Please note that the following is an Associated Press story. Did any news outlet you know of (other than ToThePoint!) carry it?
As we come to the end of summer, it is time to take our minds off Middle East maelstroms, California circuses, and world craziness in general, and spend time instead on a summer soliloquy.
For some time now, my youngest son Jackson and I have been embarked on a project we call his “Nifty Fifty.” That is, for him to travel to and learn something really interesting about each of all fifty American states.
Jackson is now 11 years old. He has been with me twice around the world and to the North Pole three times. He has been 2,000
The electoral overthrow of the Aznar government of Spain is the first major victory of Islamic Terrorism since September 11, 2001. This is a real disaster, folks. So much so that To The Point is sending out this exceptional essay by Barbara J. Stock, who publishes the website Republican and Proud. The Spanish people deserve our contempt for reacting to the terrorist attack on them in such a cowardly manner. This essay explains why. - Jack Wheeler
Blame Spain for the Next Terror Attack
Barbara J. Stock
March 15, 2004
When the next bomb goes off -- perhaps this time in Poland -- the families of the dead should blame the people in Spain who voted to run from terrorists and cower before them instead of standing strong against them.
Sound cruel? Perhaps, but it is the sad truth. The majority of Spaniards decided to follow the illogical path of blaming their own government for the attack in Madrid instead of the people who actually carried out mass murder. In doing so, they handed the butchers a victory. Terrorism and murder have been handsomely rewarded this day.
My youngest son Jackson and I will be making a trip to the North Pole this month. I started leading expeditions to the North Pole in 1978. This will be my 21st time to 90 North, the apex of the world. It will be Jackson’s 3rd. He’s 10 years old.
People often ask me: "Why in the world would you go to the North Pole so many times?" My stock answer is: "Because people keep paying me to take them there." But it is so much more than that.
Standing on the sea ice of the frozen Arctic Ocean, the
Only one year after Vladimir Putin handily won a second presidential term, his domestic and foreign challenges are snowballing and his aura of almost superhuman invincibility is quickly dissipating. This is not to say, however, that Putin should be counted out: He is still in control. The question is: for how much longer?
Under Putin, Russia is pursuing uneven, unpredictable, and counterproductive policies in its self-declared-and shrinking-sphere of influence, nicknamed the "near abroad." The Russian foreign policy and defense establishment seems unable to design and implement policies that would further develop cooperation with NATO or fight Islamist (Salafi/Wahhabi) terrorism in the Northern Caucasus. Meanwhile, hard-line circles are assailing the Putin Administration for failing to secure the election of pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine despite vast expenditures to do so.
Further, the Kremlin failed to control, let alone reverse, ubiquitous corruption in the state apparatus. The Russian state has not become a reliable and civilized partner to domestic and foreign business-which would have provided the rule of law, predictable legislation and regulation, and property rights and investor rights that are not subject to political whims.
My friend Edward Goodliffe called me yesterday from the offices of Pan Southern Petroleum Corp. in Puckett, Mississippi. He’s on Pan Southern’s board and wanted to tell me about a fascinating oil play he thought ToThePointers should know about.
There’s a small reserve in a remote area of the state called Bentonia Field. It was drilled in the late 1980s by Coho Resources and has thus far yielded 1,700,000 barrels of oil from multiple pay zones. Coho, however, has suffered massive mismanagement and has gone in and out of bankruptcy several times. Bentonia became neglected, with its equipment falling into
While the West is basking in the tunes of Christmas carols, a different tune is being played by the two leading Jihadi TV channels, al-Jazeera and al-Manar.
Little response has come to date from Washington to this 24/7 global brainwashing. Today, al-Jazeera is launching its English language global satellite channel. Al Manar is broadcasting unabated, and its popularity is growing. Al Qaeda is recruiting hundreds, if not thousands, through chat rooms around the world.
Jihadi websites are proliferating like poisonous mushrooms, in Arabic, English, French, Farsi, Urdu, Uzbek, and in the languages of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia.
A great many conservatives are seriously steamed about George Bush even thinking about sending American soldiers to fight and possibly die in some Liberian Rumble in the Jungle.
Liberal Democrats only advocate putting American soldiers in harm’s way when they perceive no US national security interest. Whenever there is such an interest, they are dependably opposed. Thus they were against the War in Iraq but are now all for Americans getting shot in Liberia by rival gangs of heavily armed thugs stoned on marijuana.
The last place in the world American soldiers should be sent to is some anarchic hell-hole
Today, what would Reagan do? He would appeal for the liberation of women in the Muslim world, he would call for the freedom of Sudanese Christians from slavery and genocide, he would demand that the brainwashing of Palestinian and Iraqi youth to become suicide bombers be stopped.
There is a group of human beings whom I find to be unintelligibly mysterious. In fact, I believe them to be aliens who, while visiting earth occasionally, actually reside in a space ship floating in the interstellar ether. I am referring, of course, to currency traders.
For the most part, other kinds of traders — guys who make it their profession to trade things like stocks or bonds or commodity futures — are normal people. For the most part, currency traders are nuts.
There is simply no explanation for the euro rocketing up far above the dollar since the US
Last Friday, July 30, three suicide bombers blew themselves up next to the U.S. and Israeli Embassies and Prosecutor General's Office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Three Uzbek security men, including the Israeli ambassador's bodyguard, were killed and eight were civilians wounded. The attacks coincided with the start of the trials of radical Islamists accused of perpetrating massive March terrorist attacks killing 35 people and wounding scores. Two terrorist groups, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The two organizations are well known in the global jihadi movement.
I do not have a crystal ball and cannot predict the future. Yet there is now in place a full alignment of “the correlation of forces,” driving the US economy forward. Thus I am going to predict that the DOW will be above 10,000 by October. What’s more, it will stay above 10,000 throughout 2004.
Did Y2K Cause the Recession?
There is an interesting theory claiming that Y2K helped precipitate the recession. Remember that it began March 2000 when the Dow and Nasdaq peaked. What happened was that in preparation for Y2K, corporate America compressed four years of IT
Georgians enthusiastically elected Mikheil Saakashvili president of Georgia on Sunday, Jan. 4. He is a the youthful, center-right leader of the Georgian opposition who overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze in the "Rose Revolution" last November. Mr. Saakashvili has received more than 80 percent of the vote in elections that were the most peaceful and transparent since Georgian independence.
The World Health Organization or WHO announced today that “the worst is over” regarding the SARS epidemic in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada. WHO pronounced Vietnam for being the first country to eradicate the disease, and praised it for doing so transparently, quickly, and efficiently.
One reason Vietnam was able to do so is because it closed its border with China. For notably absent in the WHO announcement was any praise for China. The worst is not over for China. The worst — far worse — is yet to come.
90% of SARS cases worldwide to this day are
Billed by the Government as nothing more than a toothless "declaration" at the Nice summit in December 2000, the Charter of Fundamental Rights is now to be enshrined as a legally-binding document in Part II of the new European Constitution, with profound effects on Britain's enterprise culture and legal system.
