The United Nations' global warming bureaucracy is meeting (vacationing?) in Milan this week pondering how to revive the beleaguered international global warming treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol. This week's news that Russia might say "nyet" to the treaty all but seals its doom.
If there is one thing that truly infuriates me in the investment business it's the goofy gurus I call French Bears.
The French, you see, are intellectual descendants of the 17th century philosopher René Descartes. Descartes taught his fellow Frenchmen that consciousness somehow creates reality. His most famous quote is cogito ergo sum -- I think, therefore I am. This of course is exactly backwards: it's because Descartes is what he is, a human being with a brain, that he can think at all. The French have been getting things backwards ever since, always putting theory above reality.
Enders Wimbush has been a good friend of mine since he was Director of Radio Liberty under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He played a pivotal role in bringing freedom to the subject peoples of the Soviet Union. He possesses one of the sharpest geostrategic minds not just in Washington, but in the world. I encourage you to read his analysis of America’s stakes in Asia carefully. -JW
Asia, more than the Middle East, will compete for the attention of America's next president. It is in Asia that America's most vexing security challenges will likely emerge in the next few decades.
The shape of New Asia will be formed in large part from three powerful interactive forces: America's resolve, or lack of it, to play the key role in creating a new security architecture for Asia; the specter of an unmanageable rising China; and the deterioration of security in the "Crescent of Crisis" stretching from the southern Philippines to the Persian Gulf.
It is ironic that as America's presidential candidates debate how the U.S. can achieve its goals in Iraq and get out, for most Asian strategists the post-Iraq world has already begun.
Let's do what we're supposed to do here, and get right "to the point": The most important country in the world at this moment is Iran.
Back in 1984, if you had bet Bulgaria would in 2004 host a convention of European free market think tanks including many from what were then communist countries, you probably would have been given very good odds.
Yet during the last days of October, a remarkable conference -- the First European Resource Bank -- was held in the pleasant ski resort of Borovets, Bulgaria. This "Resource Bank" essentially was a convention of European free market think tanks. Representatives from organizations in 20 countries came together for mutual support, communication and cooperation.
It is only with the most extreme caution and reluctance that someone making repulsive and racist statements should be labeled a Nazi. Hitler's crimes were so monstrous that most comparisons to them cheapen and insult their horror. Yet there are times when such comparisons are justified and Malaysian leader Mohammed Mahathir's now-infamous speech is one of them.
How do you think the sanctimonious people at TV's "60 Minutes" would portray a company charged by the FCC with "serious indecency violations," that made expensive settlements with employees and others because of injuries related to asbestos and other hazardous material exposures, underfunded its employee pension, is legally accused of securities violations, employs those who widely distributed forged documents in an effort to destroy political opponents, failed to dismiss or discipline employees who violated the company code of conduct, owned offshore enterprises that paid little or no U.S. corporate tax, and operated in and/or dealt with countries harboring terrorists?
The company that engaged in all of these practices is Viacom, parent company of CBS, which produces "60 Minutes."
The folks at "60 Minutes" remind me of the preacher who damns the sinners every Sunday, but then is caught in the brothel.
Al Jazeera released another audio tape this week, recorded by someone speaking in Arabic and claiming to be Osama Bin Laden. As with such tapes in the past, the CIA reports that it is kinda, almost, and pretty sure that it is OBL's real voice so he must still be alive in a cave somewhere.
Well, once again, I'm not buying it. As I've been saying for almost two years now, I think his remains are pulverized under a mountain of rubble in eastern Afghanistan.
This is a letter to his friends from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq. To The Point has determined its authenticity and updated its factual claims, verifying them with USAID and the Pentagon:
As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home.
And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently:
Ordinarily, I suggest that you forward my articles to any friends whom you think would appreciate them — but this is an exception. I’m going to ask you, as a TTP member, to keep this to yourself.
There is talk in certain, shall we say, “corridors of power” here in Washington about an “Ultimate Solution” to the whole Arab-Israel Gordian Knot that is so breathtaking and mind-blowing that I’d just like to keep it between ourselves for now.
Here’s the background and the outline.
We start with how the countries of the Middle East were created out of the shards
The Kerry Democrats have in reality proposed the platform most contrary to economic growth and jobs creation in U.S. history. They are betting the news media will be too dumb or willfully blind to notice and the Republicans too incompetent to explain the reality of the Democrats' proposals to the American people.
The Democrats have handed the Republicans a golden opportunity to set forth a true economic growth and jobs creation plan. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear the Bush administration and the Republicans have the skills and bold thinking to take advantage of the opportunity presented.
The Democrats are good at selling falsehoods, and the Republicans are lousy at selling the truth.
One of the most amusing things about the Washington Circus is how media feeding frenzies are almost always about phony irrelevant scandals, while truly serious scandals are ignored.
Comparing U.S. President George Bush with Winston Churchill may seem a stretch. Yet there's a parallel -- not with Churchill of the war years, when he was the "free" world's most admired leader, but with Churchill of the 1930s when he stood alone, warning about the rise of Nazism.
Then, pacifism was rampant in Britain and Europe. Hitler's aggression was rationalized by wishful thinking. Peace at any price.
Except for Churchill. He began warning that the Nazis must be stopped when they occupied the Rhineland in 1936. He urged an alliance of Britain, France and the Soviet Union to stop Hitler's expansion. He was called a warmonger, an enemy of peace, reviled in print and in speeches. Few stood with him.
History has proven Churchill right.
It is impossible for the ordinary human mind to fully grasp the evil of Joseph Stalin. He purposefully engineered the starving to death of over ten million people in Ukraine. In terms of mass murder, Stalin's Ukrainian Holocaust was an even greater crime than Hitler's Jewish Holocaust.
Millions more were hauled off to be enslaved and die in the Gulag, or tortured and shot for the slightest suspicion of anything Stalin was suspicious of. Many of his closest deputies were ordered to put their parents, wives, or children to death to prove their loyalty.
Yet this tyranny, this monstrous evil, is not a mystery. Evil exists, deeply embedded in certain human souls. That isn't mysterious; it is a basic fact of human society. The true mystery is why and how such is evil is tolerated. Stalin tyrannized the Soviet Union for thirty years. In all those years, there is not one single known attempt on his life. Not one.
Which then, is the greater depravity: Stalin killing people, or no one killing him? The former, of course. Evil itself is the greater evil -- but toleration of it is the greater mystery.
Despite enormous and continuing denial on the part of left and liberal ideologues and the media, we are facing an exceedingly pathological strain of Islamofascist terrorism. So a crucial question must be asked: from a psychological and anthropological point of view, what kind of culture produces human bombs, glorifies mass murderers, and supports humiliation-based revenge?
According to Minnesota based psychoanalyst and Arabist, Dr. Nancy Kobrin, it is a culture in which shame and honor play decisive roles and in which the debasement of women is paramount.
