E.D. Kain on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned Terrorism
Andrew L. Jaffee on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned TerrorismE.D. Kain on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned TerrorismAndrew L. Jaffee on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned Terrorism
The New Centrist on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned TerrorismE.D. Kain on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned Terrorism
The New Centrist on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned Terrorism
Eowyn on Ezra Levant Death ThreatThe New Centrist on The Myth of Stolen Arab LandAndrew L. Jaffee on The Forgotten Revolutionaries Who Shunned Terrorism~Patrick Moore
Chair and Chief Scientist, Greenspirit Strategies Ltd.
When I helped found Greenpeace in 1971, my colleagues and I were firmly opposed to nuclear energy. But times have changed. Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy growing demand.
Nuclear energy is affordable. The average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States is less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable to coal and hydroelectric.
Nuclear energy is safe. In 1979, a partial reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island frightened the country. No one noticed that Three Mile Island was a success; the containment structure prevented radiation from escaping and there was no injury among the public or workers.
Spent nuclear fuel is not waste. Recycling spent fuel, which still contains 95 percent of its original energy, will greatly reduce the need for treatment and disposal.
Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to terrorist attack. The 5-ft.-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects contents from the outside as well as the inside.
Nuclear weapons are no longer inextricably linked to power plants. Centrifuge technology now allows nations to produce weapons-grade plutonium without a reactor. Iran’s nuclear weapons threat, for instance, is distinct from peaceful nuclear energy.
Nuclear reactors offer a practical path to the hydrogen economy. Excess heat from the plants, instead of fossil fuels, can be used for electrolysis. It also can address the increasing shortage of fresh water through desalinization.
Together with a combination of solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric sources, nuclear energy can play a key role in producing safe, clean, reliable baseload electricity.
Guest Authors @ July 23, 2008
In 2004, the Greeks built magnificent stadiums for the Olympic games. They lie abandoned now, - the dream that they would be used as a spur to more sports facilities to drive on the fitness of the local people was just that, a very expensive dream.
London 2012 may be going in the same direction as previous Games in its failure to live up to regeneration promises.
While much of the funding for the Athens Games came from Brussels, the London Olympics will be funded primarily by the British taxpayer, with a smaller proportion from private business.
As a sweetener for joining the EU, more than £20billion was pumped into creating the city’s metro system.
That is no small sum to make the EU desirable to the Greek people - some would call it a sweetener, but the correct term is bribery ….. and while it is not the EU commissions money to use in this way, I don’t see them offering London any help in the funding for its Olympic challenge in 2012.
Take the bullrings in Spain. Until the EU got generous, it was a dying ’sport’ - if you can call such cruelty a sport. Perhaps this helped persuade some Spanish the EU was a good thing, but not all, because in Catalan, they are not so keen.
The Catalan separatists who hold power in that beautiful city resent anything that makes them look Spanish. Backed by the EU, which instinctively dislikes national particularisms, they have banned under-14s from the plazas, frustrated TV deals and passed resolutions against the spectacle.
So, not only does the EU speak with forked tongue, again it uses our money as a bribe, but that could also be said of Ireland, which has seen EU money pouring in for many years. The Irish economy has continued to prosper, until now, when perhaps the NO vote will cause the tap to stop flowing.
The UK taxpayers are still paying for the Greek Olympics, the Spanish Bullrings, and the Irish boom times, and God knows how many other acts of bribery instigated by the EU commission - No wonder Britain feels it is being bled dry to support such grimy deals, for as long as the EU is free to take our taxes and spend them where they will to promote their own interests, inequities in national interests will continue.
Another problem is that the UK government is also wasting our money, but it will likely be 2016 before the size of the Olympic white elephant is truly known.
References:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1036373/Abandoned-derelict-covered-graffiti-rubbish-What-left-Athens-9billion-Olympic-glory.html
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/4747,opinion,catalans-and-eu-form-alliance-against-bull-fighting
spaman @ July 23, 2008
~by Warner Todd Huston
In 1999 a handsome, earnest young man named Ahmad Batebi defied Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran. His photo caused an instant sensation and became a symbol of the flower of Iran standing ready to oppose the oppression of the Iranian religious regime.
Batebi, 31, became an icon after he was photographed as a handsome young student waving the blood-stained shirt of a fallen demonstrator during mass protests against Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, and clerical rule in 1999. With his long hair and bandana, he embodied the new spirit of defiance in Iran.
Naturally, he was apprehended by his oppressors and imprisoned under a 15-year prison sentence. While in prison he was beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling for hours and was constantly threatened with execution. It was demanded that he disclaim his treasonous actions on Iranian TV. Batebi refused.
The price of his defiance can be seen in the deep scars on his shoulders and arms — and other parts of his body hidden by clothing. In prison he was repeatedly blindfolded, beaten and deprived of sleep. Pulling up the sleeves of his T-shirt, he said: “I don’t know what they used to cut me, but they put salt in the wounds to stop me falling asleep.”
Fortunately, Ahmad Batebi found help among the Kurdish underground in Iran and he was able to make his escape to find refuge in America. It is reported that his pursuers chased him from Iran all the way into Iraq and issued the threat that they would eventually get him.
Ahmad Batebi was lucky to have escaped. Thousands of his compatriots have not been so lucky. They languish in prisons deep in Iran being tortured and murdered daily by order of the Ayatollahs.
These are the people Barack Obama imagines he can charm into becoming civilized humans.
Beyond a doubt Barack Obama can’t wait to get into the White House so that he can put into action his kindler, gentler foreign policy ideas. As he said in the debates earlier this year, he’d talk to tin pot dictators, murderers and oppressors “without preconditions.” He said this, of course, to the shock of anyone even a little familiar with foreign policy, not to mention human nature.
Apparently, Barack Obama imagines that the glint in his eye and the flash of his pearly whites is quite enough to send any terrorist leader to his nearest Mosque to supplicate himself in abject apology for ever defying the will of the Obamessiah.
Now there was once another fellow in history that felt this way — though with Hitler and his Nazis instead of the Islamofascists we face today. His name was Neville Chamberlain and he became the most disgraced Prime Minister that Britain ever had… and that’s really saying something. The only thing this foolish little man is remembered for is what he told the world after he got back from a visit with Hitler. At Heston Airport Chamberlain addressed the gathered throngs of Britains eager to see what he had found in Germany. He told them, “I believe it is peace in our time.” That was in September of 1938. Hitler Invaded Poland only one year later in 1939 and WWII began.
Neville Chamberlain’s “peace” cost the world around 72 million lives.
What will Barack Obama’s arrogance and naiveté cost us?
(Photo credit: www.iranalmanac.com)
Warner Todd Huston @ July 23, 2008
~by John McCain
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
E.D. Kain @ July 22, 2008
