Free Frank Warner

Bob Dole: Scott McClellan is a 'miserable creature'

Bob Dole sums up Scott McClellan. In an e-mail, Dole writes to McClellan:

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

“In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you. No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.

“I have no intention of reading your "exposé" because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job. That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?

“Bob Dole”

Keep in mind, if McClellan had his way, or at least what he calls his way today, Saddam Hussein and his fascist pals would still be torturing Iraq. Iraq would be absent liberal democracy or peace. The fascists have made a lot of friends in the last five years. McClellan is profiting from that trend.

Frank Warner

John Kerry: ‘On Sept. 11, we were basically at peace’

Sen. John Kerry today told a news conference that “on Sept. 11, we were basically at peace.”

His point was that everything was so nice then, but President Bush brought war. Or maybe that wasn’t Kerry’s point. What was he saying?

We have to know which part of Sept. 11, 2001, had the kind of “peace” that Kerry wants the United States to return to.

If Kerry longs for 6 o’clock in the morning Sept. 11, then he wants America to return to a point where we can expect suicide hijackers to kill thousands of Americans within a few hours.

But if Kerry longs for noon Sept. 11, then he wants America to return to a point where we have thousands of murdered Americans in tons of rubble, and if we’re smart like Kerry, we’ll use the rest of the day to surrender.

Frank Warner

* * *

Update: Later Kerry tried to explain his comment, saying, “Well, we hadn’t declared war.” That’s the usual muddy thinking of Kerry, but he speaks so pompously that some believe him a genius.

Note to Kerry: There was a war on all day Sept. 11. For years, Osama bin Laden had been attacking and planning attacks. For years, separately, Saddam Hussein had been violating the 1991 cease-fire terms, by mistreating the Iraqi people, by refusing to cooperate with arms inspectors and by supporting terrorists.

Second noted to Kerry: We still haven’t declared war. Do you need a formal invitation when you see people in trouble?

Mars Orbiter takes picture of Mars Phoenix Lander

It’s an amazing picture. Or at least it’s amazing to consider that it’s a picture of an unmanned spacecraft landing on Mars taken by another unmanned spacecraft that just happens to be orbiting Mars.

In this grainy photograph, NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander is seen four days ago parachuting through the Martian atmosphere. At this point, the Lander was 193 miles above the Martian surface.

That is not a forest in the background. It really is part of a crater.

Long lens. The image was captured by a camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, zipping around the red planet.

As the Phoenix Lander floated down, it jettisoned its heat shield. Then, 7.8 miles above the ground, it cut loose its parachute and nose-cone and switched on its engines for the final landing.

What’s interesting is how similar the picture of the parachuting Lander looks to an artist’s conception that was part of a NASA video.

Phoenix at work. Today, the Phoenix Lander is beaming pictures back from Mars, and preparing to examine samples of the frigid Martian soil.

Frank Warner

* * *

Here are the steps involved in landing the Phoenix:

Scott McClellan, where were you Aug. 31, 2005?

If ever there were a White House press secretary who inspired no confidence, it was Scott McClellan.

In a time of war, a president with obvious oratorical limitations needed someone capable of speaking with clarity and credibility. That was not McClellan, who forever looked like a scared squirrel.

Now he’s written a book that, without ever saying it directly, reveals he was forced to leave against his will. If the excerpts are any indication, the book turns every controversy into something he can blame everyone else for.

Have a TV? On Hurricane Katrina, he says the worst thing was that Karl Rove released a picture of President Bush looking out a plane window as he flew over New Orleans. McClellan conveniently avoids the real problem with Katrina, which was that someone at the White House wasn’t watching TV on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 2005, when every news channel had a reporter yelling at the cameras for 48 hours straight demanding to know when 30,000 displaced people could be moved from the Superdome.

It turned out that the reports of murders, rapes and lack of water at the Superdome were untrue, but it didn’t matter by Sept. 2, 2005. Everyone in the world had seen scared people calling for help, and McClellan, who should have seen it, too, managed to ignore it.

The big mystery about McClellan is how he kept that job for nearly three years. We’re unlikely ever to see another White House press secretary so incompetent.

Frank Warner

Global warming: The Gore-Klaus debate

This could be something: An actual public debate on global warming, what causes it, is it continuing, and is it a threat.

So far, most of us have never heard a real live debate on global warming, and yet we have been told the debate is over. Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, has done his research, and he wants to debate Al Gore one on one.

Let’s go, Mr. Gore, get in there and defend your case. And Mr. Klaus, ask good questions and demand full facts and explanations. It would be a first.

Frank Warner

After 20-year ban, Italy decides to build nuclear power plants

With energy prices rising and a shortage of CO2-free alternatives, Italy last week decided to open itself again to building and operating nuclear power plants.

In three 1987 referendums, Italy banned nuclear power and even shut down its existing reactors. That was primarily in reaction to the deadly 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the then-Soviet Ukraine.

Now, with oil prices soaring and Russia regularly bullying Europe by manipulating its sales of natural gas, Italy has changed its mind. Italy's government on May 22 announced plans to build "new generation" nuclear plants.

The French model. France is one of the few European nations that have stuck to nuclear power. It receives 80 percent of its electrical power from nuclear reactors. Germany and Belgium have abandoned nuclear power.

The United States produces 20 percent of its electricity with nuclear reactors, but hasn’t built a nuclear plant since the early 1980s.

Nuclear power cannot be viewed as free of risk, but stacked against other large-scale energy sources, it is a promising alternative, at least for the next 20 years.

Keep looking. We can move away from nuclear power as soon as we develop another energy system that can sustain our modern economies and protect the environment, too.

Frank Warner

Fidel Castro is angry that Barack Obama won’t support Cuban dictatorship

Fidel Castro, who once urged the Soviet Union to vaporize the U.S. East Coast and whose psychotic admirer murdered President Kennedy, now is upset that Barack Obama won’t embrace the Castro mob’s dictatorship in Cuba.

Obama last week told Cuba-Americans in Florida that he will oppose lifting the economic embargo against Cuba’s Communist oppression. Castro, who has chained Cuba to a police state for nearly 50 years, was particularly upset with these words by Obama, who was born in 1961:

“Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy. …

“This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century – of elections that are anything but free or fair. … I won’t stand for this injustice, you won’t stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba.”

Dictated response. Obama’s words of freedom almost finished Castro off. From his bed pan, the tyrant immediately dictated a rebuttal. And as usual, he responded to the charge of dictatorship by pretending not to notice his totalitarian enslavement of the Cuban people.

Castro has no defense for his cruel policy, enforced by his army and police for 49 years, against free elections, free speech, freedom of the press, free opposition political parties and independent courts. In the hope that personality worshippers like Noam Chomsky will salivate at his every word, Castro said:

Today, the United States has nothing of the spirit behind the Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic empire undreamed of by the country’s founders at the time. Nothing, however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be auctioned at the marketplace —men, women and children—for nearly a century, despite the fact that "all men are born free and equal", as the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world’s objective conditions favored the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban Revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations have used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don’t want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful values….

We were always bound by previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of this organization, we were elected by more than 90% of voters, as has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a time, as in the case of the United States, stay short of 50% of voters. No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbor has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions. …

Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings? …

Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect children born in the United States?

Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?

You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights? …

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have. …

The good will and determination of people constitute limitless resources that cannot be kept and would not fit in the vault of a bank. They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Communist torture. It’s a real joke to talk about the assassination plots against Castro. There may have been some, but if the United States were in the assassination business, Castro would have been gone long ago. And how about condemning Lee Harvey Oswald? How about Castro admitting some guilt to inspiring that real assassination?

Castro alleges President Bush ordered the “torture” of human beings. Bush may have authorized the harsh interrogation of three known terrorists, in pursuit of information that could stop further terrorist attacks. Waterboarding, which not all agree is torture, was used. All three terrorists survived their interrogations. Meanwhile, Castro tortures innocent Cuban people every day. In the name of tyranny, he has ordered tens of thousands of Cubans killed. On the streets, they suffer malnutrition and the injustice of rights denied. In prisons, they live and die in pain and squalor.

Why would Castro raise the subject of American Indians and slavery? Millions of Indians remain in the United States. (In 100 years of Indian wars with the U.S. cavalry, Indians suffered about 4,000 dead. Not one tribe was wiped out.) In Cuba (this was before Castro), every Indian was killed. Slavery has been outlawed in the U.S. for 143 years. In Cuba, slavery remains the centerpiece of Castro’s rule. The Castro brothers own every worker.

The brain drain. It’s hard to figure where Castro stands on the question of unimpeded illegal immigration to the United States. On the one hand, he seems to be for it and against any move to prevent it. On the other hand, he says the United States drains his nation and other police states of their best minds. Want to keep your Cuban scholars? Free Cuba, and these brains will lose their incentive to leave.

Castro argues against intervention in the affairs of other nations. There’s another sick joke. Didn’t Castro invite the Soviet Union into Cuba, making Cuba a locked-down Soviet colony for three decades? Didn’t Castro want Soviet nuclear missiles fired on the United States rather than surrendered in October 1962? Talk about intervention. And how about the Cubans whom Castro sent Angola to fight for repression? Cubans still are bitter their families lost lives for that evil cause.

Castro says, “Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have.” Wrong again, colostomy mouth. The Soviet Union oppressed and tortured its people for 74 years. You, Fidel, have managed to oppress and torture the Cuban people for 49 years, and with Barack Obama’s help, your oppression ain’t going to last 25 years more.

The sewer of history. Within five years, the Cuban people will be free. Free of you, free of your brother, free of your Communist co-conspirators. History will judge you to be the thing that stopped up the toilet. The plunger is on the way.

Frank Warner

Memorial Day

We’ve done our job.
We’ve paid our dues.
We’ve left a world
Where more can choose.

Now use the light we left you
To build a healthy peace.
Or waste our work and curse yourselves
for darkness and disease.

fw

In ‘South Pacific,’ why does Emile de Becque finally agree to the dangerous mission?

With the musical “South Pacific” making its return to Broadway after all these years, New York Times reviewer Frank Rich has noticed something that I pointed out three months ago.

When American officers try to recruit Emile de Becque, a worldly French expatriate, in a dangerous reconnaissance operation, they tell him he must do so because “we’re against the Japs.” De Becque, who is the show’s hero, snaps at them: “I know what you’re against. What are you for?” No one bothers to answer his question.

“What are you for?” he asks. And in the middle of World War II, two U.S. Navy officers and one U.S. Marine lieutenant can’t think of one thing they’re fighting for.

Freedom, democracy, a peaceful world in which the Japanese empire has stopped killing innocents by the hundreds of thousands -- none of this comes to their minds. The Americans desperately need de Becque for this mission, but they don’t know how to say what they’re “for.” This part of the script is so unlikely it’s irritating.

One other question. I still like “South Pacific.” I like it a lot, as long as I don’t think about it. But that one puzzle of the “South Pacific” script leads to a second big question, which I haven’t discussed here before. Why does de Becque ultimately agree to the dangerous mission that he initially refused?

Most fans of “South Pacific” probably would guess that de Becque finally consented to go because his girlfriend, Nellie Forbush, called off their wedding when he revealed he had been married to a Polynesian woman (already long dead).

Others might guess that de Becque felt sympathy for Lt. Joseph Cable, the Marine who already had volunteered for the job behind enemy lines. After all, it was Lt. Cable who showed a more open-minded attitude by singing, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught (to Hate).”

An illogical plot. But no. It still doesn’t make sense that de Becque would risk his life to help the Americans. Let me explain.

De Becque makes his big decision right after Cable sings, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” and right after Cable tells de Becque that he (Cable) is not going back to Philadelphia after the war. Cable explains that he will stay on Bali Hai because that’s where Liat, his Polynesian girlfriend, is. He implies strongly that America is too narrow-minded for him.

So think about this. De Becque, who is despondent that his American girlfriend has asked for a transfer because she is a bigot, and who is faced with a Marine who says he won’t return to America because of its bigotry, now decides that he will risk his life for America.

He’ll fight for the side of bigotry? What sense does that make? No one had told him that America was for anything good. All he had heard was bad. So what’s his motivation?

Hunter’s tale. There’s only way this plot turn makes sense. You have to consider that Lt. Cable also tells the despondent de Becque, in what seems a throw-away line, that, whenever Cable felt mixed-up as a kid, he’d go hunting, and, well, hint, hint, spying for Japanese naval convoys would be like hunting.

Cable says:

“You know, back home whenever I got in a jam, I used to go hunting. That’s what I think I’ll do now. Good hunting up there around Marie Louise. Carriers, cargo boats, troop ships, big game.

“De Becque, would you reconsider going up there with me to Marie Louise Island? I mean, now that you haven’t got so much to lose? We could do a good job, I think, you and I.”

The foreshadowing. Audience members are supposed to flash back to the movie’s opening scene (I’m not sure this is the same in the Broadway play) when the airplane pilot tells Lt. Cable that it’s well-known de Becque “hunts, fishes.” This explains everything! It’s the only thing that explains everything.

In the final analysis, “South Pacific” isn’t about love or tolerance. It’s about the love of hunting.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: In the ‘South Pacific’ musical, why doesn’t the Navy know they’re fighting for freedom?

‘Aztec’ crystal skulls, basis for new ‘Indiana Jones,’ are known fakes

The two “Aztec” crystal skulls serving as the premise of the new “Indiana Jones” movie are the result of tools and technology much more recent than the ancient Aztecs, anthropologists report.

When one skull was purchased by the British Museum in London in 1897, someone suggested it had been fashioned by Aztecs before Christopher Columbus. When the second skull was handed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 1992, it also was attributed to pre-Columbian Aztecs.

Astounded to learn that sculptures of this kind might have been formed more than 500 years ago, fiction writers later speculated that aliens from outer space manufactured them. Of course, that theory connects to the new “Indiana Jones” film.

Recent sculptures. But the dull truth is, neither of these crystal skulls was considered ancient for very long. The British skull probably was made around 1875 and declared fake around 1885. The one in Washington probably was made around 1960. Both show signs of grinding by relatively modern rotary wheels.

It doesn’t really matter when the skulls were carved. By the end of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” you won’t care.

Frank Warner

Reuters: Iraq violence lowest in 4 years

Reuters:

Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level in more than four years, figures released by the U.S. military showed on Saturday, but officials said progress was still fragile and reversible.

Iraqi security officials said an offensive against al Qaeda in the northern city of Mosul, which the U.S. military says is the Sunni Islamist group's last major urban stronghold, had wiped out most of the insurgent network.

Washington's envoy to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, declared that al Qaeda had never been closer to defeat. The United States says the group is the biggest threat to peace in Iraq and has blamed it for most of Iraq's deadliest suicide bombings.

"You are not going to hear me say that al Qaeda is defeated, but they've never been closer to defeat than they are now," Crocker told reporters during a visit to the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq.

Compare the last six Aprils for U.S. deaths in Iraq:

April 2003: 74.

April 2004: 135.

April 2005: 52.

April 2006: 76.

April 2007: 104.

April 2008: 52.

Of course, U.S. casualties are only one way to judge how a war is going. The real question is, are the enemies being defeated? Does Iraq look secure with its new democracy? Things look much better this year than on April 19, 2007, when Sen. Harry Reid declared the war lost.

Frank Warner

A new worst Indiana Jones film

“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” used to be the only bad Indiana Jones movie. No longer. The new one is worse.

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” has a wonderful opening couple of scenes, setting up what everyone hopes will be a wildly scary, exciting and even intriguing movie. But then it fizzles.

It’s all talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and then a big dull scene with special effects at the end. I’m not even sure what happened. What a horrible disappointment.

Friendly faces. I was happy to see Harrison Ford back as Indiana and, surprise, Karen Allen, back as Marion Ravenwood. But that’s it. Even John Williams’ “Indiana Jones” music seemed less inspired this time around.

After the first scene or two, there was never one moment when I thought the main characters or anyone I cared about was in trouble, never a doubt they’d survive every dart, machine gun and waterfall, never another surprise.

Cate Blanchett, whom I adore, plays a caricature of a Soviet KGB agent (yes, a rare Hollywood movie in which Communists are villains). Blanchett’s part might have worked, had there been a good story, but alas, no.

Coming attractions. What did look good were the previews for “You Don’t Mess with Zohan,” a comedy about terrorism that may change my mind totally about the worthlessness of Adam Sandler, and “The Happening” by M. Night Shyamalan (How do you pronounce that name anyway?).

Frank Warner

Energy: If T. Boone Pickens can’t build that wind farm, we’re all in trouble

Everyone knows we should be drilling for more oil outside of Texas. Texas, where oil production is half what it was in 1972, should be turned into a National Human Life Refuge, and Alaska should be opened to drilling.

But we’ll probably keep getting the largest part of our domestic oil supplies from Texas, and soon, more alternative energy, too.

Everyone knows we should be building nuclear power plants, as a CO2-free transition energy source on our way to alternative breakthroughs. The United States has 100 nuclear plants. We’d need 300 more to match the portion of France’s energy (80 percent) produced by nuclear power.

Everyone knows that windmills, wind turbines, are environmentally the least obtrusive way to produce energy on a large scale.

No, no, no. And yet, the United States allows no oil drilling in the frozen, barren, nearly empty parts of Alaska (ANWR population: about 250) that could produce enough oil to replace Saudi Arabian imports for 20 years. The U.S. also prohibits drilling in the most promising off-shore locations (while the Cubans in partnership with China and Vietnam are exploring right now, off Florida).

And yet, the United States hasn’t started a new nuclear plant since the early 1980s.

And yet, Massachusetts and Maryland have blocked every reasonable attempt to build wind farms in their states.

Unsustainable faith. Why don’t we drill for oil, build nuclear plants or erect wind farms? Part of it is blind faith that oil and nuclear are bad (even though Al Gore has said he has nothing against nuclear power). Part of it is selfishness. People want something for nothing, or they just don’t want any change in the view from their window, or from their Nantucket family compound.

That attitude is the definition of unsustainable development, an unsustainable economy. It’s a Shakers-style recipe for self-destruction.

Well, from the Texans who first brought you the petroleum that still runs your car today, today we have another proposal for a new domestic energy source. This might give our economy the first energy boost in decades.

Panhandle wind. T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil man, has offered to spend $2 billion to build 667 wind-turbine generators in the Texas panhandle. Those windmills would make the electricity generated by one nuclear power plant.

Pickens eventually wants 2,500 windmills producing the energy equivalent of four nuclear generators.

Now, if Pickens can’t get this wind proposal approved, cash in your Geico insurance, we’re all doomed to a return to the Stone Age. Forget your lights, forget your refrigerators, forget your TVs, computers and hair dryers, you’ve pulled out the plug on progress.

One for all. It’s just too bad one state with 23 million people has to take all the risks and bear all the intrusions. It’s worse that, in the name of superstition, Alaska, with less than 1 million people and more than twice the land of Texas, can’t be touched.

Frank Warner

White House: Hey, NBC News, where’s that Iraq ‘civil war’?

In November 2006, as various Sunni and Shiite militias, and al-Qaida were trying to push Iraq to civil war, NBC News decided to move the story forward by declaring Iraq in “civil war.”

This week, the White House, “fed up” with NBC’s pro-chaos, pro-defeat bias in its coverage of the Iraq war, demanded to know if NBC still considers Iraq in a “civil war.”

If so, where is that civil war? Why isn’t NBC covering it? Did it fizzle out? Did someone win it? Who won?

A peacock for your thoughts. The fact is, the civil war, with two major sides taking arms against each other, driving on one another’s territory, never happened. Al-Qaida in Iraq is a shell of its former self, and even the militias are in retreat. Each force never was large enough, or in direct conflict enough with the others, to represent a civil war.

Two days ago, White House counselor Ed Gillespie sent NBC News President Steve Capus a letter noting that “around September 2007, your network quietly stopped referring to conditions in Iraq as a ‘civil war.’”

“Is it still NBC News’s carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war?” Gillespie asked in the letter to Capus. “If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?”

The rest of the story. For eight months, NBC News has not referred to the “civil war” it declared in November 2006. Why didn’t it explain in September 2007 why it dropped that “civil war” reference?

As White House press secretary Dana Perino said yesterday:

“I remember very distinctly, how there was a quite the pomp and circumstance when NBC, on The Today Show, decided to declare that they were declaring Iraq was a civil war. But since then, after the surge and things certainly have improved in Iraq, NBC has never had a corresponding ceremony to say that Iraq is not in a civil war. We’re just curious to find out what they believe.”

We’re all curious. Is the war over?

Frank Warner

Ralph Peters: Why the news blackout on Iraq success?

Ralph Peters, who two years ago was gloomy on prospects for a stable democracy in Iraq, has come around 180 degrees.

Things are going so well in Iraq, he says, that the Democratic news media has decided to stop reporting the obvious. The news now is limited to minor setbacks, Moktada al-Sadr declaring his latest “truce” (that is, defeat), and the occasional American soldier shooting at a Koran.

Peters asks:

Want a real “inconvenient truth?” Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn’t helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?

Didn’t think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq’s still a hopeless mess.

Meanwhile, they’ve performed yet another amazing magic trick -- making Kurdistan disappear.

Mum’s the word. Why report on Kurdistan? Kurdistan’s 5 million Iraqis are living in peace and prosperity, thanks to their liberation by the United States of America. No news there.

Frank Warner

Best wishes, Ted Kennedy

Sen. Ted Kennedy has brain cancer. Let’s wish him the best in his battle to beat it. Get well soon!

Frank Warner

3 Deep Throats? A few questions on the Watergate scandal

How many people know that, in the 1972 illegal wiretaps of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building, the wiretappers heard conversations that sounded as if someone there was running a call-girl ring?

(I had heard this, and the rumors attached to it, but a new book gives the idea a little more significance.)

How many people know that Woodward and Bernstein last year turned over their Watergate notes (mostly Woodward’s) to the University of Texas, and those notes show that, though the reporters claimed in “All the Presidents Men” to have had 17 confidential conversations with “Deep Throat” Mark Felt, their notes show they actually talked to Deep Throat only three times, and conversations with at least two other people are incorrectly attributed to Deep Throat?

Will we ever understand what happened at the Watergate in May and June of 1972? Exactly two weeks after the burglars were caught, Nixon’s campaign chairman John Mitchell, the president’s former attorney general, resigned from the Committee to Re-Elect the President without explanation.

Asking why? The White House tapes show Nixon ordered a cover-up of his associates’ roles in the burglary, but he doesn’t appear to have known of the burglary or bugging beforehand. So what was it all about?

Frank Warner

Obama wins Oregon

Barack Obama also has won at least 1,627 of the 3,253 pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic Party nomination. It'll be hard to persuade any superdelegate to vote against that tally.

Frank Warner

President Bush tells Middle Eastern tyrants to let their people go

Yesterday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, President Bush told Arab leaders:

In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam. Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection.

Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy. But true democracy requires vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate. True democracy requires the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election's legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear or intimidation.

Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail. America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down, and dissidents whose voices are stifled. The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with dignity and the respect they deserve. I call on all nations to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate, and trust their people to chart their future.

Democratic principles. He also said a lot more that Democratic Party leaders in the United States should be saying about democracy and freedom, but don’t. When it takes courage to stand for a principle, it's too easy to forget you once had principles.

Frank Warner

Danger: Kevin’s designing logos again

Kevin has proposed a new logo for “Free Frank Warner.” Just who is that guy on the far left?

Frank Warner

Click on the logo to enlarge it.

Bin Laden: Palestinian cause fuels war on the West

The Palestinians’ decades-old fight with Israel inspires the war between Muslims and the West, Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape three days ago.

Unfortunately, instead of accepting the former West Bank of Jordan as the Palestinian homeland, bin Laden and other radical Islamists insist that Israel be destroyed to settle the matter.

What did bin Laden say in his Friday message? He said:

“We will continue our struggle against the Israelis and their allies. We are not going to give up an inch of the land of Palestine….

“The Palestinian cause is the major issue for my [Islamic] nation. It was an important element in fueling me from the beginning and the 19 others [who hijacked airplanes for the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks] with a great motive to fight for those subjected to injustice and the oppressed.”

He said the Western news media has been “portraying the Jewish invaders, the occupiers of our land, as the victims, while it portrayed us as the terrorists.”

“Sixty years ago, the Israeli state didn’t exist. Instead, it was established on the land of Palestine raped by force. Israelis are occupying invaders whom we should fight. …

“Peace talks that started 60 years ago are just meant to deceive the idiots. After all the destruction and the killings ... your leaders talk about principles. This is unbearable.”

“Instead of punishing him [former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin] over his crimes ... he was awarded a Nobel prize. …

“To Western nations ... this speech is to understand the core reason of the war between our civilization and your civilizations. I mean the Palestinian cause.”

Jewish-Christian alliance. Bin Laden said things like this before. In 1996, in his declaration of war on the West, he said:

It is not concealed from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Jewish-Christian alliance and their collaborators to the extent that the Muslims’ blood became the cheapest and their wealth and assets looted by the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. …

Utmost efforts should be made to prepare and instigate the [Islamic] nation against the enemy, the American-Israeli alliance occupying the country of the two holiest sites [Saudi Arabia], and the root of the Messenger [Muhammad]. …

My Muslim Brothers of the world: Your brothers in the land of the two holiest sites and Palestine are calling upon you for help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy, your enemy: the Israelis and Americans. They are asking you to do whatever you can within one’s own means and ability, to expel the humiliate and defeat the enemy out of the sanctities of Islam.

Careers of tyrants. It’s interesting how much the Israel-Palestine clash upsets some Arabs and, of course, the Persians in Iran. Israel and its occupied territories are a relatively tiny part of the Middle East, and yet we’ve seen all this ugly friction for all these years.

If the Arab and Iranian dictators and terrorists wanted peace and progress for their people, they’d have it by now, simply by granting the democracy that is the people’s right. Instead, the leaders keep their tyrannical careers going by stirring up hatred for 7 million Israelis, who are doing fairly well in a democracy, in spite of the constant threats and attacks from neighbors.

Yesterday, bin Laden followed up the May 16 audiotape with another tape accusing Arab leaders of selling out the Palestinians by refusing to destroy Israel.

Never for freedom. Notice that bin Laden’s solution to everything is war. He never calls for freedom. Instead of liberating more of the Middle East, giving it a real chance for a lasting peace, he wants that region and other regions imprisoned under his arbitrarily repressive rules.

His dreams amount to a totalitarian police state. No population, no nation wants that. Don’t believe me? Then let the people of each Middle Eastern nation vote every four or five years on one question: Do you want an unelected theocracy controlled by self-appointed “holy men”? Do you want any unelected government? Or do you want democracy and all the freedoms that go with it?

Bin Laden could never win a free vote. When you’re has hungry for power as that silly man is, the only other choice is coercion. That explains everything.

Frank Warner

‘The House I Live In’: Frank Sinatra and America

We’ve got new postage stamps now, 42 cents. Ten years after his death, Frank Sinatra will appear on millions of them.

Sinatra represented the many sides of America -- the puppet, the pauper, the pirate, the pawn and the king. He sang to us about the up and the down, shot down in May, back on top in June. And in one song in particular, during World War II, he described the best side of America:

"The House I Live In"

What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see
A certain word, democracy
What is America to me?

The house I live in
A plot of earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
Or the people that I meet

The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That's America to me

The place I work in
The worker by my side
The little town the city
Where my people lived and died

The howdy and the handshake
The air a feeling free
And the right to speak your mind out
That's America to me

The things I see about me
The big things and the small
That little corner newsstand
Or the house a mile tall

The wedding and the churchyard
The laughter and the tears
And the dream that's been a growing
For more than two hundred years

The town I live in
The street, the house, the room
The pavement of the city
Or the garden all in bloom

The church the school the clubhouse
The millions lights I see
But especially the people
- Yes especially the people
That's America to me.

Music to my ears. The lyrics are by Lewis Allan, who was well aware of bigotry, injustice and poverty in the United States, but also saw the potential for much better in “the dream that’s been a growing.” Allan wrote the song for a 10-minute movie short, which The New York Times today would call a secret propaganda campaign to prop up support for a war that was costing hundreds of thousands of American lives.

When we see those ol’ blue eyes in the mail, I hope we think of that song of America. It’s a song of our ideals, of our best instincts, of the power of freedom in the pursuit of happiness.

That’s worthy of music.

Frank Warner

Nancy Pelosi says ‘surge’ is working

The Associated Press tucked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration deep in a story about Iraq, but it’s there: She says Iraq’s democratic government is taking real steps toward national reconciliation. The “surge” is working.

The prime minister [Maliki] returned to Baghdad from Mosul — where he has been overseeing the crackdown — to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who made a surprise visit to Iraq on Saturday.

Pelosi, a top Democratic critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, expressed confidence that expected provincial elections will promote national reconciliation.

She welcomed Iraq's progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation, and a bill paving the way for the provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials.

“We’re assured the elections will happen here, they will be transparent, they will be inclusive and they will take Iraq closer to the reconciliation we all want it to have,” said Pelosi. She also met with Iraq’s parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.

Pelosi, who also traveled to Iraq in January 2007 shortly after the Democrats assumed congressional control, has been a sharp critic of the Bush administration's conduct of the war and has pressed for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country this year.

The calming. Pelosi avoided saying the “surge” succeeded when she saw that al Qaida was being trounced or that violence in Iraq was down dramatically. She has held to the Democratic Party line that armed forces have nothing to do with winning wars. (I suppose we closed our eyes tight and made wishes during World War II.) To Pelosi, demoralizing and defeating Iraq’s enemies was worthless. Reconciliation was the only thing to do (as if it could happen while fascists and fanatics were killing 400 or 500 Iraqis a week).

Well, now that the fascists and fanatics aren’t killing 400 or 500 Iraqis a week, the Iraqis have for months been taking the big public steps toward reconciliation. Pelosi finally has noticed. We’re winning the war!

Frank Warner

Update: Pelosi changes her mind, or pretends to, for political purposes.

New Republic: ‘Exclusive’ on why Hillary Clinton failed

The New Republic has an “exclusive story” on “What went wrong?” with Hillary Clinton’s quest for the presidency.

According to TNR’s investigative reporter, Hillary Clinton’s problems started in January when she made fun of an Iowa woman’s disfigured face. The campaign took a free fall this month when Clinton ordered her bus driver to run over dogs in North Carolina.

Frank Warner

Murdoc at the NRA convention

I’m for banning handguns and requiring every household (except conscientious objectors) to have a rifle. That said, it looks like our friend Murdoc is having a good time at the NRA convention.

Murdoc has met with Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, who says things are looking up for gun rights.

Says Murdoc:

Another reason for the perceived cheer and confidence that Glenn saw probably had to do with the fact that this is a large gathering of like-minded folks, many of whom are bloggers with strong opinions. So it's not really a sample of Republican or Conservative voters, even, let alone any kind of cross section of America.

I mean, when the idiots in SanFransiscostan get together with their BusHitler T-shirts and march in protest of the war and the village destroyers, my guess is that there’s a mood of cheer and confidence there, too.

I would expect this event to be filled with a certain amount of cheer and confidence. And, truth be told, times are indeed pretty good for gun owners. But, as Reynolds notes, this could actually work against McCain and the Republicans.

Again, I’m no fan of handguns in the hands of all Americans. Even law-abiding citizens are too likely to go nuts if all had guns in their cars and SUVs.

So why can’t the National RIFLE Association stick to rifles?

Frank Warner

Lesson of Bush speech to the Knesset: Appeasers really hate being called appeasers

Even if they’re only pretending, those politicians who suggest an all-talk approach to tyrants and terrorists are appeasers.

Talk never did anyone any good when it was with totalitarians whose total power depends on an ideology of world conquest, repression and death to all foes.

But while appeasers are seldom angered by totalitarian cruelty, nothing steams them so much as for someone to call them what they are. Nevertheless, I’m a little surprised at how much President Bush’s anti-appeasement comments to the Knesset today upset the Barack Obama campaign.

Foolish delusion. What did Bush say today? He said:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

(That senator was isolationist Sen. William Borah, a Republican from Idaho.)

Fairy tale cynicism. Obama called Bush’s speech “a false political attack,” but alas, no. Bush is right. Talking to Hitler wouldn’t have worked. In fact, it was tried. Talking to Saddam Hussein also was tried without success for a dozen years, as hundreds of thousands died in chains. Why should anyone expect talking with Mahmud Ahmadinejad or his ayatollah boss would change the theocratic dictatorship’s view of democracy, freedom or peace?

Much as I admire Obama, I know he is stuck in a political party that has based so much of its policy on fairy tale cynicism that it almost believes it can wish away the world’s thugs, to the point that the Democrats now resist any practical steps to block or stop tyranny.

Wake up, Obama, and wake up your Democrats. Pop the appeasement balloon. There is no liberalism without liberty, and those who make a career of crushing liberty are seldom talked into liberation.

Frank Warner

Abundant polar bears named an endangered species

Now that the Arctic Ocean has warmed enough to reduce its summer ice, it seems wise that the United States yesterday named the polar bear an endangered species.

But what is odd is that the polar bear (ursus maritimus) probably is the first species put on the endangered list before there was any evidence its numbers were in decline.

In fact, the world had about 12,000 polar bears in 1960. Today, there are about 25,000.

Poster bear. With no facts to suggest the polar bears are dying off as a species, even Canada has not put them on its endangered list. Canada, which has most of the world’s polar bears, actually allows them hunted, despite a 22 percent drop in the bear population in the Hudson Bay over the last 20 years.

Canada has plans to place polar bears on a list “of special concern,” but does not consider them threatened with extinction.

The bears will be a symbol of interest over the next 20 years. If the globe becomes warmer, they’ll be the cuddly victim. If the world cools, they’ll stand for the problem that wasn’t.

Frank Warner

Update: "Never before has a thriving species been listed under the Endangered Species Act, nor should it." Hmm. I guess you could be thriving and endangered at the same time. Keep your eyes open.

No Oil for Babies: Congress just killed only program that saved something for the future

The Social Security Trust Fund is empty. Medicare is empty. We’re borrowing $400 billion a year to balance the federal budget, rather than pay for it now.

And today, Congress voted to kill the last program that saved anything for the future.

A day after the Senate passed the measure 97-1, the House voted 285-25 to stop buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, America’s oil stockpile for an emergency.

Price too high? The U.S. was buying 70,000 barrels a day for the Strategy Petroleum Reserve. That’s a tiny part of the 85,000,000 barrels a day the U.S. consumes, and yet Congress couldn’t see a reason to keep filling the SPR, which is a series of salt caverns near the Gulf of Mexico. The stockpile is full to 97 percent of its targeted size, so yes, it’s not nothing. It’s 560 million barrels of oil -- almost one week’s worth.

This week, Congress decided that, with oil selling for $120 a barrel, we should stop buying it for the SPR. The price might well go down soon, members of Congress say, but who knows? A price reflects the fact that about half the market is calculating the price will go down, and the other half believes the price will keep going up.

It’s unnerving to find oneself with a government that won’t prepare for a crisis and won’t save anything for the future. It’s as if they don’t believe there will be a future. That lack of faith may be a self-fulfilling.

Frank Warner

Democratic ‘investigators’: Culprit in stolen House vote isn’t the rule-breaker, but the rule itself

Here’s how the Democrats are investigating their leaders’ illegal reversal of the Aug. 2, 2007, vote of the U.S. House of Representatives.

They’re not.

Rep. Bill Delahunt, chairman of the Select Committee investigating the crimes of Reps. Steny Hoyer and Michael McNulty in the stolen vote scandal, opened yesterday’s hearing with this stunningly brazen statement:

“I do have a sense that -- when the dust settles -- that as we consider the events of the evening with the advantage of hindsight and a calm perspective, a culprit will emerge. A culprit in the form of a rule ... a rule that was enacted with noble intent, to curb other perceived abuses ... but a rule that is at best difficult and at worst the catalyst for the raw anger we observed on Aug. 2.”

Above the law. So no one should be angry about their breaking the law? Instead we should be angry with the law? It’s obvious this “investigation” is aimed at covering up how Hoyer and McNulty subverted House rules and the Constitution.

Delahunt clearly is intent on flushing democracy down the Democratic toilet. He is scheduled to continue the cover-up at today’s hearing.

In that vote last year, House leaders knew how long they had to vote on a motion amending an agriculture bill. The motion was to bar federal welfare benefits to illegal aliens. Like it or not, the motion passed 215-213. But Hoyer and McNulty, intent on defeating the amendment, illegally allowed a member to change his vote after the voting was done. That gave the Democrats a 214-214 deadlock, defeating the Republicans’ motion.

Hiding a lie. John Sullivan, the House parliamentarian, at the time told Hoyer and McNulty they were violating the law, but they went ahead and pretended the 215-213 vote was correct, embarrassing the parliamentarian and disgracing themselves.

Now Delahunt can count himself among the co-conspirators in the stolen vote scandal. He should resign immediately from the chairmanship of investigating committee. Find a real investigator.

Frank Warner

‘The Charge of the Heavy Brigade’

I was doing some historical research last night when I discovered that Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” also wrote “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade.”

No kidding.

Apparently, there were several phases to the October 1854 Battle of Balaclava, in which the British and French fought the Russians in the Ukraine, near the Crimean Sea. The first phase involved the British Heavy Brigade attacking the Russian cavalry.

The Heavy Brigade was commanded by Major General James Scarlett.

Redcoats like drops of blood. Tennyson’s poem on the Heavy Brigade is not so melodic as the “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Its weakness explains why the verses are little remembered. But here is one of the more interesting stanzas from “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava”:

Fell like a cannon-shot,
Burst like a thunderbolt,
Crash’d like a hurricane,
Broke thro’ the mass from below,
Drove thro’ the midst of the foe,
Plunged up and down, to and fro,
Rode flashing blow upon blow,
Brave Inniskillens and Greys
Whirling their sabres in circles of light!
And some of us, all in amaze,
Who were held for a while from the fight,
And were only standing at gaze,
When the dark-muffled Russian crowd
Folded its wings from the left and the right,
And roll’d them around like a cloud,–
O, mad for the charge and the battle were we,
When our own good redcoats sank from sight,
Like drops of blood in a dark-gray sea,
And we turn’d to each other, whispering, all dismay’d,
‘Lost are the gallant three hundred of Scarlett’s Brigade!’

In the second phase of the battle, the 93rd Highlanders regiment under Sir Colin Campbell slowed the Russians’ advance by forming a “thin red line” below the Causeway Heights.

Theirs not to reason why. The final phase was the ill-fated, but much celebrated Charge of the Light Brigade. Here’s part of Tennyson’s memorable account:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Much of 18th and 19th century history appears to be recorded in poetry. Much more than I suspected.

Frank Warner

Vatican: Our ‘extraterrestrial brothers’ may live in distant galaxies

The Vatican says it’s OK to believe E.T. is out there. But if an “extraterrestrial brother” does show up in a flying saucer, just make sure his Bible is not a cookbook.

Frank Warner

House investigates Democrats’ stolen vote of Aug. 2, 2007

Finally, House Democrats in Washington have begun investigating how they illegally reversed a vote taken on Aug. 2, 2007.

The Democrats didn't like the outcome of the vote, which opposed giving federal benefits to foreigners illegally in the United States, so they simply ignored it, changed all the rules, embarrassed the parliamentarian who objected to the crime, and let the voting go on until they had their way.

After the vote, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, lied about how he rigged the vote and insisted that the illegal vote remain in the record as official. To this day, the lie remains on the record.

Today, Hoyer in particular has a lot to answer for. He trampled the Constitution, and so far, he's gotten away with it.

Frank Warner

Organic cotton project helps farmers of India avoid suicide

In the Akola region of India, 5,000 debt-ridden farmers killed themselves in 2005 and 2006. Their deaths are part of India’s 11-year catastrophe of 10,000 or more farmer suicides a year.

The suicides -- most of them in four of India’s 28 states -- have been blamed on despair in the face of high-interest debts, international competition, droughts, and the high cost of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.

According to The Economic Times, the Arvind company went to Akola last February to test an organic cotton growing project that allows farmers to grow a money-making product without fertilizer or pesticides.

Simple success. Since February, the 33 villages involved in the project have reported no farmer suicides.

Arvind Ltd. is on to something. It’s called hope. India’s government should encourage more of it.

Frank Warner

Democratic failure: Mass suicides by farmers in India

For a number of reasons -- foreign competition, drought, inability to pay back high-interest loans -- over the last 10 years farmers in India have been committing suicide at a rate of 10,000 a year.

This has to be the most under-reported news story of the decade. How can this happen in a modern democracy? Something has interfered with free institutions.

I’d love to hear what R.J. Rummel has to say about this. He has observed that famine is almost impossible in a democracy. As he explains it, the problem of spreading hunger would be reported by a free press, and a democratic government would jump into action to prevent starvation at a massive scale.

But what about this long and deadly episode? It’s not a famine, but it’s horrible and huge. How does India’s democratic government manage to ignore it?

Frank Warner

Barack Obama was not born a Muslim, even if Muslims say he was

Much is being made today of a New York Times column, “President Apostate.”

Little Green Footballs even claims, “NY Times Admits Obama’s Muslim Birth.”

Well, it’s not exactly The New York Times editors or investigative reporters saying that Barack Obama was born a Muslim. It’s Edward N. Luttwak, fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writing in an op-ed piece.

No way out. Luttwak says:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

I’m not so sure that Muslims universally, or even most Muslims, agree with Luttwak on this. We’ll see. But even if they all agree with Luttwak’s argument, it’s irrelevant.

Most sane and democratic human beings would agree that no one is born a member of a religion without some formal ceremony, that no one remains a member of that religion without regular, voluntary practice, and that everyone has the right to leave one faith for another at any time.

Proper response. If boneheads want to claim Obama is a Muslim and then to threaten him for effectively renouncing Islam by becoming a Christian, our response as free and enlightened people cannot be to look the other way, or to shun him, but to do all we can to protect him and his rights.

Our right to be what we want to be is as safe as his right to be what he wants to be.

Frank Warner

CO2 level is at record high, but Earth may cool for a decade

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 387 parts per million, the highest level in 650,000 years, and it has been rising by 2.1 ppm each year since 2000, NOAA scientists report. (About 150 years ago, the Earth’s CO2 level was 280 parts per million.)

Certainly the world warmed up from 1998 until last year. The question now is, will that warming continue at the same rate forever, or even warm faster with more CO2?

If the trend of the last 10 years continues, and Earth grew that much hotter each decade, many of us on coastal cities soon will be frying in unbearable heat and chased by rising oceans into the suburban highlands.

Cooling interim? But other scientists are predicting the next decade will be cooler. If the CO2 level is rising, and if increasing CO2 causes global warming, why would the world cool over the next decade? Scientists in Germany say natural shifts in ocean circulation will do the cooling and then, after the next decade, we’ll be heating up again.

Global warming is here, but let’s have more debate on what is causing it, how long it is likely and what the risks are. I think we’ve heard only one side so far.

Frank Warner

Are fossil fuels too limited to change the world’€™s climate?

Here’€™s an argument by John Busby that many scientists are miscalculating the global warming threat because they assume we’€™ll be burning ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuels, when there might not be enough usable fossil fuels to do that much damage.

The claim is from someone who opposes expanding the use of nuclear power:

[P]erhaps the scale of global warming has been overstated by omitting to take into account fossil fuel depletion. A guide to the maximum amount of carbon dioxide released from the combustion of fossil fuels can be calculated, given that they are limited.