Who owns your children, you or the government?

FOXNews.com - Views - ifeminists - Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start?:

"Democratic activist and child advocate Rob Reiner has collected the million signatures that guarantee a place on California's June 2006 ballot for his 'Preschool for All Act.'"

The Reiner plan means billions of dollars for more school buildings and more teachers and more bureacrats to manage the program. It also means a further assault on parental rights and responsibilities in favor of the idea that, since the existing school bureacracy is having so much success with K-12 education, we need to add to its duties the care of four-year olds.

Repeated studies going back almost four decades in the US have shown that educational benefits, if any, acheived by children enrolled in such programs are completely lost by second, third or fourth grade. But, when it comes to public policy, you can't keep a bad idea down. It just keeps coming back with a new name and a bigger budget.

The Reiner proposal would tax those making over $400,000 per year an additional 1.7% to generate $2.4 billion annually. If half of that goes to teacher salaries and union dues take 2.5%, that would generate an additional $30 million annually for the California Education Association - that's a lot of political muscle.

Human trials of nasal stem cells for spinal cord injury to begin soon in UK

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The nose cells that may help the paralysed walk again:

"'This is not the most popular way of attempting to heal spinal injuries. That would be to produce patented chemicals, which drug companies can make and sell. What we're proposing could be carried out by any very modestly equipped hospital with neurosurgery. There are no patents. It makes it a very unpopular form of research.

"'We're producing a procedure where the patient is their own cure. You can't patent a patient's own cells, thank God.'"

Professor Geoffrey Raisman of University College, London, makes a very important point here about the difficulty in securing funding for this sort of research which, although highly promising, will not make anyone rich. No one, that is, but the patients; for, who can put a price on restoring the ability to breath on one's own. or to walk, or even to control bladder and bowel functions?

No disrespect to Prof. Raisman whom I wish the best of luck, but this technique has been used in humans for several years already in Portugal, China and other countries as I have mentioned previously in this space. It appears from the article that the Guardian and the professor are unaware of this fact.

A message to the president: No Amnesty!

FOXNews.com - Politics - Bush Outlines Border Security Plan:

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told FOX News that it would be virtually impossible to send back to their home countries the 10 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

"'The cost of identifying all those people and sending them back would be stupendous. It would be billions and billions of dollars,' Chertoff said, adding that the guest worker program would presumably siphon off a portion of the illegals who would register with the government, allowing law enforcement to focus its resources on illegals who don't want to follow government guidelines."

What Secy. Chertoff is trying to hide by this statement is that every day in this country illegals fall into the hands of state and local police and his department refuses to deal with them. Interior enforcement is a bad joke. Federal officials stage occasional raids for the purpose of getting some favorable publicity, but they ignore the larger numbers of illegals available to them for deportation proceedings that they don't even have to look for.

President Bush did make a useful commitment to provide the funding needed to eliminate the "catch and release" policy in effect at the border, but nothing to deal effectively with the problem of getting all those who have previously slipped past border enforcement or benefitted from catch and release back into the net.

And, of course, the centerpiece of the president's "plan" is still amnesty. There are procedures in place for Mexicans and others to apply to enter and work here legally and many thousands do. Why does President Bush insist on saying that those who chose to come here illegally should be treated as well, or even better, than those who came legally?

A textbook example of how to win in the terror war

Telegraph | News | Snipers' head shots had to kill terrorists simultaneously to prevent explosions :

"Expectation among the 16 soldiers, attached to Task Force Black (TFB), the secret American and British special forces unit based in the Iraqi capital, was high. Each member of the four four-man groups was a veteran of many missions where the intelligence promised much - only to deliver little.

"The plan for Operation Marlborough was simple: allow the three suspected bombers to leave the house and get into the street, then kill them with head shots from the four sniper teams. Each team was equipped with L115A .338 sniper rifles, capable of killing at up to 1,000 yards."

Read this story in the UK's Telegraph. It describes all the elements of a successful anti-terror operation - solid HUMINT from operatives on the ground with access to the terrorists, excellent audio and video surveillance, and highly skilled Spec Ops troops.

As Col. John "Hannibal" Smith used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together."

Curiouser and curiouser

BREITBART.COM - Just The News:

"Rice's successor, Stephen Hadley, would not say if he were Woodward's source. But Hadley volunteered on Friday that some administration officials say he's not the leaker."

Just when you thought the interminable investigation into the apparently legal but arguably inappropriate "outing" of CIA analyst Valerie Plame couldn't get any stranger, here comes another baffling wrinkle in the case.

Another armed incursion on our southern border

WorldNetDaily: Armed standoff on Rio Grande :

"U.S. Border Patrol agents were backed down this week by armed men, dressed in what appeared to be Mexican military uniforms and carrying military weapons, who seized a captured dump truck filled with marijuana from the U.S. agents and dragged it across the border into Mexico with a bulldozer."

The craziest part of this scenario is that the driver of the dump truck loaded with marijuana escaped on foot and returned with backup quicker than the US side could gather enough force to control the situation.

We wouldn't have this problem if our government were serious about defending our country. And, it would be a lot less serious if it were true that Mexico cooperates with us - they don't, they probably couldn't if they wanted to, but the simple fact is the Mexican government uses easy, illegal access across the border to maximize its own well-being at our expense.

Another utopian migration planned - to the ancestral home of the Hollands

Group Wants Christian Coup:

"Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

"'We're going to force a constitutional crisis,' said Cory Burnell, 29, an investment advisor who founded the group in November 2003.

"'If necessary,' he said, 'we will secede from the union.'

"Burnell has not moved to South Carolina himself — he promised his wife that they would stay in Valley Springs, Calif., until the end of next year — but believes that his 950 supporters will rally to the cause. Five families have moved so far.

"Burnell said his inspiration came from the Free State Project, which in October 2003 appealed to libertarians to move to New Hampshire for limited government intervention, lower taxes and greater individual rights. By 2006, organizers had hoped to have 20,000 people committed to relocating to New Hampshire; so far, 6,600 have said they intended to make the move, and only 100 have done so.

"Christian Exodus, Burnell predicted, will be more successful.

"'There are more Christians than libertarians,' he said."

I am rather disappointed that NewsMax.com would use the word "coup" in describing Christian Exodus, from the information in their article and in the ChristianExodus.org website, they seem committed to working within the framework of the US Constitution - the real one, not the one constantly being re-written by the courts. Bad enough when we use intemperate descriptions of those who, even if we wish to criticize them on certain details, could be allies on some important issues - what makes it worse is that unhelpful word coup has been picked up in comments from the left at several blogs and websites.

It is interesting that the organizer credits the inspiration for his project, not to the Bible, but to the libertarian idealists who launched the Free State Movement two years ago to take over Vermont and declare independence. TheChristian Exodus plan is to take over South Carolina and, perhaps, secede.

As legendary NY Yankees manager Casey Stengel famously obseved, "It's deja vu all over again." I remember back in the 70s when libertarians were excitied about a plan to take over some island conveniently located near North American and making it an independent country with a libertarian population and government. Some had even picked out the island they wanted Great Abaco in the Bahamas. They were latching onto an indigenous secession movement on the island and backed a project called the Abaco Independence Movement. The only result was the world's longest bumper sticker - it read "National Health Insurance = Socialism" (if memory serves) and measured about 30 inches long.

My interest in this movement is primarily mercenary. They are targeting Greenville County, SC, and my partner and I have several choice building lots available in the Holland Trace Development on State Highway 14 on the north side Simpsonville. Anything that keeps the housing market strong in Greenville is OK by me.

Strangely, the area they have chosen is already a hotbed of activity by center-right to hard right political activists: Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, League of the South, etc. It even has its own conservative weekly paper, The Times-Examiner. There have been hot political contests in recent years over such issues as city condemnation policies, making Martin Luther King's birthday a mandatory paid holiday for county employees, and high-handed fiscal shenanigans by the county school board. In all these, the property owners and taxpayers have lost out as the local GOP has slid into the hands of RINOs.

UN preaching at us again

World Peace Herald:

"... social discrimination has aggravated the problems in many situations resulting in poverty clearly seen as a violation of human rights,' said Arjun Sengupta, the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty of UNHCR."

UNHCR is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This report comes from the UN Commission on Human Rights which should be abbreviated UNCHR or UNHRC, not UNHCR as it appears in this article.

As for the substance of the report, based largely on visits to NYC, Florida immigrant farmworkers and post-Katrina New Orleans, it is the usual nonsense. For example, there is no mention of how the lives of our 12.7 percent in poverty relate to the lives of persons classified as poor in other countries.

Also, differences in poverty rates between ethnic/racial groups appear to be assigned to racist actions of government and society with no consideration of such issues as crime rates and marriage rates which have been shown to be very significant factors. White families which do not marry and commit crimes experience economic outcomes more like Black families which share those behaviors than like other Whites who do not share those behaviors. Similarly, Black families where parents marry and members refrain from criminal activity acheive economic outcomes more similar to White families who behave this way than to Black families who do not.

It's not just Mexican laborers, anymore, porous border attracts drug runners and terrorists

WorldNetDaily: Lawmaker: Terror war spilling across border:

"Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., sheriff of Zapata County, which is east of Laredo, ... [told] to attendees of a San Antonio conference last week, ... the 'federal government has failed its citizens' by failing to protect its borders.'

"'Illegal immigration is the least of our concerns. We'll deal with illegal immigration,' he said. 'What I worry about is the dangerously violent narcotics gangs and especially the terrorists. There are people from countries of interest to the United States which could easily come over this border. They may already be in the country. We don't know.'"

Another Arab election - this one in Egypt

Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Begging to differ:

"'Nothing is going to change,' Counselor Yehia El-Refai, a respected ex-judge and honourary president of the Judges Club, told Al-Ahram Weekly. 'This is a very immoral government and it will ensure the election does not produce results it does not want.'"

This is a particularly gloomy assessment of the present round parliamentary elections. Despite amending the constitution to permit multiple candidates to contest individual seats in parliament, Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak is still suspected of bad faith by many in his own country.

Perhaps Mubarak is not a true democrat, it would be highly unlikely if it were so. Yet that may not mean that he intends to steal under the new rules what he could have "legally" given himself under the old rules. Perhaps he is simply recognizing that his position is not so secure that he can rule indefinitely and then successfully turn the reins over to his son, Gamal. Suppose his only motive is to smooth the way for Gamal, the reforms have set Egypt on a path from which turning back would be very difficult.

The real danger, as we have seen elsewhere in the region (Algeria expecially), is that greater democracy will serve only to enhance the power of the least democratic elements in the society - in the case of Egypt, that means the Muslim Brotherhood.

The "money primary" heats up

Casting call - Los Angeles Times:

"For the 2002 election cycle, the entertainment donations topped $40 million, ranking seventh out of 80 industries."

That amount for the off year of 2002 is nearly three times what the industry gave in the presidential election year of 1992, and about seven times its total for the off year of 1990.

Hollywood is the place where, for Democrats, the "money primary" begins. Its importance for them is two-fold. Not only is there a lot of money to be found there, but going there to raise it can generate favorable press in a way that meeting with a bunch of labor union executives or corporate lobbyists does not.

And the money primary is the key to be taken seriously as a candidate. So, the influence of Hollywood is enhanced by the willingness of some fairly big players to give substantial sums of money early in the election cycle.

More on piracy off the Somali coast

International News Article | Reuters.com:

"At the center of the wave of recent attacks is a mysterious, so-called mother ship that has been spotted three times since late July drifting off the northeast coast of Somalia."

More on the piracy problem in Somali waters in this article, including a call by the UN Security Council for the Somalis to get their act together - a waste of breath - and an appeal for other nations to help.

Just as the US and UK jointly patrolled the West African coast in the 19th century to put down the slave trade, it will probably fall to us to patrol the East African coast to suppress piracy. If we take the lead, maybe some other regional powers could be induced to help - India, Australia, South Africa, perhaps. Most countries in the area don't really have a blue ocean navy capability, but a carrier task force could supply air coverage and refueling and provisions to allow some countries to commit smaller ships to do the actual boarding of suspected pirate vessels.

And, somebody ought to figure out how to free the 100 or so crewmen of ships from various countries which have been hijacked and taken to Somalia.

Muslim fanatics and the GWOT: It isn't all about Israel, or the US in Iraq

WorldNetDaily: Schoolgirl dies after shooting near church:

"One of two 17-year-old schoolgirls shot at close range near a Pentecostal church in Indonesia has died.

"Siti Nuraini, a Muslim, died Wednesday in Poso's Kota general hospital on the island of Sulawesi. Her Christian friend, identified only as Ivon, remains in critical condition after the attack Tuesday, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports."

For all those who say that the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and the attacks by Muslims on Christians are all about Western support for Israel, the US/UK-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, or the support of Western governments for corrupt royalty in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - for all those who peddle the notion that there is a change of policy by which the West can unilaterally end this war without further fighting, I say: "Open your eyes!"

These young girls - gunned down as they walked down the street together - had no part of any Western political agenda. Neither did the three Christian schoolgirls who were previously beheaded in the same part of Indonesia by murderers who promised to kill a hundred Christian girls.

Of course, it is not just an attack on Christians. These folks have lots of enemies, many of them fellow believers. Consider the case of the Saudi religious police who forced dozens of Muslim school girls to burn to death because they were not properly attired as they fled in panic from their burning school dormitory in the middle of the night. Or the committed adherents of the "religion of peace" who bombed a movie theater full of Muslims in Bangladesh because they were watching a decadent Bollywood movie.

Fox news tonight (Friday) had an expert (Salam al-Marawati, I believe the name was) explaining the root causes of the current uprising in France. He blamed it - surprise! - on "institutional racism" in France. Were these people, or their forebearers, ever required to live in a "ghetto"? Ever forbidden to hold certain occupations? Ever made to ride on the back of the bus or sit in the balcony at the movies? Ever made to use segregated waiting rooms and coaches on a railway? Ever forced to drink from separate water fountains and use separate restrooms in public places? No, not in France. Jews and Blacks who have, within living memory, endured such treatment in various parts of the world could give these coddled welfare leaches a lesson in the meaning of institutional racism.

This is not to say that there are not some actions of the French government that deserve criticism. Foremost among these, in my view, has been the policy of leaving mostly Muslim suburban public housing projects as "no go" zones for police - allowing gangs of young Muslim men freedom to extort money from merchants, assault young women, and generally act in a manner that would be considered anti-social in any civilized nation. To those who are now marching for peace and demanding "dialogue," I say: "Dialogue implies a search for compromise; and there is no room for compromise with criminals."

Few surprises in election results, except in Pennsylvania

RealClearPolitics :

"• NJ: Corzine (D) Wins Gov Race | Results: Corzine 53.5, Forrester 43.2 (91%)
• VA: Kaine (D) Elected Governor | Results: Kaine 51.6, Kilgore 46.1 (98%)
• CA: Centerpiece of Schwarzenegger's Reform Defeated | Election Results
• New York City: Bloomberg Storms To Second Term With Win Over Ferrer
• TX: Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Overwhelmingly Approved"

No big surprises in the nationally-watched contests - follow the link to RealClearPolitics.com for links to election coverage if you want the details.

One thing I did notice was that the turnout in California - for that raft of referenda which were pushed by Gov. Schwartzenegger and failed as predicted - was way below the experts' predictions. While some had said turnout could be in the 60s, the actual figure was nearer 40 percent statewide, ranging from the mid-70s to as little as 30 percent in some counties.

Pennsylvania - although it had no races attracting national attention - did manage to make history. For the first time since 1969 when our silly system of putting judges up for a yes/no vote every ten years was launched, a sitting appellate court judge lost his seat on the bench. Justice Russell Nigro (D) of the Supreme Court lost on a 51-49 split while his fellow Justice Sandra Schultz Newman (R) was retained with a paltry 54 percent vote. These were the only statewide contests on the ballot and a grassroots effort to show voter displeasure with recent pay raises for legislators and judges targeted both for defeat.

The legislature will soon take up the question of repealing the pay raise bill which has proved too radioactive for some of those who so recently voted for it.

In typical fashion, the Pennsylvania legislature adopted this latest raise with no prior notice at two o'clock in the morning. Now, if that isn't evidence of a guilty conscience, I don't know what is.

To make matters worse, my state senator, David J. Brightbill, Esq., has come up with his own scheme to answer those who object to the increased cost of legislative salaries - he wants to reduce the number of legislators!

What we need is a much larger legislature so that the committee and subcommittee workload can be spread around (ideally only one subcommittee per member) and we can again have part-time legislators. More members would also mean smaller districts and less expensive campaigns. Both of these factors would increase the pool of available candidates. It might also help to make members more responsive to the real priorities of voters rather than the government and its hangers-on. I don't say it's a panacea, but it's worth a try.

We wouldn't need to pay part-time legislators well over a hundred thousand dollars per year, fifty thousand ought to be plenty; nor would taxpayers be expected to provide them with luxury sedans and SUVs or generous health care and retirement plans. And, with much smaller districts they wouldn't need to maintain two or three offices in each of their districts, one would suffice.

Reaction to the Volcker report, an Egyptian view

Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Smoking gun or smokescreen?:

"As to the timing of the report, some believe that a smokescreen is being established to shield not only the Security Council, which was allegedly complicit with the oil-for-food scandal, but the US government, mired in its own domestic and international problems. 'I sense Annan was pushed by Washington to have Volcker do public, media-conspicuous, work in order to divert attention from the mess in the US capital with regard to the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Meantime, several Congressional committees are working on studies of US scandals linked to the UN oil-for-food programme -- I have met two committees myself,' Halliday told the Weekly."

This is an interesting article with quotes from several persons involved in the scandal. In some ways, it provides a fuller explanation than I have seen in much western coverage of the affair.

Egypt also has a fence ... to keep out deadly camels and terrorists

Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Sharm fence, sharp controversy:

"South Sinai Governor Mustafa Afifi denied that the fence was 'meant to stop any particular group of people'. Speaking to the Weekly, Afifi said the fence was part of an Interior Ministry project meant to control and secure traffic on the Sharm El-Sheikh highway. 'The highway has been the scene of tragic accidents because certain parts of it are very dangerous and require greater safety precautions. Camels, for instance, used to wander onto the road from the desert and cause very serious accidents. Last month, our head veterinarian and his family were killed in just such an accident. I have also been the victim of a car crash with a camel.'"

Meanwhile, the Bedouins insist the fence around the tourist facilities of Sharm El-Sheikh is aimed at restricting their movements and predict it will foster rather than forestall new terror attacks.

Second thoughts on NAFTA from our northern neighbor

TheStar.com - Lessons from a Royal commission:

"Among those non-business groups that commented on economic development strategies for Canada, close to 100 per cent either opposed free trade or suggested alternative strategies. More surprisingly, perhaps, close to 50 per cent of business organizations took the same perspective.

"Combined with the fact that 60 per cent of Canadians voted in the 1988 election against the only party advocating free trade, this means the Canadian government embarked upon a policy choice that lacked widespread popular support."

Interesting history on how special interests manipulated Canadian assent to the NAFTA deal. Conspiracists will be inclined to ask how, if so many opposed it everywhere, it ever got approved in the first place.

Canadians no better than US when it comes to efficient government

TheStar.com - The never-ending war on government waste:

"In a second, equally depressing report to the committee, Griffiths found that city workers assigned to recover overpayments mistakenly issued to welfare recipients cost the system far more than they were able to recover. Last year's net recovery to city hall totalled $143,000. But landing that relatively small amount cost $920,000, leaving a net loss of $777,000."

To be fair, one has to ask how high the fraudulent collections might be if no one were minding the store. That $777,000 deficit might be a bargain; but, to quote a former head of the US War on Poverty, "we lack appropriate metrics" to make that determination.

The important point to keep in mind is that most politicians - even most of the ones who say they oppose "waste, fraud and abuse" - want to keep the system much as it is, except worse. Among other things, "waste, fraud and abuse" are effective ways of buying votes. And, it distracts attention from more important questions like "should these programs exist at all?"

11th night of violence : 839 vehicles burned, 186 arrests

11e nuit violences : 839 v�hicules incendi�s, 186 interpellations :

"Les violences urbaines ont d'abord touch�les banlieues pauvres de la capitale, puis celles de la province, depuis la mort accidentelle, le 27 octobre, de deux adolescents d'origine immigr�e en Seine-Saint-Denis (banlieue nord de Paris). Depuis cette date, pr�s de 1000 personnes ont �t�interpell�es et plus de 4.300 v�hicules br�l�s."

No end in sight for the riots in France as they spread from the suburbs of Paris to the city proper as well as such far flung provincial centers as Dijon and Marseilles. The number of cops injured has now reached 34. The only good news is that the number of vehicles burned declined from 918 the previous night to 839 last night.

Not mentioned here is that the toll also includes arson attacks on schools and businesses. The deliverate targeting of schools in their neighborhoods is a fair indication that the Muslim rioters are not seriously interested in assimilating themselves into French society, but in bending French society to their will.

To the French, I say: Remember Tours where, in 732, Charles Martel led the Franks to victory over the Arabs and saved Christian Europe.

[Note: I apologize for not knowing how to make the French print properly.]

Adventure tourism - Middle East style

Haaretz - Israel News - Tourism to Israel rises by some 26 percent in 2005 over last year:

"The lion's share of tourists visiting Israel in 2005 came from countries with large Jewish populations.

"The largest proportion of tourists came from the United States, with 339,000 visits. France came second with 243,000 and the United Kingdom third with 114,900.

"Most of the other tourists came from countries with large Catholic populations such as Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Poland and South Korea."

I am a bit mystified by the casual assertion that South Korea is a country with a "large" Catholic population - it's only 26 percent Christian according to the CIA factbook and I believe a lot of those are Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists.

The real puzzle here for me is the Brazilians. The article points out that there has been a substantial increase in Brazilian travel to Israel despite a lack of efficient airline connections between the two countries. I wonder what people who live in the sun and sand capital of the world find so attractive about travel to the Mid-East war zone. Still, there's no accounting for taste. Right now some Aussie is probably settling in for an 18-hour plane ride so he can get a sunburn in Miami.

Official reaction to "oil for bribes" scandal in The Times of India

Volcker report is 'dead' for Natwar; probe to be made public- The Times of India:

"[External Affairs Minister K Natwar] Singh said he had spoken to India's Ambassador to the United Nations Nirupam Sen four times in recent days asking him to find out the basis on which he and the Congress party had found a mention in the annexure to the Volcker report.

"'The Ambassador told me that even at the UN the view was that the report is a dead document,' he added.

"'The Volcker report was not on the agenda of the UN Security Council or the General Assembly,' he said, adding that it has been, 'noted and locked.'"

Fortunately, the Volcker report, despite its shortcomings, is on the agenda of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Whether that office will extend their probe to the appendices so as to encompass an examination of the activities of Minister Singh is uncertain, but it does appear that the minister will face parliamentary and judicial inquiries in his own country.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Pirates Attack Cruise Ship

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Pirates Attack Cruise Ship :

"'There were at least three rocket-propelled grenades that hit the ship, one in a state room,' [passenger Edith] Laird [of Seattle] wrote. 'We had no idea that this ship could move as fast as it did and (the captain) did his best to run down the pirates.'"

Piracy on the high seas is a sort of crime that is seldom noticed by the press. Another is motor freight hijacking. And both have implications for the war on terror. Although both have been around for a long time, as long as there have been ships and trucks, they both offer lucrative opportunities for organized criminals. And terrorism is the ultimate organized crime.

Attacks on ocean liners are more likely to be noticed and draw a response from civilized nations, so they occur less frequently. Attacks on freighters often go unnoticed by any but those directly involved. From other news reports, it seems that there have been a number of freighters pirated in Somali waters recently, some still being held for ransom including shipments of food for famine relief in other African nations.

The Straights of Molucca see even more of this sort of activity. One of the favorites is shaking down the crews of oil tankers. It's hard for them to fight back when a single spark can send the whole ship up in flames. And, the volume of shipping and the narrow channels make evasive action of the type undertaken by the Seabourn Spirit problematic.

There are several ways in which piracy can dovetail with terrorism. One is, of course, the money - just as revolutionaries have traditionally used bank robbery and kidnapping as ready sources of funds. There is also the opportunity to steal things like explosives that might be awkward to buy without leaving a paper trail. At some point, a pirated ship may be turned into a floating bomb to explode in some port or, easier yet, to ram another ship and block a key channel to some busy port. A ship you don't have much invested in can also be useful for high-risk but lucrative missions like smuggling arms, drugs or illegal immigrants.

The fact that there is a lot of piracy on the high seas is helpful to the terrorist contemplating seaborne operations because it creates a crowd in which his operations can be hidden.

Don't let the left hand know what the right is doing - and don't tell me either!

Getty Images Editorial - Detail View

Thanks to The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns (samanthaburns.com) for this link to a picture of the future king and the former librarian.

Doing the jobs Americans won't do?

WRAL.com - News - Immigration Agents Arrest 21 Workers At Camp Lejeune:

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Wednesday 21 illegal immigrants working for construction companies at Camp Lejeune, the agency said.

"The workers were from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico and most had counterfeit immigration documents.

...

"Last month, three men believed to be illegal immigrants landed jobs at Fort Bragg's Special Warfare School teaching foreign languages to elite forces. In August, a tip led federal agents to arrest 39 suspected illegal immigrants at Camp Lejeune. And in July, nearly 50 men who worked on construction projects were arrested at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base."

If it wasn't the weekend, I'd make some calls and find out if the jobs the illegal construction workers held were covered by the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts which set higher wages than the standard US minimum wage for many federally-funded construction contracts. At any rate, these guys weren't cleaning swimming pools, raking leaves and cutting grass, or doing stoop labor picking vegetables.

A gem buried at the bottom of today's Robert Novak column

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Slowing down Alito by Robert Novak:

"Dr. Jerry Vlasak of North American Animal Liberation was quoted as saying at an animal rights convention: 'I don't think you'd have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, or 10 million non-human lives.'"

An animal rights leader advocates killing medical researchers and it makes hardly a ripple in the press. But if anyone associated with the cause of preserving human life makes such a statement about abortionists, it is headline material. I would rather we settle these questions without random bloodshed, but the difference in the way the MSM reports these things should make it clear which side they are on in the cultutre war.

Red spies in the sunset

Four arrests linked to Chinese spy ring�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper:

"Key compromises uncovered so far include sensitive data on Aegis battle management systems that are the core of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers.
"China covertly obtained the Aegis technology and earlier this year deployed its first Aegis warship, code-named Magic Shield, intelligence officials have said.
"The Chinese also obtained sensitive data on U.S. submarines, including classified details related to the new Virginia-class attack submarines.
"Officials said based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines, a compromise that potentially could be devastating if the United States enters a conflict with China in defending Taiwan."

This looks bad, and it will likely appear much worse as prosecutors press for details of what was stolen as a part of plea negotiations. I just wish Bill Gertz hadn't struck the conventional note by referring to how we could suffer if we attempt to defend Taiwan. The truth is that the PRC's ambitions are no more limited to Taiwan than Hitler's were limited to Austria.

The PRC has, at various times since consolidating the Communist seizure of power on the mainland in 1949, annexed the peaceful neighboring country of Tibet, supplied over three million "volunteers" to the late North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung in his effort to forcibly communize South Korea, and fought border skirmishes with India, the former Soviet Union and Vietnam.

None of this bloodshed had anything to do with Taiwan per se, but it does represent the PRC's rather expansive view of itself as the heir to everything that China ever claimed to control. This is why China (both the PRC and the ROC on Taiwan, in this case) press their claim to the Spratley and Paracel islands with no attempt to negotiate with Vietnam and the Phillipines which also have ancient claims to these barren rocks and shoals which may be sitting on top of some considerable amount of oil.

That same imperial feeling of entitlement may easily turn China to be actively hostile toward Japan (not just abetting North Korean provocations) since Japan's Ryukyu Islands were a nominal tributary kingdom under the Chinese Empire as late as the 1840s. For that matter, Japan itself is seen by the Chinese as a part of the Chinese cultural zone in that it, like Korea, long ago adopted the Chinese system of pictographic writing. The virtue of that system for the Chinese was and is that it papers over the fact that many of the people who use it don't speak Mandarin or any other closely related Chinese language. For an appreciation of the rather flexible view which China's leaders have had over the millenia of what is and isn't theirs, I am indebted to The New Chinese Empire by Ross Terrill.

Let me close by saying that I have the greatest respect for Bill Gertz and believe he has done signal service to the nation by his reporting and in his books. I have just got round to finishing his Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (2002).

On the subject of intelligence, I also recommend John J. Fialka's War By Other Means (1997). Fialka's book focuses on industrial espionage directed against companies rather than governments and deals with the actions of allies like France and Japan as well as enemies like the PRC and the former Soviet Union. It is structured as a series of case histories told in a journalistic rather than an academic style and is as easy to read as its contents are distressing.

More technical troubles

I ditched my DSL connection in PA in favor of wireless networking with my neighbors' DSL connection next door. Since I only spend around half the year here, it seemed like a waste of money to pay for my own DSL year round. Reception on my laptop is only poor, but we are seldom online at the same time and performance was adequate.

This turned into a disaster.

The DSL line next door went down. Eventually two Verizon technicians showed up and spent over two hours - one working the pole and one in the office. Eventually they decided the modem was fried but they don't carry a replacement on the truck. I gave them the one that came with my service and they got that one to work and left. The next day when we powered up our computers, we were offline again!

Calls to various manufacturer and ISP tech support numbers resulted in lots of frustrating searching through various menus entering arcane subscriber IDs and passwords, and we were back up for a day. Then Verizon decided to send another modem by UPS which arrived about 4 pm Wednesday.

Naturally, the installation process with the supplied CD failed. This led to another tech support call with a very polite man in India who took over an hour explaining various things to try - unplug the modem for 45 seconds, depress the reset button for one minute, etc. Finally, he decided that the computer was faulty and suggested using their laptop to run the installation procedure.

I was online with my laptop at the next desk before the install procedure finished running on their laptop. Who knows why?

Thursday was a washout for health reasons, so now I am back in harness. More politics and such will follow later tonight.

New Photos - check out http://keensphotos.blogspot.com/ for a raft of new photos that have accumulated in the last month which I posted this afternoon.