Posts Tagged ‘UN’
Friday, October 7th, 2022
I hope all BattleSwarm readers are safe from the Joe Biden Armageddon thus far. Today’s LinkSwarm features Democrats disdaining the rules followed by the little people, the UN is delusional enough to think they can run the world and defy the laws of economics, and petting dogs is good for you.
The UN is demanding that central banks forget everything everyone learned about inflation in the 1970s and institute price controls instead of raising interest rates.
UNCTAD, the UN agency dealing with global trade, demanding *all* central banks stop rate hikes and instead switch to price controls. They argue, “policymakers appear to be hoping that a short sharp monetary shock – along the lines, if not of the same magnitude, as that pursued… under Paul Volker – will be sufficient to anchor inflationary expectations without triggering recession. Sifting through the economic entrails of a bygone era is unlikely, however, to provide the forward guidance needed for a softer landing given the deep structural and behavioural changes that have taken place in many economies, particularly those related to financialization, market concentration and labour’s bargaining power.”
I am not playing tennis with them either, but note the radicalism. Indeed, their latest report also argues, “supply-chain disruptions and labour shortages require appropriate industrial policies to increase the supply of key items in the medium term; this must be accompanied by sustained global policy coordination and (liquidity) support to help countries fund and manage these changes.” So, industrial policy. And Fed swap-lines. Expect both ahead.
They also ask why we haven’t regulated shadow-banking, and why we allow speculators in global commodity markets who have nothing to do with underlying trade. On the latter they note, “Market surveillance authorities could be mandated to intervene directly in exchange trading on an occasional basis by buying or selling derivatives contracts with a view to averting price collapses or deflating price bubbles.” I expect nothing but that ahead – and geopolitically driven to boot.
This boils down to: “Hey, we need to institute economic policies proven to fail, because otherwise lots of rich people will lose money!” Wage and price controls were tried in the 1970s and they failed miserably. The longer governments try to defy the market, the more terrible the snapback when those efforts fail.
Speaking of the UN, they think they own science.
Ukraine troops are using spoofed tracking systems and deception to infiltrate Russian lines. (Hat tip: .357 Magnum.)
“NYT ‘Right Wing Conspiracy Theory’ Comes True In Less Than 24 Hours.”
On Tuesday, the New York Times framed a story circulating on the right over a software company’s connection with the Chinese Communist Party as a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”
“At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome,” was the Times’ original lede (via the Daily Caller).
In it, the Times wrote that “right-wing” election deniers in Arizona had fabricated a conspiracy theory that election software company Konnech had secret ties to the CCP, and was passing them information on around two million US poll workers.
“In the two years since former President Donald J. Trump lost his re-election bid, conspiracy theorists have subjected election officials and private companies that play a major role in elections to a barrage of outlandish voter fraud claims,” reads the article. “But the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups. Their claims often find a receptive online audience, which then uses the assertions to raise doubts about the integrity of American elections.”
The next morning, Konnech executive Eugene Yu was arrested for the alleged theft of poll workers’ personal information.
New Orleans’ Democrat mayor wants you to know that laws are for the little people.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is facing the threat of a recall election and it’s not just the city’s rising crime that has petition signers enraged.
The two people behind the petition are both Democrats demanding the Democrat mayor leave office for her “failure to put New Orleans first and execute the responsibilities of the position,” according to Fox News.
In 2021, more than 150 officers left the New Orleans Police Department, despite a surge in murders and carjackings. Carjackings so far this year stand at 217, an increase of over 200 percent since 2019, according to the Metropolitan Crime Commission weekly bulletin.
But it’s the mayor’s exorbitant travel spending that has people up in arms.
She traveled to sister cities Ascona, Switzerland, and Juan Antibes-les-Pins on the French Riviera this summer, costing the City of New Orleans close to $45,000, including first-class international airfare with lie-flat seating.
The city’s travel policy requires employees to pay the difference in cost for work-related airfare upgrades, stating “employees are required to purchase the lowest airfare available … employees who choose an upgrade from coach, economy, or business class flights are solely responsible for the difference in cost,” Fox News reported.
But Cantrell hasn’t paid the near $30,000 bill from her first-class international flight upgrades over the summer.
She has claimed the visits are an investment in the city and necessary for her safety.
“My travel accommodations are a matter of safety, not of luxury,” The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. “As all women know, our health and safety are often disregarded and we are left to navigate alone. As the mother of a young child whom I live for, I am going to protect myself by any reasonable means in order to ensure I am there to see her grow into the strong woman I am raising her to be. Anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn’t understand the world Black women walk in.”
Yes, I’m sure the men and women who walk the streets of New Orleans at night have never know unthinkable fear of having to fly coach to Switzerland.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“Federal Law Does Not Exempt LGBT Employees From Bathroom, Dress Code, Policies, Judge Rules…A U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) policy document from June 2021 overreached in its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling forbidding employment discrimination based on sexual preference and gender identity, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found. Texas sued over the guidance.”
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds: “Biden hates Republicans so much, he would rather give oil money to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia than Texas.”
Related: “Politico reports that Democrats are ‘seething’ about the decision by OPEC+ to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day.”
Well, fellas, if you don’t want OPEC+ to be in a position where it can influence U.S. gasoline prices a month before the election, you need policies that minimize the U.S. market’s dependence upon the global oil market. This means maximizing U.S. oil production and expanding U.S. refinery capacity.
It would be a mild exaggeration to declare that the Biden administration hascompletely stopped issuing leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands and in federal waters, but only a mild one. As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, “President Biden’s Interior Department leased 126,228 acres for drilling through Aug. 20, his first 19 months in office, the analysis found. No other president since Richard Nixon in 1969-70 leased out fewer than 4.4 million acres at this stage in his first term.” It’s not a complete halt, but it’s very close to one. This means that the U.S. is almost entirely dependent upon oil production from private lands.
The good news is that there’s still a lot of oil beneath private lands. As of July, the U.S. was producing 11.8 million barrels per day, an increase from the 11.1 million barrels per day produced in January 2021, the month President Biden took office. But before the pandemic hit in early 2020, the U.S. was producing 12.8 million barrels per day, and it even hit 13 million barrels per day in November 2019. We have the proven ability to produce about 1.2 million more barrels per day than we are, if we want to do so and our public policies encourage it. But right now, they do not.
The Biden administration keeps insisting that it’s doing everything it can to bring gas prices down, including releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which is now at its lowest level in 40 years. But what’s in the SPR is oil, not gasoline, and oil must still be refined. You can’t just pump the stuff out of the ground and put it in your car.
U.S. refineries are running at full capacity, or just short of full capacity. This is why oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases got sent to Europe and Asia, because they had the room and equipment to turn it into actual usable fuel. The U.S. currently has no more spare ability to turn the oil from the reserve into stuff that will actually make your car move; yelling at the oil companies isn’t going to change what is fundamentally an engineering problem.
And Democrats absolutely refuse to let anyone build new oil refineries.
Possibility: Nortstream2 explosion could have just happened because Russians suck at maintenance.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Nord 2 was full of natural gas; that it was full for at least months; and that said natural gas had never moved.
It. Just. Sat. There. For — allegedly — months.
During normal operations of a pipeline, you run a pig through fairly regularly. A “pig” is a bit of equipment pushed by the gas flow, and as it moves along it shoves water and hydrate slurry down to where it can be removed; and it scrapes compounds off the inside walls (hydrogen sulphide, I’m looking at you) that might be are probably eating your pipe.
Note the part above where the pigs are pushed by the gas. The gas in Nordstream 2 never moved. That means no pig ever went down the line to shove water out, move hydrate slurry, or stop H2S from corroding the steel of the pipeline.
As I said in the previous post — and I will continue to say — none of this rules out intentional Acts of War. There are idiots enough in that region that sabotage can’t be discounted.
How-some-ever … hydrate plugs.
(Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
“A lot of folks are running the White House. Joe Biden just isn’t one of them.” “Biden is surrounded with longtime D.C. power players, such as Ron Klain, Susan Rice, Anita Dunn, John Podesta, Gene Sperling – a veritable “who’s who” of Beltway knife fights and insider skullduggery. Throughout their long careers, they’ve never sought credit or voter approval. Just power.”
“NYC Mayor Declares State of Emergency over Influx of Illegal Immigrants. [New York City mayor Eric Adams] said at least 17,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city by bus from other parts of the country since April.” Oh, a million illegal aliens come over the border into Texas and it’s no big deal, but 17,000 show up in your “sanctuary city” and suddenly it’s a problem!
“Vermont High School Girls Volleyball Team Banned From Locker Room For Objecting To Changing With Biological Male.”
“NYU Fires Chemistry Professor After Students Launch Petition Claiming His Course is Too Hard.” The lesson here seems to be that businesses shouldn’t hire NYU grads…
“Meta ordered to pay $175M for copying Green Beret veteran’s app.”
Chris Cuomo loses to Paw Patrol. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
British blogger eats on £1 for a single day and has a very tough time of of it, even with foraging and scavenged condiments. Despite the dollar-pound exchange rate being so favorable, I don’t think I could do that on $1 a day shopping at HEB, and even if you made it $1.25, it would have to be three meals of ramen. Also, I don’t think I can even buy a single carrot at HEB (if I had wanted to), spaghetti is considerably more than 23¢ for 500 grams. $5 for $5, that I could do, and $30 for 30 days would be grim but very doable (price, pasta, and beans).
Dispatches from Sad Trombonia: “$1.5 Million Floating Home Prototype Sinks Into The Water Just As It’s Unveiled.”
Epic basketball player name.
“Petting a dog can be good for your brain.” Agrees:
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Tags:Arizona, banking, basketball, Border Controls, China, Chris Cuomo, Communism, dogs, Economics, Eric Adams, Eugene Yu, Facebook, food, fraud, gay, Illegal Aliens, interest rates, Joe Biden, Konnech, LaToya Cantrell, Lawsuit, LinkSwarm, Matthew Kacsmaryk, Media Watch, Military, natural gas, New Orleans, New York City, Nordstream, NYU, oil industry, OPEC, Paw Patrol, Regulation, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, sanctuary cities, Saudi Arabia, Texas, transexual, True The Vote, Ukraine, UN, Venezuela, Vermont, voting fraud
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 4 Comments »
Friday, July 24th, 2020
Guns are flying off the shelf, India isn’t rolling over for China’s aggression, and things just keep mysteriously blowing up in Iran. Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!
66% of Americans polled oppose cutting police funding. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
The data is in: Using Hydroxychloroquine significantly cuts the death rate from the Wuhan coronavirus.
California is Number One…in Wuhan Coronavirus cases. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Meanwhile, case in the Texas Medical Center in Houston are going down. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
Scenes from the credibility gap:
“New Data Suggests Coronavirus Lockdowns Didn’t Work.”
Gun sales are up big. “A record 10.3 million firearms were purchased in the first half of 2020, according to NSSF’s adjusted NICS data. They report, ‘The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women who show a 58.2 percent increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year.'” Makes sense, since they disproportionately live in Democrat-controlled cities where they’ve let rioters, arsonists and looters run rampant…
“Trump Task Force to Dismantle MS-13 Takes Down Gang’s Key Leaders.”
Thanks to Barack Obama’s open border policies, MS-13 was energized with new recruits provided by a steady flow of illegal immigrant minors. When the Obama administration started welcoming a barrage of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) in 2014, Homeland Security sources told Judicial Watch that the nation’s most violent street gangs—including MS-13 and the 18th Street gang—were actively recruiting new members at U.S. shelters housing the minors. The Texas Department of Public Safety subsequently confirmed that the MS-13 is a top tier gang thanks to the influx of illegal alien gang members that crossed into the state under Obama’s disastrous program, which saw over 60,000 illegal immigrants—many with criminal histories—storm into the U.S. in a matter of months. Tens of thousands more have entered since then.
Snip.
The cases announced this week include an indictment against a high-ranking MS-13 operative, Melgar Diaz, in Virginia. Diaz is charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill or maim persons overseas, conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiring to finance terrorism, and; conspiring to engage in narco-terrorism, in addition to racketeering conspiracy and drug trafficking. In another case eight MS-13 members were indicted in New York for committing six murders, two attempted murders, kidnapping, narcotics felonies and related firearms offenses. In Nevada 13 MS-13 gang bangers, including leaders of the “Hollywood Locos” clique and “Los Angeles Program” were charged with multiple counts of narcotics distribution and weapons crimes. The task force is also responsible for the indictment in New York of Alexi Saenz, an MS-13 leader accused of committing seven murders, including two high school students with a machete and baseball bat. “MS-13 is a violent transnational criminal organization, whose criminal activities respect no boundaries,” said [Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV) director John Durham]. “The only way to defeat MS-13 is by targeting the organization as a whole, focusing on the leadership structure, and deploying a whole-of-government approach against a common enemy.”
Why capitalism succeeds and communism fails. They simply can’t steal quickly enough from capitalist societies to catch up, in China now just as in the late Soviet Union.
The coming India-China conflict:
China may be a powerful adversary to India, but its bluffs can be called. And that is what India has done in the last two weeks, making a host of decisions that, seen in the perspective of the stand-off with China, represent its resolve and constitute a sustained effort on several fronts — military, diplomatic, economic, social — to make China pay.
Previously, India had never taken sides with or against China on the Hong Kong protests. But this time around, it took a strong stand on the passage of the new security law, which is an attempt to stifle the city’s pro-democracy movement.
It has also blocked Chinese firms from investing in India under the free FDA route, taken several initiatives to force a global probe into the source and origin of COVID-19, and, as mentioned above, banned a host of Chinese apps.
That’s not all. India’s railways ministry has canceled a signals and telecom contract with a Chinese company for a mammoth freight corridor project in Uttar Pradesh. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) have decided to exclude Chinese firms from providing telecom equipment and cancelled their plans for upgrading 4G services. The roads department has announced that no highway projects will be awarded to China. The power ministry is looking to curtail imports from adversarial nations, including China. The move is aimed also at reducing the ability of adversarial nations to cripple India’s power infrastructure through cyber attacks.
Several Indian states have followed up on the national government’s moves. A push to deny a Chinese firm, Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co Ltd, a contract for the construction of a critical section of the Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor, is ongoing. The state of Maharashtra is on the verge of cancelling three agreements with Chinese firms. It includes an agreement with China’s Great Wall Motors (GWM) to set up an automobile plant near Pune and produce electric vehicles there. However, the state is going ahead with nine other agreements signed with the U.S., Singapore, and South Korea, indicating to China what’s to come.
Things just keep mysteriously blowing up in Iran:
First, it was forest fires.
Then a missile factory.
Next was a heavily fortified, highly restricted, underground nuclear enrichment facility. Then power stations, a port, a health clinic and a petrochemical plant.
For weeks, things have been blowing up or catching fire in Iran.
The two most significant incidents were a June 26 explosion at Khojir, near Tehran — a liquid fuel production site for the country’s missile program — and more recently, a blast deep underground at the Natanz nuclear facility on July 2.
NYPD clears out Occupy City Hall camp.
Social Justice Warriors go after hard scientists for opposing their bullshit.
Red Bull decides that they don’t want to go broke, refuses to get woke. “Red Bull has fired two ‘diversity directors’ who tried to force the company into virtue signaling about Black Lives Matter while also dissolving several ‘culture teams’ who were pressuring Red Bull to take a more aggressive ‘woke’ political stance.” Good for them.
“Tom Cotton Aims to Defund Schools That Indoctrinate Kids With NYT’s ‘1619 Project.'” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Obama Fired an Inspector General to Cover Up a Sex Scandal.”
Gerald Walpin had been investigating Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA basketball star and Obama supporter, for misusing federal grant money from AmeriCorps. The program was created by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 and grew to over 80,000 members. Program participants received benefits such as student loan deferment, living allowances, health benefits, career opportunities and training, and so forth. The program has done some good but has also been plagued by waste and corruption.
He found that Johnson gave $850,000 of AmeriCorps grant money to a nonprofit organization he founded called St. HOPE Academy. In addition to being improperly used to pay AmeriCorps volunteers for political activity, to wash his car, and to run his personal errands, Walpin also discovered that Johnson had used AmeriCorps grant money to pay hush money to underage girls, who were students at St. HOPE Academy, that he had sexually assaulted and then staged a cover-up.
Walpin called for Johnson to be criminally prosecuted. Instead, Johnson was able to get a sweetheart deal avoiding prosecution if he paid back the money. This deal was approved by Alan Solomont, a major Democratic fundraiser who was also the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
Walpin was furious about the deal and made it known, prompting his illegal firing. Following the firing, the Obama White House waged a smear campaign against Walpin, making bogus allegations that he appeared “confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions,” and exhibited “behavior that led the [CNCS] board to question his capacity to serve.”
Alan Dershowitz has some thoughts.
- If there were no police, if the police were defunded, wealthy people would hire private security guards, but the people who cannot afford private guards need to have a well‑funded police force. I am in favor of extra funding for the police. Give them better training. Teach them how to subdue people without using lethal force.
- The problem with the UN is not that it passes too many resolutions, but too few. It never attacks its favorite countries. It applies a double standard of injustice. It has devoted more time to condemning Israel than all the other countries of the world combined. Let us see what it says about recent reports concerning murders in Iran of gay people, for instance the recent murder of a 14‑year‑old by her father as an honor killing. Let us see what it says about so many of the violations of human rights around the world. Well, do not hold your breath. It will say nothing. It will focus only on Israel and the United States. There is a case to be made for the United States withdrawing and defunding…
Plus some observations on recent Social Justice Warrior/Cancel Culture issues. Not in agreement with everything (he opposed elected judges), but worth reading. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“NBA to Close Training Camp in China in Area Where Muslim Concentration Camps are Located.”
Thank science and capitalism for eliminating hunger:
During the height of the coronavirus lockdown, with a substantial portion of the world’s population in quarantine and the global economy sliding toward a deep economic recession, most of us still ate our fill every evening. We should rejoice in this miracle. Hunger, which has accompanied humanity from our beginnings, has practically disappeared. Isolated cases of malnutrition—but not of famine—remain, due to local conflict and extreme forms of poverty, themselves on their way to remission.
Since 1970, world population has doubled—but food production has tripled. In 1970, India was known as “the famine continent,” and the economic literature was uniformly pessimist, an echo of the writings of Thomas Malthus, who proclaimed 170 years earlier an inevitable contradiction between demographic growth and agricultural growth. Humanity escapes this proclaimed fate, thanks to science and commerce—the two foundations of progress, including agricultural progress.
Snip.
What saved us from famine was the 1970s Green Revolution: a combination of species selection, hybridization, and the application of farming techniques such as irrigation and fertilization. When these techniques were applied to wheat and rice, average yields tripled, especially in India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The leaders of this revolution, which we do not celebrate enough, were two agronomists: Norman Borlaug, a Texan who transformed wheat cultivation in his laboratory near Mexico City; and M. S. Swaminathan, an Indian from Chennai who applied Borlaug’s method to rice in a laboratory near Manila. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 (Swaminathan was overlooked). Never was the Nobel Peace Prize more deserved—or so soon forgotten.
Progress is seldom, if ever, unanimously welcomed. Activist groups in India and the United States have blamed Borlaug and the Green Revolution for creating new inequalities. It’s true that all Indian peasants were equally poor and hungry before the Green Revolution. Those who applied Borlaug’s recommendations became more prosperous than those who stuck to the old methods. It’s easy to achieve equality when there is nothing to distribute; leftists seem to prefer scarcity to plenty if plenty implies unequal portions. The same people who condemned the Green Revolution now oppose GMOs. Their ancestors, in the early nineteenth century, justified destroying new textile machines using the same arguments. Science progresses; ideologies spin their wheels.
Kanye West explains why he’s against abortion. Man says a lot of wacky things, but he sounds truly sincere about this and his faith.
“NPR Radio Ratings Collapse As Pandemic Ends Listeners’ Commutes.”
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Citadel Securities was frontrunning bloc trades from Robinhood.
“Arizona child welfare workers fired for wearing ‘professional kidnapper‘ shirts.” Yeah, that was a really bad decision on their part.
“UT-Austin faces a third lawsuit claiming that white students were unfairly denied admission under affirmative action.” If UT wanted to avoid these in the future, maybe they could stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Small engine maker Briggs & Stratton declares bankruptcy. The very last paragraph mentions seeking a new deal from United Steelworkers of America. (Hat tip: ASM826 at Borepatch.)
James Lileks goes to town on that stupid “Classical music is white supremacy” essay.
“Breathe…breathe in the air….”
The B-17 that landed without a tail.
“Chicago Mayor Hires Gangs To Spell Out ‘Trump Is Bad’ With Bullet Holes.”
“Federal ‘Secret Police’ Disguise Selves As Rioters So Democrat Mayors Will Let Them Do Whatever They Want.”
Related:
Tags:abortion, Alan Dershowitz, Alexi Saenz, Arizona, black, Border Controls, Briggs & Stratton, California, Chicago, China, Citadel Securities, Communism, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, education, Gerald Walpin, Great Wall Motors, Guns, hydroxychloroquine, India, James Lileks, John Durham, Kayne West, Kevin Johnson, LinkSwarm, Maharashtra, Media Watch, Melgar Diaz, MS-13, Narendra Modi, NBA, New York Times, NYPD, Obama, Obama Scandals, police, Pune, Red Bull, Social Justice Warriors, Soviet Union, Texas, Texas Medical Center, Uighers, UN, United Steelworkers of America, University of Texas, Uttar Pradesh, Wuhan
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 11th, 2019
President Donald Trump asked for National Security Advisor John Bolton’s resignation. While Bolton was too interventionist for my tastes, I liked having him in the Trump Administration:
Whatever his faults, he actually understood foreign policy challenges like few in D.C.
Every administration needs heterodox thinks among its ranks to avoid complacency.
Having Bolton as National Security Advisor no doubt scared countries like Iran and Syria to no end, making them easier to negotiate with and keep in line.
In many ways, UN Ambassador (the role Bolton held on an interim basis under Bush43) was the perfect role for him, allowing him to call BS on rogue regimes without enabling his interventionist inclinations. But Bolton doesn’t seem to have learned several important lessons from aftermath of the Iraqi war, namely that the Middle East is a horrible place to install democracy, that the aftermaths of regime change tend to take far longer and cost far more (in lives and treasure) than the regime change itself, and there are no U.S. military accomplishments there which cannot be undone by the feckless policies of a Democratic presidency.
As far as maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the issue over which Bolton was reportedly fired, there are no good options, but the default (staying in and losing) is probably the worst of all. Unfortunately, without a willingness to directly confront nuclear-armed Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence is running and funding the Taliban, there’s no solution that doesn’t involve America eventually leaving in defeat.
Tags:Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, Jihad, John Bolton, Middle East, Pakistan, UN
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 18th, 2018
There’s the usual outpouring of posthumous accolades now that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has died at age 80. I know we’re supposed to be all de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but in truth the best I can say about him is that, like the organization he served, he wasn’t completely useless. Annan never stopped a war, never prevented a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear weapons, and could never prevent UN peacekeepers from raping the locals. If you had a treaty whose outlines were 90% complete, he could get you the last 10% of the way, and if you wanted a dignified member of the bureaucratic chattering classes to make ritual condemnations of evils they had no intention of doing anything to end, he was your guy. These days the UN exists mostly to keep transnational diplomatic elites in caviar and denounce Israel. He was not the worst UN Secretary General, and was not the worst man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tags:Foreign Policy, Nobel Peace Prize, Obituary, UN
Posted in Foreign Policy | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 17th, 2018
Syria has sworn up and down that missiles from the United States, the UK and France only hit peaceful sites of toys for crippled orphans a baby milk factory a cancer research center (no really, that’s their story this time) rather than a chemical weapons facility.
So naturally, they would have no problem with UN inspector’s visiting the site, right?
We all know exactly how that movie turned out:
The international chemical weapons watchdog that sent a fact-finding team to Syria said Monday that Syrian and Russian officials blocked efforts to reach the site where rebels claim government forces unleashed chemical weapons against civilians.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the team arrived in Damascus on Saturday and met with government officials to work out a plan for deployment to Douma.
The Syrian and the Russian officials informed the team that “pending security issues” needed to be worked out before the group went to Douma, the organization’s director general, Ahmet Üzümcü, told an emergency meeting of the group’s executive council in The Hague, Netherlands.
Of.
Course.
Some other Syria strike news:
Hezbollah says that “Syrian air defenses had intercepted three missiles aimed at Dumair military airport north east of Damascus.”
ZeroHedge is reporting that Israel just hit Syrian sites near Homs. Not seeing any confirmation right now.
Speaking of ZeroHedge reports on Israel strikes against Syria, they also reported another Israeli airstrike two days ago I haven’t seen other confirming reports of. “I know what you’re thinking, punk. Did I hit Syria six times, or only five? In all this excitement, I sort of lost track myself…”
In fact, this New Yorker piece asserts that Israel has launched more than a hundred trikes in Syria since the civil war began.
Israel has hit a wide range of sites, including convoys of Hezbollah or Iranian fighters near the Golan, trucks ferrying missiles and rockets destined for Hezbollah en route to Lebanon, bases for Iranian drones, and an Iranian command-and-control center.
“We are facing now a determined decision by Iran to take advantage of the vacuum in Syria, the coming victory of Assad, and the defeat of ISIS to extend Hezbollah’s stand in Lebanon at the expense of Syrian territory, especially in the Golan Heights,” Amos Gilead, a retired Israeli major general who now heads the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya, told me. “This is a strategic threat. It’s an intolerable plan. We are trying to preëmpt them and protect Israel.”
Israel confirmed it hit Syria on April 9, as previously reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron says he convinced President Donald Trump to join in on strikes against Syria. France wants to initiate military action in the Middle East about as often as Henry Youngman’s wife wants to have sex. (She died in 1987, so: Not often!) But France has a continuing relationship with both Syria and Lebanon, having administered the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon between 1923 and 1946. France still has extremely close relations with Lebanon, and has been royally pissed with Assad’s consistent meddling there, especially the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.
Tags:chemical weapons, Dasmascus, Foreign Policy, France, Hezbollah, Homs, Iran, Israel, Military, Russia, Syria, UK, UN
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 5th, 2016
While the reverberations from the Brexit vote are still being heard, here are a few interesting pieces you might have missed:
Nigel Farage resigns as head of UKIP. Hey, he fulfilled his victory conditions! What else has he got left to prove?
The elites still haven’t gotten over their defeat:
As several commentators, from Megan McArdle in The Atlantic to Rupert Darwall in National Review, have noticed, many liberal journalists, representing elites throughout the advanced world, have reacted with indignation to the fact that 52 percent of U.K. voters (many without degrees) have rejected the EU system of supranational government of which the elites approve. Naturally, these journalistic spokesmen argue, the common people could not possibly have good reasons for such an act of multinational vandalism. So they must be inspired by, er, racism, xenophobia, fear of globalization, and related other thought-crimes.
That account doubtless condenses and oversimplifies the elites’ response to the Brexit shock, which is just one small skirmish in a new class war in advanced societies between geographically mobile, liberal, skilled, high-earning professionals and more rooted, communitarian, particularist, and patriotic citizens (or what British journalist David Goodhart calls “nowhere” people and “somewhere” people). “Nowhere” people simply didn’t grasp the outlook of “somewhere people” in the referendum, not seeing that many decent people who voted for Brexit had such respectable anxieties as loss of community or, one step up, the transformation of their country as motives for casting their votes. So the elites thought the worst. They were still making the same mistake in their television and columnar explanations of the result on Friday morning. But what was remarkable was the Darwall-McArdle thesis that in other countries the elites reacted to the Brexit shock as if personally or spiritually affronted in their own lives. Alarmed, they asked: Why weren’t we told that they might vote for Brexit?
It’s a hard question to answer.
One aspect of it, however, is ideologically fascinating. Among the central arguments of those favoring Brexit was that the Brussels system was dangerously undemocratic and that British voters and MPs had lost the power to propose, amend, or repeal failed or oppressive laws. This was a passionate concern among English people who had grown up in a self-governing democracy, who may have fought for it in wars, and who simply couldn’t understand why the loss of their democratic rights didn’t worry their opponents. Yet again and again liberal journalists treated this passionate belief as either abstract or a cover for more primitive emotions and bigotries. Democracy as such was rarely given weight in Remain or liberal debates on the cost/benefit analysis of Brexit. They treat multinational political institutions as such unalloyed goods that it would be impolite to raise questions about such defects as a democratic deficit. Has the knowledge class/meritocracy/cognitive elite/nowhere people/etc., etc. developed not only an intellectual snobbery towards the rest of society, but even an impatient, dismissive contempt for democracy that cannot be openly avowed but that does influence its other political attitudes?
“Bigotry! Nativism! Racism! That’s what elites in Britain, Europe and here have been howling, explanations for why 52 percent of a higher-than-general-election turnout of British voters voted for their nation to leave the European Union. But there is plenty of bigotry, condescension and snobbery in the accusations and the people making them. And it’s incoherent to claim, as some do, that it’s undemocratic for voters to decide. That amounts to saying that ordinary people should be content to be ruled by their betters.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“I think it’s shocking and appalling to assume because I voted to leave the EU that I’m racist.”
Even countries that aren’t contemplating leaving the EU (like France) are demanding changes to EU policies…and threatening to simply stop obeying them. There’s also this tidbit: “Italy’s banks are saddled with 360 billion euros ($401.18 billion) in bad loans.”
More on the same subject. “In Italy, 17% of banks’ loans are sour. That is nearly 10 times the level in the U.S., where, even at the worst of the 2008-09 financial crisis, it was only 5%. Among publicly traded banks in the eurozone, Italian lenders account for nearly half of total bad loans.”
If the UK can leave the EU. why can’t we leave the UN?
“London Banker Bonuses Set to Shrivel as Brexit Hits Dealmaking.” My heart bleeds…
And what is the UK leaving behind? “EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration.” Finally someone with the guts to stand up to Big Dihydrogen Monoxide! (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig’s Twitter feed.)
Tags:Brexit, EU, European Debt Crisis, France, Italy, Nigel Farage, Regulation, UK, UKIP, UN, Welfare State
Posted in Elections, Foreign Policy, Regulation, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 28th, 2014
Russian forces in two armored columns captured a key southeastern coastal town near the Russian border Thursday after Ukrainian forces retreated in the face of superior firepower, a Ukrainian military spokesman said.
The two Russian columns, including tanks and armored fighting vehicles, entered the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov after a battle in which Ukrainian army positions came under fire from Grad rockets launched from Russian territory, according to the spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko.
Well, thank God for Hillary Clinton’s reset button, and Obama’s “flexibility” and smart diplomacy. Who knows what sort of mess that bungler Bush would have made of the situation.
And the UN Security Council is meeting. Since Russia still has a Security Council veto, don’t expect even the usual strongly worded letter.
Tags:Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Military, Russia, Ukraine, UN
Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | No Comments »
Monday, August 4th, 2014
Another roundup of news on Operation Protective Edge:
Israel destroys last known Hamas tunnel.
Atheist explains why he refuses to criticize Israel over Gaza. “People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen.”
John Kerry’s asinine “peace” plan alienated not only Israel, but every Arab state not backing Hamas.
More Krauthammer:
Via Iowahawk’s Twitter feed: An “Israel has been rocket free for” counter.
Hamas is a walking catalog of prosecutable war crimes. So who does the UN target for denunciation? You know who.
“Strategically and economically, the Palestinian people are far worse off now than they were two decades ago when then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat signed the first Oslo accord in Washington in September 1993.”
Anti-Israeli protestors in Calgary hold silent vigil. Well, silent except for the shouting “Heil Hitler!” part…
Reminder: U.S. protestors against Israel are the usual far-left, Che-loving lunatics they’ve always been.
Tags:Charles Krauthammer, Gaza, Hamas, Iowahawk, Israel, Jihad, John Kerry, UN, video
Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
Because those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion (also known as “voters”), Obama hasn’t been able to disarm law-abiding Americans the way he would like. What to do, what to do?
Hey, how about using that UN Arms Treaty to disarm Americans?
You know, the one Secretary of State John Kerry just signed?
John Lott notes that
The Arms Trade Treaty will regulate individual gun ownership all across the world. Each country will be obligated to “maintain a national control list that shall include [rifles and handguns]” and “to regulate brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms.” In fact, the new background check rules approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee include just those rules — a registration system and a record of all transfers of guns.
Will Obama even submit it to the Senate for approval, knowing he doesn’t have even 50 votes in the Senate for it, much less the 67 votes required to ratify it?
Tags:Guns, John Kerry, John Lott, UN, UN Arms Treaty
Posted in Guns | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 10th, 2013
Who knew stopping a war could be so easy?
Not the Syrian war itself, of course; that grinds on unabated. But Obama’s ill-advised attempt to directly involve the U.S. in it seems to have been derailed.
Now, instead of the fig leaf of an unbelievably small attack on Syria to assuage Obama’s wounded ego over Assad waltzing all over his red line with a chemical weapons attack, now he gets to climb down thanks to the fig leaf of what will be a laughable, easily circumvented UN supervision of whatever chemical stockpiles Assad wants to turn over to them. We’ve seen how ridiculously ineffective UN oversight was in Iraq even with US force to back it up; there’s no reason to assume it will be any more effective in Syria.
But make no mistake: This is a better outcome than an attack that would be various parts ill-advised and laughable, depending on the size. Now Obama gets to accomplish exactly as much as he would before (namely nothing) without the risk of going to war.
It’s a win-win solution.
Tags:Foreign Policy, Jihad, John Kerry, Military, Obama, Syria, UN
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »