Just Stopping Over in the UK Long Enough to Destroy the Place

The UK has a long and fascinating history, dating to long before the origin of human writing. By the time Margaret Thatcher came along to save the UK from its own leftist leanings, the nation had seen a world-wide empire come and go. It was just settling peacefully and prosperously into its role as "only one of the most important countries in the world" when--under the radar--things began to go perilously wrong.

Peter Hitchens in today's Daily Mail:

The deeply English, deeply Christian city of Oxford, one of the homes of free thought, is now being asked to accept the Islamic call to prayer wafting from mosque loudspeakers over its spires and domes.

If that is not a threat to our "way of life", then I don't know what is. Allowing the regular electronic proclamation of Allah's supremacy in a British city is not tolerance, but a surrender of the sky to a wholly different culture. Just you wait and see what opponents of this scheme are accused of.

It may be a "wholly different culture", but unlike the spires of those empty Anglican churches it represents the demographic energy of today's England. Corner

Even worse than the shift in demographic energy of the UK, is the government turning on its own citizens. If a homeowner shoots a home invader in defense of his family, it is the homeowner who goes to jail and is sued penniless by criminals. Now, the voice of England is less the voice of Empire than the voice of the vanquished:

We're all being taken for idiots. - Mike, Coventry

This society gets worse and sicker by the day. I can't wait until I can retire and get out of this hell hole of a country. - Diana, England

Eating a sarnie?! does that also apply to sweets? Or having just one hand on the wheel? which would mean virtually nearly every driver getting caught as (unlike most other countries) most cars are manual! - Cww, Ipswich, Suffolk

Oh happy days in our free and happy country- smile you slaves or I will tax sorry fine you... - Ian, Hereford

I think the use of these high tech digital cameras to catch potentially dangerous drivers is a fantastic idea. I'm tired of observing drivers using mobile phones and smoking whilst driving on our congested roads where full concentration is needed at all times. I'd make the fines higher too, maybe confiscation of their cars would make these irresponsible drivers think twice... - Bill, Warrington England

Will there be two variants of camera? Type A set up to screw Joe Public; type B programmed to disregard police who commit the same offence. - Glyn, Southampton, U.K.

I think I'll give up motoring and take up drug-dealing, pimping, mugging, burglary, and extortion ...it'll be safer for me, and more socially-acceptable. - David Bourke, Rochester, England. Corner

Originally published in Daily Mail via SDA

Brits have always wondered why the Yanks rebelled against the Crown when they had it so good over there. Now, the UK may be ready for an "American-style" revolution of its own against a "Crown" that treats them like vassals.

George W. Bush--Climate Superhero!

The United States under President George W. Bush has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than 75% of Kyoto signees. While the duncehat mainstream media is expected to downplay such accomplishment, one might expect climate organisations such as the IPCC to acknowledge Bush's climate superherodom.

If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto. Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers. (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)

* Maldives, 252%.
* Sudan, 142%.
* China, 55%.
* Luxembourg, 43%
* Iran, 39%.
* Iceland, 29%.
* Norway, 24%.
* Russia, 16%.
* Italy, 16%.
* Finland, 15%.
* Mexico, 11%.
* Japan, 11%.
* Canada, 8.8%.

American Thinker

Bush appears to have picked up support from fellow Anglosphere nations, including Canada and Australia (under the new PM!).

Rather than being isolated, the decision by the United States and Canada to take the lead in international energy and climate diplomacy appears to have galvanized key allies, who are gradually rallying around a much tougher stance vis-a-vis China and India.

In Bali, the Anglosphere nations have in effect drawn a red line in the sand: Unless developing countries agree to mandatory emissions cuts themselves, much of the Western world will henceforth reject any unilateral burden imposed by future climate deals.

Source

Believers in Kyoto are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, to be sure. But their tendency to bury their heads in the sand provides a very tempting target for a quick wicked kick! I feel better now.

This Campaign Ad Gets My Vote

I tend not to vote for Republicans or Democrats. But I have no reservations about voting for this Fred Thompson campaign ad YouTube video.

It reminds me of all the Jack Bauer jokes, growing out of the TV show "24." Something tells me that a lot of American voters are ready for a Jack Bauer like president. As long as he was willing to abstain from an inordinate level of "nation-building" overseas.
;-)

The Unfortunate Rudeness of Essential Truths--The Fastidious Decadence of an Affluent and Forgetful Civilisation

Western democracies, by virtue of their affluence, relative stability and security, and general absence of deep spirtuality--whether religious or secular spirituality--have grown forgetful of historical lessons. But the needful lessons of history have not forgotten the neo-decadent west. Hardly.

It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it....War is a fact of the human social condition neither man wishes were so. Sun-Tzu, concerned with war on the highest strategic level, affirms that the greatest warrior is one who calculates so well that he never needs to fight. Clausewitz, interested more in the operational level, allows that war takes precedence only after other forms of politics have failed.

...But there are also the Martin Decouds of this world, the brilliant sneerers who analyze everything into oblivion. ...Decoud doesn’t represent any particular philosophical position or point of view; he is there to remind us that cleverness should not be confused with character.

...Holding or not holding a place for warriors in our midst is not just a matter of faith as we normally think of it, or even moral hardiness as I have described it. It is also a matter of collective self-regard...Faith is the capacity to believe in what is simultaneously necessary but improbable. That kind of faith is receding in America among a social and economic class increasingly motivated by universal values: caring, for example, about the suffering of famine victims abroad as much as for hurricane victims at home....You may care to the point of tears about suffering humankind without having the will to actually fight (let alone inconvenience yourself) for those concerns....The loss of a warrior mentality and the rise of universal values seem to be features of all stable, Western-style middle-class democracies.

...As American society grows more socially distant from its own military, American warrior consciousness is further intensifying within the combat arms community itself....Marine[s] and Army....Special Forces A-teams, manifest a proclivity for volunteers from the states of the former Confederacy, as well as Irish and Hispanics from poorer, more culturally conservative sections of coastal cities.

...As for the West, it is divided. European civilians take little pride in their standing armies; in America, however, civilians still do. Iraq, in this respect, has not been like Vietnam. While Americans may have turned against the Iraq war, they have not turned against the troops there. If anything, in recent years, they have grown more appreciative of them. The upshot is that America has a first-class, professional military that is respected even if it is not reflective of society.

But to see that America’s circumstances are not as bad as those of the European Union is not the point. The point is to remember what we have forgotten. A military will not continue to fight and fight well for a society that could be losing faith in itself, even if that society doffs its cap now and again to its warrior class....While a good society should certainly never want to go to war, it must always be prepared to do so. But a society will not fight for what it believes, if all it believes is that it should never have to fight.

Robert Kaplan

Europe's sneering sense of superiority toward the US--and any other western nation determined to maintain a modern military shield against both old enemies and emerging Islamic and third world violence--is a facade covering an empty shell. Europe cannot defend herself. So she pretends that nothing exists in the world worth defending against. In the meantime, a growing number of human termites continue to degrade Europe's structural integrity.

The US is indeed exceptional, among its first world peers. But if the US does not wake up enough to recognise the importance of a more broadly societally-based military--one where all strata of society meet and must work smoothly together--the will and ability of the US military to not only defend America, but to defend Europe, the world's seaways and trade routes, the western hemisphere, and other allies, will melt away.

Radical Islam Exposed: A Must-See Expose of A Nightmare Future--If You Allow It

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 below:

Hundreds of millions of muslims are susceptible to the fanatical message of mad mullahs, imams, and clerics. There is no shortage of youthful cannon fodder in most primitive third world muslim countries. If western civilisation is to survive largely intact for the huge challenges of the next level, it will have to be smart.

If you fail to understand what radical Islamists have in mind for you, your families, your countries, your civilisation--you will be in no position to stop it.

In fact, if you fail to understand . . . . you will probably delay any effective preventive action until it is too late. At that point, westerners will understand that what they though was war, was not really war. What they thought was curtailment of their civil rights, was not curtailment. What they thought was American Theocracy, was not theocracy at all. They will learn, but by then, sadly it will not help.

Hat tip: Augean Stables

Regional Nuclear War--If So, When?

Thanks to Iran, North Korea, China, and Pakistan's infamous Dr. Khan, nuclear proliferation is a fact of modern life. Israel's famous bombing of Iraq's Osirik reactor, and its more recent bombing of a Syrian/North Korean collaborative reactor, bring the issue into focus. While Iran appears to be pushing US President Bush into a confrontation over its own nuclear proliferation program, some people think that Pakistan is the greater danger:

There was George Bush's Oct. 17 warning that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III," you ought to worry about the prospect of Iranian nukes. ... Then, a few days after Bush's Oct. 17 shocker, I came upon a less widely noticed, perhaps even more ominous quote, originally published two weeks earlier in London's usually reliable Spectator, in a story about the Sept. 6 Israeli raid on that alleged Syrian nuclear facility. A quote from a "very senior British ministerial source" contending, "[I]f people had known how close we came to world war three that day there'd have been mass panic."

...And now we have the crisis in Pakistan, one that portends a nightmare scenario in which Pakistan's so-called "Islamic bomb" falls into the hands of al-Qaida sympathizers. Such an outcome would put us on a fast-track route to World War III....Finally, there was the almost unprecedented declassification of an element of the U.S. nuclear war plan formerly known as the Strategic Integrated Operating Plan, now called OPLAN 8044...Soon, if not already, one can be sure, there will be "robust contingency plans" for Pakistan, as Martin Walker put it recently in the New York Times.

...Now, there are at least eight nuclear nations and who knows how many "nonstate actors," as the euphemism for terrorist groups goes. And some of these nonstate actors have adopted an ideology of suicidal martyrdom, even when it comes to nukes, and thus can't be deterred by the reciprocal threat of death.

...I'm surprised there isn't a greater sense of concern about those Pakistani nukes. Forget Iran and Israel (Bush's hypothetical route to World War III). Pakistani nukes now represent the quickest shortcut to a regional nuclear war that could escalate to a global nuclear war.

Slate

Despite whatever Al Gore may say, climate change will probably not be the trigger for nuclear war. But a nuclear war may very well usher in the next significant climate change. All that dust circulating around the atmosphere will promote a "global dimming" that will not be good for the world's crops.

Nuclear weapons technology is a cat that is long out of the bag. If Pakistani, Iranian, and North Korean scientists have the technology, then anyone with political, religious, or financial connections to these scientists or their particular agencies can have the technology as well. Think about it. And make your plans accordingly.