Saturday, April 29, 2006

Random Thoughts 4/29/06

Greetings, Mein Froinds!

Pardon, once again, the rather skint entries to the blog. Work has been busy, profitable, and exhausting, and thus, posting at the end of these vigorous workdays can be nigh impossible. That said, it has been an interesting few weeks news-wise (when isn't it?). Nothing out of the ordinary, mind. Gas prices went higher, leftist demogogues came out in full force decrying price gauging (when is someone going to teach these people Economics 101?), Iran once again thumbed its nose at the perpetually impotent United Nations (so much for multi-lateralism!), the Fitzgerald special prosecution has called Karl Rove for a FIFTH time to talk about who leaked Valerie Plame's name (while, of course, failing to disclose to the public whether she was a covert agent or not; more on this later), and Dana Priest of the Washington Post and James Risen of the New York Times won the Pulitzer for their seditious journalism, aiding al Qaeda in the process. (Thanks, folks! I'll touch on that later, as well.) Anyway....


* I read an article that Andy Garcia has written, directed, and produced a movie called The Lost City (pardon the lack of link; writing on the Mac today!), which depicts Che Guevara in his true (ie bad) light. Seems this has a few people upset out there, and thus he didn't have the easiest time getting the movie made. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people that scream, curse, yell, and cry about the supposed erosion of civil liberties here (four years plus since 9/11, I haven't felt any erosion at all; then again, I'm not a muslim and/or attempting to sabotage the United States...), call Bush every name in the book (King George, George W. Hitler, etc...etc...ad nauseum), but defend the Castro-ite regime to the fullest. Said Garcia, "There have been festivals that wouldn't show it. That will continue to happen from people who don't want to see the image of Che be tarnished and from people who support the Castro regime. He still has a lot of supporters out there. Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for the kids and the poor. It's a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro came to power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities." Go Andy. And thank you for revealing, yet again, the complete falsehood that the leftists of this world are interested in peace, human rights, and liberty for all. It couldn't be further from the truth.

*The Left once again has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted with security issues in this country, unless of course, you're the enemy. Then they can be consistently counted on to publish classified information which damages the United States, as was the case with Dana Priest of the Washington Post (who published the story that the U.S. was working with Romania, Poland, and a few other Eastern European nations in setting up secret holding sites for al Qaeda captives) and James Risen of the New York Times (who published the NSA wiretapping of international calls story). For this, these two seditious morons won a Pulitzer Prize. (Think Claudia Rossett, who doggedly unearthed the United Nations oil-for-food scandal got a Pulitzer? Nah....she wasn't even nominated.) I fail to see how publishing these stories was of any benefit to anyone, save giving the seditious Left yet another cudgel from which to beat on Bush and, obviously, al Qaeda.

*On a related note, the CIA fired the leaker of the secret prisons story, a woman named Mary McCarthy. Not coincidentally, McCarthy was a campaign contributor to the John Kerry campaign ($2000 contribution) and was a Clinton appointee to several positions during his tenure. Of course, in the eyes of the seditious Left, McCarthy isn't a "leaker", but rather a "truth-teller". Well, yeah....she told the truth. So what? She also jeopardized the war effort against Islamo-fascism. And for what? Because her favored nominee lost the election? I'll tell you, if the security of this nation is consistently compromised by people within government who put their party (Democratic, in this (and most) cases) above the safety and security of the American people, I fear for the future in a deep way. And yet, this ridiculous Valerie Plame investigation continues. Which brings me to....

*...the Valerie Plame investigation. Why can't Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald just say flat-out whether Plame was an undercover agent or not? My guess is that she wasn't, that the revealing of her name was a non-story, and this thing is gone completely off the rails. Just to recap for all of you, Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, was sent by the CIA (at her urging) to Niger to verify whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from them. Turns out that Saddam DID in fact attempt to buy uranium from Niger in '99, just as he had succeeded in doing in the early 90's. Wilson told this to the CIA, but then, in a fit of Bush hatred (this should be diagnosed and entered into psychiatric journals as a bonafide mental illness, no?), wrote the opposite in a New York Times op-ed piece. So, the Bush White House, when asked who Wilson was and why he was sent to Niger, told the truth: we didn't send him, his wife did. So....how do we know that Wilson lied in his NYT op-ed piece? Because a.) he said the opposite to his CIA debriefers, and it was reflected in the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Estimate report, b.) the British Government's Butler Report also verified that Saddam sought to acquire uranium from Niger, and c.) Wilson claimed that the forged documents that had been floating around, that were ancillary to his original observations regarding this story, had dates and names wrong....though Wilson, while using this as additional evidence that Saddam HAD NOT sought to acquire uranium, had never seen the documents himself. (And later admitted that he hadn't.) And yet, Scooter Libby has been indicted for perjury for supposedly lying about who told him about Valerie Plame, even though Valerie Plame wasn't even undercover, and Karl Rove is STILL getting questioned over this non-leak. And yet, Dana Priest and James Risen parade their Pulitzers around with pride in having weakened their country with a REAL and damaging leak. Unbelievable.

*On a different note, I'm almost through Plutarch's "Makers Of Rome", which is a truncated version of "Lives". Many interesting short biographies on the great Roman figures. I was struck by this quote by Sertorius, as recorded by Plutarch, "A man of noble spirit welcomes victory if he can achieve it with honor, but he will not embrace dishonor even to save his own life".

Except, of course, if you're seditious leftist. (Pardon the redundancy there.)

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

ANZAC Day

Today, our compatriots in the Anglosphere, Australia and New Zealand, commemorate ANZAC Day. The story of what this day is and what is means is below:

What is ANZAC Day?

ANZAC Day - 25 April - is probably Australia's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

Why is this day so special to Australians?

When war broke out in 1914 Australia had been a federal commonwealth for only fourteen years. The new national government was eager to establish its reputation among the nations of the world. In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula to open the way to the Black Sea for the allied navies. The plan was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. They landed at Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold stroke to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stalemate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915 the allied forces were evacuated after both sides had suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. Over 8,000 Australian soldiers were killed. News of the landing at Gallipoli made a profound impact on Australians at home and 25 April quickly became the day on which Australians remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in war.

Though the Gallipoli campaign failed in its military objectives of capturing Constantinople and knocking Turkey out of the war, the Australian and New Zealand troops' actions during the campaign bequeathed an intangible but powerful legacy. The creation of what became known as an "Anzac legend" became an important part of the national identity of both nations. This shaped the ways they viewed both their past and their future.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Al Gore, Scaremonger

Seeing red over 'green scare'
Jonah Goldberg

April 20, 2006

MEET AL GORE, scaremonger. In 2004, Gore denounced President Bush for "playing on our fears." Today, he is at the forefront of a "green scare" about global warming intended to terrify Americans into submitting to his environmental policies.

Consider the trailer for "An Inconvenient Truth," Davis Guggenheim's documentary about Gore's green crusade. It promises to be the most adept piece of scaremongering ever captured on film, making "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" seem like "Toy Story 2." The movie's poster shows penguins walking across a desert. The trailer says, "If you love your planet … if you love your children … you have to see this movie." In case you're thick in the head, the producers spell it out for you: "By far, the most terrifying film you will ever see!"

Of course, Gore is not alone. A host of new environmental scare books are out or on the way. Last month, Time magazine's cover warned, "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." Those renowned climatologists who make up Vanity Fair's editorial board have unveiled a "green issue" that informs us that "green is the new black" and that global warming is a "threat graver than terrorism." It says so right there on the cover, above Julia Roberts' hip. And she's dressed like a forest nymph, so it's got to be true.

Now, it's true that Earth has gotten warmer — one degree since the 19th century — and it will probably get warmer still. And it's probably true that human activity plays a significant part in all that. But it's also true that we don't have a clear picture of what's happening now, never mind what will happen. Just ask the 60 climatologists from around the world who wrote Canada's prime minister that "observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future." But that's all beside the point to Gore & Co., who say the time for debate is over. And if you disagree, get ready for the witch hunt. Major news media have gone after scientists who argue there's still time to study global warming rather than plunge into some half-baked environmental jihad that could waste possibly trillions of dollars.

As Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, recently lamented in the Wall Street Journal: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."

In Vanity Fair, writer Mark Hertsgaard alleges that Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences and the former president of the prestigious Rockefeller University, was a shill for, of all things, the tobacco industry. A press release by the National Environmental Trust proclaims "Scientist Who Spearheaded Attacks on Global Warming Also Directed $45M Tobacco Industry Effort to Hide Health Impacts of Smoking." Seitz, a giant in American science, says this is all "ridiculous, completely wrong." Now 94, Seitz explained to TCSDaily.com that R.J. Reynolds had given Rockefeller University $5 million a year for basic research. Seitz says he directed the money toward non-tobacco-related efforts in the study of prions (the virus-like proteins that cause mad cow disease), tuberculosis and other diseases. Prion researcher Stanley Prusiner thanked both R.J. Reynolds and Seitz in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

But Gore & Co. aren't troubled by such details because the smears are all for a good cause. That's why Gore saw nothing wrong in bullying dissident climate change scientists when he was a senator or waging a mean-spirited campaign to discredit the work of his old mentor, Harvard oceanographer Roger Revelle, because Revelle thought alarmism was unwarranted.

Hence the irony of the title "An Inconvenient Truth." It is the green scare that has no patience for inconvenient truths. For example, Gore blames the disappearing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro on global warming, but a 2003 study in Nature identified the clear-cutting of surrounding moisture-rich forests as the culprit. In the famously fact-checked New Yorker, Editor David Remnick pens a love letter to Gore in which he laments that Earth will "likely be an uninhabitable planet" if we don't heed Gore's jeremiads. Oh … come … on!

This is just a small taste of the millenarian battiness running through the green scare. Sure, a one- or two-degree-per-century rise in average global temperatures may have unpleasant consequences — with some pleasant ones as well — but in what study did the New Yorker's fact-checkers verify that Earth will become uninhabitable? Moreover, the greens' proposed solutions to global warming are even more otherworldly. Reducing global carbon dioxide emissions to 60% of 1990 levels before 2050, while China, India and (hopefully) Africa modernize, is inconceivable, ill-conceived and also immoral because it would consign generations to poverty.

But none of that seems to matter to the greens. To them, the only thing we have to fear is the lack of fear itself.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Happy Easter....

To all readers of this blog. Let us never forget who we are, what we are, and the civilization that we have built. Let us also take stock of the fact that it is under assualt from the leftist fifth column within our ranks, and the Islamic hordes seeking to infiltrate and destroy our culture. And Happy (belated) Passover.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

More Catonian Wisdom

Something to remember when people of low character and bitter dispositions verbally attack you(an excerpt from Plutarch's Lives):

"When he himself (Cato the Elder) was attacked by a man who led an infamous and dissolute life, he retorted: 'We can never fight on equal terms: you are so hardened to abuse that you can return it just as easily as you suffer it, whereas for me it is as unusual to hear as it is unpleasant to utter'."

Pop V. Soda

One of the stranger things I recall coming across when I was a wee lad was the difference in terminologies from region to region. At age ten, I visited some relatives in West Virginia, and wheneven I was a guest in their house, they would ask me if I wanted a "pop". What they heck was "pop"? Eventually realizing that they meant "soda", I accepted, but never could get over how weird it was to call soda "pop". Well, here's a map that makes sense of it all. If any of you plan on traveling throughout the United States and/or Canada, this will help you tremendously to make sense of where to order a soda, a pop, or a Coke.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Quote Of The Day

"How can a body lke this be on any service to the state, when everything in it from the gullet to the groin is devoted to the belly?"

--Cato The Elder, 234-139 B.C.

The observation above was in reference to a certain Roman senator, a contemporary of Cato's. Take a moment on ponder which current U.S. Senator this quote would also be applicable to. Feel free to post your answers on the comments page.