kenya of similar thugs like Ahmoudinejead and a recent story that Kenya may get a "special" crude oil deal from Hugo Chavez, the North Korean announcement is perhaps a sign of the desperation felt by Kenyan leaders under extreme Western pressure over reform, crimes against humanity and an inability to stop stealing voter's and donor's money.

The Kenyan leadership perhaps hopes to fire a few shots across Western bows with a "look, we can be nice to your nasties" brand of diplomacy. Knowing that Iran, Venezuela and North Korea can do nothing at all for Kenya except cause it to garner isolation, it is likely the Western powers are not disturbed by Wetungula's bluster.

Obama, Health Care & Lies.

2009-09-16T11:31:00.005+03:00

This BBC story by US Editor Mark Mardell is seriously uninformative. Mardell tells us thatRep. Joe Wilson (R) Wilson is a racist, that criticism of Obama is likewise and on the substantive issue of health care for illegal aliens, that "all experts" agree it is impossible in Obama's legislation.

It is true that Rep. Joe Wildon broke parliamentary decorum by shouting "You Lie" during an Obama health care speech but Mr. Mardell could have told us such indecorous behavior, including prolonged jeering, shouting and cat calling, happened from many Democratic party representatives when former President Bush spoke to Congress.

Secondly, Mr. Mardell picks up the "charge" (with no evidence), that Rep. Wilson can only have made such an outburst due to “racism”. Indeed Mardell highlights "mutterings" that are now "out there in the open" - opposition to President Obama at meetings and rallies across America is motivated by "racism". How convenient for Obama -to criticize his policy is to be racist. So we can ignore everything the protesters actually say, and get on with agreeing with his policies.

This is the exact line the Democrats are pushing in news dumps and PR releases - a cub reporter with a news nose might have noted accusations, getting shriller each day Obama sinks lower in polls, deflect attention away from issues. Vague charges of "racism" stifle debate – which helps the Democrats. That's what they want. Mr. Mardell delivers for them - but not to his readers.

The attribution of these "out in the open mutterings"? That vigorous endorser in 2007/8 of then Senator President Obama's campaign, The Washington Post.

Mr. Mardell says the Democratic congressmen vigorously voted to condemn Rep. Joe Wilson (R) for his t two word outburst, but not their refusal to censor Rep. Pete Stark (D) who called Bush a liar during a congressional speech , adding that Bush was sending US soldiers "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Lastly, the story ends by stating (unnamed) experts “all (my emphasis) concur that under the terms of Mr Obama's reform package undocumented immigrants would not be able to claim health care subsidies." Oh, that’s the end of that then.

One must conclude then Rep. Joe Wilson (R) is a clueless, manner-less, racist boor who unprecedentedly interrupted a President speaking to Congress. And this on an issue where all the 'experts’ agree Wilson is utterly wrong and Obama wholly right.

Yet Mr. Mardell does not tell us Democratic party drafters rejected the Republican "Heller amendment" to enforce non-provision of Obama health care to illegal immigrants, via the simple use of mandatory verification as already exists for many federal programs -the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)/ Mr. Mardell’s “experts” strangely can’t Google.

It is plain to any fool that without verification, illegals will obtain citizen-funded "free" insurance or health care without limit.

Joe Wilson may be a boor and President Obama may be a liar. We will never know from reading Mr. Mardell. He shields us from knowing the true issues or facts. His story ends up another page in the daily media praise-singing litany for Mr. Obama. The Ministry of Truth needs journalists. Mr. Mardell should apply.

The Coackroaches and the Flashlight

2009-07-10T18:41:00.004+03:00

Kofi Annan has been characterized as a well meaning but weak Unocrat. This has been more so since he brokered the 2008 Kenyan election accord that restored peace amongst ethnic riots and tribal cleansing that almost plunged the country into civil war.

Annan was presented in mid-2008 with the Waki Report into the tribal violence that has never been made public and certainly implicates some of Kenya's highest politicians. Part of the peace deal was that unless kenya successfully prosecuted in open court the named suspects, Annan would hand the list over to the International Criminal Court for action. It seemed he never would as Annan patiently accepted one Kenyan delaying tactic after another.

Naturally neither President Kibanki nor Prime Minister Odinga ever had, along with the entire ruling elite, the least intention of prosecuting anyone, as both their political parties' high rankers are undoubtedly involved.

Absurd delaying suggestions emanated from Kenya's rulers over the last year, as they failed again and again to set up any prosecution mechanism. The best was a suggestion to Annan that the suspects would never be publicly named, even if prosecuted, until proven guilty in secret courts - an event as likely as wildebeeste in the famed Mara game reserve growing wings. The Kenyans bickered,prevaricated, visited Annan over and again in Geneva and tried every trick in their ingenious battery of cover up, learned through 40 years of post-independence impunity.. All to no avail.

Yesterday, Annan dropped a bombshell. In a letter made public, he literally told Kenya's ethnic leaders he was "calling your bluff" and handed the envelope containing the Waki list of names to the ICC's chief prosecutor. The absolute panic in the ranks of the Kenyan polical elite has since been akin to the scurry of cockroaches when the lights are switched on.

Torture,Bush and the Facts

2009-04-27T19:02:00.007+03:00

It turns out that thousands of US military members and NATO soldiers have been routinely waterboarded, kept in cramped conditions, subjected to sleep deprivation, kept in the cold, played loud music to endlessly and every other technique now widely being trumpeted in the world media is "torture", admittedly inflicted during Bush's time on some top Al Qaeda members, like 911 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, by the CIA in 2001-2006.

The reason is that all the methods that are so-called "Bush torture" are actually used to train US and NATO troops to resist interrogation when captured.

In light of these facts, should NATO and US officers, including many generals and others, who devised and ordered waterboarding and more of their own soldiers for the past 30 years, be investigated and tried for "torture"?

After all, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And if they should not be investigated, why should Bush or any of his officials be subject to retrospective prosecution for the same techniques applied to confessed terrorists and mass murderers- including those who killed the Kenyans in the 1998 embassy bombings?

If US and NATO officers are not to be prosecuted en masse for "waterborading", "sleep depriving" and so on thousands of troops, it can only be because (a) we would hold such techniques are not "real" torture but merely harshness (b) the techniques the US used on it's own soldiers really are torture, but were used in training for a "good end" -- i.e.not to cause pain for pain's sake.

If we argue (a): the techniques are "harmless" or merely "harsh interrogation", why is it called 'torture' when US citizens do it to non-Americans but not, as in the NATO/US Army training, to each other?

If hold to (b): why was the CIA "waterboarding" of Sheik Khalid Mohammed, which had him confessing to a plot to bomb Los Angeles and the arrest of the attack cell, not a "good end"?

Welcome To Hotel California

2009-04-21T09:31:00.005+03:00

It sure is an odd place. Miss California, who was leading the Miss USA contest, lost last night because of a "controversial" (according to all the big media), "shocking" etc answer to a question. A pro gay activist and judge asked her what she thought of gay marriage. Her dignified answer was that some people believed in same sex and others opposite sex and whilst she meant no offense she believed in opposite sex marriage and that is how she was raised.

The gay activist judge later called her a "bitch" and a "c*nt" in public and said her remark cost her the title.

The fact that a judge at the contest is not considered "controversial" for ruining Miss California's title chances due to her polite remarks and calling her a "bitch" and "c*nt" after the TV programme is interesting.

The eventual winner was Miss North Carolina who was asked about the US financial bailouts for her question. She said she was opposed to the bailouts and the Federal and Presidential policy of bailout financially, even in a time of crisis. The media neither called this "controversial" nor remarked at all on it.

Most voters in California just rejected gay marriage in a referendum, most Americans do not approve it and neither (piblicly) does President Obama. Wheras most Americans voted for Democrats in the last election and for President Obama and he, the Senate and Congress have called financial bailouts vital and neccessery.

When you can figure out what Miss California said about gay marriage that was "controversial" or "shocking" and what Miss North Carolina said about bailouts that the media found non-controversial, you may figure out the immense bitterness social conservatives or the religious feel towards the big media in the USA that supposedly represents "unbiased" news.

America, Through A Glass, Darkly

2009-04-07T10:28:00.004+03:00

Peggy Noonan's commentary in the Wall Street Journal on Obama's Domestic Agenda provoked much opinion and my reply was published in the Opinion letters, where it received many positive comments. Noonan seems surprised at the 'grandiosity' of what Obama is undertaking. Herewith what I wrote:

"The directions Obama's domestic agenda takes, and his grandiose ideas to fundamentally alter the American relation between citizen and government from a quasi-libertarian ( "classical liberal") to a European ( "social democratic") one, have always been crystal clear for many years to anyone who bothered to look beyond the celebrity style superficiality of his attractive persona. Or to those who delved behind Obama's disarming happy-talk during the primary and presidential campaigns.

Obama-ism is a simple three legged stool comprising Alternative Energy, Education and Healthcare. There is nothing to suggest he will abandon the first, even were a new Ice Age to emerge (as it might) because it is the revenue generator. By loading America with the omniscient tax-and-expense of costly, unproven alternative energy, Obama pays in large measure for the other two prongs of his plan.

The most basic lesson of economics, that it is wasteful to subsidize one thing to be cheap by making another dear, is something Obama, an otherwise attractive and clever man, shows no sign of swallowing.

In all of this new American social construction, the government will be the lumber provider, carpenter, store owner and salesman. In other words, energy, education and health are to be nationalized, in essence and de facto. That none of this is shown to work any better, or indeed worse in the long run, than risk-reward private enterprise seems not important to Obama.

For Obama is a social egalitarian. and was largely raised in the international anti-American gruppenthink of the extpatriate intelligensia. The collective "fairness" to all Americans (perhaps even non-Americans) and of groups and classes of citizens real of contrived, is more important to him than the classical rights of individuals - rights upon which the nation was found ed.

Did the American people want this? Probably not - but with a supine applauding media and a mood of economic despair to exploit, there is every chance they will get it. Obama seems unworried that his grandiosity will saddle Americans with more public debt in a few years than the Republic has accumulated since 1776. To be indebted to your government to Obama's mind one begins to darkly glimpse, is perhaps desirable.

That the opposite intention was in the minds of those who framed the Constitution is an inconvenience not to be discussed.

To the obvious calculation that Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupted in Obama's daughters prime or there will no money left to fund the Healthcare and Federal education without raising taxation to European levels, the President seems equally unruffled.

For Euramericans like Obama, the new social contract is basically this: the private person must be indebted, financially and morally, to government. Government's prime obligation in return to the citizen is continued displays of public virtue via engineered "egalitarianism". The debt is real, the egalitarianism is fake - but the public, like in 1984, never figure out this simple trick. Thus the Democrats are fated to slowly become Jacobins - indeed some already are.

Though China will be the world Superpower perhaps in 2050, as predicted, Obama-ism merely hastens America along the declining European path of "soft" power, with soft citizens taking neither risk nor reward nor responsibility.

It is hardly what the Founding fathers had in mind, but with a citizenry addicted to easiness and pleasure, all of de Tocqueville's warnings about the consequences of "beneficial" government may sadly come true."

Pissing About with Pirates

2009-04-06T20:08:00.004+03:00

Despite hugely increased naval presence in the area, the Somali pirates continue to make a mockery of the world's sea powers as see today's BBC story.

Nothing will change until Obama takes the very unlikely step ( for him) of doing a "Barbary pirates" on the Somalis. In US history, when north African pirates caused havoc to US and other shipping around 1820, the navy invaded and sacked the home ports of the pirates. That shut down the notorious Barbary pirates pretty quick and one suspects it is the only medicine the Somalis will ever understand. Besides, it is the only sound military tactic - hit them at home.

Somali pirates seize more vessels

More than 130 pirates attacks were reported in 2008

Somali pirates have seized a British-owned cargo ship and a Taiwanese ship, maritime officials say, after capturing three other vessels over the weekend.

Obama the Obsequious

2009-04-06T16:55:00.004+03:00

Are the people surrounding President Obama clueless, or could -not -care -less? Who is in charge of Obama's protocol? It would seem on his recent trip to Europe, Obama became the first American President in memory to bow to a potentate ,when he stooped before the autocrat, King Abdalla, despite it is a rigorous rule of protocol that American Presidents never bow to Kings or Queens.

When Obama met the far more important Queen Elizabeth, a democratic monarch, he did not bow.

One could also not fail to note that Obama never missed an opportunity to "apologize" for America's imagined wrongs as a preface to nearly every meeting he had on his recent European trip. In this he is following up his first TV interview after the Presidency, when he apologized to the Iranian theocrats on Al-Arabiya TV.

Even when proposing the elimination of nuclear weapons in Prague, Obama had to apologize for America being the "only nation to have used" them, something which imposed a "moral duty "on the USA to lead in their elimination, he said. Did he know the historical facts?

True, the US used two atomic bombs to end Word War 2. Yet recent historical research shows that Japan had prepared submarines with aircraft on board, and was awaiting from Germany the clandestine transfer of nuclear material (the Nazi submarine carrying it surrendered en route to Japan in May, but the Japanese never knew this) so that a "dirty bomb" attack could be conducted on San Francisco. The proposed date was just a few days after Japan actually surrendered!

This is besides the fact the US and allies never knew the correct position of Germany's wartime research into atomic weapons, which Hitler fully intended to acquire. Therefore, as they saw it, they were in a deadly race, with the fate of the world in the balance - as indeed it was. Hitler already possessed in the V2 the means to deliver atomic weapons on London, and was working on the V4 ICBM which could have reached New York - again with a "dirty bomb" plutonium weapon. Had the war run another 6 months, the outcome might well have been ghastly.

It is a wonder that the USA grasped the full need to develop atomic weapons rapidly in the face of deadly enemies who were looking for the same, and to use them to end the war with far less human loss of life (on both sides) than a mainland invasion of Japan. This also had the intended purpose of halting Stalin from annexing much of Northern China and possible Stalinist ground offensives in Europe.

Obama has nothing to apologize for and his obsequiousness is unbecoming. However, reading his books, it is obvious Obama was an early and strong believer in 'conventional wisdom' anti-Americanism and blaming many of the ills of the world on the US. To the lesser extent that may be true Obama could be refreshingly honest, but it is not the way it's seen by the myriad of loathsome enemies the West faces.

Barack's Baptism

2009-01-28T22:43:00.008+03:00

Today Barack Obama is going to receive his first full secret briefing from US intelligence agencies on the threats his administration faces, as ABC News notes here. Many have said that within days of these briefings, past Presidents seem to have aged quite a few years.

President Obama is going to painfully discover that no matter even when the US has been right,just,fair and generous, there still exist a myriad of vicious enemies of freedom trying to destroy the USA.

The reaction from Iran today to his TV offer of "extending a hand" was calumny, bile, anger and insolent demands the US "apologise" for "past crimes", just one component of the hatred some regimes perpetually have for the USA - which Obama will find all his sweet words and charisma cannot change.

Obama will wake up to the painful realization that the USA cannot just be "liked", it also needs to be respected and fear of power is one ( vital) component of respect that he has never acknowledged.

Speak softly and carry a big stick, Barry as a former US President once said. You are going need it sooner rather than later.

After this briefing, Obama will change a lot of his mind about George W Bush, if he acknowledges it or not.

Summing It Up

2008-10-22T01:48:00.002+03:00

I think summarizes the USA for the next four years better than one thousand words might!

Palin's Troopergate!

2008-10-11T15:00:00.002+03:00

The just released Alaska probe is only damaging to Sarah Palin because the media, including the BBC, have been waiting to spin it against her. The BBC quotes investigator Blanchflower only in part, the first of only two "findings", one of which is negative to Palin and contradicted in the second.

Why was their report not headed "Palin acted lawfully and properly", instead of "Palin abused power"?

Blanchflower disagrees with himself in the same report, second finding, quote:

"Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads."

How can "lawful and proper" suddenly become "abuse"? Is it not Mr. Blanchflower that needs investigating over such contradiction?

The BBC has also chosen not to mention the investigation is not a criminal one, and has been conducted by partisan Alaskan Democrats who appointed Blanhflower and has as much low weight as any other inter party mud-slinging. Instead it will be spun into Watergate Two by the media.

If the BBC had read any of the report, how could they so fail to report the glaring contradiction of the second finding? Perhaps they will read it now.

And why is the BBC calling this item "Troopergate"? That itself is a spin. The trooper Palin wanted dismissed admitted he taser gunned her own 10 year old nephew, which was cruel, dangerous, even potentially fatal and could be prima facie child abuse, admitted he poached wildlife but denied being drunk on patrol or threatening to kill members of the Palin family. Quite a list.

How about "Tasergate", or would that raise questions that would not lead to anti-Palin conclusions?

Why I Hate Sarah Palin!

2008-10-09T01:17:00.003+03:00

The second debate was awful and boring. I wonder who will watch the next? Obama remains a person I would like to believe in but with under two years in the Senate and a very nondescript (even buried) record, I tend to think of him as a celebrity media candidate with charm, looks , a good brain, fine articulation and great oratory...but as to who he really is and represents?

He remains a cypher , even to the British Ambassador in the US who briefed Gordon Brown. Unless you never grew up from 60's, Obama looks like a weirdly contemporary retro-radical, pushing for Main Street. I wish it were not so, for the guy has true talent aplenty to burn.

As the most left wing US candidate of all time ( not that this does not please some) I cannot see how the massive expansion of government/spending/entitlement his kind always invokes would help the USA, broke as it is, ..but politics goes in cycles and the Dems certainly have the pendulum.

Thatcher/Reagans's idea to deregulate prudently so the deserving and thrifty could better become house owners degenerated 10 years on into cajoling the undeserving, indigent and un-creditworthy into bad loans . Greed on Wall Street? Politicians passing the buck..after all this was not triggered by anything other than the artificial housing boom of the past 15+ years, fed by "politically correct credit" which Fannie and Freddie re-cycled in an act of fiscal criminality, all over the world. It was a scam, a house of cards - nothing more or less.

Is it reasonable that bankers, who depend upon their jobs by not losing money, would give away absurd loans from "greed"? Why were bankers in our father's time not similarly "greedy"? Or were they allowed back then to judge their loans on their merits? Those who swallow the "greed" red herring will get choked by the nasty bones that are the facts. For it is not Lehman Bros etc ( greedy though some in these businesses were) who caused this crisis. It was improvident lending, sanctioned by Congress and encouraged by them since 1977 but paced faster every year.

We are not in a "corporate salary crisis" or a "commodities boom crisis" and the only "greed crisis" exists in the minds of Congress trying to palm off their duplicity on frightened voters - the mother and father of our problem is real estate and "subprime" at that, and so it is named.

Of course, lending to everyone for political reasons ("affirmative lending" would be a good term) put huge pressure on the natural supply and demand chain of housing, forcing up prices even more in the 90's and current decade. In a phrase, it was a pyramid scheme that would collapse ( as was warned by some fiscal conservatives many times).

After a period of anti-American gloating so typical of the superior moral beings that are Europeans, I see the chickens have come home to roost there too.

Again, the problem is not one of deregulation but too much regulation in the critical housing market, replacing the decentralised prudence and decisions of the traditional banker with a command-style regulation from politicians/pressure groups to loan to any and everybody.

This was accompanied ,at least in the USA, by actual fines and penalties, all in the name of egalitarianism and helping social mascot groups ( the unemployed, illegal immigrants, racial minorities regardless of median income, drug addicts, people with bad credit rating, trailer trash etc). Why? It seems charitable on the surface, but in the end it was to buy votes. In the 1990's the process accelerated.

Indeed, by 2005 a full 19% of the massive loans backed by Fannie and Freddie that year were "subprime" ( i.e. loans a banker would not make without threats or cover from politicians, or both). Hence the absurdity of random tele-callers offering loans to every bum in Europe and the USA, to fullfil, like little communist workers, their "quotas" of "non-discriminatory" loans to please Congress and courts. I do not say there were no other factors to the current crisis outside of the sub-prime, and one cannot blame the uncreditworthy for taking the chance for what they saw as a better life. Yet only the sub-prime problem could have triggered the uncontrollable meltdown that started some months ago, as house prices steadily dropped for the first time in over a decade.

It was a huge bonfire of the vanities in which we are all burned. I agree with the 60% of Americans who would, as polled yesterday, not return a single member of Congress to power in Nov if it was their call. But it's not. Congress has rigged their choices as well.

All of this is why I hate Sarah Palin. She was in Alaska, has never spent a minute in Congress and is the only one of the four candidates who has zero blame for this mess. Indeed, while Washington was bankrupting the USA, she put Alaska into the black and got an 85% approval rating from both parties. Bi-partisanship in action, I suppose. She is the only candidate to have never accepted a dime from Fannie and Freddie. Obama grabbed $125 thousand and even McCain took a modest $15 thou. Sarah is the dimwit serial -breeding hick who is not fit to lead America, or so I am told.

Sarah Palin, Warmonger!

2008-09-16T02:41:00.004+03:00

ABC's notoriously condescending interview with Sarah Palin by the Charlie Gibson has fuelled immense media spin when Palin pointed out, quite correctly, that were a country a member of NATO and it was invaded by Russia, the treaty obligates members to defend it, even if that "perhaps" meant war. This is the exact nature of the NATO treaty, but ABC would never have you think that.

Of course the interview was censored by ABC who cut important portions from it. The entire unedited interview is now available here. Listen to what ABC cut out of the interview, and make your own mind up about Palin-The-Warmonger the left and the Democrafts are frantically spinning this week:

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

The treatment of Sarah Palin by the media must stand as the most despicable hit-job undertaken on a Presidential candidate by the mainstream media in recent times. The chances are it will backfire splendidly in their faces - the American people are not fools.

That Race Card - A Joker

2008-09-14T22:04:00.003+03:00

Kelley’s misleading article “Race card could hurt Obama” and the comically vicious abuse of John McCain repeated by Mutuma Mathiu (Sunday Nation 14 Sept) go beyond the understandable desire most Kenyans have to see Obama win the US Presidency. The media have a duty to inform but the blatant partisanship on display is likely to leave Kenyans none the wiser if Obama, whose campaign is faltering, does not make it.

There is no evidence whatsoever that McCain’s campaign has made any derogatory remarks about Obama’s race. Like him or not, McCain is acknowledged even by his enemies as a true American hero, and a veteran maverick politician of considerable personal honour. Are all the voters in Central Province tribalists because they never voted for Mr. Odinga? Are the Germans racist because they have not a single non-white senior cabinet minister and the same for most Western European countries? Are the people of Nyanza ethnicists because they refused to vote for Mr. Kibaki? What nonsense – yet Americans are threatened with being branded “racists” if they do not elect Mr. Obama. This is plain anti-American bigotry, holding Americans to standards that are not even asked of others. Perhaps Mr. Kelley can inform us if Kenyans vote, on the whole, for tribal personalities or for parties?

Mr. Kelly was better served informing Kenyans of various facts of American politics: that the USA historically votes for Republican presidents most of the time, that there are almost equal numbers of Republican and Democrat party members who vote for their party above all, that Obama made a huge blunder in not taking Hilary Clinton as his running mate and that he is, however brilliant, fresh and eloquent , the most inexperienced person to ever run for US President, against a veteran Republican who has cunningly chosen a woman running mate.

If Kenyans do not vote based upon whoever Ugandans or Chinamen might like to see in State House, why should Americans take the least notice of what foreigners want? Obama is not standing for President of the World, which he might win – first he has to convince US voters.

Some 87% of US voters are non-black. Obama could never have got where he is on their paltry votes. True as Mr. Kelley states, only a few black Republicans attended their convention – most vote Democratic since 1945 and they are free to have that choice. President Bush put more blacks into positions of power than any President to date, as see Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, to name two. The idea the Republicans are against blacks is a smear.

As for Mr. Mathiu gleeful reprinting of McCain’s convention speech as basically being delivered by a senile, out of touch old fool addressing a despicable bunch of cronies ( who only happen to represent about 0% of American voters!) he should keep it up if he wants Obama to lose. Americans reading it might feel so insulted as to vote for McCain.

Borking Sarah Palin

2008-09-08T13:42:00.005+03:00

Oxford English Dictionary 2002 Edition: people who Bork others "usually [do so] with the aim of preventing [a person's] appointment to public office."

There is no doubt that the serially biased US mainstream media are determined to bork McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin. As is well known, the left's fierce devotion to free speech only applies to groupthinkers. Those who exhibit thoughtcrimes outside of the leftist narrative that the MSM obligingly controls and steers will be borked. The last person who suffered this shameful treatment was black Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Feminist Florynce Kennedy.....on the importance of defeating the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, said, "We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically. . . . This little creep, where did he come from?"

So far all the MSM have to run with is the idea that Palin is at fault for the attempted firing of her former brother-in-law from the Alaska police. What mileage the media hopes to get out of this is severly dented by the well documented facts: Palin's brother in law tastered an 11 year old boy, broke state hunting regulations and was caught driving drunk on duty. He also is on his fourth marriage.

Thus The Guardian runs the "investigation" smear in a recent edition, conveniently failing to note exactly just what sort of character Sarah Palin's former brother-in-law actually is. I doubt Mr and Mrs. Average American will do anything except pat Palin on the back.

More laughable is that the MSM, who play softball with regard to any investigations into their democratic pets (the John Edwards no-story being the most glaring latest example), have gone into a frenzied hits against Palin but simultaneously spread the lie that it is Republicans who are the "attack dog" party and the "smear artists".

So successful are the media in producing newspeak terminology that they have managed to get "swiftboating" into the language as "the false accusation of someone for political purposes". Yet the famous anti-Kerry "Swiftboat" political ads of 2004 were never challenged as to the facts they spoke of. If anything, the word should stand for "accurate accusation."

Will Palin survive the cloud of smears the left has inundated her with? I have my doubts. McCain is too well known as a war-hero and patriot to try that on him, but it's open season on moose hunting mamas and she will be lucky to survive. However the latest Rasmussen poll showing 51% of Americans think she is being picked on also indicate that blow back from a fed up electorate could easily scorch the Democrats.

Barack and Biden's Blood

2008-09-06T13:51:00.005+03:00

Post Convention Update:

Blood on the floor and it's Barack and Biden's: more people watched Sarah Palin's speech than St. Barry's. More people watched the RNC convention than Mubarak's styrofoam faux-Nuremburg rally. In fact more people watched John McMelanoma on his final night than ever before in US convention history. MSM scrambling to spin these ratings.

People turning on the media generally for the cloud of smears and lies they emitted when their anointed Obamus the First suddenly faced the shock-gasp-horror of the Esquimo inbreeding, caribou eating, wilderness trash that is Sarah Palin.................and her genetically challenged family.

Obama will now trot out a lot of chisel faced wimmin and members of the US Female Welders and Hardhats Lesbian Coalition to counter the moose -murdering serial mama from Sticksville.

Media fuming: their breathless declaration that Britol Palin is pregnant actually backfired - they thought it would annoy Republicans and the religious. That's because the mean fire-and-brimstone image they have of such people is entirely the creature of their own liberal 0.5 child-per-couple fantasies. The right on the other hand loves babies (Baracky: an unwanted pregnancy would be "a punishment" any of his daughters should abort if it happened).

They especially love those who don't chuck 'em down the hospital chute - or in Baracky's case, he was the only member of the Illinois legislature to vote to allow born-alive late abortions to die without medical care. Media love, Palin 40.

The Reps have so much red meat between their teeth now that the Barracuda (Palin's nickname) can't digest it all. The next event in about 10 days is Sarah, the pitbull with lipstick vs. bloviating Joe Biden, one of the least accomplished hacks to occupy the Senate for the past 36 years and renowned for his large foot-in-mouth once he gets going. On the other hand as the eternal chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he knows where Canada is ( and probably Krygystan) whilst Sarah Stickshick is still looking up Washington DC on the map.

Key moment of that debate? When Biden runs into Sarah with the "experience" line and the Pitbull sweetly points out that The O-nointed One not only has less executive experience than her, but that Biden himself is on public record stating Obama is not qualified by experience to be President over John McCain. Ouch, ow...gasp...........

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

2008-09-04T01:14:00.002+03:00

"Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?... Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?... Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?... Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy…. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen.... Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?."

New York Times, 1984, on Geraldine Ferraro as Vice Presidential nominee

Three front page stories on the pregnant Bristol Palin.

New York Times, 2008

Never A Wiser Statement

2008-09-03T03:34:00.000+03:00

"Government´s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it." - Ronald Reagan

For The Price of A Movie

2008-09-02T23:39:00.001+03:00

Breathless post.......................

Half--Muslim mixed race child with zero experience knocks out America's biggest political family in primaries. Takes on on "tortured for two thousand days" war hero maverick/serial melanomist, who was written off 2 years ago, in a tight 2008 Presidential race.

After the Obamessiah takes an early lead, maverick John McMelanoma fires back at Democratic identity politics via a secret weapon: unknown 44 year old Alaskan beauty Queen VP pick Sarah Palin who hunts, fishes, flies planes, shoots bears and knows how to prepare a mean mooseburger.

Beauty Queen Sarah at once accused by lefty media of having faked her Down Syndrome 5 month old baby's birth and claims baby shown to media is her daughter's. Press holds breath as is soon revealed actually the Beauty Queen's 17 year old daughter is pregnant, by a schoolmate whose Facebook descrip reads "redneck" who "is not looking forward to having children".

Lefty media start piranha hunt and smell blood until St. Barracky (own mother at time of birth: 18 years) steps in and calls it off.

Meanwhile, Beauty Queen's husband revealed as a world class "snowmobile racer" who votes Democrat! Works in a "World Deadliest Catch"-type fishing boat. Lefty press dig hard and find he has a Driving-Under-Influence arrest 20 years ago. Bloggers point out St. Barracky also admitted in public to using cocaine 20 years ago. Public chuffles.

Obamessiah campaign, reeling from sneak Alaskan attack (McMelanoma was a Navy pilot in Vietnam days) blast Miss Alaska for "lack of experience", producing extreme hilarity as even the most dim witted voter notices that applies to the Obamessiah himself. Only he is running for Prez and she isn't!.

Meanwhile a hurricane bears down on New Orleans and will it be another Katrina? Is it an act of God to strike down the evil Republican Bushitler/McMelanoma cabal once and for all, during their convention? Or an act of the Devil to wipe the media focus from Emperor Obamus' temple gathering just 48 hours before?

Who cares? How much would you have to pay for this stuff in a movie theatre? Who could possibly make it up? How utterly boring the rest of world politics seems.

God I love America!

The Unseen Victory

2008-07-09T08:29:00.003+03:00

One of the most significant events post-911 has passed almost without notice by US and world media: the roundup of 1000 Al Qaeda suspects in Mosul Iraq, representing the final annihilation of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

At least the UK's Times has an article on this pounding of what once looked like an unbeatable terrorist force. Of course the same leftist media who parroted that " one can never win against terrorism by military force" now have nothing to say: their anti-American mascot Bin Laden lives in a cave in Waziristan, two thirds of his cadre of leaders is dead or captured and the branch in Iraq, the standard bearers for what Bin Laden called the most important fight against America, has been totally routed and the leadership killed.

Rugby Tri-Nations Time!

2008-07-03T01:45:00.002+03:00

Huge rugby weekend on Saturday when the world's premier rugby test, the Tri-Nations series, kicks off with a volcanic encounter between the Springboks and All Blacks in New Zealand's Dunedin "House of Pain" stadium.

Bok/Black match-ups have an intensity all of their own in world rugby and for nigh on 100 years and this one is no different with the World Champ South Africans desperate to prove their superiority against a New Zealand side that feels bitterly cheated of the same title in 2007. They are focused with X-ray intensity on penetrating and destroying the Boks 12 match unbeaten run. Bragging rights, the inside track to the Tri-Nations '08 trophy and the IRB No 1 ranking are all on the line.

SA's first non-white coach, Pieter de Villiers, has chosen a very good side with many excellent players of colour. The full set of new laws will be on display for the first time too, meaning each side will be stretched to the full limit of their speed and endurance in the machine-gun rapidity of the experimental rule changes. However, scrum advantage plays an enhanced role under the new laws and this is where de Villiers may have erred. The All Blacks have a powerful scrum and a very destructive front row that pulverized England in two recent Tests - yet de Villiers, who paired his best front row with BJ Botha and exciting new black prop Beast Mtwarira against Wales three weeks ago has inexplicably left Botha at home.

Perhaps there is politics at play here, with de Villers having to field, by some rumored unwritten agreement with the SA sports authorities, a high number of "coloured" players - or perhaps he has just made a mistake. You simply must get parity, if not go-forward, at scrum time under the new laws, since the defenders have to stand 5 yrads behind the scrum which gives the attackers a big advantage. I can't see de Villiers possible combinations of Steenkamp/Van Der Linde and young first-timers Mujati/Mtwarira doing this in Dunedin against the best, when they failed to manage the front-foot against lesser opposition in recent weeks.

The Boks best card will be the lineout combination of world class locks Victor Matfield and Bakkies "Pickup Truck" Botha whose work in this department is simply brilliant. Therefore, expect magical All Black no 10 Dan Carter to do everything to avoid lineouts while his classy backline of Nonu, Leon McDonald, Sivivatu and possibly Conrad Black (if chosen) try to run the Springboks ragged with fast play from side to side of the pitch.

With Captain Ritchie McCaw out of action, the Bok backrow should shade the All Blacks led by Rodney So'ialo but de Villiers may opt for Luke Watson instead of his hardest combo of Burger,Juan Smith and a resurgent Big Joe Van Niekerk at no 8. In fact, de Villers has so many quality backrowers he is probably spoiled to get this vital balance perfect. New Zealand may not match up here, giving the Boks a real chance at the vital breakdown ball - and a win.

He would be wise to suit up 5 forwards and only two backs on his bench, since in runners Pienaar and Steyn he has two backs who can cover every backline combination. Since two of his loose forward bench, Spies and Kankowski, are as explosive and fast as backs in their own right, this could give the real edge. But, as I write,one is unsure of who de Villers will actually pick.

Every Kiwi is dangerous, but Maa Nonu especially so at No 12 and with the clever Conrad Black at 13, the Boks likely pairing of John de Villers and Adi Jacobs are going to have their hands very full indeed, let alone with the brilliance of McDonald and Sivivatu. The new coach wants to play an expansive game but will the Bok no 12 and 13 get the space and time to deliver their clever touches? It must be in doubt. Again, the Boks will likely play JJ Pietersen on one wing, yet he is a shadow of his 2007 form when de Villers might have moved incumbent, on-form fullback Conrad Jantjes to the wing and played the always reliable Percy Montgomery at fullback, even given he is 34 years young but still playing near his very best. This mega-Test will come down to how clever each coach is with his final line-up and if amything de Villers has more options than Graham Henry for once - and more chances thus to get it wrong.

My head gives this match to the All Blacks on home soil and by about 7 points but it will be a close run affair and certainly is the most awaited clash for years. My heart goes to the Boks who can certainly win and have the best chance against New Zealand at home for many seasons - but certainly is a word that almost always comes undone against a fired up bunch of All Blacks on home winter soil. Have your smelling salts and blood pressure guage to hand when you switch this one on.

Court Of Fools

2008-06-18T00:57:00.004+03:00

Reading the impassioned and often wrong comments following this link on the Supreme Court Boumedienne decision led me to the following response:

"It is sad to read here people speculating as to why the Bush admin neither wanted the captured terrorists to be treated as Prisoners of War under Geneva Conventions, not executed summarily as the laws of war and Geneva would have allowed. Many seem baffled by this. The answer is surely, that POWS cannot, under Geneva, be interrogated beyond "name,rank,serial number". And if they are summarily executed on or close to the battlefield they would neither be interrogated to give information. They would be dead. If the asymetrical war against international WMD seeking terrorists is not to be conducted by the shadows, the questioners, the isolation of the suspected, by harsh and secret methods, just who will conduct it? The San Francisco circuit of judges? The FBI? How about the UN? Wait, let's call on the ICC in the Hague.

The Bush admin did the world a huge service by trying to act on what waffling bodies like the UN have been paralysed over for decades - the treatment of terrorists and "unlawful combatants" or the new breed of mega-terrorists. It is indeed Bush's brilliance, not his detriment, that he realized the old Geneva Rules were useless in the face of a conspiracy so vast as Al Qaeda. If international terrorism had not been stopped cold by America's aggression post 911, the EU and others would probably be asking George Bush for the Gitmo blueprints long ago.

For those as naive as Obama,who trumpet how civilian courts dealt with the 1993 WT bombings, one has only to ask: just how effective were those civilian trials in stopping attacks on the USA and US citizens? Not at all, if we go by the Africa Embassy bombings, the USS Cole and of course the whole run in to 9/11.

Contrast the Bush approach when, with every fanatic in the world supposedly desperate to attack the American heartland, not a single attack has taken place. rather, the terrorists have been constrained, or sucked into killing fields like Iraq and slaughtered, so that Osama now hides in a Waziristan cave and most of his deputies are dead or in Gitmo. This, we are told ,is a failure. The blind sheik rotting in a New York jail after the 1993 attacks who gave us no information on the holocaust of Americans that was to come, is one learns, a success.

If America's standing in the world is low, it is largely because of the dismal and disloyal role of media, American included, in not explaining what is patently explainable: that WMD seeking mega-terrorists do not fall whatsoever under any of the protected categories of combatants under the Geneva Conventions and Rules and Conventions of War. According to the Geneva Conventions, they are war criminals and subject to summary justice.

With the terrifying possibilities of nuclear and bio-terrorism around us, which our enemies have assured us over and again they will use the minute they can obtain the weapons, to give foreign terrorists superior access to US justice than Nazi Werewolf partisans, foreign spy saboteurs in the Revolutionary War, German saboteurs on US soil in WW2 and a host of other examples including captured Barbary pirates if we go so far back, is an act of unbelievable stupidity and nothing more than a Supreme Court supremely out of touch with reality."

When Hydrogen Equals C02

2008-06-16T11:54:00.004+03:00

Honda makes first hydrogen cars

The FCX Clarity emits none of the gases responsible for global warming

The Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.

The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour.

Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car.

As someone who totally supports the use of cleaner energy, regardless of global warming debates, this is good news. However the thorn in the rose, and what is not widely understood, is that hydrogen does not occur on earth in gas form. It can only be manufactured by using energy, and a lot of it at that. The cheapest and best way to crack hydrogen from water would be by using nuclear power, otherwise it would have to be done by fossil fuels, making the net saving in carbon emissions very minimal.

Once more, like so many "green products" this turns out to be a PR gimmick more than something we shall all be driving in 5 years, or perhapos even 50.

The Mainstreaming of Terror

2008-06-13T22:27:00.002+03:00

Today I read excerpts of the worst decision I have ever seen from the US Supreme Court, the Boumedienne case which, under Justice Kennedy, gives enemy terrorists of the USA the rights to habeus corpus in domestic courts for the first time in our history, supposedly because (among other reasons) the war against terror has gone on a very long time!

This is unheard of in any Common Law jurisprudence and goes against well established earlier Supreme Court cases and precedent concerning aliens making war on the united States. It is a stunning blow against the US military and the safety of Americans, and a ghastly mainstreaming of terrorists , and by extension even foreign armed forces, into the heart of US civilian courts.

There is a far finer take on this terrible decision here at the NRO which makes sobering reading. My jaw dropped and my heart ached as I read this mystical extension of the US Constitution to cover those who have plotted and executed attacks upon us from foreign countries where they were captured. As Justice Scalia said in dissent, the decision, " sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."

As has been said, no great power is ever defeated from without, without first defeating itself from within. As for Justice Kennedy, I never thought I would say this about a Supreme Court member, but the only remedy is his impeachment, which sadly will never happen.

Rugby Hots Up

2008-06-12T23:11:00.005+03:00

Wales vs Springboks, 2nd Test: This should be a no-brainer. The Boks have players with names like "The Beast" (photo above) and "Pickup Truck". The Welsh are all called Jones and after their 43-17 hiding I expect them to be better than last week, for a while and then fade badly in the second half. When they see the Springbok bench they will start looking for their airline tickets - it's awesome. Moderate Bok win.

Oz vs Micks (in Australia): An interesting one, Robbie Dean's first match as Australia coach and he has already, as a good Canterbury Kiwi, been moaning at the soft Aussie forwards. Ireland's are anything but and this could be the best and most even match of the weekend, especially with the super pass of veteran Peter Stringer to serve Ronan O Gara who has got over his bout of RWC "going Irish" ( booze and women) that made him so pathetic in november. Oz to win but close?

All-Blacks v England (in NZ): I don't see the ABs at their best at the moment and they too are grappling with player turnover, but they could put out the coach's grandma and her dog and still beat this depleted and experimental English XV in their sleep. England hope to play an "expansive" game against the All Blacks but the only expansion will be to the Kiwis side of the scoreline. England cannot, by temperament, upbringing, bloodline, genes, training, tradition or ability play an "expansive" game so why don't they give up ttalking and just try to grind the Kiwis down as per ususal? A big score.

The Teflon Messiah

2008-06-12T00:38:00.004+03:00

It is often said that Ronald Regan was able to ensure that no political problem or scandal ever stuck to him - hence the moniker of the "Teflon President". Barack Obama seems set to raise slipperyness to such heights that it will make Ronnie seem like the Velcro Prez. It helps to have the media running interference for you and consigning lots of otherwise juicy stories to the fabled MSM memory hole.

A short while after hiring James Johnson as the chief of his Veep vetting panel, suddenly Obama claims today that, he had never actually worked for him. This is in the vein of Pastor Wright and multiple fraudster Tony Rezko, who contrived to get Obama a $250,000 house for about a quarter of the value. In both cases, Saint Baracky claimed these, along with the ranting Rev. Pfhelger, "were not the people he knew" despite he knew one of them for 20 years.

There is also the case of the once fired Austan Goolsbee who "never really" worked for Obama either when he was caught lying about NAFTA briefings he had with Canadian officials, who has now just been re-instated to Obama's team as a top economic policy adviser. The MSM has adroitly dodged Obama's very friendly links to domestic left-wing terrorists Bill Ayers and the charming Bernadette Dorn, once on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list.

Obama "never knew them very well" either, despite being neighbours and having cozy political parties with Bill, last seen in public a few years ago dancing on an American flag and stating his complete non repentance for attempting to bomb the Pentagon.

Obama has railed against the corporate greed of slippery sub-prime mortgage bankers. It seems then odd that on his Democratic fund raising staff he has people directly linked to banks like Continental Finance and many others of the worst type of subprime sharks.

Surely the real reason James Johnson, who never worked for Obama despite being appointed by him, suddenly resigned is the Wall Street Journal expose of how Johnson did not disclose the friendly loans he got from Countrywide ( another sub-prime shark) to Fannie Mae, of which Johnson was CEO. At the same time, Fannie Mae was buying Countrywide’s rotten sub-prime loans.

Presumably Obama would say, "This is not the story I read".

If Obama Was Republican

2008-06-08T22:22:00.004+03:00

Hat Tip: Peoplescube.com

Eating Climate Propaganda

2008-05-31T23:03:00.006+03:00

A good example of the unsubstantiated claims of global warming hysterics is found at the very well read BBC News. What looks like a straight news piece "Clashes at Nairobi Food Protest" includes at the end the mandatory, and totally unsubstantiated, "climate change" mantra so beloved of the soft-left social controllers that totally dominate the BBC.

"World population growth, increased food consumption in emerging economies such as China, climate change and increased land being given over for biofuel production are all having an impact on the price of food." says Aunty Beeb.

Of course,there is little evidence that "climate change" a.k.a. "weather" is responsible. The excellent page on Wikipedia here does note "climate change" as one of the debatable reasons for food shortages, but assigns it last on the list and in the follow up data, provides almost no evidence for the assertion, even in the exhaustive footnotes and quoted scientific papers.

The Beeb of course has it has as number 3 in their list, that also includes the beloved leftist Malthusianism , "world population growth" is the primary cause. Translation? Abort the little brown buggers and we will be fine.

What the Beeb does not have in their list are factors like: the effect of the anti-free market OPEC cartel on oil and fertilizer prices, the frantic resistance to GMO foods displayed by the grossly overweight European Union populations and their blackmail of developing countries that want to employ GMO crops, the anti-capitalist subsidizing of food prices in especially the EU but also the USA, the role of anti-democratic misgovernment in Asia ( North Korea) and Africa (Kenya included) in producing artificial famines and other factors.

Wikipedia notes quite correctly that "Systemic causes for the world-wide food price increase continue to be the subject of debate." but not amongst the leftists at the BBC, where the matter is cut and dried. Wikipedia experts say:

"Initial causes of the late 2006 price spikes included unseasonable droughts in grain producing nations and rising oil prices. Oil prices further heightened the costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. Other causes may be the increasing use of biofuels in developed countries (see also Food vs fuel),^[1] and an increasing demand for a more varied diet (especially meat) across the expanding middle-class populations of Asia.^[2]^[3] These factors, coupled with falling world food stockpiles have all contributed to the dramatic world-wide rise in food prices.^[4] Longterm causes remain a topic of debate. These may include structural changes in trade and agricultural production, agricultural price supports and subsidies in developed nations, diversions of food commodities to high input foods and fuel, commodity market speculation, and climate change."

One factor for sure is the lunatic insistence of the climate dogmatists on bio-fuel production. Whereas the production of bio-diesel in arid climates using the jojoba plant would, for example, be of enormous benefit to poor countries in Africa, instead we have the world's rain forests being cut down ( with a huge loss of bio-diversity) to plant palm oil or large food areas being put over to corn based ethanol, as just one example of the unintended effects of the climate control freaks agitprop.

A conservative perspective starts with the idea that perfect human socio-political or economic institutions are impossible, and that something like "global warming" will always involve trade-offs and systemic solutions, many of which will be imperfect and flawed, and always subject to continuous review and adjustment based on human priorities and freedoms. This is absolutly not what the Beeb wants to hear or broadcast.

The Pit Beckons

2008-05-21T09:49:00.002+03:00

I often write with tongue firmly in cheek, with an eye to the satirical. After all, my childhood hero was Swift. Sometimes things are not a laughing matter, however.

Yet yesterdays decisions by the UK parliament to allow human-animal hybrid embryos, to allow the breeding of "saviour siblings" simply to provide donor matches, to do away with any "right to a father" by those who use insemination or fertility clinics and to stick with killing 6 month old babies in late abortions has made me deeply ashamed of my citizenship in that country.

The founder of the left, Rousseau, was the first to demand the destruction of the family - he even gave away his only child for adoption for "political reasons" and broke his wife's heart for life. He was a monster. The left has continued openly, quietly or even surreptitiously to believe in the next 250 years that we can only have "new humans" when the family, as we know it, is pulverised and remade in a political image.

We truly enter a brave new world of Frankenstein creations with Britain's new legislation.

Anyone who has worked with fatherless children would see that encouraging society to raise the same is utterly irresponsible and costly. Indeed it is the left's own social studies that show those with two stable parents do better in every measure than those from single parent families - social policy cannot guarantee that, but it should aim for it. Breakthroughs last year mean that any human cells can now be used for creating stem-cells and the need for using human embryos no longer exists. The idea of breeding simply to provide spare parts for another human needs no comment. Finally, advances in medicine mean premature children born at 6 months are quite viable and many thousands are today growing into healthy adults, making abortion at 6 months nothing less than infanticide, unless one wishes to argue a 6 month old is just a "fetus" which to me seems utterly unsupported by science or evidence.

Countries like Britain wonder why their core is rapidly being overwhelmed by brown immigrants with a strong sense of family life and spiritual belief and who detest the "values" of their hosts on many levels. Hurry up, is all one can say.

Obamamania Pt 4

2008-05-19T12:40:00.005+03:00

A remarkable piece by respected veteran black political scientist and left wing activist Prof Adolf Reed Jr in The Progressive, which is hardly my normal reading, takes issue with the vacuous nature of Obamania and, from a leftist perspective, the shammery and hollowness of his aspirations. Excerpt:

I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.

Read the whole thing.

This is an extraordinarily prescient piece that, coming as it does from someone who is a black leftist, all the more likely to be true. It is fascinating that both right wing commentators and Mr. Reed seem to say almost the same things about the Obamessiah and therefore they are both right or both wrong. I happen to believe the former more likely.

Let Them Eat Strawberries

2008-05-15T20:43:00.004+03:00

It's an odd time when millionaire greenies in the developed world hit out a semi-starving Africans in the name of climate change. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramasay wants his namesake, the Fat Controller, to arrange legislation to ban all out of season foods in UK, a move that would devastate hundreds of thousands of workers in developing countries.

"I don’t want to see asparagus on in the middle of December. I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown."

Perhaps in a few hundred square miles worth of ecologically friendly heated winter greenhouses?

A much better suggestion would be to close down British agriculture totally so that Ramsay and his fellow New Labour trendies can use the country for what they really want anyway: a vast picnic site where entertaining yokels will doff their hats and tug their forelocks as they watch Gordon and his pals rock up in his Ferrari ( great choice of green car, except it's red and has 12 cylinders) to eat Kiwi Fruit and Foie Gras canapes all washed down with a 1968 Le Mernot de Petites Villages.

"He says it would cut carbon emissions as less food would be imported and also lead to improved standards of cooking. "

Yes, the Brits can't wait to go back to a traditional winter dish of pureed parsnips with a slice of deep fried blood pudding. These people are simply hilarious.

Blogging Laos

2008-05-15T00:26:00.001+03:00

A splendid day. First a trip to Laos across the immense, lazy Mekong River. Laos an expected and excellent time warp , with super cute Laoettes. all in their tribal costumes of black sarongs with silk borders, French colonial buildings and almost no ATMs. The local currency is the "kip", worth 1/270th of the Thai money and 1/8000th of a dollar. People accept it like you are offering them used toilet paper. Capitalism rocks.

I get to ride vile Tuk-Tuks that keep breaking down ( it took a relay to get me back to the bridge later on). Am interviwed by a Uni student on his "English Languarge" (as the check sheet says) practise assignment - complete amazement from this hardened travel warrior that there is no come-on or rip-off. His Task? " Interwiev One Forgneir in One Day".

Usual and expected Communist poverty - spot a Merc 230 SL obviously driven by the relative of a Politburo member. Who else could possibly afford one in Laos?

Stop in at the East-West Restaurant for lunch to discover Sri Lankan lady owner and her quasi-European partner ( all the white folks in this part of the world are so utterly wasted by Indo-China you can't tell their ages or nationalities - suffice to say they are always florid, perspiring, unkempt and more than a little mad) going through the wringer with a People's Workers Party of Laos grande dame. For a Lao she is enormous, well over 5 ft 8, with a beehive hairdo, pancake make-up and an assortment of Party insignia. Am not quite sure what a Sri Lankan is doing running a resto this far up the Mekong, but through the interpreter I can here her pleading ,
" But this man my husband he is not allowed to verking here", as she unfolds endless permits and documents.

The Laoettes are so utterly sweet. I fall in love every time I talk to one. I simply have not met any women like this in 20 years. They seem not from another planet but an entirely different galaxy.

Back to Nong Khai in the late afternoon of my final day. I attend the "Western Cowboy Club" where acres of Thaiboppers jump up and down to the bizarre strains of a Thai rock band, whilst waiters with bowties dump huge ice-cubes into your beer.

To Brendan's Place for the mandatory drunken local Irish publican's visit. I bump into Teak Pete, the pony-tailed ex Vietnam vet who has lived here since 1970. We have a great chat and afterwards I end up across the road (I should point out Nong Khai is a very conservative city with zero of Bangkok's glittering nightlife) at "Nongs Place." In this tiny pub I fall into animated conversation with a public school educated Burmese lad and Mark, a raving drunk who spent 6 years in the 4th Batallion, Kings African Rifles based in Jinja, Uganda.

Meanwhile Dao, a singularly worn out ladyboy, attaches herself to me with the subtltey of a giant squid in feeding mode. After a full discussion of the Greek influence on Afghan architecture, the U.S. Marine and Japanese army casualty rates on Saipan and if Speke the Nile explorer was undone by spending a month in the Queen Mother of Buganda's school for sex slaves, Dao unwinds herself to retire rebuffed and the rest of us stagger off to our hotels.

It's taken two weeks. This is why I came here, this is why I return. I honestly wonder if I should be leaving tomorrow and feel vaguely sad.

P R of China,perfect fascists?

2008-05-12T22:16:00.007+03:00

An interesting debate kicked of by Far Eastern Economic Review where Michael Leeden asks if we are not witnessing a mature fascist state in existance?

Mr.Leeden is immediatly accused of heing brutally unfair, a hegemon and more. Furious reaction from Asiaphiles are all noted in the responses, but here is my own reaction to their mostly angry comments.

"This hurt response is mostly by people who think that "fascism" is a general insult and not a political situation with certain clear features.

These include hypernationalism (with or without various filters of racial purity), private enterprise rigidly controlled by the state (privatized socialism) and severe abscence of, and hostility to, democracy. One might also add the worship of a mythical and deeply "wronged" past which, if allowed to bloom anew, would prove the superiority that has always been inherent in the genius of the people in question. Looks like China, sounds like China, tastes like China, though of course I may be wrong.

Miss Nguyen needs to be asked, if China possessed democratic insitutions, would the Chinese people allow the forms of abuse they are hidden from at present in Tibet, in the Chinese non-response to the Burma cyclone, Dafur and other events where even the humanitarian instinct is masked in the obsessive need to make primary the national interest, as seen by the ruling clique?

If the answer is yes, they would allow these abuses, then we surely do not understand "Asians" ( whoever those are in that broad canvas) as Ms. Nguyen means them and I am not sure that, on those terms, one would want to.

However I believe that is not the case and giants like China, when they have broad access to denocratic rights, will be forced by their masses to act differently to the loud drum of their current nationalist frenzy."

Obamamania Continues

2008-05-12T16:04:00.003+03:00

Four years ago, Evan Thomas of Newsweek famously said:

Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win… They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them… that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.

The attempts to polish the absurd flawed rhinestone that was John Kerry famously failed, but the media is wetting itself at the prospect of helping Obama win the 2008 Presidential race. McCain, once their hero when he seemed to be the anti-Bush in the 2000 primaries, is already being recast as an old, out-of-touch warmonger who is clueless on the economy. Every point McCain tries to make will be relentlessly skewered whilst St.Barry is given a completely free pass. If Kerry and the lizard-like Edwards were given a "glow" in 2004, expect Obama to receive the 1 gigawatt halo effect.

The hidden subtext is already emerging: criticism of Obama is...whisper whisper....racism! Personally, I would have given a black candidate my vote all other things being equal. For their history, they need an extra shake of the dice and had Colin Powell run in 1992, he would have had mine, and everyone else's.

If Obama were a green man from the galaxy, he would never get my vote for many good reasons: he would be the most inexperienced US President in 100 years and is Jimmy Carter re-born, a quasi-religious figure who promises to talk to our enemies and ignore our friends. His international trade policies could set the world economy back "decades", and that is New Labour's Peter Mandelson talking over in Europe, no less. He firmly believes that judges should be left-wing and pre-empt democracy by making new laws from the bench, not interpreting the ones the people we elect actually draft and thinks anything that a citizen can do, government should tax you more to do it better themselves.

He has consorted with homegrown terrorists like Ayers and Dorn, the crackpot Rev Wright and the convicted racketeer Tony Rezko, for all his talk of "new politics" and his wife is an moaner who whines about how hard life is on $500,000 a year and thinks that "they" have always been out to get her and Obama. Who are "they"? Presumably the same typical Americans who arranged for her to get affirmed placements in Americaa's top universities as a black women from a modest background - the shamelessness of "them".

Obama would be the most left-wing President ever elected, a template of the radical "victimolgy" concept of modern identity politics. For all that he remains a supremely gifted and talented young man and perhaps the most perfect politician of the last 50 years - if oratory, sharpness and style over substance is everything, and maybe in 2008, it is.

He will probably win, for not only does he have the media breathlessly behind him (Oh, the new stories, the spins, the angles, the Big Narrative! How their sales will soar.) but Americans have come to believe that their economy is in a severe recession ( it isn't yet), everyone hates them ( they do, and that won't change unless the USA is prepared to give away the store and the keys to the safe) and that unconditional talks with our enemies will make everything fine again. In this, Obama resembles Chamberlain more than Churchill, Carter more than Reagan and blind wishful thinking over reality. Roll on 2012.

Roosting Chicken Pie

2008-05-08T22:43:00.004+03:00

Therewith a hastily published note from Rightspeak in todays N.Y. Times comments section. This is in regard to the uproar that's breaking in the blogs about Clinton's new remarks that she has the majority support "among the hard working voters of America, the white voters" and a furious bust up live between two MSN hacks (Brazile and Begala) who comment for the Democrat's softball network, CNN:

I love all this. If any party has built 4 decades of power grabs and policies around low grade identity politics, it’s the Democrats. The Democrats have tried to divide Americans into an eternally splitting series of groups, each of whom “are what we say we are” and no more questions please. Feminists, hispanics, blacks, native Americans, immigrants, gays,straights, trans-gendered and so on.

Now it’s all coming home to roost as if the Rev Wright was not enough. Please give the Republicans some credit. You were told the Clinton’s were a pair of political lizards 15 or more years ago. How you cheered them on breathlessly. Your own identity politics, the cheapest route to power, has come back to bite you hard and I’m opening another beer!

The Truther Fairy

2008-04-22T23:26:00.004+03:00

Despite every evidence to the contrary, people who have nothing in common except a lazy mind or a streak of the paranoid continue to believe in "9/11 Conspiracy" theories. Someone who might know is Al-Queda No 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri who speaks here on the BBC. Ayman is a little upset at Iran's President Mr. Armouredinnerjacket for joining the "truther" ranks that are illuminated by such intellectual giants as Hollywoord film stars and Euro Members of Parliament - not to mention 70% of Frenchmen. Says The Beeb;

"Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.
In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US. He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network."

Come on Ayman, even though you planned 9/11, get with the programme, dammit. Everyone knows it was Booooooosh and the Joooooos.

The Reform of the Snail

2008-04-21T13:08:00.004+03:00

Shiraz Maher has hopeful views on Muslim conversions to other religions in his BBC piece here. His thoughts are progressive and show a slight healing of potential rifts between Muslims and Christians, but also point out the problem.

No two Muslims seem to agree what the Koran and Hadiths actually say. Another problem is, we simply don't know what language Muslim prophet Mohammed actually spoke. Archaic Arabic is almost impossible to recover, even by scholars.

Attitudinal change towards Muslim conversion, led by Imams or Mullahs, will have to take precedence over Muslim text, in that case. It will be a very long, slow process since the finality of "the word" in Islam is taken to an extreme not seen in most of Christianity for centuries. Islam also lacks a central authority and indeed since Mohammed's death has interminably warred within itself, something Christians avoided for almost 1500 years.

Indeed, only a decoupling of Islam from Sharia, as has happened in Turkey, will reform Islam enough to permit freedom of conversion, and as this story illustrates, even that is on shaky ground. Some Turks who convert are threatened with death or indeed murdered and this is after 80 years of a decoupled secular state in Turkey.

Getting Obama Wrong

2008-04-21T01:43:00.007+03:00

Gitaru Warigi has a succinct analysis of the security problems raised by the Mungiki movement in Kenya but a fettered view of US politics at the end of his otherwise useful piece in Nairobi' Sunday Nation. Warigi sees Obama's nomination by the Democrats and his success subsequently again John McCain as a matter of race. My response to him by letter:

"Whilst your analysis of the Mungiki situation (SN 20th April) was superb, your dissection of the Obama nomination in the USA was crippled by a narrow perspective.

Contrary to popular fantasy, Americans are open to a non-white President though admittedly a minority are not. Colin Powell would have waltzed to victory in 1992 had he accepted the Republican nomination, but for personal reasons he refused.

Perhaps the overwhelming ethnicity of Kenya politics makes it hard for some to see that objections to an Obama candidacy or Presidency stem not primarily from his race, but from his electability. He is fervent left-winger in a country that is centrist or right of centre politically.

By contrast McCain is a moderate Republican, even a maverick, with a strong populist streak endearing to independant voters. It is these who decide Presidential elections and not the strident minority of Democratic or Republican activists in primaries.

I agree Obama will probably win the Democratic nomination. The Democrats are utterly unelectable in the USA without their usual 90% black support - despite up till the 19040's Blacks solidly voted for the Republicans, the party of Lincoln. That turn-around is another story. You are right that Democratic Party bigwigs will commit suicide politically to deny Obama the nomination, but their objections again have nothing to do with their "whiteness" - but Obama's ideology and thus electability.

To beat McCain, Obama will be scrutinised like never before and his inexperience and extreme left-wing ( in American terms) Senate record could well cost him the final prize - but not first and foremost, as you imagine. his race. Democrats, Republicans, PNO, ODM, New Labour or what-have-you possess one characteristic - a desire to win regardless of candidate."

Kenya Airways and the US Elections.

2008-03-27T12:33:00.005+03:00

On the face of it, there would seem to be zero relationship between the state of Kenya Airways and the US Presidential race in which the Democrats seem poised to mount a very serious challenge to regain the White House. In this contest, there is no doubt that 95% of black American votes will go to Barack Obama should he be nominated or around 85% to Hillary Clinton should she squeak by.

This has been the black American tradition since around 1940. Previously blacks, most especially those in the South, voted Republican. Most people would be surprised to know that Martin Luther King was one. That's because most people, and almost no Kenyans, have any idea that the Democratic Party in the USA was the party of the slave owners and fought for segregation after the US Civil War right up until the late 1960's. Kenyans are amazed to hear that the Democratic Party supported the Klu Klux Klan and denied blacks all voting rights for 100 years after the end of slavery. They would almost fall over if they learned all the southern state Governors in the time of the great 60's civil rights crusade were Democrats. Yet African-Americans now vote against the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln?

The explanation is the Democratic Party was split between southern and northern in the USA with the south following a racist brand and the north a non-racial type of Democratic Party politics. Most blacks lived prior to 1940 in the south but the Great Depression forced millions to migrate to northern cities in the 1930's where the northern Democratic Party was in control gave them welfare and other forms of assistance they had never seen in their lives under the southern Democrats. Thus black Americans switched allegiance from the Republicans to the Democrats and have kept that allegiance, besides a rare 10% Republicans like King, ever since.

Voting for the Democratic Party has not helped black Americans so much as destroyed large parts of their former independence, thrift, marriage rates and hard work ethic. From the hard bigotry of the southern Democrat , black Americans ran into the soft bigotry of the northern variety. This "kindness" allows for very low expectations of black Americans. They were the subject of endless handouts in welfare, socially ruinous policies that paid them more for having illegitimate children than for marrying, and affirmative action that allowed blacks to have high placement for lower achievement than others academically and professionally.

All of these Democratic Party practises seem to be "progressive" but have a message: "You are not to be held to high expectations because of the past". This is not very far from a hidden message of, "You are not to be held to high expectations because you can't reach them" - hence the soft bigotry.

Politically the Democrats have used every trick in the book to block welfare reform, to prevent the faith based help of the older African-American society, to offer school choices to inner-city parents and replace affirmative discrimination with helping raise the educational standards of black Americans so they can be independent of welfare.

What has this got to do with Kenya Airways? Here is a black run company with under 0.05% expatriates in the work force that was privatised a decade ago when it was a shoddy Government run corporation. Consistently it beats the profit records and service standards of other African airlines, including South African Airlines which has a very high percentage of "white" employees. It is voted often as the best airline in Africa and as a preferred carrier to European ones like British Airways or Air France.

Kenya Airways works to the high expectations of strict international airline standards, not a low expectation that Africans need extra help or are otherwise incapable of running an airline. Instead of being in confrontation with non-African airlines the way black Americans are in confrontation with the entire range of Republican values (self reliance, non-affirmative, small government, anti-welfare), it partners with a major European airline and shares ideas and expertise.

This story is repeated with black Kenyan hotel management as another example. Our large tourism industry meets international standards, not the local standards of small hotels. Consequently, Kenyan hotel managers can be found in Dubai, Europe, Asia and America running hotels and often 5 star ones of exacting international quality. But what if promotions in our local hotel industry, which is the springboard to an international career, met only Kenyan standards which are lower than international?

It remains a tragedy for black Americans not that they should ever vote Republican en masse, but that the Democrats, while offering to help them have actually added to the low esteem and dependency culture that prevents many of them, racism aside, from prospering. If the split between the parties in the black American community was more 60/40 or 55/54 as in most other communities in the USA it would mean a healthy internal debate and dynamic between the endless dependency of affirmative welfare the Democrats offer and the non-affirmative conservative social and economic values of the Republicans.

That would be good for all of America and especially African-Americans. There seems to be no sign either Democratic candidate in 2008 is willing to shift an inch away from the failed past the way Kenyan Airways did.

Losing Her Grip

2008-03-27T12:12:00.005+03:00

Harvard University has allowed sexual segregation at it's gymnasia and public Islamic calls to prayer from the Harvard Yard. Many are disturbed and some outraged, but there will always be blind liberals to spring to to the defense of conservative Islam. Thus Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post labours like Obama over Pastor Wright to make moral equivalence between her private Jewishness and someone else's hijab-wearing public segregation mentality. According to her, those objecting need to "get a grip".

She writes, "Muslim women who enroll at Harvard and turn up in hijabs at its gyms reflect a strand of Islam that society ought to encourage". What a breathtaking repudiation of the Enlightenment. Muslim women enrolling without hijabs, and showing they are the same as the rest of students not in nun's habits, 18th century Jewish Orthodox peasant woman's dresses, Hindu temple saris or chastity belts - all outward signs of a primacy of religion over secularism - would be an encouragement.

Just like Obama's glaring error in equating his grandmother's private worries to Pastor Wright's public utterances, she fails to see any difference between what all religious people may think in private (as she says, that their creed is the best or true one) and the preaching of Islam's "superiority" in a public place, Harvard Yard. Marcus cannot see her Orthodox relatives personal refusal to shake her female hand as not the same as a secular gymnasium being publicly out of bounds to males - or a loudspeaker blaring "Allah Akbar" in a public square.

It is Marcus that needs to "get a grip" and not those exercised by creeping religious separatism, since the steady advance of "soft" sharia in the form of seemingly innocent setting aside of sexually segregated gymnasia times, for example, is merely the precursor of the demands of hard sharia to come. This is the precise experience of Europe and having allowed the erosion of their values by giving in to "soft" sharia, they find themselves singularly unable to prevent the advance of the hard version. As the cretinous prelate Dr. Rowen Williams of Canterbury recently showed, they may have no alternative but to advance it.

Her article is one more example of the suicide of the Western intelligensia when, having so long fought for sexual equity (let us imagine the response if Christian men at Harvard had made the same request as the hijab-wearing women), they are quite willing to sacrifice the gains and benefits for a one sided "tolerance" of intolerant religious sexism.

Obama - Mixed Race, Mixed Message

2008-03-19T16:14:00.006+03:00

In many ways Obama's big speech on race was courageous, novel and forthright in a way political speeches rarely are, but his failure to denounce Pastor Wright fully is revealing. The first time we have heard him talk openly about the white half of his family, he managed to throw his grandmother under the bus for her occasional remarks, whilst refusing the denounce Wright for his frequent ones. One has to imagine what would be the reaction were he a white person on the conservative side and running for President whilst taking spiritual nourishment from someone like Pastor Wright, with the racism reversed.

It strains credulity that Obama was for 20 years able to have the most intimate mentoring by Wright and not absorb his “Hate America” and the dollops of crypto-marxist “Black Liberation Theology” doled out at his church. Indeed, it could be thought that it is precisely this hard-left, hate America, down-with-capitalism and collectivist underpinning of Wright's version of religion that actually brought the atheistic, but highly political, Obama into church in the first place. Obama argues such talk is common in black American churches but if it is as wrong and totally repugnant as his speech claims, it seems not to have bothered him till the other day.

Of course, to get elected on a Democratic party ticket where there is a big black urban vote, as Obama had to in Illinois, you simply have to spout such anti-American, anti-white nonsense, or at least give it a nod and a wink or you won't get the vote. So is it cynical realism that made Obama join an "Afrocentric" church that spews race-hustler talk every Sunday? It would be a sad mark on his hopeful and fresh character were that the case.

Are Americans going to be happy with a President and First Lady who have lapped up angry anti-American and occasionally racist comments for years in the same pew? Michelle Obama, Ivy League super-grad on top tier salary and black, has never had anything to be proud of in America except Barry in 2008 - as she told the press recently. Not even the silver spoon she fed herself with to now.

It needs to be asked, if in his speech he says he “never” agreed with many of pastor Wright’s virulent, racist ideas ( one that white people “invented” HIV to decimate blacks - straight out the Nation of Islam hatebook), his visits to dictatorships like Libya with Farrakhan and other anti-American baggage, why then did he stay in the church for 20 years, bathe his children in Wright's ideas that says now he thinks totally wrong, yet not find another church?

He is trying to be too clever by half, damming his pastor with faint praise for the “causes” of Wrights rants, whilst offering collectivist and class solutions ( the “poor whites” bit of his speech) and all straight out of the soft-left catechism.

I admire his eloquence and a certain amount of courage he displays but dislike his faint heartedness and his sidestepping of an issue if he truly wants to get all Americans and not just the Democratic echo-chamber on his side, he will have to do better. Obama is an exceptional politician that only America, the sole truly revolutionary country that has ever worked, could produce. However America's success is due not to it's collectivism but it's individuality, nor to a statist political philosophy but the breath of freedom that inspired it's founders.

Nothing changes from Obama being an inexperienced but highly gifted young politician bathed and imbued with the standard ideas of the American left, ideas which only a fraction of Americans embrace. Republicans and independent voters want race to cease to be an issue and remind themselves that the Democratic party once stood for slave owners and Southern whites-only politicians and has always been the party to play the "race card". We shall see, perhaps Obama is America's destiny, in which case nothing can stand in his way but I remain unconvinced.

More Boomer BS Bites The Dust

2008-03-16T11:29:00.003+03:00

My generation, the notorious, narcissistic and flaky "baby boomers" are of course the authors of beatnikery, hippiedom, Che Guevara worship, the 60's, the "New Left" and many other feats of social and intellectual tomfoolery. Never has a generation less deserved the fruits of the sacrifices of our predecessors, the magnificent "Greatest Generation" of World War II veterans. Another of our highlights was the "sexual revolution"...well, one can't say that one has been entirely dull now that I think of it.

However it's been a rigorous dogma of most boomers that somehow abortion is good for you and always preferable to the "unwanted" pregnancy. International folklore wisdom thinks this is nonsense, but what do those ignorant savages in the Third World know? Then there is this from The Times Online

"Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health.
This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion....................
The controversy intensified earlier this year when an inquest in Cornwall heard that a talented artist hanged herself because she was overcome with grief after aborting her twins. Emma Beck, 30, left a note saying: “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

Kenya After The Clashes (1)

2008-03-03T20:09:00.003+03:00

Donald Kipkorir’s articles are always entertaining and thought provoking but his “After the grand coalition” (March 1^st) makes an uneven case for fragmenting Kenya into tribal enclaves as an act of “positive ethnicity”. Such positivism can only come from that which unites people of all cultures and races, not that which narrowly divides them.

One of his proposed tribal regions is the Kalenjin-Maasai -Turkana , a putative “Nilotic” jimbo.* Yet these tribes have historical enmity. Do Sudanic origins long ago make them suddenly compatible? Why not include the Luo in this “Nilotic” micro-state? Other proposals, like for a coastal “Mji-Kenda” state ignore the complication with numerous WaSwahili and Kenyan Arabs, the former slave owners.

North Easterners do not consider themselves one people, despite joint Cushitic origins and languages. Would “forcing” them into an instant micro-state really be better than prodding them, with all other Kenyans, firmly in the direction of Kenya first, tribe second?

And where can one find a place for the Kisii, Samburu, Taita and other large tribes? If they are not to have their own “micro-states” then they must be thrown in as perpetual minorities among larger groups. Where will all this dividing up start, or end?

The example Mr.Kipkorir gives of Germany is misleading. True Germany is federal, but the German tribes were historically and linguistically one people divided by regional differences or religion. They cannot be compared to the diverse and radically differing Kenyan ethnic groups.

Those who emphasize “ethnic diversity” rarely point out that federations, like the USA and Germany, are expressly designed to unify previously sovereign people by making them free to live, work and open business in any part of the federation. If the Kenya tribal proponents wish this, why bother with the expense and complexity of tribal regions? We already have this freedom in Kenya’s current law.

One would be happy to see a Kenya Federation where any Kenyan can work and live, own property and act in politics as they wish, all enforced by the Army and a Kenya version of the FBI. Try preventing a Californian from opening a business in New York and see how fast George W. Bush sends the Federal Marshals to lock you up. This is not what most “ethnic diversity” advocates have in mind but the opposite, namely perpetual superior empowerment of one group, based on where it was geographically circa 1898.

The unity of Kenya may not be a perfect solution, but excessive regionalization could lead to more negative tribalism. There are few signs enough people understand devolution except as a tribal “winner-takes-all” game, as post-election events have sadly shown. This is a trend Mr. Kipkorir probably deplores but is nonetheless a logical consequence of this ideology.

*jimbo - a region or province

You Can't Make This Stuff Up #321

2007-12-05T20:35:00.004+03:00

According to The Times of the UK:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.
Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

Mr Hamid denies providing weapons training, five charges of soliciting murder and three of providing training for terrorism. The other men deny a series of charges related to training.It becomes downright bizarre, as if someone was trying to parody the perfect genteel, clueless BBC leftist twit-of-the-year. The Times reports on the BBC producer, Phil Rees, take on Hamid, the terrorist trainer:

He said: “I think he had a comic touch and he represented a strand within British Muslims. I took it as more like a rather Steptoe and Son figure rather than seriously persuasive. I saw him as a kind of Cockney comic.” Mr Rees, who now works for the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, gave Mr Hamid a signed copy of his book "Dining With Terrorists".

Hollywood Drops Bombs

2007-11-27T20:28:00.000+03:00

Very good news that Hollywood's latest bout of nasty anti-American, pro-terrorist movies are totally bombing at the box office.

Brian dePalma's "Redacted" which naturally won rave reviews and awards from the chatterati, Hollywood flakes and Euro-wimps (standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Gold Medals in Venice etc) is typical. It cost $5 million and depicts US soldiers as thugs and beasts - it's wildly anti-troops ( whilst pretending to "support them") theme has so far , after weeks of major release and publicity, brought just just $23,000 total box office. It's delightful to learn the scumbag producers of this shit-flick have lost 99.5% of the millions they spent slandering those who defend their right to show offensive garbage.

On the other hand, "Outside The Wire", a hand made documentary by an ex-Marine depicting an hour of true footage and stories by vets cost $35,000 and has made back $27,000. It's only available on DVD via the internet but it's managed to out gross the hugely advertised multi-theatre showing of "Redacted".

Also bombing at the box office are "Rendition", "Lions for Lambs" (Redford and Streep no less) and "Valley of Elah" - all on the same theme of USA= Al Qaeda and what's the difference between a US soldier and a terrorist ( basic answer, none). These have collectively lost the Hollywood set tens of millions of dollars.

When I was in the angry 60's Bob Dylan had a wonderful line in one of his best songs that sums it all up: "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" It seems the majority of America does know but Mr. Jones is stuck in Los Angeles.

Euro Arrogance

2007-10-31T10:34:00.000+03:00

In a chilling display of the elitism that drives European politics, Giscard d’Estaing, author of the EU constitution that was roundly rejected by French and Dutch voters (and would have been by the British) has claimed the new EU reform treaty the EU leaders have slipped through the back door of Euro politics is exactly the same thing. The fact that he can baldly state this when centre right parties are crying 'foul' over the new treaty and demanding a people's vote on it, shows the cocky insulation he feels from the reality of democracy. He can bypass in having bypassed the popular will and brag of it. Read the whole frightening interview here.

Americans, apart from Europhiles who make up segments of the Democratic Party, have long viewed European politics as an Old Boys club , as tight and tangled as the rotten aristocracies it replaced. For all of Europe’s scoffing over the rare American political dynasty like the Kennedy or Bush family, politics of the elite is the norm in Europe. Whilst Europeans laugh at the Schwartzenegger phenomenon of a Hollywood star rising to governor and never stopped deriding Ronald Regan, they forget that it is virtually impossible to get elected in Europe unless one is an insider – Sarkozy being the first modest crack in this edifice.

True to form, d’Estaing states to the BBC with breathtaking arrogance that cosmetic changes were made to the EU reform treaty to "head off any threat of referenda" and that the drafters have made the new document "a catalogue of amendments" that is impenetrable for the public. So much for the voter. Such is the traditional contempt of Europe’s rulers, from kings to dictators to democrats, for the people.

Mullahs Meet Modern Medcicine

2007-10-06T00:32:00.000+03:00

Pretty sad story here about Muslim clerics in Nigeria who opposed the use of a polio vaccine campaign because they claimed the drug was designed to "sterilize" them. This ended up with too few children being vaccinated, which can cause the virus to reappear, as it did killing many and spreading to neighboring countries.

What happens when modern medicine meets the medieval mind, in the form of the gross ignorance so many mullahs display? The results are tragic.

"Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this vaccine will be a tough sell," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.

Fiji Orders It's Priorities

2007-10-06T00:27:00.002+03:00

Hmm, our friends in the MSM never seem to get the right end of so many stories. Here the BBC misses the point totally. How can Fijians gather in large raucous crowds, get drunk, stay out late and party when their beloved rugby team has made it to the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup and play the Springboks on Sunday? There is one way:

Last Updated: Friday, 5 October 2007, 07:41 GMT 08:41 UK

Fiji to lift state of emergency

Fiji's military-led government says it will lift the state of emergency it imposed last month when deposed PM Laisenia Qarase re-entered politics.

A military spokesman said that the measures would end on Saturday because there was no threat to the nation.

BBC Goes N-Word

2007-10-04T09:25:00.001+03:00

As if any proof were needed, the BBC takes on openly leftist vocabulary for a description of an Australian immigration policy. Misleadingly headlined "Africa Refugee Ban", the piece by Nick Bryant in Sydney states the dreaded "N" word as if it is a plain fact:

"Certainly, there is a nativistic streak in parts of the Australian electorate."

Most Third World countries try to restrict immigration from each other and from the North. Try getting a work permit from the Immigration Department of Kenya, let alone becoming a citizen, even after 30 years of residence. Many countries, like the UAE, forbid people not born of native parents to ever become citizens. In Dubai that precludes any of the over 1 million "guest workers" or their children from ever gaining a Dubai passport.

Would the BBC ever use the word "nativist" against these sorts of policies? That would be upsetting politically correct lexicon. Calling non-white people anything to do with "native" is strictly paeleolithic, racist and colonial. The correct left-think term for anything to do with "natives" is the self-authenticating "indigenous". Except of course for Australians.

Chili Terrorism

2007-10-04T09:22:00.001+03:00

Also from the BBC:

"A pot of burning chilli sparked fears of a biological terror attack in central London.
Firefighters wearing protective breathing apparatus were called to D'Arblay Street, Soho, after reports of noxious smoke filling the air.
Police closed off three roads and evacuated homes following the alert.
Specialist crews broke down the door to the Thai Cottage restaurant at 1900 BST on Monday where they discovered the source - a 9lb pot of chillies."

Chili Power

2007-10-04T09:18:00.000+03:00

A chemical from chilli peppers may be able to kill pain without affecting touch or movement, according to a BBC report.

This might in theory mean a woman in labour could have an epidural without losing the ability to move her legs, or the sensation of her baby being born.

Conventional local anaesthetics affect all nerve cells.

But the researchers Harvard team, writing in Nature, said that with capsaicin, the chilli chemical, they can target just pain receptors.

However, a UK expert said it might be difficult to inject it safely.

Certainly the idea of 5 cc of Tabasco shot into your ham sounds excruciating.

Socialism vs Monks

2007-09-25T02:06:00.000+03:00

Lost in all the MSM stories about the protests aimed at bringing down the Burma regime is that the junta oppressing the sad Burmese people is a socialist one. I wonder how the left wing media can easily handle the fact that it is the "reactionary" force of religion, led by Bhuddist monks, that threatens to collapse a "progressive" regime. Not much different to Poland, come to think of it.

That's easy, just airbrush out the nuances. Thus the Guardian reports on "the ruling junta" and "the ruling generals " who resort to "repressive measures". Yes, just like that. They have no ideology, they are just a "military regime ".

Meanwhile the gormless cowards at CNN continue to cringe and call Burma "Mynyamar", the name those "generals" coined for it. Not even the image of the lovely,brave and serene Aung Yang Soo Kyi, one of the few Nobel Peace Prize winners to actually deserve that debased accolade who calls it Burma, of course, can change that.

Global Gobbledegook

2007-09-25T01:57:00.001+03:00

More signs of just how confusing and contradictory the "certainty" science behind much of the global warming hype is, the BBC reports:

Amazonian forest 'more resilient'

The Modis instrument scans the Earth's surface every eight days

The Amazon rainforest may be more resistant to rising temperatures than has been believed.
Researchers found that during the 2005 drought, many parts of the rainforest "greened", apparently growing faster.

Mugabe Drags On

2007-09-22T10:49:00.000+03:00

"Comrade Bob" continues with the fascism that has ruined one of Africa's brightest countries and regional African leaders continue to give him standing ovations at conferences but the end is very near for this ruinous fool. The price controls imposed on all forms of Zimbabwean industry are, if the evidence of 5000% inflation is not enough, the final attempts to prevent a societal implosion that would sweep him away. Yet given Africans' notorious passivity, partly borne out of a fear of the brutality of African governance, don't expect to see Harare's version of the storming of the Bastille on your TV screen any time soon.

A quarter of the population has fled and the country has obviously sunk to levels that were not even approached in the times of white supremacy. Actually a lot of older Zimbabweans are probably wondering why they bothered to fight Ian Smith & Co at all. Still, Comrade Bob has plenty of supporters in Africa showing that taking self-destructive actions against white people ( even if their are your own citizens) is far more important to many Africans and their leaders than anything else they might do. One would have thought that Aminism in Uganda might have taught some lessons to the continent, but it appears not enough.

Borat At The Rugby World Cup

2007-09-16T02:48:00.000+03:00

Questions will soon be asked at this Rugby World Cup why Europeans pay fortunes to watch gelled up, pampered professional superstars prance around the pitch like show ponies when Georgia nearly caused the biggest rugby upset in history by going down 14-10 to 5th ranked rugby superpower Ireland.

With just 8 rugby pitches in their entire country, the East European unknowns arrived on the pitch looking like stubble-faced Borats on steroids. Only the Irish did not end up laughing. Possessing bewildering names like Dimitri Kalasnikavili and Kav Dzernevshu and wearing what looked like rolled up bicyle shorts only a handful of Georgians were professionals, and those all play in the French 2nd Division. The rest were amateurs.

To say mighty Ireland were lucky to win this so-called mismatch does not tell half the story. Georgia missed four drop goals by inches and had a winning try held up in-goal. They scored a stunning intercept taken at full sprint, made double the number of tackles to the Irish, took 66% of the territory and close to 70% possession and laid a twenty minute last ditch seige on the Irish line when they went through more than sixty phases of possession. If they lost it was only because they lacked a few finishing touches that should come as second nature to any professional team. This was one of the most thrilling matches of this or any other World Cup and the entire stadium of 35,000 were on their feet chanting "Georgia, Georgia".

They played a style of old fashioned forward rugby not seen for perhaps 20 years, meeting head on the pampered professionals that are amongst Europe's highest paid and biggest stars. And they shattered those pretensions. So far did this game smack of today versus yesterday that Georgia did not bother to go off the pitch at half time. The Irish led 7-3 and hustled off to be attended to by a doctor, three masseurs, two sports paramedics, a nutritionist, a statistician, three coaches and no doubt Father O Reilly, for they were in need of prayers. The Georgians stood on the pitch munching apples and discussing what to do next.

The surreal moments did not end after the final whistle, as seasoned sports broadcasters spluttered and ran out of adjectives to explain what they were witnessing. When winger Georgi (what else?) Shikinin, looking uncanilly like Mr. Bean, was presented with the International Rugby Board's "Man Of The Match" trophy after the game, he spilt a toothy,shy grin, waved at the camera and said cheerily,"Firstly thanks you, I want..like.... I means... I am wanting wish hello to my mummy and nice sister also all my familly.Hello". It was as priceless as it was perfect.

On a serious note, the IRB has mooted plans to kick out tiny rugby nations like Georgia, Namibia and others from future RWC events and restrict the tournament to 16 "super teams". Yet to many fans and even more commentators, the performances of a number of the unsung nations bring into question just what is happening in Europe when the Big Six of the North have so far played mostly abysmal rugby against countries one cannot locate on a rugby atlas. The minor league teams have gained the hearts of everyone.

The only sides to give any thrills to the audience besides the small nations ( as anyone who saw the breathtaking 35-34 win of Fiji over Japan can attest) have been the mighty southern Tri-Nations teams of the Springboks, Wallabies and All-Blacks, assisted by fellow Southerners Argentina. They are actually playing rugby. Established Europe has played rubbish. The IRB should think of ways to cut the salaries of the Six Nations teams and donate the proceeds to the Rugby Unions of Georgia, Portugal, Fiji, Namibia, Tonga, the USA and a few others if they have any idea at all of how to grow the global game.

RWC Shockers

2007-09-10T10:18:00.000+03:00

It's hard to read too much from the preliminary games of the RWC which tend to feature minnows vs giants, but the question has to be asked: what on earth has happened to European rugby?

From four years ago, when the gap between Northern and Southern hemisphere rugby had closed to a crack, European teams seem to stare at a with a chasm of class between them and South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

Starting with the shock of southerners Argentina beating fancied France in the opening RWC game, one watches amazed as rugby powers struggle and stutter against nations that are the equivalent of a Third Division soccer side.

England ground out a 28-10 win over the USA that flattered. The USA outplayed them in the second half. Tiny Namibia with a few thousand players shocked mighty 5th ranked Ireland, holding them to a 37-17 win helped by a blatantly wrong referee's decision. Lowly Canada led Wales at half-time before finally succumbing and debutants Portugul made Scotland labour to win.

Contrast this to the Southern nations. The Australians demolished Japan 90-3, Italy were thumped by the All-Blacks by more than 40 points and Samoa crashed to South Africa's Springboks 52-7. All these wins were classy, error free and decisive. Samoa and Italy are also IRB Top Ten ranked nations unlike the small fry who made Europe's best creak and clank towards the try line like rusty old tractors.

Rugby World Cup 2007

2007-09-03T23:08:00.000+03:00

I've just watched the defiantly quaint Springbok send-off gala in Jo-burg, complete with gold trimmed Boy's Own blazers and every squad member wearing his tasseled cap. It was a relief from the Gaygear soccer uniforms they and others will don post Sept 7th. Thoughts naturally turn to who might win the RWC 2007? The town of Paarl on South Africa is not large, which is why you have never heard of it. They have two main schools there, Paarl Gymnasie and Paarl High. I watched as the two school teams slugged it out on Supersport TV. The crowd was merely twenty thousand. If passionate addiction to rugby would bring home the trophy, surely the Springboks would carry it off easily.

I am not sure that will happen. The build-up of the Wallabies and All-Blacks has been enveloped in a dark cloak of secrecy and we know next to nothing of their post Tri-Nations XVs. Ireland, who promised so much, appear woeful and exposed for depth, Wales are a shambles, Scotland awful and the less said about England the better.

The team that has impressed most is home ground France and by the length of a punt at that. Their tough build-up of two games against England and one with Wales were easily won. Everything about them looks complete, polished and even easy. More ominously, they appear complete for the sort of European pitches the Australians and South Africans in particular are not used to. As for depth they have been able to put out close to 45 different players without their pulse rate rising above 72 bpm. Formidable and frightening Frogs would be an apt moniker.

Naturally the Brazil of rugby, the All-Blacks, remains firm favorites. Just like Brazil, they sometimes fail to deliver, are prone to choking and can fall apart. They have problems at centre unless Mauger is fully fit and their line-out does not impress any more than No 10 Dan Carter's 2007 form. They however do possess a great backrow, superb strikers like Rokokoko and perhaps overlooked , the finest bench of impact players of all. Their ability to double the game's tempo in the second half is incomparable. Thus they will be finalists if the rounds go according to form but may have peaked in 2006 when they needed to do so this RWC year.

Their opponents, if they reach the final, are likely to be the Springboks or the French and I tend to think the latter. South Africa has the best scum half in the world (Du Preez), the most lethal winger (Habana), a massive, skilled presence in the second row and, at least until wonder boy Pierre Spies developed embolisms, a backrow of exceptional lethality with Burger and Juan Smith. Their build-up and lack of racial interference from politicians has been smooth and unexpected. What counts against them is a fade-out tendency in the last quarter and an inability to punch attacking holes with their backs. They can poach intercept tries, in this they are masters. Yet with the defensive styles employed in RWC ties, snatch-and-grab opportunities may not be there for them. Will they get past England? Probably. Will they pip the French on a home ground semi? I think not, but unlike the 2003 Boks, they are well capable of beating any team and going all the way. One more problem is that since “nobody has ever met a nice South African”, the refs tend to single them out for decisions in the 50/50 phases.

England retains a formidable pack but outside one J.Wilkinson seem impotent and clueless in the backline. If they don't get by the Boks who seem to freeze whenever they face England, then a dumping in the quarter-finals is their likely fate. To win the World Cup you need world class players. In 2003 they had perhaps four. This year, Wilkinson included, they have none.

With no European nation save France likely putting a hand up, Argentina remain dark horses who could upset any team, starting with France in the opening RWC match on Sept 7th. However, the Argentina team is not as good as it was a year or two ago and the momentum towards the Pumas XV becoming a Top 5 ranked rugby nation has slowed.

Australia has a veteran team and is renowned for their clever and even sly rugby. With George Gregan as the most capped rugby international of all time, his sublime partnership with fly half Stephen Larkham plus the skills of centre Matt Giteau and fullback Chris Latham, Australia will be the equal of anyone. Masters of gamesmanship, sledging and referee tweaking, nobody should underestimate the Australian ability to dominate a match psychologically, even one they otherwise deserve to lose. Their biggest block to a final spot will probably be a semi against the All Blacks but they, like South Africa, have no fear at all of the favorites and could easily swing the upset of the tournament.

Figures Lie, Liars Figure

2007-09-03T21:31:00.000+03:00

We are all told endlessly in the media that the USA is a violent and crime ridden society, compared to peaceful Europe. No wonder America remains the overwhelming choice of Kenyans seeking emigration, when we look at the real figures as opposed to media hype.

Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):

4161 - US
7736 - Germany
6941 - France
9927 - England and Wales

Thus the US has a substantially lower crime rate than the major European countries!

Here are the Interpol 1995 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):

5278 - US
8179 - Germany
6316 - France
7206 - England & Wales

Hence the trend in the US is towards a lower crime rate, while the trend in Europe (except Germany) is towards an increasing crime rate.

Even the USA's higher homicide rate has been dropping dramatically.

However, the homicide rates have been dropping dramatically :

Homicide Rate/100,000 by Date in US:

1980 - 10.2
2000 - 5.5

Flower Power!

2007-07-11T17:19:00.000+03:00

The Kenya flower and horticulture industry, long the main forex earner and biggest employer of single women with children in Kenya, continues it's fightback against global-warming Gorons of the "better dead than fed" school. These have tried to have Kenya's exports to UK banned under various absurd "carbon footprint" claims. These aim at the vital airfreight links between Kenya and Europe.

The Standard reports the Kenya Flower Council initiative here:

Kenya has launched a new campaign to protect its UK market against attempts to block its products over environmental concerns.

Horticultural industry players have launched the ‘Grown Under the Sun’ campaign to inform British consumers about the development benefits associated with sourcing fresh produce from Kenya.
Kenya has in the recent past faced major battles to protect its EU market following campaigns by supermarkets in the UK to block its products over environmental concerns.

It seems absurd that wealthy first world consumers have to learn of the obvious benefits of Third World people providing them with flowers and vegetables, when the near collapse of the WTO talks over Western subsidies that work against poor farmers are common knowledge.

At the same time, Kenya is looking forward to the first of it's fuel efficient Boeing 787 Dreamliners for Kenya Airways so that we can benefit from direct flights between Kenya and the USA. This would be a hiuge boost to our tourism and horticulture industries. Right on cue, up popped another Goron on the BBC from the "Environment and Aviation Group" or like sounding busybody to lecture us that environmentalists fear the Dreamliner will make flying more "attractive". Oh yes, the world is going to fly less in future. Let's all bicycle to New York.

Thicko

2007-05-20T13:41:00.002+03:00

The biggest Sicko in Michael Moore’s new movie is fat Mike himself who gives lots of aid and comfort to propagandists. Moore has the bright idea of flying some 911 survivors with health problems to Cuba so they can get “better” treatment than in the USA. No doubt Cuba’s Ministry of Health spared nothing to put one over on the yanquis, including their special show clinics for party members and foreigners only.

Real photos of genuine Cubans hospitals show a different story.

Moore uses all his usual tricks of faux documentary, insert shots and context bending to try and get Americans to buy the idea that their health system should be like the socialized ones of Canada, Britain, Europe and perhaps Cuba.

Of course Canadian and British health systems are collapsing and all the horror stories of US care exist there in spades. Ah, but those countries are not doing health care for profit , so the fact you wait 18 months for a hip operation in UK while doctors and hospital administrators form an elite, rich upper class of Britons is very moral, don’tcha know?

As for the vaunted Cuban health model why should anyone swallow statistics from an unfree society where these can never be checked or questioned?

Every statistic of communists except the count of prisoners in gulags and the numbers of annual executions are propaganda We know after communism's collapse that they lied about food production, educational standards, children’s health, personal wealth, technology, the environment, in fact the lot. Anyone who has visited Cuba will tell you that waiters whisper requests for asprin, paracetamol and sticky plasters. Health care in Cuba is free, if only there were any drugs.

Cuba also has a higher literacy rate than the USA, trumpets Castro. This one I do believe. Marxist dictatorships have high literacy rates is not so individuals can broaden their minds and improve their personal situations. It’s so everyone can read the propaganda. Mass literacy is part of the repressive groupthink modus of Marxism. What is the point of having 100% literacy if all you can read is The Collected Longer Speeches of Comrade Kim Jong Il?

Cuba also claims an exceptionally low HIV rate. This one is also true. Homosexuality in Cuba is a jail offense and thousands are imprisoned. The Cubans stole the drug patents of Western manufacturers early on in the pandemic. The hard drug trade is export only and controlled by Communists for benefit of the party so narcotics are not around to facilitate infection. Finally anyone HIV positive in Cuba is first locked up in quarantine and then registered and followed by the authorities, restricted socially and forced to take ARVs.

There is a daily ration of food in Cuba that has to be believed as well. The only problem is the calorific and nutritional value of the average Cuban ration (if he can even find it) is lower today than that of slaves in 1842.

The Food Ration in 1842 for slaves in Cuba:
meat, chicken, fish-- 8 oz
Rice-- 4 oz
Starches-- 16 oz
Beans-- 4 oz

Castro Gov. Ration since 1962:
meat, chicken, fish-- 2 oz.
Rice-- 3 oz
Starches-- 6.5 oz
Beans-- 1 oz.

Regrettably Michael Moore has no plans to do one of his tear jerking "documentaries" on this subject or any other which is not cornerstoned in anti-Americanism and fear of capitalism.

France Revolves

2007-05-07T11:20:00.000+03:00

First Germany and now France have swung centre-right. Not because they want to but they simply must become more "anglo-saxon" in their socio-economic outlook in order to survive as competitive nations. Being dragged to a more "American" future explains the strident anti-Americanism that emanates from Europe. The more Europe is forced to abandon it's crust of statism, the more it kicks and screams at successful America. It's rather like a political fit of infantilism.

Europe's flagstone nations all share a conceit that there exists an more mature, wise and compassionate template of human social order and this is to be found, by some inexplicable and mysterious process, in the roots of European centre-left politics. These of course are merely a modern extention of traditional European statism, hardly a force for social effervescence. The French have finally hit the wall and elected Sarkozy over the predicatable boilerplate socialist, Royal.

Sarkozy is nothing if not a novelty in the chummy world of eltitist Europolitics. He never attended the ENA ( Ecoles Nationales) schools where 90% of France's hegemonic elite are groomed for power and control. His refreshing response to being elected is to spend the week in a period of reflection before he takes up the job.

Despite French anti-Americanism, France and the USA share many similarities and one is their strong sense of assimilationism. Thus American's are able to elect an immigrant as governor of California and the French the offspring of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy, as President. It is unthinkable to see the same happening in any other European country, where a more primitive sense of blood politics is the norm.

Although Sarkozy will diminish strident anti-Americanism (Brits should note this is an extension of traditional antipathy toward "les rosbifs" and thus a backhanded compliment), he will not be a panacea. French national debt, as computed by some, will soon reach the levels of the late Ottoman Empire and presumably confirm France's place as the new Sick Man of Europe. This is the fate Sarkozy, and a belated French electorate, desperatly wishes to avoid and it raises hope in European political realism. France's electorate, like Britain's when faced with Thatcher's hard choices in 1979, finally realise the old game is up. The only problem is they are almost 25 years too late. The parient is comatose and is recovery truly possible?

I watched in amazement the French Presidential debate, where 10 minutes was spent arguing wether one should work a full 35 hours a week only or have the option to add an extra hour. Only in the fantasy world of Euroland could one expect such an exchange. An excellent longer article on France's sclerosis by Michael Gurfinkiel is to be found here.

What is ironic is just as America's recent foes in Europe all turn centre-right, America prepares for a leftward swing with the election of the Democrats. Their welcome of Sarkozy has been tepid to say the least. The influential far-left arm of the Dems, which represnts perhaps 30% of their total numbers, is already ranting on about the election of "Sarkozy the fascist". The left wing of the Democratic party is always more comfortable with communist dictators than democratic reformers.

The War Against Something or Other

2007-04-17T09:46:00.001+03:00

The British government has abandoned the phrase of a 'war on terror.' It's so Tony, so old fashioned. New Labour is famous being a party of Newspeak and the cherished leftist belief that by language manipulation you can change a core of human or social behaviour.

Orwell made clear Newspeak's basic theory: if something cannot be said, then it cannot be thought, and if it cannot be thought, it could never be done. If you can manipulate the meaning of words, then you can control the thoughts and actions of others.

Such manipulations by the left range from the gross, as in a North Korean radio broadcast to the subtle, as in the utterances of rising New Labour apparatchik Hilary Benn, son of famed loony-tune radical Tony Benn. To Benn the Younger, a phrase like "War on Terror" is doubleplusungood.

In a recent speech that shows the next generation of New Labour thinking, Benn informs us that if we use terms like "war on terror" we will aggrandize terrorists. Being careful to avoid the "I" word, Benn tells us the current state of world terrorism is not a war or struggle, just most individuals in the world "against",

a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger.
What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others, without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength

Though some might see contradiction between the “disparate” groups with “shared" views, Benn postulates that by invoking a ‘war on terror’, we are actually strengthening terrorists. He does not explain how you combat people who will not debate or indulge in dialogue and only use violence. Presumably, once you have “a majority of people against loose, disparate groups” instead of a “war on terror”, the problem will ameliorate..

No doubt, this airbrushing will impact on the “disparate groups” self-esteem, that other beloved Newspeak creation of the left. In this thinking, you don’t have to have achievements or character as a person or group. You must simply believe you are an achiever and have others tell you so, even when you are a total tosspot or wastrel. If this fatuity were true then the reverse holds. Once Islamic terrorists are no longer told they are part of a big worldwide movement, their morale will crumble.

This is like the theory of modern nursery school teachers: if a child does not start every day yelling , “I’m good, I’m clever, I’m meeeeeeee…..” in assembly, they will suffer irreversible socio-psychic harm for life.

You can read all of Benn’s ramblings here. Meanwhile it is comforting to know that Osama Bin Laden in his cave, Hizbollah in their bunkers and Islamic terrorists cells everywhere are discussing surrender or disbandment as they realise they are merely “disparate groups” with “little in common” facing the mighty majority of the world’s people who are armed with “values and ideas”.

With the EU having banned all thoughtcrime phrases like "Islamic terror" and "jihad" from official discourse, and with rampaging Muslims from Sweden to Belgium to Paris now called "youths", the Australians are not to be left out. During the Cronulla riots in 2006 , police were not able to issue bulletins describing Middle Easterners as other than "youths" with a "mullet hairstyle". Where I come from a mullet is something you eat.

Benn's terminology joins this honourable list of descriptors that have so enriched our language. We await the future headline: ' Youthful disparate groups of fish blow up the House of Commons".

ANOTHER CRICKET WORLD CUP SHOCK

2007-04-06T14:20:00.000+03:00

LATEST CRICKET RESULT: Iran 896-0 (Ahmedinejad 498 n.o), England 2-10 (Bliar 1,Beckett 1)

England slumped to a disastrous shock defeat at the hands of newcomers Iran, with their new star A.Ahamedinejad scoring a world record for one day cricket of 498 not out, which included 80 boundries (status disputed).

England was not helped by the defection of their entire team, less Blair and Beckett, to the Iranian side. England's start player Faye Turney found the going difficult as she tried to bowl in a full length chador-shemeez and was the first to give up and go over to Ahamedinejad's rampant side.

It is rumoured this is Englands gratest humiliation since they were beaten by one J. Ceasar;s team in 256 B.C.

ITerrorists Use Poison Gas - MSM Yawns

2007-02-22T12:12:00.000+03:00

The BBC reports that Iraqi terrorists are using a banned chemical weapon from WW1, Chlorine gas. This it seems only "concerns" them and the rest of the MSM are silent. Can we imagine the outrage if the coalition even released a whiff of Mustard gas, Phosgene and other WW1 horrors? Chlorine gas kills or maims by burning victims lungs. A whole truckload was found wired to go and obviously more is on the way.

Seemingly MSM and The Beeb's bland reporters can't be bothered to look up Wikipedia here.

What's worse is it's use against civilians in Baghdad. Just imagine if they got ahold of Sarin!

Obamania Part 1

2007-02-13T00:35:00.000+03:00

Now that Barack Obama has finally announced his precocious candidacy for the US Presidency, sections of the Kenya media will be agog with every development. Many Kenyans understandably have pride in his Kenyan connection via his father but will probably make the mistake of analysing his prospects through the usual lenses employed in local politics. These are always firmly fixed on identity obsessions (i.e. tribalism). Thus Kenyan commentators are already fixating on race identity, gloomily wondering if Americans will ever elect a "black" President.

They will miss the fact that Americans by and large are keen to vote for a black President which would, they hope, finally put the bear of race into a long and perhaps terminal hibernation. What many can't differentiate is that being "black" is not sufficient on it's own. Policies in the USA, unlike simple identity poltics in Kenya, actually count. Colin Powell might well have won the Presidency but that does not mean Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson would. The same holds for Obama, who leans far left of the political spectrum when most Americans are moderate or even centre-right. Americans are not at all against a "black" candidate - the question is, which one and is it a figure like Obama?

Obama may also have a harder time capturing the African-American vote than his formidable rivals like Hilary Clinton. He is not actually a "black" candidate at all, unless one accepts the basic racism inherent in the idea that a white woman can always give birth to a black child, but a black woman can never give birth to white one. Blacks in America appear upset that Obama has had a privileged childhood, exotic and international and not at all one that took in the historical sufferings of African-Americans, as they see it.

How does this likeable young man position himself? He cannot move towards the centre of US political ideas, as that is already occupied firmly by Clinton and other Democratic prospects. To do so would fatally undermine his credibility, as he would find it impossible to explain away his leftist positions on everything from Iraq to healthcare. The possibility will be that he ends up the candidate of the moonbat left, the liberal media and Hollywood elites- already Stephen Spielberg has jumped ship to raise money for him. This is hardly a base which will carry him to the Presidency unless the US veers so far left as to cause the greatest shift in modern political history. That is not going to happen.

Is he ready for prime time? His tasteless jibes at Australia's John Howard, where he attacked and ridiculed a staunch ally of the USA shows in the very infancy of his run that he seems determined to appease America's enemies and insult it's best friends. Asking Australia to "ginny up" and provide a further 20,000 troops to Iraq is just the first error to show his absolute inexperience, beyond a couple of years as a junior Senator. It's early days yet, but the chances are Obama will discover that Americans would be much happier voting for a non-white candidate who shows reliable centrism or even mildly rightist policy ideas than the narrow voter base he is obviously reaching for.

Yankee Come Home

2007-01-27T15:08:00.000+03:00

Confirmation about something many suspected and which our blatantly anti-American big media has hardly commented on: the BBC undertook a worldwide sample of some 29,000 respondents showing Kenyans have the highest positive view of the USA of any country surveyed, a stunning 70% rating.

Compare this to the miserly 16% of Germans who believe the USA has a mainly positive role in the world. The Germans got magnanimity after World War II in the Marshall Plan, and an underwriting for the cost of their defence against communism, allowing them to concentrate on becoming rich and peaceful, thanks to America. Despite the unspeakable atrocities the Germans visited on the world with their war, less than 20 of it’s worst leaders were hung as war criminals. Forgive and rebuild was the watchword. As we say in Kiswahili, asante ya punda ni teke; the thanks of a donkey are kicks.

Here in Kenya, our local newspapers also own TV and radio outlets. The biggest is the Nation Group comprising daily papers, the business tabloid The East African and broadcast media. It’s owned by Muslims, albeit the moderate Aga Khan Foundation. The Standard Group undersells it considerably, and both exhibit unrelenting anti-Americanism from the editors downwards.

Kenyans are bombarded with stories written by Islamists, tranzis and anti-democrats. In the Standard last year, a column on the “only hope” for Iraq was, wait for it, to have the UN reinstate Saddam. Jihadi journalist Salim Lone informs readers in The Daily Nation that “hardly anyone” believes in Islamist plots to blow up airliners and that these are “inventions of Bush and Blair”. The recent collapse of the Somali Islamists (fervently wished for by Kenyans) was greeted with serious media alarm, followed by derision directed at the

USA

This is the normal journalistic meal served up to Kenyan readers, a country where Christians are the overwhelming majority and print is still king. The blogosphere has hardly any readers at all. All the more surprising then that Kenyans have weathered this propaganda effort and still favour the USA.

Gunship Hash Fry-Up

2007-01-23T20:28:00.000+03:00

The January 13^th issue of The East African editorializes; “US Makes A Hash Of It Again” referring to Somalia. Claiming the "US adventure is Somali is going off the rails, raising fears of another Iraq being enacted right here in East Africa", it minimizes the Islamist support o'f Eritrean and foreign mercenaries, the long history of Somali-Ethiopian wars, the massive influx of arms into Mogadishu from mischievous countries and Kenya’s own interests in eradicating terrorists. It’s all Uncle Sam’s blunder, again.

Facts are abandoned. There are no reports, as the editor would have it, of “US fighter jets” or “Blackhawk helicopters” operating in Somalia. There was a solitary AC-130 gunship that could have done many favours if it had eradicated the Al-Qaeda cell leaders. Their attacks killed hundreds and wounded thousands in Kenya. This nearly bankrupted our tourist industry and entire economy twice. There are a few Special Forces boots on the ground and these, plus the British SAS , have been welcomed by all parties except the Islamists and their allies and dupes in the Kenyan media.

Also, since it does not fit The East African’s favoured anti-American narrative, the paper fails no mention the ICU attacked Baidoa and the TNG on December 16^th despite endless international warnings and thus sealed their own fate.

The US has publicly stated it is willing to work with non-Al Qaeda Islami c Courts Unionparties in Somalia – a big shift in policy. It strongly backs an AU force and stays as much in the background as possible – unlike for example Eritrea or Al-Qaeda itself, which called for global terrorists to come to the ICU’s aid. The US has kept it’s military footprint very small. No doubt most regional countries would like to see the irredentist ICU dismantled. Moderate Somalis in Hargeisha and Puntland are whooping with delight.

Rather than “hashing” the job, it is more likely the US has learned valuable past lessons and kept the problem at arm’s length. One is not sure why The East African would want to inflame jihadi passions by asserting otherwise.

Somalia

is both an inter-African and regional failure.

America

is justifiably interested in the capture or death of a limited group of Al-Qaeda terrorists. The

left Somali alone for a dozen years after “Blackhawk Down”. During this time did Africans solve their own problems? Did the EU or UN come to rescue the country? Not at all.

The result was the ICU and more civil war, with the possibility of an Afghanistan- in Africa. This was intolerable to all in Kenya except a handful of Islamists and their mouthpieces like jihadi supporter Salim Lone of The Daily Nation. In truth there is no simple solution in Somalia and making people believe that the American bogeyman is behind all the woe implies it will vanish should the US ignore Somalia for another decade. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A week after this "editorial", which reads more like a shill for the ICU, the moderate leader of the ICU surrendered peacefully to Kenyan authorities and was reported headed for Nairobi for talks with US State Department officials. The real question is, why do Kenyans have to read over and again these hopelessly biased and innacurate anti-American rants, in the guise of "editorials"?

A Massacre Of The Guilty

2007-01-10T22:14:00.000+03:00

Is it useful for Kenyan authorities detain 6 suspected Kenyan Islamists allegedly fighting in Somalia ? If they had on them cell-phones with recorded messages to Osama Bin Laden, Idd cards signed by Al-Qaeda leader Al Zwahiri, notebooks detailing intimate conversations between themselves and terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and details of suspected targets worldwide, there is nothing whatsoever, besides letting them go, that Kenyan authorities could do. This is because Kenya refuses, in a weird mixture of misplaced nationalism, incoherent anti-Americanism among it's elites and naked Muslim vote-buying in an election year, to pass anti-terrorist legislation.

Every terrorism suspect that has been brought to court since 2001 has been freed. The record of Kenya, a nominally Christian country, in convicting jihadi terrorists is actually worse than most Muslim nations. The former Moi government used to hand over terrorists to the USA and seek the active assistance of American law agencies like the FBI. The chances of the Kibaki government doing the same seems nil. Strident anti-American/pro-terrorist propaganda is staple fare of many in Kenya's news media and readers are delivered daily barrages of articles that are strongly sympathetic to the terrorist world viewpoint. Al-Jazeera is being given a license to operate it's TV programming in Kenya. Kenya is the only nation in the world to have suffered repeated and devastating terrorist attacks without passing a single piece of anti-terrorist law. The majority of Kenyans desire such laws, but the elite and pressure groups have so far resisted passing any.

An entire Muslim network ( or fifth column) of street demonstrators, mullahs, preachers and "activists " has sprung up to denounce any proposed anti-terror laws, to demand the disbandment of the Kenya Police Terrorism Unit and rail against the USA/Israel at every opportunity. Coupled with the notorious corruption of the Kenya Police and Immigration officers, it is no wonder the Islamists in Somalia have made a dash for the Kenyan border. There is little assurance that dozens will not, and have not already, slipped into the country. The only thing in their way seems to the the AC-130 gunships and special ops forces the US bases in nearby Djibouti.

Todays news of the death of 1998 Embassy bombing mastermind Fazul Mohammed who also plotted the 2002 Kikambala Hotel attack in Malindi and simultaneous attempt to bring down an Israeli airliner at the airport will be more than welcome to the staggering number of Kenyan victims of Al-Qaeda and their relatives. Over 200 Kenyans have been murdered by Al-Qaeda and a shocking 5000 injured, often ghastly lacerations from flying glass after bombings.

The Ethiopians, Somali government and US forces have driven the Al-Qaeda remnants to a no-win penninsula of isolated headlands and rocky islets around Ras Komboni in south Somlia. It is rare for the US to get Al-Qaeda in it's sights in such a hopeless position. Worse for the Islamists, they are cut-off from their bleating supporters in the world media, though the "they are killing only civilians" reports are naturally being circulated. There is every indication the US forces are going to kill or capture all Al-Qaeda trapped on Ras Komboni. The entire event is a complete humiliation of the jihadi juggernaut that claimed such invincibility. Maybe Kenya won't need those anti-terrorist laws at all after a few more days of gunships, Predators and special forces operations.

Preparing The New Kristallnacht

2007-01-09T00:11:00.000+03:00

Jimmy Carter is arguably the worst President ever elected in US history. While the MSM, Euro-paranoids and others rant on about George Bush and "fudamentalist Christians" taking over the USA, it's worth remembering that Carter is something of a hardline Christian from the Deep South himself. Presumably because he's a Democrat however, he gets a free media ride. That's why the sinister side to this failed man hardly gets examined. Many Southern Christians basically fall into two camps: those who are anti-Semitic (Jews as Christ-killers etc) and those who, for their own odd scriptural reasons, support the existence of the state of Israel.

Carter's racist new book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” shows him firmly to be in the "Jews -Are-Evil" camp of Christian fundamentalists. Who does Carter most remind one of? A creep like Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam who, in a perfectly reasonable and calm voice, can spew out hatred and venom, smiling all the time. Even the liberal media cannot spare Carter. His book has been condemned as “moronic” (Slate), “anti-historical” (The Washington Post)and “laughable” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Carter is of course doing nothing more than many of the worst sort of Christians have done for almost two millennia: demonizing Jews and dehumanising them, to prepare them for killing or persecution. I wonder what it sounds like to the average Israeli, with his memories of the combined pogroms of Europe, this constant stream of racist propaganda directed at his tiny minority? The slow, steady preparation of justification for a new Kristallnacht.

One hears it in the assertions of the left and Arab nationalists who subscribe to the nonsense that the "key to peace in the Middle East is solving the Palestine problem". What they are promising is the illusion of peace, with Israel as the scarifical lamb. If only Israel ceased to exist we would all live in peace and be happy and prosperous. Anyone who believes this of the Middle East is easily duped.

Those who cannot spot the similarity to this racist nonsense and Hitler's assertion that Germany (and Europe) could only achieve the levels of Utopia when cleansed of Jewish "control" needs to think deeply indeed.

It's not enough that Jews be compared to South African racists. When asked whether he believed that Israel’s “persecution” of Palestinians was “[e]ven worse . . . than a place like Rwanda,” Carter answered, “Yes. I think — yes.” ... Thus this disgraceful man, who Americans threw out of office in revulsion, prepares the ancient ghost of debased Christianity: the Jew-devil, the Evil One, the Scapegoat. It is part of a pattern that has been going on in Europe too for a good while.

Many now take it as axiomatic that Israel is the key (or rather obstacle) to all problems in the Arab world - even to Shiites and Sunnis slaughtering each other in Baghdad. World opinion is being softened up for a new Kistallnact and anyone with a Christian heritage should look very hard, with the largest moral magnifying glass they can find, at this latest round of Jew-baiting from the "deeply CXhristian" Jummy carter

Kenyan Athlete Finally Loses

2007-01-08T22:05:00.000+03:00

It's hard to feel sympathy for either side in this story:

Authorities have revoked the Bahraini citizenship of a Kenyan-born athlete who ran in an Israeli marathon, the nation's athletic union said Saturday.

Bahraini runner Mushir Salem Jawher competed and won the Tiberias Marathon in Israel on Thursday, ending the race in just over 2 hours and 13 minutes.

Gulf Arab states are all over Kenya getting Christian athletes to defect for huge sums of money, so as to build their athletics programs. And what is so wrong with that, given Kenya has a surplus of runners and high poverty levels? What is wrong is that the Gulf states make the Kenyans abandon their Christian religion and convert to Islam. They are also required to adopt fully Arab names.

Now imagine the outcry if, say, the talented Sudanese basketball players coming to the USA were required to give up their names and convert to Christianity. However as usual it's one rule for the West and another for everyone else.

EU Issues Shock Christophobia Report

2006-12-19T00:12:00.000+03:00

The EU nomenklatura is at it again with a new report that claims a rise in "Islamophobia" in Europe. However the Brussels mob have yet to issue any report on rising "Christophobia" in Europe by Muslim immigrants, evidence for which is more than just a matter of feelings or perceptions.

The very solid grounds for rising Christophobia in Europe includes multiple suicide bombings in London last summer, increasing calls for Sharia law, the small matter of the Danish Mohammed cartoons and wordwide bloody riots that ensued, let alone numerous thwarted plots involving dozens of Islamic terrorists. The latter extended to countries which had become anti-US in their foreign policy, such as Spain, Germany and France. Even Sweden experienced riots.

Fear of Islamic violence caused the cancellation of many arts events in 2006, including a performance of Mozart in his homeland. A French Jew was tortured to death in Paris for no other reason than his religion.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Europe threatened to kill the Pope, behead homosexuals and declare Muslim "no-go" areas in various European cities. Honour killings, often involving cross-religious love relationships, increased.

The same EU politicians that issued the "Islamophobia" report are the ones who in 2004 supressed an EU report of rising anti-Semitic attacks because it named young Muslim Europeans as the chief perpetrators.

Obama and the M Word

2006-12-13T03:02:00.000+03:00

Reading the thoughts of Joshua Marshall on Talking Points regarding some Republican bottom-feeders already going on about Barack Obama's middle name being "Hussein" leads to some thoughts on his ability to ever get elected President and what the Muslim world would think of this?

Obama's late Kenyan father was a nominal Muslim, hence his Kenyan name of Mbarak Hussein Obama. His mother is an American Christian. Obama himself is an observant and fervent Christian and brought up that way.

My understanding of sharia is that all children born between a Muslim father and non-Muslim mother are considered Muslims automatically, regardless of whatever religion the actually observe and to deny this makes them potential apostates - which can carry severe sanction, including death, in the eyes of very many traditional Muslims. This does not hold,however, if a Muslim woman marries a Jew or Christian. It only applies to the male sire.

This question is going to come up if Obama ever makes a run for President: what is the Muslim world going to make of his candidacy? Chances are he will be considered a Muslim candidate, which will look fine in say, Saudi Arabia but not look neccesarily the same in the USA. Vocal and radical claims that Obama is either a Muslim or worse, an apostate worthy of death, are bound to issue from the Muslim world.

The impact on Obama as a candidate is likely to be fatal. Not only would various bonehead elements in the GOP and electorate generally try to stir this issue, but so will the Muslim press. Al-Jazeera's take is to be imagined. The potentially bitter cat-calls of racism,Islamophobia , mullahs propounding on Koranic sharia and all the rest are bound to command media attention, and this in a candidate who is meant to bring novel freshness to the political scene.

I don't know if Obama's staff see this one coming, but it's certainly on my radar and will have a fascinating life of it's own sooner rather than later. People may see Obama as the new Kennedy, but JFK's "Catholic" problem was nothing compared to what might be on the horizon.

A Tale of Two Bad Guys

2006-12-13T02:57:00.000+03:00

I confess I had not read the Washington Post's excellent editorial on the death of Pinochet when I got to wondering about the following political poser:

Pinochet's 1973 coup against a communist take-over of Chile had 3000 killed (on both sides) and over 10,000 detentions. Yet it turned Chile into South Americas most successful economy to this day. He resigned in 1988 after 15 years in power when he lost a referendum on his rule. Chile is now South America's healthiest democracy. Everywhere he went in later life, he was hounded by human rights activists and judges. Would Chile be in the same place today if the communist coup had succeeded?

Castro's 1959 coup against an odious Cuban right-wing dictator resulted in 17,000 killed and a gulag of over 150,000 prisoners. Cuba developed a complete basket-case economy, which remains to this day. Three million have fled. Everywhere, even internationally, he gets standing ovations and mass adulation from the media. Castro has never had a referendum on his rule and will only resign in his coffin. The country remains a totalitarian state. Would Cuba be in the same place today if Castro had resigned in 1974?

Xmas Shorts

2006-12-10T23:09:00.000+03:00

On Barack Obama, "Black" hope: As pointed out in the National Review in April, 2000, "the United States is the only country in the world in which a white woman can give birth to a black baby but a black woman cannot give birth to a white baby."

Those Stupid Republicans: Incoming Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Silvestre Reyes doesn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites. Or what Hezbollah is.

Those Stupid Republicans, Part II: Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

Gay Taliban?

2006-12-01T22:41:00.000+03:00

One of the things the MSM never brings to our notice is the well known fact that the Taliban are bi-sexual, if not exactly gay. Bi-sexuality has deep roots in Afghanistan for reasons that may have to do with with it's conquest by Alexander the Great and subsequent long period as a Greek colony. It is widely accepted that the Macedonians and other ancient Greeks, including the Spartans, were bi-sexual. In some cases, bi-sexual lovers fought and lived together and this practise was common, if not the military norm. Even as far back as Homer, we have Achilles and his lover. However all Greek warriors were also expected to maintain a heterosexual family with wife and kids, rather like today's Taliban do.

In the early part of the Afghan campaign, a British daily reported that a Northern Afghan warlord was particularly pleased the British Royal Marines were replacing American troops in his sector as they were, he said, "far more handsome to look at". In case this sounds like a fantasy, a new copy of the Taliban Rules and Code of Conduct has been obtained and translated by a Swiss specialist, exclusively published in the Swiss journal Die Weltwoche. Here is Rule 19,obviously aimed at something more than the US Army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy:

"Mujahideen are not allowed to take young boys with no facial hair onto the battlefield or into their private quarters."

Somalia Cooks Up Trouble

2006-11-30T22:31:00.000+03:00

The reports of 3 suicide car bombs detonated in the Somali town of Baidoa bring a new and ominous escalation in the growing threat of Islamism in Eastern Africa. Though fanatically brave and careless of their lives in battle, Somalis have never been known as methodical suicide jihadis. Newswire suggestions than non-Somalis were captured at the site indicate Al-Qaeda involvement. As is usual with Somalia, the situation is endlessly opaque and confusing, with the ICU going so far as to invite the USA to officially visit Mogadishu for talks!

Kenya is a non-aggressive nation, known for the excellent professionalism of it's armed peacekeepers in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere with a foreign policy that stresses regional dialogue and agreed solutions. Kenya has been instrumental in helping end the genocidal Southern Sudan conflict, among many. For years Kenya coaxed the quarrelsome and boisterous Somalis into forming their Provisional Government. All that work is undone by the advance of the shadowy, sinister Islamic Courts Union forces.

The Guardian and other leftist MSM outlets repeat the clueless canard that somehow, when the US gave cash to non- ICU warlords in a futile attempt to stem the ICU takeover of Mogadisu last summer, this "exacerbated" the Islamist advance. Such thinking blames America-as-usual, forgetting that the groundwork of trained forces, superior weapons, advanced tactics and foreign cadres of the ICU took months, if not years, of careful planning. The blame game also ignores the most likely cause of the Islamist assault: it coincided with and would plainly forestall, the final establishment of the internationally backed, African Union approved Provisional Somali Government.

While ideologues look to their bogeyman in the USA, others note that Islamism in Somalia could revive the murderous regional violence of the 1960's and 70's when Somali nationalists tried to take over territory in Kenya and Ethiopia. These have large ethnic Somali minorities. There are uncomfortable signs that "Greater Somalia" is longed for by some of the ICU top leadership. It's hard to see how the ICU will not eventually go for the racial expansion of Somalia, which would have disastrous repercussions in Kenya's north east, heavily populated by native and refugee Somalis. Throw in the ICU acting as proxies for Eritrea, Ethiopia's belligerent refusal, backed by a huge army, to countenance Islamist takeover, Iranian mischief, Al-Qaeda elements, mystery arms flights into Mogadishu, new suicide bombers and one has a cauldron of bitter ingredients that could scald an entire region.

Kenya meanwhile tries to play the peaceful middleman, desperate to avoid being caught in any situation that would demand it abandon perceived neutrality in face of a need to balance acute national interests. It's something Kenya diplomats are very skilled at, but for how much longer before somthing lights the fire and the Somali pot finally boils into open regional conflict?