There are many backup programs to choose from. I did not test dozens of contenders against one another. I took the advice of the computer magazines. Most rated SyncBackSE at or near the top. That’s the one I bought and it’s the one I’ll review.
The brutal treatment of Iranian women by the Mullahcracy is a daily occurrence. As "Iran Focus" recently reported, "at least 54 Iranian girls and young women, between the ages of 16 and 25, are sold on the streets of Karachi in Pakistan on a daily basis," according to "a senior women's affairs analyst...speaking to a state-run news agency."
The analyst, Mahboubeh Moghadam, added that there are at least 300,000 runaway girls in Iran right now, the result, in Moghadam's words, of "the government policy which has resulted in poverty and the deprival of rights for the majority of people in society."
Professor Donna M. Hughes, at the University of Rhode Island, one of the few Western scholars courageous enough to keep reporting on these horrors, says that the enslaved women are typically sold to people in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, such as Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. But the slave trade is not limited to the Islamic world.
Has anyone emailed you this picture of the December 26 tsunami hitting Phuket, Thailand? It’s all over the web, yet if you’ve ever been to Phuket, you know this is a fake. The city is actually Antofagasta, Chile with phony Photoshopped waves.
We all have friends with the terrible habit of forwarding some shocking claim worthy of National Enquirer on to everyone in their email list, without bothering to check its veracity out first. There’s no need to be upset at them, for they’re excited and just want to share something they think is cool - but now you can tell them how to easily find if any claim is for real or not.
Just go to Snopes.
When I mentioned to Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the White House Christmas Party this week that she was the key to solving Social Security and US energy independence - both at the same time - you can imagine how much her eyes widened. “I am?” she responded with wonderment and her beautiful smile.
"You sure are," I said. "Here's how..."
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is to unveil sweeping economic reforms at the Party's Third Plenum next month, with an assault on the state behemoths and the Party patronage machine (really?).
Yet he also wants to tighten the grip of the one-party, one-ideology, authoritarian state. Here's a good account from Wiang Xiangwei at the South China Morning Post.
The Development Research Center (DRC) in Beijing has published its road map of reform measures. It is being taken very seriously since it is written by none other than reformer Liu Wei and by President Xi's right-hand man on economic affairs, Liu He.
The problem is that these proposals skirt over/contradict the core finding of a joint DRC-World Bank report last year. It said China would not succeed in jumping to the next stage of economic development and would languish in the the "middle income trap" unless it embraces the whole package of modern free thinking. It did not quite say democracy, but that is what it meant.
Last week, Christine Jacobs, the CEO of Theragenics Corp., a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange that makes medical devices and is involved in cutting-edge cancer cures, wrote a letter to President Obama explaining why it was necessary to "begin moving our U.S. manufacturing to Costa Rica."
The power players in Washington still do not get that many businesses are being forced to flee America or just plain shut down because it is no longer profitable or too risky to continue to do business in the historical home of entrepreneurial capitalism.
Businesses operating in the United States, and even businesses outside of the country that have a small nexus with the U.S., are going to be hit with a slew of expensive job- and growth-destroying taxes and regulations beginning the first of the new year, even if the "fiscal cliff" is avoided.
The more government regulation grows, the more business in America dies.
Accra, Ghana. When Britain granted Ghana full independence (the first African colony to gain it) in March of 1957, it was the richest tropical country in the world, with huge foreign currency reserves from massive sales of cocoa, coffee, gold, timber, and bauxite.
The Brits had provided the new nation with an efficient civil service, an impartial judiciary, a fair electoral system with competent elected politicians, and a prosperous middle class.
Yet they allowed a man to lead Ghana who was a charismatic charlatan, an intellectual lightweight, a self-proclaimed Marxist who hated capitalism, a self-worshipping narcissist of the highest order, and a black racist who hated whites and the West. To the surprise of no one with unblinkered vision, but to the shocked surprise and denial of every fawning liberal on the planet, he proceeded to run Ghana straight into the ground.
The parallels with Zero are obvious. That white liberal guilt is responsible for Zero is fairly well-recognized among those who are intellectually honest. What is little understood, however, is that it is also responsible for what inevitably happens as a consequence of African Big Man government: the Africanization of that government.
[This is the text of Gov. Rick Perry's address to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington DC yesterday, December 7]
It is an honor to be with you today and to share my thoughts on faith, foreign policy and the free State of Israel.
As we gather today, I am struck by the coincidence that two of the American citizens being unlawfully detained abroad today are Jewish: Alan Gross in Cuba, and Warren Weinstein by al Qaida in Pakistan. In both cases their offense was spreading political and economic freedom to better the lives of less advantaged people around the globe.
The repressive Castro regime should not be rewarded with increased tourism while Mr. Gross languishes in prison, and Pakistani authorities should clearly understand the significance of rescuing Mr. Weinstein from terrorist elements within their borders if they value the foreign aid they seem to take for granted.
We have an Administration in Washington today whose foreign policy is an incoherent mess. They embolden our adversaries while isolating our allies.
What’s the difference between a disaster and an election in New Orleans?
The buses run during an election.
Why isn’t New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin worried about all the dead people being found in Katrina’s aftermath?
Because they’ll keep right on voting anyway.
Tasteless? Here’s what really tasteless: Cleaning up New Orleans physically without cleaning it up politically. Not draining New Orleans’ political cesspool of organized crime and corruption. Not evacuating Mayor Ray Nagin and every city official and police officer on the take before they get their greasy hands on all those billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild the place.
Sure we trust our kids. Most of them grow up OK. A large part of the problem for parents is the mystery - the not knowing what really goes on in their kids’ lives. Are the web sites and chat rooms they frequent more or less innocent? We are pretty sure we can trust them, but can we trust the people they are communicating with? What about their email and IM buddies?
Because so many of kids’ potentially dangerous activities and relationships are conducted online, a measure of control is possible. We have to figure out a way to get at their information without their realizing it.
It has long been assumed that a repressive regime could survive as long as it had the will to crush any opposition, and that clever tyrants could deflect hatred of their regime by conjuring up an external enemy. There is still a tendency, particularly among intellectuals, to assume that these principles apply to contemporary dictatorships like those in China, Iran, and North Korea.
Yet recent events suggest that these three countries, which are united by common interests and which help one another with advanced military technology, from missiles to WMDs, are losing control despite their fierce determination to cling to power and eventually fight and win a great war against the West. All three have nearby examples of new democracies, and their peoples are asking, with increasing intensity, why they are not permitted to govern themselves.
When Ted Turner compared Fox News to Hitler this week, a Fox spokesman commented that “Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind - we wish him well.” It is time to feel such sympathy for other famous businessfolk who have similarly lost their minds - such as Warren Buffett.
The legendary investment guru has allowed his newly acquired left-wing politics to idiotize him. Just like Turner, he sets up an assumed liberal populism as an envy-deflection device, ends up hating America and the capitalist system that made him wealthy - and becomes a fool in the process.
To be clear: only a fool would bet long-range on the euro now.
“Aeschylus and America” is an essay I wrote for a book edited by Rod Martin and released this week, Thank You, President Bush. It is available at Amazon and I encourage you to get a copy. This is a lengthy essay, which may be easily read by clicking on “printer-friendly format” in the top right corner and printing a hard copy. It is a summation of my thoughts on America’s recent history and the choice America faces this November.
AESCHYLUS AND AMERICA
Chapter Eight of Thank You, President Bush, Los Angeles: World Ahead Publishing, September 2004.
Includes the following sections:
Aeschylus and Homer
Aeschylus and Neal Armstrong
Getting Drunk
Getting Sober
The Evil Eye
Terrorism As a Pathology of Envy
Liberalism As a Fear of the Evil Eye
The Masochism of Liberals
The Pathology of Bush-Hatred
Aeschylus and George Bush
Hi, everyone. I'm Karma Singh, a longtime TTPer in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. I was with Jack Wheeler on his incredible Hidden China adventure last month, and we talked about what's going on in India, the world's second most populous country and China's rival for superpower status in Asia.
Our conversations got pretty interesting, so Jack suggested I write an India Report for TTP. Here's my first effort. Let's jump right in.
India's major drawback is the people administering the country. Plagued with monumental amounts of corruption, there are no words to describe these monstrous looters. According to an article published back in 2010, unofficial estimates of black money obtained through government corruption is pegged around 1.4 Trillion US Dollars.
The hope for India lies in the elections next spring. For there is a man being hailed by the Indian press as India's "capitalist hero." He is the amazingly successful governor of one of India's largest states, and he stands an excellent chance of being our next Prime Minister. His name is Narendra Modi.
If you are a member of Congress and you wish to be re-elected, do you increase your chances of winning by voting for or against raising taxes on the "rich"?
In decision theory, "regret" is defined as the difference between the actual payoff and the payoff that would have been obtained if a different course of action had been taken. In the upcoming votes on the "fiscal cliff," members of Congress will be making decisions about what is best for the economy and the nation - and what is best if their highest goal is re-election.
You may think that these two decisions are at odds. But members of Congress need to know that the Regret Matrix shows they are not.
