Politics and Patriotism

A Prime Minister speaking sense

2012-02-11T07:13:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Julia Gillard- Australia

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks..

Separately, Gillard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying she supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote:

'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT.. Take It Or Leave It.
I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians. '

'This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom'

'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society ... Learn the language!'

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.'

'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.'
'If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.'

West watches Syrians murdered

2012-02-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Contributor Don White has commented by email about the lack of military interest by the West to intervene in Syria, and more interestly that a resolution comdeming Syria was vetoed by Russia and China at the UN security council.

Just what is the West expected to do? Does the rest of the world, and the Arab world in particular, now expect the West to intervene as we have done as part of the Arab Spring? One can see why Syrians and others in the Arab world could have that expection. What is different between Libya and Syria?

The backing and support of Iran, China and Russia. Remember that China and Russia did not comment seriously about Nato's military action in Libya, because there was no geo-political interest for either country.

Syria is a different matter, and Iran has a geo-political interest as well, and their allies in China and Russia have the same interest. That is why both China and Russia vetoed the latest resolution in Syria put before the UN security council. This is global geo-politics at it best.

Because China and Russia have used their veto, The West will continue to voice it concerns at events in Syria and that is it. Cheap words.

Episode # 170: Stanley Weintraub's Pearl Harbor Christmas

2012-02-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

Stanley Weintraub is the author of more than sixty books during a career that has spanned five decades. His interest in history began at an age, when he collected military trading cards. His latest book is Pearl Harbor Christmas (Da Capo Press, Boston), ) which is a sober and sometimes wry look at the three weeks that immediately followed the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor (December 7^th, 1941).

Pearl Harbor Christmas is Weintraub’s fourth look at the holiday of Christmas in a time of war. During a C-SPAN interview in late 2011, he joked that it would be his last on this theme. This book was released on the 70^th anniversary observing the attack on U.S. forces in the Hawaiian islands on what FDR called “a date that shall live in infamy.”

The author isn’t bashful about his opinions, and he finds plenty of academic citations to back them up. The casual reader will be surprised in ways that should certainly provoke a lot of dinner table conversation. Especially when it comes to the historical giants that we so often presume to know, based on what we learned in high school.

Pearl Harbor Christmas is not a nostalgic look back. I’ve seen a few snarky book reviews from readers who thought that’s what hey were buying. Weintraub’s 70^th anniversary offering is a carefully gathered treasure trove of academic facts and documented observations that will serve future academicians well when they go looking for obscure knowledge relating to America’s role in the Second World War.

There is a real effort made here to create a contiguous portrait of a chaotic period. In my mind, I see a careful shutterbug picking and choosing the right moment to take pictures. Each of the ‘scenes’ we read don’t always transition fluidly like we expect form a movie, but hey do fit together like a puzzle which reveals a larger picture.

The author presents us with two major characters and a long list of cameos. Franklyn Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill cast long shadows over some of that era’s most famous and infamous. I was struck by the way that Churchill seems to steal the show. Talking with the author leads me to believe that he’s really quite partial to that British Prime Minister.

President Roosevelt may very well have seen the fight coming, but there wasn’t much he could do about it in the face of Isolationist opposition. Things were tough all over in late 1941. The national unemployment rate in America was roughly 9.9% and Europe was in shambles. Soviet Russia was flailing. The United Kingdom stood on the brink of starvation, even though their Royal Air Force had won the Battle of Britain.

News of the Japanese December 7^th attack reached Churchill. He privately rejoiced and quickly made plans to cross the u-boat infested Atlantic ocean to plot grand strategy with the American President. Churchill suspected that FDR might need some ‘encouragement’ to pursue a “Europe first” strategy.

He wasn’t wrong. Wientraub’s depiction makes a strong case for the assertion that FDR was under a lot of pressure to focus most of America’s might on Japan. The author enjoyed relating Churchill’s speech to the Senate on December 26^th. Most historians do agree that the Prime Minster’s dry wit and sober assertions did persuade U.S. politicians to back that “Europe first” strategy, to the hilt.

Documentation and depiction are used to show the reader some thing that are less than well known, such as General Macarthur’s miscalculations immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. One self serving detail is brought to light that surprised me. Did you know that Macarthur picked up a really sweet deal on mining stocks at the very last minute? You’ll have to read this book to learn more.

There’s more going on in Pearl Harbor Christmas than a recounting of troubled times. I like to think of it as a time capsule with contents that can be interpreted by future generations. During my interview, I asked the author about comparing Pearl Harbor to 9-11. Weintraub agreed that they were, at the very least, Seminoal moments for their respective generations.

It turns out that I have one thing in common with Stanley Weintraub. Wikipedia says that Stanley read National Grosgrain Magazine at a very young age. Can you still et Nat Geo as a hard copy magazine?

My parents used to ship me off to California every summer. My grandmother had started a subscription in the early 1950’s, and She kept all of them for her the children of her sons and daughters to read.

I spent many hot summer days in the back room of her mobile home. The temperature inside that little room was sweltering, but I didn’t care. I laid on the floor, surrounded by bulging book shelves, with a goose-neck lamp making my entire body slick with sweat.

I used a hand-held magnifying glass in those days to read from glossy color pages. The very idea that a “bigger world” out there, just waiting to be found, kept me up at night. I am, by temperament, a storyteller. Those informative periodicals filled my head with facts, figures, and concepts that made me want to write even more than I already did.

Pearl Harbor Christmas isn’t confined to Washington D.C. The author takes us around the world, quite suddenly at times, to give the reader some sense of what went on behind enemy lies while America was staggering to recover from the Japanese blow.

I didn’t have a chance to ask Weintraub about his encounters with National Geographic. There was never an opening in our hour long conversation. Even so, I detect their influence upon him in much the same as they affected me.

His inclusion of events in other parts of the world that were beyond American influence at that time suggests that his exposure to those magazine, and his recollections of what they contained, may have contributed to the scope and scale of Pearl Harbor Christmas.

Stanley Weintraub is the author of more than sixty books, including the soon to be released Final Victory, about FDR’s unprecedented fourth term in office.

Boston-based Da Capo Press, is a member of the Perseus Books Group, Publishers Weekly’s 2007 Publisher of the Year. Online at http://www.dacapopress.com/.

Episode #169: U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

2012-02-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

Martin Bain and Don White talk with Justin Oldham. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announces a change in American military withdrawal dates from Afghanistan. He says U.S. combat forces will be out by the end of 2013. The similarities to Vietnam are striking.

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Episode #168: Bread and Circuses

2012-02-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Is ignorance really so blissful? What can we learn from Super Bowl 46 and the American political process? The Romans would have called in Bread and Circuses. What should we call it today?

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Episode #167: Mitt Romney

2012-01-31T22:46:00.001-08:00

Mitt Romney wins the Florida Republican primary by fourteen points. What does this mean for the future of Super PACs? Has the American political process been corrupted beyond repair? How does Mitt Romney go on to defeat President Obama?

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Episode #166: Another Look at Newt Gingrich

2012-01-31T22:43:00.000-08:00

Justin Oldham and Luke Herbert discuss the personality traits of Newt Gingrich in a way that you've never heard before. What is it about this man that could get him compared to some of history's more volatile or mercurial leaders?

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Episode #165: Power & Responsibility

2012-01-31T22:37:00.001-08:00

Super PACs now dominate our political process, making many wonder if their votes still matter. What can we learn from the GOP contest in Florida?

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The US, Iran & Israel

2012-01-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

The issue of Arabs v. Israeli has come down to this: Israeli leaders say the Arabs must admit and or declare that Israel is a Jewish state.

I admit I do not know what the Netanyahu/Lieberman government means by the term, “A Jewish State.”

The Arabs have dismissed this demand as either redundant or as appropriate only for the government of Israel to so declare. One state cannot define another state.

So exactly what is it the Jews of Israel want which they describe by the phrase “a Jewish state?” In all honesty, I thought Israel was already a Jewish state. At least since the Armistice ending the 1948-49 War of Independence (as named by Israel).

The earlier indefensible boundaries established by the Armistice were later modified by the conquests of the Six Day War of 1967. The West Bank and Jerusalem were taken from Jordan, the Golan Heights were taken from Syria and the Gaza Strip was taken from Egypt.

Egypt was glad to be rid of Gaza. Jordan had no objection of having the West Bank and Jerusalem taken off their agenda. But Syria does not want to concede the fertile Golan area to Israel. Syria however, has done nothing I am aware of to enforce their claim. In fact, the current strife in Syria makes me think Israel and Assad of Syria have reached some kind of detente on the Golan. “You leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone!”

So just what is a Jewish state?

US, Iran, Israel and Strait of Hormuz

2012-01-30T20:08:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that Iran forms the eastern border of the Persian Gulf. From top to bottom. Over 600 miles. Let us not allow our HUBRIS ot overcome our REASON when it comes to "keeping the Straits open."

That too may be best described as a "bridge too far."

STORY World Remembers Holocaust 67 Years After Auschwitz Freed

On Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz -- a sprawling complex containing 48 labor and extermination camps where more than 1 million people were killed during the Holocaust.

In 2005, the U.N. Security Council designated Jan. 27 an international day of remembering the Holocaust's millions of victims. View some of the events and memorials in our slide show above.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/holocaust2012/index.html

The impact of this most horrific of the tragedies of the 20th century is still with us today. It is expressed by the seemingly endless combat in slow motion waged between Arabs and Jews in Israel and the West Bank (which for convenience I call ‘Old Palestine’).

Yes, I am aware of the Kulaks (the richer peasants) died by the millions in the early 1930s when Stalin forced the collectivization of their farms in the Ukraine. I am also aware of the Armenians slaughtered by Turkey in the 1920s. I am aware of the uncounted millions of Chinese who died in the 1950s when Mao dictated the “Great Leap Forward.” The great mass killings of humans in the 20th century.

Excepting the case of the Armenians, I argue there is no equivalency between the Kulaks, the Chinese and the Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. If we grant the Armenians like the Jews were the victims of state enforced genocide, we are left with the numerical fact that about 1.5 million Armenians were murdered whereas about 6 million Jews were murdered.

The single worst example of the plight of the Jews was in Poland which in 1939 was home to 3 million Jews, but in 1945, fewer than 10,000 could be found. The Germans ferreted out about 1.5 million Jews in Poland but the other 1.5 million Jews were delivered to the Germans by the “Christian” Poles.

HISTORY. Well before the First Century CE, Jews had settled in all the major cities of the Mediterranean Sea basin. Those Jews thrived as commercial traders. Jews had no quarrels with Romans. It was only following the failed Second Jewish Revolt aka the n bar Kokhba Revolt 132-136 CE, that the first instance of Christians labeling Jews as “Christ Killers” is noted; around 150-175 AD. CE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt

The Romans were penalizing all the Jews around the Empire. the Christianized Jews had not participated in the bar Kokhba revolt. The Christianized Jews wanted to distinguish themselves from the offending Jews, hence they claimed the non-Christian Jews were “Christ killers” and therefore they shared Roman’s animosity towards the “real” Jews. The ploy apparently worked,

European Passion Plays were going full tilt by the 15th century. For the most part those plays portrayed the Jews as the bad guys who wrongfully obtained the crucifixion of Jesus. These plays continue to this very day usually once a decade.

The last example of a passion type memorial I am familiar with is the movie by Mel Gibson, “The Passion of the Christ,” released in 2004 and about 2 hours in length. I certainly did not see it and would not. From what I have heard about it and the ads shown on tv, I would have rated it XXX. 3 X. Hard core porn. It is hard for me to imagine how it could not have been made without being overtly anti Semitic. We non-Jews are still too much into the "Christ Killer" mode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ

All of which brings me to the dilemma faced by Israeli Jews in 2012. Jews in Israel cannot depend on anyone including Americans for their survival and security. Hardly any American knows what I mean when I remind them of the MS St. Louis.

Sailing out of Hamburg, Germany, in 1939, with 937 Jewish refugees, the MS St Louis attempted to land in America but was refused permission by FDR. When its German captain turned the ship towards Havana, we called our "lackey" in Havana and told them not to let the ship dock. Cuba refused to let the ship land. Running out of fuel and food, the captain of necessity returned to Hamburg. And you know the rest.

Following World War 2, about 600,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were homeless in an unfriendly Europe. They were forced into concentration camps which we labeled as “Displaced Persons” camps to avoid the stigma given to such camps.

Kept in such camps for up to 3 years the US agreed to accept 28,000 Jews per year, provided those met our criteria. In the meantime, the victorious Allied Powers argued whether to send the Jews to Uganda or to Madagascar. As portrayed by Paul Newman in the movie “Exodus” the Jews finally took matters in their own hands and moved to Old Palestine, despite British efforts to block them.

Unfortunately, Arabs already living there owned about 85% of the land. Jewish settlers owned about 15%, having begun to buy land after the 1880s establishment of the Zionist Movement by Theodor Herzl. During and following the 1948-49 War of Independence (Jewish name) between 75,000 and 150,000 Arabs were driven out or left on their own, from the area the Armistice gave over to the Jews. It is the few survivors and mostly the descendants of those Arabs who insist on the Right or Return.

Finally, we come to Jerusalem. Although I do not subscribe to the Solomon’s Temple story - i.e., I consider the first 3 kings of Israel are frictional - I do not doubt that Jewish people worshiped on top of the Temple Mount for a long time. The only remains (of Herod’s Temple?) today are the Wailing Wall or West Wall. Aside: it is established the Wall was rebuilt in the 4th century and again in the 11th century. What we see today may or may not bear any resemblance to the wall there in the First Century CE. Of course in matters of religion, fancy trumps facts every time.

Then in the 7th century, the new Islamic faith captured Jerusalem and erected the al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The former being the 3rd most notable mosque in Islam, and the latter built over the same rock from which Mohammad supposedly flew off to Heaven and returned, and it being also the same rock where Abraham was about to offer Isaac as a child sacrifice. END of History.

Whether it was ever possible to reach a stable not to say peaceful settlement between 2 urgent peoples claiming the same space is problematic. Let’s be honest, based on straight forward property law the Arabs (Right of Return) have the law on their side. But as Machiavelli pointed out, it is might that makes right!

And therein lies the risk. If the more powerful ever becomes the less powerful, the other party will be ready to take over and usually with a vengeance.

So, the question is: should America go to war with Iran to protect Israel?

Looking back, I say it was an opportunity missed to make a full and “final” settlement at the end of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. We should have offered the dispossessed Arabs about 150 billion dollars - about (1 t. in 2012 dollars) - but cheap compared to what the anti Israel OPEC has cost us in gasoline prices over the years.

In fact, it would still be cheap if we would put up say, $1 t. for the Arabs provided they gave the State of Israel a quit-claim deed for each and every parcel of property. To avoid forever arguing over value with the Arabs I’d suggest we pay a flat $2.5 million for each property and that it to be divided as the claimants see fit.

WARNING. Otherwise playing this high stakes poker game with Iran is about the dumbest thing I can imagine. The CIA World Factbook says Iran has a GDP of $800 billion. $10,800 per person. (Our per person GDP is given at $47,200).

The US is given a GDP of $14.6 trillion. That happens to be 14,600 billion dollars compared to Iran’s 800 billion. Who but a fool sits at a poker game holding EIGHTEEN times as much money as his opponent?

OR, look at it this way. Iran is a net importer of about 1.5 mbd of refined product. Million barrels per day. The US is currently a net importer of both crude and refined oil totaling about 11 mbd! When oil approached $145 a bbl, in June, 2008, we were facing economic ruin. See historic oil price for crude oil here: http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Inflation_Adj_Oil_Prices_Chart_sm.jpg

Persian Gulf. This inland sea of some 95,000 sq miles (twice as large as Lake Superior) is connected to the Gulf of Oman in the east by the Strait of Hormuz. Its length is 610 miles, with Iran covering most of the northern coast and Saudi Arabia most of the southern coast. The Persian Gulf is about 34 miles wide at its narrowest, in the Strait of Hormuz. The waters are overall very shallow, with a maximum depth of 300 feet and an average depth of 165 feet.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Persian_Gulf_map.png/300px-Persian_Gulf_map.png

I again CALL for a Comprehensive Inclusive Conference of the Middle East, to include Egypt, Turkey, China, Russia, the EU and the United States as well as those nations physically located in the Middle East, which may include Afghanistan and Pakistan. If Pakistan is invited, then India must also be invited.

NY Times Editoral on Keystone XL & Tax the Rich

2012-01-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

NUMBER ONE
EDITORIAL “The Right Call on the Pipeline” by NY Times, Large Print Edition, Jan. 29, 2012

President Obama has properly rejected, at least for now, the Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Canada to the Gulf Coast. He rebuffed the demand of House Republicans that the controversial project be decided in haste under an election year deadline.

That foolish requirement that Mr. Obama issue a decision on the pipeline by February 21, 2012, cynically inserted into the payroll tax bill passed in December - could never be met given the need for a through environmental study before any judgment is made.

The president made the right call in accepting the recommendation of the State Department which has primary jurisdiction over the proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that would cross through ecologically sensitive areas in the Midwest.

The pipeline sponsor, TransCanada, could submit a proposal to build along another route, but that too, would require time for a comprehensive environmental review.

Republicans intent on scoring campaign points immediately repeated their fallacious cries that “tens of thousands” of jobs would be lost by not instantly approving the project. They made no mention of the risks inherent in the project: harm to the Canadian boreal forests and threats to water supplies in the Midwest. Bipartisan opposition to the project has notably been led by Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican.

The extraction and production of tar sands oil in the fields of northern Alberta would also cause far more greenhouse gas emissions than drilling for conventional crude. Lobbyist and the House Republicans have tried to sell the project as a redaction in America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But much of the pipeline oil that would be refined on the Gulf Coast would be destined for foreign export.

Far more important to the nation’s energy and environmental future is the development of renewable and alternative energy sources. This is the winning case that Mr. Obama should make to voters in rejecting the Republicans’ craven indulgence of Big Oil. Page 36.

NUMBER TWO
Op Ed NY Times Large Print edition for January 29, 2012.
Income Taxes at the Very Top by Paul Krugman

I’m actually enjoying watching Mitt Romney doing the Dance of Seven Veils - partly out of voyeurism but also because it is about time we had this discussion.

The theme of his dance is taxes- his own taxes. Although disclosure of tax returns is standard practice for candidates, Mr. Romney has never done so, and at first, he tried to stonewall the issue even in a presidential race. Then he said that he probably pays only “about 15 percent” of his income in taxes and he hinted he might release his 2011 return.

He will take pressure to release previous returns, too. And the public has a right to see the back years: By 2011 with the campaign looming Mr. Romney may have rearranged his portfolio to minimize awkward issues his accounts in the Cayman Islands or his use of the reviled “carried interest” tax break.

But the larger question is what Mitt Romney’s tax returns have to say about U. S. tax policy. Is there a good reason why the rich should bear a startlingly light tax burden?

If Mr. Romney is telling the truth about his taxes, he’s more or less typical of the very wealthy. Since 1992, the IRS has been releasing income and tax data for the 400 highest income filers. In 2008, the most recent year available, these filers paid 18.1% of their income in Federal income taxes; in 2007 they paid 16.6%. When you bear in mind the rich pay little in payroll (FICA) taxes or in state and local taxes, this implies that the top 400 faced lower tax [rates] than many workers.

The rich pay so little because most of their income takes the form of capital gains, which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%, far below that for wages and salaries. The question is whether capital gains - three-quarters of which go to the top1% of income distribution - warrant such restraint.

The gap between taxes on earned income and taxes on unearned income creates a perverse incentive to arrange one’s affairs to make income appear in the “right” category.

And the economic record certainly doesn’t support the notion that superlow taxes on the superrich are the key to prosperity. During the first Clinton term when the very rich paid much higher taxes that they do now the economy added 11.5 million jobs.

Mr. Romney’s tax dance is doing us all a service by highlighting the favors being showered on the upper-upper class. At a time when self-proclaimed serious people are telling us that the poor at the middle class must suffer in the name of fiscal probity, such low taxes on the very rich are indefensible.
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Iran, Nuclear Weapons and Hormuz

2012-01-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

Will Israel Attack Iran to Prevent Iran acquiring a Nuclear Weapon?

Key words
hegemony, n. The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.

hubris, n. Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.

The Middle East. See map link below. I disagree about 180 degrees with America’s foreign policy towards Iran. Here we sit; we won’t talk to Cuba because the Cubans seized American Sugar Refining Company’s property in 1959. American officialdom has little or no regard for the well being of ordinary Cubans. It is still more important to the Powers that Be to ignore Cuba. To teach the world a lesson: don’t mess with our property! But it looks to me only the teacher is in the classroom. Everyone else is going about his business.

We won’t talk to Iran. We conveniently overlook the cause behind the 1978 seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Our intervention in Iran in 1953, to overthrow the first democratic government and to restore the autocratic shah who was ‘our man’ in Tehran. We are unwilling or incapable of apologizing for unleashing 25 years of the murderous SAVAK secret police on the Iranian people, as if it all never happened.

We boast to be the last super power standing, yet have no embassy in Tehran or Havana. We would rather pay the Swiss to “represent” us in those places. And you know the Swiss don’t work for nothing. By the bye, just who gains in such an arrangement? As an American citizen I do not feel any the better for this arrangement. Cuba now 53 years on and Iran now 34 years on. Wow! Will we ever learn?

Here follows an excerpt from the New York Times for January 25, 2012. The story tries to get the feeling of the Israeli political establishment on what Iran has obtained in the way of nuclear capability and what risk Iran poses to Israel. It does appear the latest round of sanctions to be imposed - blocking Iran’s central bank from oil trading - and threatening to stop Iran’s export of oil - is having an effect. I personally hope Iran is not going to respond in kind. FYI, it may not prove necessary to actually sink a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, to frighten the owners of half billion dollar tankers from running the risk of such a loss. They may just lay outside the strait and “wait and see.” If it takes 6-8 weeks from wellhead to gas pump, that will give us a brief moment to “get this argument straight.” The US shows TOO much hubris in its effort to exercise hegemony far from home. Don

FROM THE STORY. When I mentioned to Barak the opinion voiced by the former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi - that the Iranian threat was not as imminent as he and Netanyahu have suggested and that a military strike would be catastrophic (and that they, Barak and Netanyahu, were cynically looking to score populist points at the expense of national security), Barak reacted with uncharacteristic anger. He and Netanyahu, he said, are responsible “in a very direct and concrete way for the existence of the State of Israel - indeed, for the future of the Jewish people.” [METHINKS THIS PERSON THINKS HIMSELF TOO IMPORTANT. HE IS NOT THE OFT PROMISED MESSIAH. HE STILL PUTS HIS PANTS ON ONE LEG AT A TIME. THE JEWISH PEOPLE SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST. THEY WILL SURVIVE IRAN. DW]

As for the top-ranking military personnel with whom I’ve spoken who argued that an attack on Iran was either unnecessary or would be ineffective at this stage, Barak said: “It’s good to have diversity in thinking and for people to voice their opinions. But at the end of the day, when the military command looks up, it sees us - the minister of defense and the prime minister. When we look up, we see nothing but the sky above us.”

Netanyahu and Barak have both repeatedly stressed that a decision has not yet been made and that a deadline for making one has not been set. As we spoke, however, Barak laid out three categories of questions, which he characterized as “Israel’s ability to act,” “international legitimacy” and “necessity,” all of which require affirmative responses before a decision is made to attack:

1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

For the first time since the Iranian nuclear threat emerged in the mid-1990s, at least some of Israel’s most powerful leaders believe that the response to all of these questions is yes.

At various points in our conversation, Barak underscored that if Israel or the rest of the world waits too long, the moment will arrive - sometime in the coming year, he says - beyond which it will no longer be possible to act. “It will not be possible to use any surgical means to bring about a significant delay,” he said. “Not for us, not for Europe and not for the United States. After that, the question will remain very important, but it will become purely theoretical and pass out of our hands - the statesmen and decision-makers - and into yours - the journalists and historians.”

Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s vice prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, is the third leg in the triangle supporting a very aggressive stance toward Iran. When I spoke with him on the afternoon of Jan. 18, the same day that Barak stated publicly that any decision to make a pre-emptive strike [on Iran] was “very far off,” Ya’alon, while reiterating that an attack was the last option, took pains to emphasize Israel’s resolve.

Ya’alon said, “Our policy is that in one way or another, Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped,” he said. “It is a matter of months before the Iranians will be able to attain military nuclear capability. Israel should not have to lead the struggle against Iran. It is up to the international community to confront the regime, but nevertheless Israel has to be ready to defend itself. And we are prepared to defend ourselves,” Ya’alon went on, “in any way and anywhere that we see fit.”

For years, Israeli and American intelligence agencies assumed that if Iran were to gain the ability to build a bomb, it would be a result of its relationship with Russia, which was building a nuclear reactor for Iran at a site called Bushehr and had assisted the Iranians in their missile-development program.

Throughout the 1990s, Israel and the United States devoted vast resources to weakening the nuclear links between Russia and Iran and applied enormous diplomatic pressure on Russia to cut off the relationship. Ultimately, the Russians made it clear that they would do all in their power to slow down construction on the Iranian reactor and assured Israel that even if it was completed (which it later was), it wouldn’t be possible to produce the refined uranium or plutonium needed for nuclear weapons there.

But the Russians weren’t Iran’s only connection to nuclear power. Robert Einhorn, currently special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control at the U. S. State Department, told me in 2003: “Both countries invested huge efforts, overt and covert, in order to find out what exactly Russia was supplying to Iran and in attempts to prevent that supply. We were convinced that this was the main path taken by Iran to secure the Doomsday* weapon. But only very belatedly did it emerge that if Iran one day achieved its goal, it will not be by the Russian path at all. It made its great advance toward nuclear weaponry on another path altogether - a secret one - that was concealed from our sight.”

That secret path was Iran’s clandestine relationship with the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb. Cooperation between American, British and Israeli intelligence services led to the discovery in 2002 of a uranium-enrichment facility built with Khan’s assistance at Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran. When this information was verified, a great outcry erupted throughout Israel’s military and intelligence establishment, with some demanding that the site be bombed at once.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not authorize an attack. Instead, information about the site was leaked to a dissident Iranian group, the National Resistance Council, which announced that Iran was building a centrifuge installation at Natanz. This led to a visit to the site by a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who were surprised to discover that Iran was well on its way to completing the nuclear fuel cycle - the series of processes for the enrichment of uranium that is a critical stage in producing a bomb.

Despite the discovery of the Natanz site and the international sanctions that followed, Israeli intelligence reported in early 2004 that Iran’s nuclear project was still progressing. Sharon assigned responsibility for putting an end to the program to Meir Dagan, then head of the Mossad. The two knew each other from the 1970s, when Sharon was the general in charge of the southern command of the Israel Defense Forces and Dagan was a young officer whom he put in charge of a top-secret unit whose purpose was the systematic assassination of Palestine Liberation Organization militiamen in the Gaza Strip. As Sharon put it at the time: “Dagan’s specialty is separating an Arab from his head.”

Sharon granted the Mossad virtually unlimited funds and powers to “stop the Iranian bomb.” As one recently retired senior Mossad officer told me: “There was no operation, there was no project that was not carried out because of a lack of funding.”

At a number of secret meetings with U.S. officials between 2004 and 2007, Dagan detailed a “five-front strategy” that involved political pressure, covert measures, counter proliferation, sanctions and regime change. In a secret cable sent to the U.S. in August 2007, he stressed that “the United States, Israel and like-minded countries must push on all five fronts in a simultaneous joint effort.” He went on to say: “Some are bearing fruit now. Others” - and here he emphasized efforts to encourage ethnic resistance in Iran - “will bear fruit in due time, especially if they are given more attention.”

From 2005 onward, various intelligence arms and the U.S. Treasury, working together with the Mossad, began a worldwide campaign to locate and sabotage the financial underpinnings of the Iranian nuclear project. The Mossad provided the Americans with information on Iranian firms that served as fronts for the country’s nuclear acquisitions and financial institutions that assisted in the financing of terrorist organizations, as well as a banking front established by Iran and Syria to handle all of these activities.

The Americans subsequently tried to persuade several large corporations and European governments - especially France, Germany and Britain - to cease cooperating with Iranian financial institutions, and last month the Senate approved sanctions against Iran’s central bank. END OF EXCERPT FROM NY TIMES

Here is a map of the Middle East as defined by geographers and not as by historians or 2012 politicians. Such strong players as Egypt, China and Russia are not included. The “bull in the china-shop” is the United States. From Tehran to W-DC is 6,340 miles but it’s only 3,488 miles to Beijing. Nevertheless I like a map to help me keep the relative positions of the countries in perspective. DW
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/me.htm

*Doomsday bomb. Around the time of the Cuba Missile Crisis - 1962 - some die-hard’s over here speculated what would we do as a nation, if the Soviets managed to make a first strike on us and effectively put our retaliatory force out of action. It was suggested we should construct a large hydrogen bomb - 25-50 megatons - and wrap it in 10 tons of cobalt. Located high in the Rockies, the ‘last man standing’ would push the button and VIOLA! there would be enough radio active waste material from the explosion to kill all life on earth!

A similar “final” event was threatened by Israel against Egypt in 1973 Yom Kippur War, if the Egyptians should over-run Israel. It was called the “Sampson” option, apparently referring to the OT story of Sampson and Delilah when a blinded Sampson pulled down the temple. Israel said it would blow the Aswan High Dam, which would send Lake Nasser up the Nile and drown 75% of all Egyptians. 40 million people.
DW

When Should Military Retire?

2012-01-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

Something important in the Armed Forces has completely skipped my attention in the past few years. I don’t know when this happened, but I do know that it was after the Armed Forces were made all voluntary.

It is this: General rank officers - includes Navy admirals - have had 6 pay bogies added to their time in service pay rates, taking them out to 40 years from the former 30 years.

Note: a pay ‘bogy’ is the slang term for the every-2-years increase in base pay. There is also one bogy at the end of three years service, meant to encourage re-enlistments. In other pay grades there is no pay raise until a certain amount of time has passed. A person promoted to pay grade E9 gets no increase in basic pay until he (or she) has finished 10 years of service. End.

General (and Navy Flag) officers are now paid for service “over 40 years” and this is up from the previous 30 years. This is not good.

Before the current 40 years service allowed for the upper leadership of the Armed Forces, 30 years and out was the unwritten rule. Aside: Officers are promoted periodically from a list kept by the Bureau of Personnel by the Navy and its equivalent by the Air Force and Army. (The MC was once part of the Navy). If any officer was “passed over” 2 times, that was his signal to resign. He had reached his peak and would never be considered for promotion again. This usually happens at the O-3 to O-4 promotion. About 8 or 10 years in. This was a quiet way to rid the service of people not well suited for that career.

Today’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is an “over 40" years of service person. Look back. He began his career at West Point in 1968. Two generations ago. If we ever needed an example when it’s better for the institution for “old timers” however much revered, to quit the field for the next generation, look at Coach Joe “JoPa” Paterno who stayed “too long.” This same theory applies to the other institutions of our country. Move over, make room, get out!

I contend the person sending men (and women) into high risk assignments ought to be closer to the generation taking the risks than a man with 40 years service behind him. He is too likely to become jaded to the risks involved, become too casual to send the young men and women out and too remote. In other words, let's have people closer to the age of those taking the risks making the plans that put those at risk.

FYI here are sample pay scales of ranks I selected to be representative of the Armed Forces.

Officer pay grade O-1, entry level Ensign in the Navy, and Second Lieutenant in the other 3 services, the initial pay rate per month is $2,828. With over 3 years service, that is raised to $3,558.

The two star pay grade O-8 is “Rear Admiral, upper half” in the Navy, and Major General in the other branches. Base pay is $9,683 per month. Over 10 years, more common in real life, $10,210. Top pay is reached at the “over 34 years” of service at $13,959 per month.

Four stars, “full” generals, Admirals in the Navy, are paid $16,620 with over 28 years of service. Before my complaint of adding pay scales out to 40 years of service, this was the time when it was expected all officers would retire. Today, the O-10 at “over 40" receives $19,239 per month. Note: The Executive Branch Pay Limit act puts O-10s in Level II, limits military pay to $14,975 per month regardless of rank, except the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is set at $20,587.

Military retirement is still calculated the same way as when I was a member. 2.5% per year of service, minimum to retire, 20 years, maximum pay for 30 years. 50% to 75% to make it simple. Note the highest ranking general officers with a salary top limited at $14,975 would still receive his 75% calculated on BASE pay, $19,239, which is $14,429. A pay cut of but $545 per month or $6,500 a year when retiring.

Note how the pay progresses for the upper 4 ranks of officers at the 40 year pay level stack up: O-7, $12,021; O-8, $13,939; O-9, $16,075; O-10, $19,239. All per month, of course. Those ranks enjoy so many perks you and I would not even dare to ask for, such as riding FREE in any one of the 100s of VIP planes - Airstream - Gulf 7 - the Air Force operates to haul ‘top dogs’ around the world. It would be nothing for a retired admiral at The Landings to fly out to Vegas for a round of golf, stay over in luxury suite at nearby Ellis AFB then fly back the next day to The Landings, all at taxpayer expanse. And with chaffered staff cars at both ends of the trip. Hmm?

Lets look at the enlisted ranks and warrant officers. Note: old time warrant officers were super performing enlisted men, often a first sergeant or a sergeant major or a chief petty officer. Today the Army and MC make helicopter pilots warrant officers. The AF has none. I do not know about the Navy.

The entry level, E1, private or seaman recruit in the Navy, $1,671 per month. But, pay grade E5, the first rank called “NCO” or non-commissioned officer. Aside: In the UCMJ - Uniform Code of Military Justice - all enlisted men are cautioned to obey any lawful order from an NCO or a commissioned officer. The key word being “lawful.” With over 3 years service, the E5 pay is set at $2,487 per month. The highest enlisted rank, colloquially called super sergeants, an E9 with over 10 years gets $4,708.

W-1, called Warrant Officer, Junior Grade, WOJG, is paid $3,141 per month with over 3 years. Chief Warrant Officer, CWO, at W4 is paid $4,312 per month with over 6 years.

Military pay includes over 70 separate types of pay and allowances. Military allowances include such things as extra money for housing, food, clothing, family separation and dislocation.

If the place of your duty assignment does not have an “open mess” for enlisted persons, then an additional tax free subsistence allowance of $348 a month is paid. For officers the allowance is only $239 a month, the only time in the military services when an EM gets better than any officer. Note: This is due in part to this historic officers paying for their own meals as they consume them, and their base pay taking that expense item into account. End.

The other tax free allowance paid to Armed Forces persons is the BAH - Basic Allowance for Housing - which I have taken the amount when there are dependants which is about 50% more than without dependents. Note also that BAH is calculated state by state, city by city.

I used Jacksonville, FL05, for my numbers and for comparison, I included Miami FL61, in parenthesis. E5, $1,257 ($1,863). E9, $1,704 ($2,301) . W4, $1,731 ($2,301). O-7, $2,112 ($2,922).
http://www.military.com/benefits/content/military-pay/charts/historical-military-pay-rates.html?comp=7000022859188&rank=2

Oh, there is also a COLA for high rent cities. The Armed Forces person serving in Miami gets $46 a month extra for the higher cost of living. http://images.military.com/media/benefits/pdf/bah-2012-with.pdf

More On Iran, Straits of Hormuz & Persian Gulf Oil

2012-01-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

MORE On a High Stakes Poker Game Playing out at the Straits of Hormuz which connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean

As a detached - but not disinterested - observer I am horrified by the easy way those who justifiably hold fears for their country and those who truly want war, any war, to happen and happen quickly, are fanning the coals of what could turn out to be a very large conflagration!

Add those dangerous elements to the mediocre capacity of the people in power today who have the "hammer and nail tool box" mentality, and we may well get ourselves into a shooting and killing war the consequences of which no one bothers to even discuss. It's like replaying an old nightmare with Rumsfeld and Cheney still in charge!

Here's the way I see it. America, which sometimes can't do right for doing wrong, is about to do a re-run of the knee jerk reaction to the Nine Eleven Event. For a moment we had the option to label that as a crime and call the FBI, or to name it an act of war and send in the soldiers! Now, $7 trillion in borrowed money later, and 6,000 KIA on our side, and maybe 200,000 on the other sides, the world is not safer nor are we apparently any the wiser. The Iranians can't get over 1953 (our overthrow of Iran’s democratic government), just as we can't get over 1959 (losing Cuba to Castro). The Iranians are not the only blockheads in the world.

We gave up our credibility over nuclear proliferation when we probably supplied the plutonium to Israel, after the Six Day War of 1967, to make their own nuclear bombs. As several authors have pointed out in recent years, having nuclear weapons does not make a country safe or safer as in fact, it is more likely to do just the opposite because with nuclear weapons a country may think it can get away with things it otherwise would not do. It is all too tempting to self delude because of the imagined capability. Negotiating out of serious situations is not so crucial when you as a country can bomb its way out?

Consider this. Eighty-percent of Iranians live outside the major cities. They still live a life as they did in the 1950s. You cannot shut off their electricity because they do not have electrify. For the most part they live in villages and have dirt roads between theirs and the next village over. My point is, sanctions and bombs do not change their way of life. Without actually planning that, this coincidence means they are nearly invulnerable to outside forces.

We, on the other hand, are really at the mercy of the price of oil. We escaped the most recent event - the short shut down of Libyan oil - by drawing about 30 million barrels of oil out of out Strategic Reserve. This stopped the spiking price of crude oil as set by the speculators (over which we seem to lack any control whatsoever).

Everybody knows that oil is fungible. That is, one barrel is like the next barrel. (That’s not exactly true but it’s close enough to make it seem to be true). That means that even though we get only 2 mbd - million barrels a day - from the Persian Gulf out of the 19-20 mbd we consume, we could replace that from the Strategic Reserve.

But that leaves Japan and South Korea short on oil. We cannot undertake to supply those countries. The price of crude would skyrocket if the Strait of Hormuz was closed. The worldwide 80 mbd craving for crude oil, deprived of (20%) 15-16 mbd from the Persian Gulf, would make the price of oil so high you would not want to guess.

It is easy to see the Congress being asked by the president to declare a state of economic war! We would have no alternative but to go to fixed prices and to ration gasoline at the pump. How’s 20 gallons per month, per vehicle, at $5 a gallon sound? That would work for 6-8 weeks but then the pressure would be on to "let the market set the price!"

As I often ask those around me who complain about a gridlocked Washington, "How much money did you send to your congressman last year?" Your influence is in a direct proportion to the amount of money you sent! Thanks for your time. Don

Excerpted from the story. In the audience at that lecture was Rafi Eitan, 85, one of the Mossad’s most seasoned and well-known operatives. Eitan agreed with Dagan [former Mossad chief] that Israel lacked the capabilities to attack Iran. When I spoke with him in October, Eitan said: “As early as 2006 (when Eitan was a senior cabinet minister), I told the cabinet that Israel couldn't afford to attack Iran.

First of all, because the home front is not ready. I told anyone who wanted and still wants to attack, they should just think about two missiles a day, no more than that, falling on Tel Aviv. And what will you do then?

Beyond that, our attack won’t cause them significant damage. I was told during one of the discussions that it would delay them for three years, and I replied, ‘Not even three months.’ After all, they have scattered their facilities all over the country and under the ground. ‘What harm can you do to them?’ I asked. ‘You’ll manage to hit the entrances, and they’ll have them rebuilt in three months.’ ”

Asked if it was possible to stop a determined Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Eitan replied: “No. In the end they'll get their bomb." The way to fight it is by changing the regime there. This is where we have really failed. We should encourage the opposition groups who turn to us over and over to ask for our help, and instead, we send them away empty-handed.”

Israeli law stipulates that only the Knesset’s 14 members making up the security cabinet have the authority to make decisions on whether to go to war. The cabinet has not yet been asked to vote, but the ministers might, under pressure from [PM] Netanyahu and [Defense Minister] Barak, to answer these crucial questions about Iran in the affirmative: that these coming months are indeed the last opportunity to attack before Iran enters the “immunity zone:” that the broad international agreement on Iran’s intentions and the failure of sanctions to stop the project have created sufficient legitimacy for an attack; and that Israel does indeed possess the capabilities to cause significant damage to the Iranian project.

In recent weeks, Israelis have obsessively questioned whether Netanyahu and Barak are really planning a strike or if they are just putting up a front to pressure Europe and the U.S. to impose tougher sanctions. I believe that both of these things are true, but as a senior intelligence officer who often participates in meetings with Israel’s top leadership told me, the only individuals who really know their intentions are, of course, Netanyahu and Barak, and recent statements that no decision is imminent must surely be taken into account.

After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that.

Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear - rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive - and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves. END

By Ronen Bergman, an analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He is the author of ‘‘The Secret War With Iran.”

Who Said If "You Can't Stand the Heat . . ?"

2012-01-25T14:02:00.000-08:00

The issue of global warming has passed the threshold. We need to take it up seriously before we pass the tipping point, a point of no return. It is too important to continue to ignore. Look at this book: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas
336 pp National Geographic (2008) ISBN-10: 1426203853. paperback $11.06 + s&h from Amazon dot com.

The author Mark Lynas, is a journalist, a campaigner, and a broadcast commentator on environmental issues. He is the author of “High Tide: News from a Warming World.” He is a contributor to periodicals including New Statesman, Ecologist, Granta, and Geographical, and to the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the United Kingdom.

Review From School Library Journal
Mark Lynas has gathered global-warming information from an array of authoritative scientists: geologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, climate scientists, and paleo-climatologists, as well as "major scientific projections" from computer modelers.

He divides his findings into six main chapters representing the consequences of a one- to six-degree shift in temperature rise. More factual than hysterical and using accessible language, the author portrays a sobering, but broad and fascinating, view of the problem. He discusses not only the environmental consequences of melting icecaps, ocean warming, coral reef bleaching, CO2 emissions, deforestation, and severe weather, but also cultural and economic reverberations-the result of population shifts, animal migrations, and societal collapse.

Through computer-modeling simulations he looks back into the past (the Pliocene, the Mayan civilization) and projects into the future for CO2 comparisons. His premise: the problem is now at global scale and will not just impact the disappearance of one group alone as it did the Maya.

Claiming that solutions must be political, and that it is too late for quick fixes using renewable energy sources or technology, he concludes with some cautionary possible solutions: relocalization of goods and services, less consumption, global-scale carbon rationing, and a "2 degree increase target."

Anyone studying climate change will find this a helpful reference as much current research has been compiled and interpreted within one resource. Berkeley Public Library, CA

In some ways, a return to Eocene norms seems Eden-like. Lush forests grew at the poles, temperate zones became subtropical, and fascinating species spread across the globe - but the original Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) took place over approximately 10,000 years, giving plants and animals time to migrate and adapt to new circumstances. We don't have 100 centuries - only decades - a pace of warming far too rapid for meaningful adaptation by natural ecosystems or human civilization. Humanity will become an endangered species.

Channeling Dante as our guide to a 6̊ C increase is warranted as earth descends into the Sixth Circle of Hell. Welcome to 'Cretaceous Park' - 65 million years ago - (mya) without the tourist attraction dinosaurs as a best-case scenario, or the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) extinction event (251 mya, aka the Great Dying) - when life itself nearly died - as the worst-case outcome. Lynas uses outside documents to show how rampant greenhouse warming triggered anoxic oceans to release massive amounts of poisonous hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg gas) into the atmosphere. Oxygen levels plunged to 15% (contemporary levels are 21%) and many organisms (terrestrial and oceanic) literally suffocated. It gets worse, not better. From a review by Carl Flygare, an independent reviewer at Amazon dot com.

YOUR OPINION IS INVITED

Episode #164: Charles Bracelen Flood

2012-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Justin Oldham talks with award winning author and historian "Charlie" Flood about his latest book, Grant's Last Victory. (Da Capo Press, Boston, 2011). It's about America's 18th President, Ulysses Grant, who raced against time to complete his memoirs before dying of cancer. This is more than a documentation of one man's death. It's a closer look at what it means to do "great things."

Author’s web site:http://www.charlesbracelenflood.com/

=======================

Charles Bracelen Flood is a Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) with a long list of publishing credits that demonstrate his life-long passion for History, which I deliberately spell here with a capitol ‘h’ to underscore the point.

Flood’s latest book, Grant’s Last Victory (Da Capo Press, 2011), is written in a style that make you feel like “Charlie” is talking to you about something that matters to him. Anyone who expects a dry treatment of ‘the facts’ will be in for a surprise. This is a frank discussion that makes every use of hindsight reach a conclusion.

Grant’s Last Victory is chronicle of courage that was hard for me to ignore. It’s about Ulysses S. Grant, America’s 18^th President, and the last year of his life, which was filled with more complications than most of us know about.

I appreciate what Flood has done in Grant’s Last Victory. The title of this book is more significant than the casual reader will first realize. President Grant’s last “victory” was military or political. It was a race against time to finish his personal memoirs before he died of throat and mouth cancer.

I took a degree in History because it “spoke” to me in ways that no other academic pursuit did at that point in my life. My father used to say that how we die says a lot about how we lived. For that reason, I’ve been fascinated by “how” people of historical note meet their end.

Flood’s book relates in painful detail how President Grant was financially swindled in 1884 by unscrupulous Wall Street bankers. It’s easy for the uninformed to laugh at this, only because they are uninformed. The fleecing of Grant could just as easily happen today. It has happened to many among us who not so well known.

As Flood relates, the year 1885 begins on a sour note for “U.S.” Grant. His terminal medical diagnosis, when it comes, did not break him. Grant did what any soldier worth his salt would do. He assessed his situation, formed a plan, and carried it out.

Grant realized he could provide for his family, if he were somehow able to live long enough to finish a memoir that a publisher would dare to print. As a writer, I appreciate the kind of gamble that Grant was willing to take. Even today, many of us write but few of us are lucky enough to be published.

Flood’s account of Grant’s struggle digs deep. The author does more than tell us that Grant succeeded in writing his memoirs just a few days before he died. He does more than tell us that Grant’s publisher was the legendary Mark Twain. Flood documents what Ulysses Hiram Grant went through, before he put his pen down for the very last time.

As I send before, I’m fascinated by how our leaders die. What they do in their final days can and should be used as a barometer to assess how they lived. Grant made his fair share of mistakes while he was in political office. There is no disputing that.

Grant’s memoir, as described by Charlie Flood, was written by a man who knew he was going to die. That cold hard immovable fact gave him the freedom and peace of mind to ignore the critics of his day to speak from the heart.

I learned a lot from Grant’s Last Victory. Flood’s reason and documentation helped me put several misconceptions about Ulysses Grant out of my mind. There’s a part of me that is now jealous of that dead president because he’s done so much with just one book. Then again, I haven’t save a nation from anarchy so I shouldn’t whine too loudly.

It’s been said that funerals aren’t for the dead. They are a form of closure for the living. Flood’s writing takes us through Grant’s funeral and the period of national mourning after the fact. The conclusions that Flood makes about Grant’s legacy are hard to deny.

It’s my opinion that Grant died as he lived. Honestly. I read excerpts from Grant’s memoir many years ago in college, as part of my degree studies. With humility, I confess that all I really did was regurgitate what they told me so I could get my grade.

After my exposure to Charlie Flood and Grant’s Last Victory, I now feel compelled to find another copy of Grant’s autobiography. The historian in me is curious. The writer in me wants to study his technique.

Charles Bracelen Flood is the author of twelve previous books, including the bestselling Lee: The Last Years. For more information, go to http://www.charlesbracelenflood.com/.

Author’s web site:

http://www.charlesbracelenflood.com/

Boston-based Da Capo Press, is a member of the Perseus Books Group, Publishers Weekly’s 2007 Publisher of the Year. Online at http://www.dacapopress.com/.

Episode #163: Is Newt Gingrich Like Hitler?

2012-01-24T23:40:00.001-08:00

Is there any chance that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will be compared to Adolf Hitler? Bear in mind that Supreme Court sanctioned Super PACs have a lot of leeway. Would they really be so brazen as to smear a candidate for high office in this way?

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Episode #162: Scottish Independence

2012-01-24T23:36:00.001-08:00

Martin Bain talks with Luke Herbert about the continuing drive toward Scottish Independence. He asks a rather tickling question. Is the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) committing treason under current U.K. law? Think about this in the context of America's Abraham Lincoln, and his decision to "preserve the union".

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Episode #161: The Gathering Storm

2012-01-24T23:32:00.000-08:00

War looms large as a possibility in the Straits of Hormuz, Europe's debt crisis worsens (again), and the 2012 GOP Presidential race reveals many flaws in the American social fabric. How much of this is human error, and how much is history repeating itself?

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The Epiphany of Newt Gingrich

2012-01-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

Voters in South Carolina went to the polls on Saturday, January 21^st of 2012, to cast their ballots in the Presidential primary. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich won by a wide margin. Former Governor Mitt Romney came in a distant second.

I followed the returns this evening, and I saw something that’s worth commenting on. Liberal and conservative mainstream media outlets were genuinely surprised by this turn of events, as were the candidates themselves.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that we’ve been casually and sometimes flippantly observing the anger of the American people. Politics & Patriotism has been ‘on the air’ since January of 2011, and we’ve seen this rage grow ever since. Some of our reporting has been a little cheesy, but we’ve been we’ve seen what the candidates themselves and media have missed…until…now.

South Carolina is a microcosm of the larger United States. The wants and needs of that State are shared by just about every other State in the Union, with very few exceptions. The results of this evening’s vote aren’t hard to understand, if you struggle each month to make ends meet.

The mainstream media is a lot of things. Among its greatest sins, we can annotate the fact that its pundits and pollsters are trying harder to push and agenda than they are to actually find the facts. This one failing has helped to blind the candidates to what’s really going on.

The candidates themselves, who have relied too much on media research to fine tune their message, has also tried to hard to push an agenda without ever stopping to ask if that’s really what the rest of us wanted in the first place.

All of the GOP candidates have stumbled around for the last fourteen months trying to find the right combination of themes and memes to “wow” us in to voting for them. Some have changed tactics more than once. A few have thrown caution to the wind, hoping that random factors could somehow save their candidacies.

Tonight, we saw the accidental victory of Newt Gingrich. He and he alone stumbled in to the right recipe for success…and…he knows it. I watched him make his ‘acceptance’ speech after the primary had been called in his favor. The look on his face and the tremble in his words was “priceless.”

Conservatives everywhere are now tempted to rejoice. They shouldn’t. It’s great that one of the candidates finally found us, but we need to look before we leap. Let’s avoid the buyer’s remorse that often sets in after hasty unconventional purchases.

Episode #160: Who Opposes Obama?

2012-01-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

Don White and Justin Oldham look at the GOP Presidential race as the candidates prepare for the next primary vote, in South Carolina. Social conservatives are facing off against fiscal conservatives for a fight of epic proportions. Can the winner of this contest actually be more "electable" than Barack Obama?

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Episode #159: The Cost of Agreement

2012-01-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

Costa Concordia, the pride of Mediterranean shipping, has gone down just 150 yards off the coast of central Italy. Is this a metaphor for larger problems facing us today? American leaders shouldn't laugh until they can steer their own Ship of State.

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Episode 158: Will There Be War with Iran?

2012-01-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

Western leaders don't want Iran to acquire nuclear bomb technology. Several U.S. Presidents have been quite adamant in their opposition to a nuclear Iran. What propels this conflict and what are the possible outcomes?

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Episode 157: Youth Unemployment

2012-01-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

Martin Bain and Luke Herbert talk about the problem of youth unemployment in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and around the world. It's a growing problem that shows every sign of getting worse. How does a young person survive in today's downturned economy?

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Frank Bainimarama would be Chinese puppet

2012-01-16T00:23:00.000-08:00

Frank Bainimarama remaining in power is contrary to New Zealand interests. A would be Chinese puppet in power in Fiji will led to our future enemy, setting up a naval base there. The Kiwi voting public has allowed the NZDF to become a glorified UN police force. Our politicians have ensured that without Australian military support we could not hope to affect regime change in Fiji. The Fijian military never succumbed to becoming a purely politically correct BS peacekeeping force. In the 80's the Fijian army provided troops to Lebanon who were respected by both the militias Israeli troops. NZ UN police force is fine for East Timor . But for it is useless for the wider world or during war time conditions. Countless blood will be shed the next time a war comes to our door step, due to our political leaders being so retarded , when it comes to defence matters. Unless the NZDF gains the logistical and combat capability to effect regime change in Fiji soon it will be to late.

China is buying influence in Fiji with foreign aid. If the Australians don't want to use the military option against Fiji that is there choice. Fiji is in New Zealand backyard. If we don't start tidying up our backyard the weeds will swallow us whole. Once a naval war breaks out in the Pacific the game is already up. BTW has it occurred to anyone that a RNZAF or RNZN air arm could have come in handy if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz?

Episode #156: The Perception of Power

2012-01-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

What does "politics" look like and why do we care? You might be surprised to learn that what we see and hear does influence how we vote.

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We pay our military to kill and be agressive

2012-01-14T05:10:00.000-08:00

The social liberals and our elected leaders are all too keen to condemn the actions in the recent video of US marines in Afghanistan, and yet they fail to understand that these marines are trained and paid by the US government to be killers. Lets not take the moral high ground on this. We train our military to obey orders and I am sure these marines were given legal orders to kill these Taliban.

Anyone with a brain cell, knows that the reputation of a military unit is as important as its actions in the field, and do the Taliban care about how they treat their enemies?

I guess we can not expect anything more from half witted, media hungary and money focused elected leaders who have not the concept, or even have the mental capability to understand, what it must be like to serve on the front line and kill.

Guess what, America, you elected these cretins. Think harder about who you elect.

What I fear most a naval war in the Pacific

2012-01-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

Well discounting a complete economic collapse, which is another topic I fear a naval war in the Pacific the most. New Zealand politicians are a few bricks shy of a load when it comes to military matters. The fact that neither RNZAF or the RNZN has a combat air wing speaks of this. So does the NZ government obsession with politically correct peacekeeping.

If a third battle of the Atlantic takes place at the same time a naval war in the pacific will they be inseparable?

Given the range of modern weapons I would expect both campaigns to over spill to the Indian Ocean creating a de facto theatre of war. The advent of the anti shipping missile and the modern day true submarine are now added factors. WW2 era submarines were really only torpedo boats that were capable of submerging. Today subs are faster under the water then on the surface unlike there forefathers.

Seventy odd years of peace of lulled NZ a maritime nation into a fatal sense of security. The Rena proves the folly of relying on private shipping companies. Rogue private shipping outfits are out to make a profit. They have no stake in NZ national interest. Billions of dollars are spend on health and education each year much of it inefficiently. Yet no money can be spared for a merchant navy or increasing the NZDF capability's. When China is on the warpath in the pacific it will be to late to consider such options. At best Kiwis would face a US military leader coming to the country will quiet literally take over. Think about how MacArthur set up shop in Australia and ran the show in 1942. The Australian government allowed its military leaders to be shafted. Staying neutral in a USA-China war is not an option.

Within a week of the conflict all available merchant shipping will have been sunk or confined to port. No private shipping company would allow its ships to venture into a war zone. China will use its vast industrial capacity to out produce the US and its allies. China naval build up will give it both the warships and naval bombers needed to shut down the Pacific. The range of modern day aircraft and cruise missiles would bring the war to our door step.

If we are to stop the brain drain one of the things that needs to happen is a home grown defence industry, be established. Australia and New Zealand need to develop shipyards that can better the performance of there US counterparts in WW2. Nor can we afford to relearn the lessons of the Battle of Atlantic. Need I remind the reader of just how few merchant ships are in service today. China is buying influence in the Pacific with foreign aid. Bainimarama will become a Chinese puppet if he is not removed from power. New Zealand political leaders are allowing the country to be swept up by geopolitical forces. Its time to let US warships back into our waters. Time is running out for the country to wake up. If anyone thinks we should side with China, I ask them when was the last time an election was held in that country?

Guest Entries Coming Soon

2012-01-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

In the future, some of our contributors will be posting blog entries written by people we can only interview by text.

Episode #155: The Next Korean War

2012-01-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

Martin Bain talks with Luke Herbert about the portents of another Korean war, and any possible outcome. Will North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jung Un, be willing to risk war? Or, will he stand pat, hoping to preserve his power?

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Episode #154: The Future of Social Conservatism

2012-01-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus by just eight (8) votes. Rick Santorum, known for his social conservatism, found himself in second place. Can an alleged fiscal conservative beat an ardent social conservative? This internal debate will rock the Republican core to its fundamentalist foundation.

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Help from the State should come with strings

2012-01-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

Can we assume from Don White's email "Too good for me to pass up" email, that we must all continue to pay our taxes, and then see the aid given to help citizens over the hard times continue with out any strings attached.

Why should I work hard, pay my taxes and then see some of those taxes being given to people who are not interested in changing their lives for the better.

We do not have the concept of food stamps in the UK. We give cash and then hope that those who are on benefits will use the money to buy decent food, that will keep them alive and healthy. All too often, benefits are used to purchase junk or rubbish food, and then in the long term, the State will have to pay even more money for health care. We should apply the same standards to the provision of benefits that would apply to a business. No serious business would spend money now, knowing that as a directly result of that spending, they will have to spend even more in the future to repair damage caused by the original money.

On health spending, why should my taxes be spent on people who have made no effort to prevent the need for medical help? Our hospitals are too busy with stupid people who should be allowed to die rather than be a burden on the State. We need to start make hard decisions about how taxes are spent and who should be the benefit of medical aid. If you are overweight, and have failed to make any attempt to reduce your weight, why should the State waste money on health care. There are service people who need and will need medical care for years to come, who should have this money spent on their care. They have made a commitment to the State.

If one lives in national or local Government housing, how can you afford items like games consoles and large TVs. If you have these before moving into State housing, sell them first. The State is there as a back stop to help you over hard times, not as a standard, because you are too stupid or lazy to improve.

Receiving unemployment benefits from the State is not an excuse to sit back and do nothing. The State is paying you to search for work. Either search for work or do work for the State. Else, no benefit from the State.

And if we continue to let social liberals tell us that we should let those on benefits do not have a contract with the decent hard working tax payers, and have no obligations to get off benefits as soon as they can, then we can expect to see less of our taxes being available to help us over the hard times, as it is being spent on the lazy and worthless.

We have a choice. Let the lazy continue to get away with wasting our money and listen to the social liberals or start to educate people that the State and its benefits are there to help in the hard times and not the way to live your life.

What fanaticism is yet to bring us Modern Day Military Kamikaze Weapons

2012-01-06T03:22:00.000-08:00

9-11 showed what fanatics are willing to do with hijacked civilian passenger aircraft. What we haven't seen in seventy odd years is the fusion of such fanaticism/willingness to die with miltary hardware. Towards the end of WW2 the Japanese utilized an array of Kamikaze weapons. In terms of number of US ships sunk the Kamikazes were the most successful branch of the Imperial Japanese Army/Navy. Before going any further its worth examining the kinds of weapons the Japanese deployed. The most common was simply an aircraft with bombs attached . This means had the most success at the time was via aircraft. This would have been due to the number aircraft available and the fact the pilot could guide his plane to the target. The Kaiten was a human torpedo that achieved very limited success. An Ohka was like a crude version of the V1 rocket launched from a mother aircraft. It was an object failure due to the fact that it slowed down its "mother" aircraft that was already vulnerable to enemy action. These are the topical Kamikaze weapons for this entry if you throw in boats laden with explosives as well.

Two main issues dogged the piloted aircraft . One being that they failed to make concreted attacks on a single target. Secondly they often went out looking for targets based on incorrect reports. The Tactical decisions made by enemy military leaders will decided the first issue. Modern day technology and communications would negate the second problem.

So what happens if the Iranians or an similar government, on the horn of Africa utilizes modern day version of such weapons?

Well the most obvious weapon would be a man guided anti shipping missile. No mother aircraft would be needed. Upon launching the pilot would be updated with the latest target data. Human torpedos would have a better guidance systems then there forefathers. This is a small sample of the kind of weapons that could be in use. Modern day Kamikaze weapons would sink both warships and merchant shipping. People are no longer accustom to such losses in wartime. Remember you can win strategically while losing from a tactical point of view. So that means with or without Kamikaze Weapons, the worlds navies would taken heavier then expected losses in keeping the Straits of Hormuz and the Horn of Africa open to shipping.

Never underestimate how far ideological extremists will go in length to meet there maker and take a step, towards a perceived victory. Any would be suicide bomber is going to be more ideologically trained then they will be in any military matters. If a radical Islamic government comes to power in Somalia then China could supply them components for weapons described in this entry. Any attempted by Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz could lead to the use of Kamikaze weapons either as a last resort or a general part of the conflict.

G.O.P. VP: Who's it going to be?

2012-01-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

Current political wisdom says that President Obama gets a second term. The same positive outlook does not hold true for his fellow Democrats, who appear on track to lose more seats in the House and in the Senate.

The state of America’s Federal debt has finally reached a tipping point that most of the Old Guard never thought would come. The civilian economy is in peril. A few bad bankers ruined it for the rst of us, and they know it.

Republican strategists are already starting to eyeball their options in 2013, based on the notion that Barack Obama will be an isolated President. The national mood has gone sour, to be sure. All pessimism aside, I think Republicans should make the most of this election cycle and try harder (than usual) to learn from it.

The terrible truth is that the Grand Old Party [GOP] lost its way during the previous administration. They gave in to the same tendencies that get Democrats in trouble. They spent like drunken sailors, always assuming that there would be more.

The cupboards are bare, an the GOP is shamed. They are forced to make due with second rate candidates while their best and brightest sit this one out. The terrible truth is that he conservative stable is empty at this time. There are no thoroughbreds to groom for 2014. Their next best chance to ‘shine’ comes in 2016.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Mitt Romney is “it.” Who then does he choose for his Vice Presidential running mate? Romney’s best credentials are related to business. That would be economics.

In conservative circles, this strongly suggests that he needs to pick a social conservative. I don’t really disagree with that mixture. Republicans do well in most elections when they stick to that formula. I’m sure that Romney’s handlers know this, even if they don’t read this blog.

Michelle Bachmann or Rick Santorum? Those are the two most ardent social conservatives on the scene right now. Bachmann’s femininity would drag the GOP kicking and screaming in the 20^th Century Santorum’s hawkish nature would be reassuring to nationalists.

Newt Gingrich has made too many enemies, John Huntsman is too closely associated with the Obama administration, Rick Perry is his own worst enemy, and Ron Paul is Ron Paul. That leaves just two choices. Bachman or Santorum. Either one would be quite capable of speaking to socially conservative voters.

Episode #153: GOP Prospects for 2012

2012-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

The New Year is upon us. Voters in Iowa are about to caucus, meaning that they will hold an informal meeting to vote for the favorite Republican Presidential candidate. It's not a binding vote, but it will be seen as important to the political pundits who may spend the next three weeks talking about it. What's to be gained? What should we learn from the results?

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Iran - Should we glass them?

2012-01-04T11:55:00.001-08:00

Don White has offered his opinion by email that the war mongers in the US and the rest of the Western world are pushing President Obama, and by extension NATO, in to military action upon Iran.

Why is this such a bad thing? Iran for many years has thumbed it nose at the international community, and both the US and the UK has had its sovereign territory invaded by Iran, and US diplomats and embassy staff imprisoned. British Military have been kidnapped from International waters and held prisoner.

Iran is one of the rabid dogs of the world and should be treated as such. Iran continues to bully the rest of the world and unless we are prepared to teach this bully a lesson, we will only have the weak politicians we continue to elect to blame, when they do something major and take down a US carrier or deploy a WMD against Israel.

I expect our elected leaders to ignore the social liberals who want us to sit round a table and talk it out. Talk is cheap. Just ask those who can remember Hitler and the run up to WWII.

Will postive action, we can show the world that NATO is a global force that will step up and protect the whole world. It is either NATO or we might as well sell out to China now.

Episode #151: The Next Korean War

2011-12-27T16:38:00.000-08:00

What does the next Korean war look like? How does it start? Who makes the first move? How could the North win against the South? What should we expect from Western military leaders?

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Episode #150: Christmas 2011

2011-12-27T16:33:00.001-08:00

Fern Crossley and Justin Oldham talk about the meaning of Christmas and what it really means in 2011.

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Episode #149: Europe's Debt Crisis

2011-12-27T16:25:00.001-08:00

Martin Bain talks with Justin Oldham about the E.U.'s debt situation as the year 2011 comes to a close. What can the Europeans really do about their debts? What's in store for 2012?
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Lets meddle in Syria rather than fix our own countries

2011-12-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

In another of Don White's emails, he wrote supporting those who wish to topple the President of Syria as he has killed thousands of his own people maintaining power. Don seems to have forgotten that there are people in Syria who have died supporting their current president. Where is the support for those who have lost their lives defending what they see as the duly appointed president of Syria?I suspect that Don would say that those who want to topple the President of Syria want to be able to determine their own future and should have the right to democracy. Where do we in the Western world get off telling the whole world that our forms of democracy are so good.We have to understand that what we consider democracy is not the best form of Government for all cultures. Iraq is the current example of the failure to understand that Western democracy is not also the best form of Government.What about China? When will we decide that the people of China need to determine their own futures and have what we regard as proper democracy? When will I see Don supporting action to ensure the people of China have Western democracy and that the leaders of the Government in China are brought to book for the crimes against their own people?More importantly, when will we in the US and UK have real democracy, so we can ensure that our leaders will not take us to war on on lies and that we will bring those leaders to book for their war crimes and the stealing of the democracy we think that rest of the world should have. Lets raise hell in our own countries first. We think democracy is important but how many if us are prepared to stand up for the rights of our people. We have allowed too many of our elected leaders to lie to us and do what is good for them and their pockets.Lets see the support for a return to democracy in our own countries first than to telling the people of Syria we support them in their fight for democracy, when we clearly do not enjoy the right to bring our elected leaders to account for their lies to us.

Ups & Downs In Mfg At Home

2011-12-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Don White, in one of his emails highlighted how different companies consider manufacturing in the US. Gillette have continued to invest in manufacturing and R&D in Boston and have seen the business for the Boston plant grow.On the opposite side, Don highlighted that Kellogg have cut too many jobs in their plants are have paid the price with product recalls.The difference? Corporate greed. Companies that are more interested in shareholder value above all other concerns, will cut jobs in high cost economies, and in many cases will move those jobs aboard to low pay economies, so the senior executives can get bigger bonus.Corporate greed companies do not care for local communities, and their management have failed to see the importance of keeping jobs local. There are not interested in the long term, only the short yield in their pockets.Gillette in Boston have understood that local skills are as good as any other, and are keeping a skill base in the US.Corporate greed companies get away with these actions because we as consumers are more interested in cheap products, than keeping skills local.We have the power as we make the decision what and where to spend our money. If we all decided to punish companies like Kellogg by not buying their products until they employ enough people locally, they would soon listen.We only have ourselves to blame. We are weak and more interested in cheap product rather than maintaining local communities

End Of The Iraq War

2011-12-15T17:03:00.000-08:00

The Iraq War has officially ended to-day. It started in 2003 after much debate and a false claim that Saddam Hussein was sitting on a stash of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The term WMD has since become infamous because none of the much feared and widely claimed nuclear arsenal was found.

This war cost the American taxpayer one trillion dollars. 4,500 of our sons and daughters died in the pursuit of something that should have been good. 32,000 U.S. service personnel lost body parts or mental faculties in the source of this conflict that was started on the premise of a lie.

Let me be clear. Some good has come from this. There is one less narrow minded adversative regime in the world. There is now one more country on the road toward self determination. Either one of these goals would have been worth fighting for. Striving for both would’ve been glorious. I only wish it had been so.

We didn’t start this thing for the right reasons, but we can still learn from it. We should value those lessons as much as we value our own freedoms. Knowing what NOT to do is a form of wisdom in and of itself. We should never again tolerate such lies from out leaders. Liberation for the sake of freedom is good enough. Or, It should be.

The Iraqis won’t truly appreciate what we did until we’ve been gone for a generation. That’s twenty five years to you and me. During that time, I expect our leaders to modify the way they carry out foreign policy. Whack ‘em when they need it, embargo when we must ,and otherwise; keep hands off.

Sounds arrogant? Americans liberate and leave. Others have a tendency to stick around and run your life for you. I say this as a 21^st Century American who now stands in the growing shadow of China. We may not be around to save you much longer, so you’d better enjoy that freedom while you still have it.

Episode #148: The Future of Egypt

2011-12-14T15:49:00.001-08:00

Don White and Luke Herbert discuss the future of Egypt in the post Mubarak world. What does their new Constitution look like when its finished? How will they deal with America? How will they get along with Europe?

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Episode #147: Another Look at Newt

2011-12-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

What does Newt Gingrich look like from the non-American perspective. Luke Herbert tells us what he thinks from New Zealand, where things are much different.

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Episode #146: The Rise of Newt Gingrich

2011-12-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

Liberals fear the rise of Newt Gingrich, and they're likely to compare him to Hitler. Would they be wrong? The former Speaker of the House seems poised to fight hard for the Presidency at a time when America is in distress. Is Gingrich the new Hitler? Or, are we just in for a tough and bitter election?

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Episode #145: As The World Churns

2011-12-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

The European Union struggles to unite while Russia, China, and India look for ways to expand their markets. American politicians are gridlocked while the U.S. economy falters. Is this any way to celebrate the Holidays? Is there anything Merry about this Christmas?

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Episode #144: Attack on British Embassy in Iran

2011-12-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

The British embassy in Iran was attacked by government backed rioters in late November, after the U.K. government increased sanctions against the government of Iran. Why didn't we hear very much about this in the American press? Martin Bain gives us a rundown of what happened, and why.

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Gingrich, President by Accident?

2011-12-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

As of the day I write this, we see that Newt Gingrich now leads the GOP Republican in the 2012 campaign for President. It’s my opinion that, like Herman Cain, he got in to this race just to sell books. His PR stunt has turned in to the chance of a lifetime.

Liberals and conservatives alike were contemptuous of this big for the Presidency from the start. He never seemed to take it seriously. He rather infamously went on vacation so that he could be out of the country during the wedding of his estranged lesbian sister.

What changed? What was it that turned Gingrich in to the front runner as we come to the end of calendar year 2011? I’ve been following the former Speaker’s career ever since I first saw him in the late 80’s. He and I have two things in common. We’ve both had our ups and downs. We’ve both been under estimated.

I haven’t had many positive breaks in my lifetime, but I’ve also never hesitated to capitalize on the good breaks I’ve gotten. I believe deep down that “the wheel” turns. Being on the bottom today means I can be on the top tomorrow. Doesn’t always happen that way, but every now and then, it does.

My point is that some of us succeed by sheer dint of being stubborn. Find one thing, and do it well. Devote yourself to it and force it to pay. Why? Because every now and then your competition will fall down and you’ll win just because they failed and you didn’t.

Newt Gingrich is the GOP frontrunner now because his competition failed to convince the voters of their worthiness. In all their speeches, none of them succeeded in lighting that mythical fire which could light their way to victory. Gingrich watched, waited, and changed his tactics when he sense that weakness I just referred to.

Scrappers don’t always win. Our track record is mixed, even in the best of times. We excel at being unpredictable because we are willing to change tactics, and we’re willing to take a few punches. No pain means no gain. Taking it means you can give it.

Newt Gingrich himself must appreciate the dumb luck that has put him in this position, although he’d never say it was just dumb luck. I wouldn’t. I’d claim it was the love of a good woman blended with my grit and determination. No politician in their right mind would ever say they reached such lofty heights by accident.

Newt Gingrich isn’t the first person to be in this position, and he won’t be the last. Ulysses S. Grant and “Silent Cal” Coolidge never expected to win, but they did. There are many reason why Gingrich could win, but that’s a subject for another blog entry.

Episode #143: Troops Need You dot-com

2011-12-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

Troops Need You dot-com is a privately funded not-for-profit organization that helps American service personnel at home and abroad. They provide everything from mortgage assistance to body armor. Press Representative Charity Corkey tells us all about the history of this patriotic non-profit that was founded in 2007.

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Episode #142: Lost Lessons Of Peal Harbor

2011-12-09T15:35:00.001-08:00

Don White and Justin Oldham discuss the similarities between Pearl Harbor and the 9-11 attacks. Sound bytes from old radio broadcasts are shared and compared with modern media methods. What did we learn from Pearl Harbor, and do we still remember it?

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Episode #141: The History of Pearl Harbor

2011-12-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

Luke Herbert and Don White take a look back at the root causes of the war with Japan, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. What do we know about this confluct 70 years after the fact? What can we learn from it in the 21st Century?

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Episode #140: End of Posse Comitatus

2011-12-09T15:22:00.001-08:00

The Posse Comitatus Act was signed in 1878, and it prevents the United States Army from arresting Americans in domestic soil. A new provision in the 2012 Defense Authorization Act will overturn this law and make it legal for Federalized forces to arrest American citizens, no matter where they are in the world. Is this really a good idea? What are the Consequences?

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Episode #139: The Consequences of Greed

2011-12-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

Herman Cain has dropped out of the 2012 Presidential race, and it now seems that Europe is on the edge of bankruptcy. What can we learn from these two seemingly unrelated events?

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70th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

2011-12-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

December 7th 2011 marks the 70th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The famous air raid has more then been covered by historians so I will take a different tack in this entry. I will do so by asking two questions.

Was Pearl Harbor a master stroke from the Japanese or a great blunder?

Should Japan have only declared war on Britain and the Dutch?

In the very least Admiral Nagumo failure to order a third strike cost the Japanese a chance to destroy the ship yards and tank farms. IMO the fact that the Japanese never invaded Hawaii is a sign that they lacked a decent military strategist. Any decent military strategist would have advocated one of two actions. The first course of action would have been to land four divisions of troops on Hawaii. Had they taken both the Hawaii and the Philippines the US would have been driven out of the Pacific . In the event that had happened FDR would have had to seek a political settlement, or adopt a Pacific first strategy. The other option would have been the smartest . Had Japan only seized British and Dutch possessions the Axis would have won World War Two.

Once Burma fell it would have only been a matter of time before followed. Under the circumstances even Hitler would have given Rommel the supplies and manpower he needed to win in North Africa. Upon the Axis forces linking up in the area around the Suez Canal, Churchill would have been forced to seek an end to the war. Well I am glad that that the Japanese committed the blunder they did I am also wary . Future commanders may not make the same mistakes .

Episode #138: Does China Threaten America?

2011-11-30T12:55:00.000-08:00

Chinese influence is on the rise. American influence is on the decline. Their economy grows. Our economy shrinks. Does this mean there is a fight in our future? Justin Oldham says 'yes' and Don White says 'no' in this controversial episode.

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Episode #136: Politics and Greed

2011-11-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

Americans have entered "the holiday season" with a lot on their minds. Failed leadership at home and troubles abroad should force us to reconsider how we treat each other. It should, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Why is that?

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Episode #135: What Are We Thankful For?

2011-11-28T13:53:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving holiday, 2011. Justin Oldham talks with Fern Crossley. What do we have to be truly thankful for? In what ways should we be more grateful? How does all this tie in to making the world a better place? The answers should be obvious, but they aren't.

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Episode #134: A European View

2011-11-28T13:49:00.001-08:00

Martin Bain and Luke Herbert examine American politics. What does the U.S. Presidential race look like to the Europeans? How do they interpret what we do? Their perspective might surprise you.

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Episode #133: What Else Did They Get Right?

2011-11-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

A recent episode allowed us to focus on the good things done by past American Presidents. You wrote in to ask for more. So, here it is. More insights on some of what U.S. leaders did get right.

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Episode #132 Different Tax Policies

2011-11-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

Different countries have different tax policies. That's a given. Americans are often unaware of what a tax debate in some other part of the world sounds like. In this episode, we examine the tax debate in New Zealand as it relates to insurance and earthquakes.

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Episode #131: The Solyndra Conspiracy

2011-11-28T13:38:00.000-08:00

Solyndra was a California-based solar panel maker that took five hundred million dollars in Federal money just before it went bankrupt. Now, the scandal threatens to bring down the Obama administration. How real is this "mistake" and who was really responsible for it?

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Episode #130: Disaster Politics

2011-11-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

President Obama's "super committee" has failed. European leaders seem to be in denial about their own debt problems. Why is common sense in such short supply? Why can't we compromise?

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Episode #129: Any Soldier dot-com

2011-11-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

Any Soldier dot-com is a first rate internet clearing house dedicated to helping American service personnel in combat zones around the world. This non-profit is owned and operated by retired SFC Marty Horn, who started the web site in 2003 after receiving a request from his son, who was deployed to Iraq at that time.

http://www.anysoldier.com

Episode #128: What's Wrong With Europe?

2011-11-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

Martin Bain discusses the ECB's limited number of options. Who defaults first? Italy or Greece? How does this impact American banks? The implications are significant.

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Episode #127: Selfishness and Greed

2011-11-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

Government mismanagement and Corporate Greed have now created a Perfect Storm. The sins of Joe Paterno and Penn State are just as tragic. Why do the Bad Guys hurt us? They do it because they can.

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New Zealand Personal Debt Level and KiwiSaver

2011-11-11T03:53:00.001-08:00

However Mr, Key said Italy's debt was mostly owed by its Government. New Zealand was "absolutely" much safer than Italy in terms of Government debt which currently stands at about 38 per cent of GDP on a gross basis, or 20 per cent in net terms. Mr Key, who has relentlessly highlighted the risks associated with prospect of higher Government borrowing under a Labour Government, acknowledged New Zealand's debt vulnerability lies in the private sector.

Standard & Poor's yesterday noted New Zealand's private sector debt was about 150 per cent of GDP.

Source

The stakes are high because KiwiSaver now has more than 1.8 million members.

Labour, which introduced the scheme, wants to make it compulsory for all wage and salary earners, while gradually increasing employer contributions to reach 7 per cent by 2022.

Employee contributions will remain at 2 per cent under Labour's policy, and the party says it won't make any more changes to the member tax credit.

National, which in an attempt to ease the pain of recession-hit businesses cut employer contributions from 4 per cent to 2 per cent in 2009, shortly after it came into office, says it will introduce automatic enrolment for KiwiSaver in 2014, subject to New Zealand returning to surplus by then.

Source

Even if Treasure current forecasts come true they don't explain how the country can possible pay back the extremely high personal debt levels. Other sources give NZ personal debt as 70% of GDP. No one should be surprised by this fact. Kiwis have proven to be very poor savers and investors. Just look at how many people were stupid enough to borrow mortgages that were worth 100% of there house. Now it says a lot about a society, when so many people can't afford a 10 -20% deposit on home, and yet they think they can afford it. No doubt charging for higher education has contributed to the high personal debt cultural in New Zealand.

If it is normal to take out a student loan for the full cost of someone higher education then why not same for a mortgage?

The me , me cultural of consumption has finally caught up with us. People impatience and demand to have there "dream " home from the outset has finally caught up with us. No longer are or were people prepared to buy a entry level market home. After doing up such a place and selling it , eventually getting a better place each time. After a couple of homes someone might have looked at building a house. One way or another the tax payer folks out for ads on TV that discourage drink driving and encourage people, to support breast feeding in public. When was the last time anybody saw an ad on TV aimed at getting people to adapt better saving habits?

Compulsory superannuation ( Kiwisaver is just a moniker for superannuation ) can't solve the problem by itself. But it does shift the costs involved with retirement somewhat from the government to the wider population. The debate surrounding how affordable superannuation is has plagued the country since the days of Robert Muldoon. My complaint about Kiwisaver is that it doesn't offer those who join the scheme enough freedom over what happens to , the funds they put in. If you chose one of the options to put your money in the stock market it is left up to others to make the investment. The options are based on the standard risk / rate of return basis. Now I might be willing risk my meager retirement savings on the stock market if I could do it on the basis of an informed decision.

Is there really any difference between making Kiwisaver compulsory and automatically enrolling new workers in the scheme?

IMO given the high uptake of Kiwisaver the answer has to be no. The argument around these two points of stem from jam National finds itself. The business community dislikes superannuation . On the other hand the government needs to ensure more people can support themselves financially in retirement. National decision to oppose raising the retirement age from 65 - 67 is stupid on a grand scale . Every other political party in parliament supports the move. New Zealand may be able to avoid defaulting on its government but not personal debt.

Episode #126: What Did They Do Right?

2011-11-10T18:44:00.001-08:00

Have any of America's recent leaders done anything right? Don White and Justin Oldham take a look back at some 20th Century U.S. Presidents, and their individual legacies. What did they do right?

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Episode #125: Consequences Of Our Actions

2011-11-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Herman Cain remains embroiled in a sex scandal that just won't go away, and the Europeans are fighting over just what to do about their growing debts. Doesn't anyone take responsibility for their actions?

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Episode #124: Implications of Greek Default

2011-11-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Martin Bain offers his take on the looming likelihood of the Greek government's default on their national debt obligations? Is this crisis being hyped for no good reason? Or, is it all too real?

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Episode #122: U.S. Tax Policy

2011-11-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

What are the pitfalls of future U.S. tax policy? What mistakes are we about to make? Don White and Justin Oldham mix it up.

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Episode #121: Regime Change in New Zealand

2011-11-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

What would you change about your government, if you could? The people of New Zealand are about to consider changes to the way they vote. How would that work, and why would it matter? The details of this proposition might surprise you.

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Episode #120: U.S. Forces in Africa

2011-10-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

AFCOM was activated in 2009 to oversee U.S. military operations in Africa. U.S. Special Forces personnel were deployed to Uganda in October of 2011 to combat regional threats like the Lord's Resistance Army. What are the implications of this power projection in to Africa? Is the U.S. moving to check Chinese influence in Africa, or is this something else that isn't obvious?

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Episode #119: The Murder of Muammar Gaddafi

2011-10-27T21:04:00.001-07:00

Was NATO "complicit" in the killing of Libya’s deposed leader? Martin Bain says yes, Justin Oldham says no. Did NATO conspire to take down Gaddafi because he wouldn't be a team player? Listen to the facts of the case, and decide for yourself.

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Episode #118: Was Gaddafi Murdered?

2011-10-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Was there a conspiracy to kill Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi? Did NATO kill Gaddafi? Martin Bain reviews the evidence and Luke Herbert provides commentary. How real can this plot be?

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Episode #117: U.S. Activity in Africa

2011-10-27T20:52:00.001-07:00

America's foreign policy interests do include what goes on in Africa. There's more happening in the heart of Africa than meets the eye. Recent victories include the death of Muammar Gaddafi. China wants a slice of Africa, too. Is the mission to Uganda truly about stopping the LRA? How does China fit in to all this?

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Episode #116: American Tax Code

2011-10-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

Don White says we don't pay enough taxes. Luke Herbert says that U.S. tax law is a mess. Can these two agree on a solution? How honest is the Liberal argument for more government and higher taxes?

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Episode #115: Herman Cain Controversy

2011-10-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

GOP candidate Herman Cain has recently drawn fire for his remarks about an electrified border fence and now he's taking heat over his 999 tax plan, which includes a 9% national sales tax. How does all of this look from outside the U.S.? Analyst Luke Herbert tells you what he thinks.

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Episode #114: Disaster Politics

2011-10-27T20:34:00.001-07:00

2011 is a chaotic year. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is on the ropes. Muammar Gaddafi is dead, and Libya is momentarily free. Big banks are declaring war on the U.S. government, and Herman Cain is going down in flames. Why is the mainstream media so thrilled?

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Episode #113: The Herman Cain Conspiracy

2011-10-25T23:40:00.000-07:00

Is GOP Presidential hopeful Herman Cain everything that he appears to be? Is there any hint of a corporate agenda in his words? Do the Koch Brothers have some role to play in all this? Don White shares his epiphany. The truth might just surprise you.

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Episode #112: H.L. Quist

2011-10-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

Justin Oldham talks with author and financial historian H.L. Quist about his book, "The Aftermath of Greed." Mr. Quist believes we are headed for a deliberate global financial meltdown. His evidence is compelling. Will he be right?

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Episode #111: Economic Collapse

2011-10-24T06:45:00.001-07:00

Justin Oldham and Fern Crossley discuss H.L. Quist's book, "The Aftermath of Greed" in the context of current events.

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The clock is always ticking global hot spots and issues

2011-10-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

Tick tock the clock is always ticking on rising living costs and the seventy odd years we have gone without out a world war. To start with only massive protests / civil unrest will put an end to the oil cartels and there food counterparts. People who are in there teens and there 20's better become very civic minded if there not already. For us and the generations to come there won't be any old age pensions either we prepare for this or try to stop the rot that has set in. Given that New Zealand public in general gets more up in arms about the price of All Black jerseys, then they do the price of milk and petrol.

After the Napoleonic wars/era a similar lull in the peace occurred like we are experiencing before the outbreak of World War One. In such lulls the seeds of conflict are always being planted. In Syria a proxy war between Iran and the USA has sprung up. Turkey and Iran are backing the Assad regime with arms. Its not a great leap to conclude that if there not doing it already the US will supply arms to the protesters. Any kind of direct NATO intervention in Syria in support of the protesters would likely put the USA and Iran in direct conflict. Iran and Turkey could get troops into Syria ( via Turkey) fairy quickly. The US would need about six months to find friendly allies , complete the troop up and find the required manpower. The rest of NATO would have to decided there role in the conflict and face the same issues as the US. Iran has a larger supply of anti shipping missiles then Saddam did in the lead up to the first war.

Elsewhere few people seem to grasp that Russia will if they are not already become the worlds largest energy producer/exporter. Russia influence in Eastern Europe is growing via the control of the supply of natural gas. In spite of this Germany is moving away from Nuclear Power. Any blow up over the price natural gas would see Poland get flattened by the Russians . Shades of 1939. The Balkans remain a powered keg for genocide and it is possible that competing western and Russian interests could spark off another world war.

Iran Nuclear Weapons program is threat to that country population , Israel and parts of Europe. Water is another possible flash point in the middle east. Water is the middle east most important resource, even if consumers in the western world thinks its oil.

North Korea needs to invade South Korea in order to ensure its survival . For two decades the North Korean regime as lived off international food aid. Its hard to see that regime sticking with the status qua. The reason for this is that they face the constant danger of the food aid being cut off which would result in the end of the regime. Kim Jong-il successor may also chose war as a way of consolidating his/her power or to keep the regime from falling for any particular reason.

Since 1991 the international community (read western powers) have neglected the Horn of Africa. Somalia is a failed state by anybody's definition. Chinese naval planners will want to put anti shipping missiles on the Horn of Africa. By the time this happened it will be to late to do much other then say " I told you so." The Horn of Africa is a choke point for the worlds shipping along with the Suez and Panama Canals. The Philippines remain the key to the central Pacific. Who controls the Philippines or who that country allies with is vital to any naval war in the Pacific Ocean. China growing influencing in Fiji is to New Zealand peril. A Chinese naval base in Fiji would be like dagger down the throat of New Zealand.

Lastly Taiwan and China look set for eventually peaceful reunification. There could be trouble if this trend was to be reserved.

Tick tock , tick tock,

Lesson From History

2011-10-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2011. Moammar Gadhafi, the former dictator of Lybia, has been killed by rebel forces in his home town of Sirt, after a NATO air strike prevented his escape.

I have often said that Politics and Patriotism are two sides of the same civic coin. We’ve got to be careful about how we spend that political capitol. The oppressed peoples of the world have a lot to think about as another tyrant falls.

Actions have consequences. Western leaders are keenly aware of this as they watch events in Yemen and Syria take a turn for the worse. “The Arab Spring” is a good thing…but…too much of anything is bad for you.

It may already be too late. We could already be on our way towards a larger war that will take our leaders by surprise. We’d be wise to remember that the events leading up to World War One seemed simple enough, before they got out of control.

“The Colonel” was a heavy-handed ruler who got what he deserved. The Libyans will be cleaning house for quite some time, whether we like it or not. The rise of a new Libya does more than gift the West with another trading partner.

Tunisia, Egypt, are Libya, are just the beginning. One liberation and another is bound to have unforeseen consequences. My worst fear is that fearful folks might now be convinced that NATO will come to save them, if they stand up to their oppressors.

Freedom is intoxicating, especially when you don’t have it. Good intentions, no matter how well founded, can still get you in trouble. Protestors in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen could become bolder now that Gadhafi’s reign is now over. Who would blame them?

The current lesson to be learned by the average rebel is that if you fight back hard enough, “they” will come. Help might arrive in the form of economic sanctions, no-fly zones, air strikes, or ex-pats who smuggle guns. Help matters to people never had any.

I see a slippery slope down which the U.S. and NATO might quickly slide if too many of these revolts gain traction at the same time. Uncle Same isn’t as spry as he used to be, and his allies aren’t going to be eager to play World Police while he orchestrates.

The bottom line for me is that we’re not ready for this. American politicians have squandered out wealth, and the U.S. military is out of position. Historians have been warning that the pot was going to boil over, but contemporary leaders---who can’t seen past next week---are unable to reconcile our past with our future.

Episode #110: Republican Strategy

2011-10-13T20:13:00.001-07:00

How do the Republicans win the Presidency in 2012? Is that even possible? Justin Oldham outlines several options that could put Mitt Romney in the White House. Don White provides a rebuttal.

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Episode #109: America vs. E.U.

2011-10-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

U.S. and European debt issues look and sound very much alike. Only one question remains. Who goes bankrupt first? Martin Bain briefs Justin Oldham on the rising tide of European debt, and what it’ll mean for the U.S.

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Episode #108: Future Shock 2012

2011-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

World leaders are faced with many choices and no good options to fudge or pass the buck. Agitation grows, and consumers aren't willing to be merciful. Who benefits from all this chaos, and why?

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Film Judgment at Nuremberg

2011-10-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

Judgment at Nuremberg is a brilliant film which I now own on DVD. Anybody has an interest in International Criminal Court and its predecessors should watch this film. The same goes for anyone who has general interest in history or the morality of Nuremberg type trials. Above is part one of the film on Youtube. Enjoy!

Is Obama His Own Worst Enemy?

2011-10-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

Is Barack Obama his own worst enemy? That is a fair question. Like many academics before hi, he tries to stay on the right side of every issue. I, myself, am something of a dispassionate ideologue, so I know it takes one to truly know one.

I, too, am forced to make a decision every now and then. I have to be accountable for the things I do, like this blog post. Anything I say here is my responsibility. I know this, and I act accordingly. The key word here is “act.”

Mr. Obama found the nerve to propose a piece of piece of legislation. He even managed to get it on paper and send it to Capitol Hill. I don’t agree with what’s in the American Jobs Act, but I will give him credit for actually doing something.

And…then…he…stopped. Again. Olay, that’s not entirely true. He’s barnstorming around the country, giving pop talks that end in a half-hearted semi-demand to “pass that bill.” The only thing missing from the text of each speech is the word “please.”

I can and I do take issue with the liberal agenda. Now, it seems I have to take issue with a liberal President who can’t even carry water for his own team. It’s not safe to be a waffle. Waffles get eaten. Somebody should tell this to President Obama before Mitt Romney can find the maple syrup.

Episode #107: Obama's Winning Strategy

2011-10-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

The economy is down and the American public's opinion of the Federal government, in general, is at an all time low. How does President Obama win a second term in office?

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The "Need" To Vote

2011-10-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

There are times in the history of any democratic nation when you can actually get away with not voting. Apparently, we no longer live in such an era. The “need” to vote has become paramount. We will get exactly what we deserve, if we stay home on election day. It is so obvious that this is the end of my short post.

Episode #106: Actions Have Consequences

2011-10-05T18:17:00.001-07:00

Anyone who acts "in public" has the power to be a good role model, or a bad influence. Where do we draw the line?

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Vote The Bums Out

2011-10-05T18:13:00.001-07:00

I do believe that politics and patriotism are two side of the same civic coin. We get what we pay for, when we spend this “political capital.”

It’s my opinion that every incumbent who holds Federal elected office in Washington D.C. should be voted out of office in November of 2012.

U.S. Federal debt will hit fifteen trillion dollars by the end of calendar year 2011. This stands out in sharp contrast to American private enterprise, which will record profits in many sectors.

Consumers are caught in the middle. Suffering without credit, at the mercy of uncaring banks that win no matter which way the economy goes. The simple fact of the matter is that We The People are going to clean this mess up on our own, without much help from the current generation of leaders.

That’s why I think we should start with voting the bums out of public orifice. Voting seems so simple on the surface that you could almost overlook it. Go to the polling place, make your mark, and leave. Let somebody count ‘em up later, and there it is. A result. It’s not a “maybe.” It’s a de facto result.

Episode #105: Tax Debate

2011-10-05T18:02:00.001-07:00

Liberal tax policy holds that tax rates should be higher. Conservative tax policy holds htat tax rates should be lower. What is the real source of the problem, and why should we care?

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A Look at Somaliland

2011-09-28T02:45:00.000-07:00

When you land at the clean, tidy airport in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, you feel you could have arrived in any small African state.

The police are courteous and wear freshly-pressed uniforms, the Somaliland flag flutters gently in the hot morning breeze, and you move briskly through the airport security.

The taxi you take into town is paid for in Somaliland's currency, the shilling.

But do not get carried away - despite the outward trappings of statehood, this is a country that does not officially exist.

Source

Read the article in full . Somaliland doesn't seem like a place that to many people would want visit including me . That said it would be hard for even unrecognised government/state to do much worse then the rest of Somalia. It should be hard to fathom why the International Community has not given more attention to this matter , but its not. Somaliland is lacking in natural resources . Even Taiwan has a sort of dysfunctional diplomatic recognition by most countries around the world . It must be said that the Somaliland website more resembles a scram ran out of Niger , rather then one of a country aspiring for statehood.

What would some degree of international diplomatic recognition do for Somaliland?

Well it would likely mean advisors both military and law enforcement would train local security forces. Then the Somaliland army could deal with the pirates who operate from the coast of Somalia. A few Provincial Reconstruction Teams could also be floating about. Throw in some investment into the country infrastructure and a you end up with a pro western government in the Horn of Africa. The Chinese will make the investments eventually because of strategic importance of the Horn of Africa. Even with the USA supplying arms to the warlords who oppose the Islamic nut jobs. Who ever sets up camp in the region first will decided the outcome of the on going conflict.

I don't expect to many people to take the notion of Somaliland statehood seriously . Instead I invite people to think about the apathy the west has shown the continent of Africa.

BAE cutting jobs in the UK - Here is what the PM should do

2011-09-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Major UK defence contractor, BAE Systems has announced just over 2,000 job cuts in the UK. We can expect words from the UK PM, but can we expect any action. The sad truth is No.The PM should haul the CEO of BAE Systems in and in no uncertain terms, advice the company that if any jobs are cut in the UK before operations aboard are closed, that he will instruct the MOD and any government department to suspend any contracts with BAE Systems, and that BAE Systems will not be on any contract shortlist for any Government contracts.BAE Systems have grown up off the back of UK Defence contracts and this is how the company rewards the country that made BAE Systems what it is today.

So this is the kind of democracy we wish on impose on the rest of the world?

2011-09-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

We have political leaders who have lied to their electorate, sent our military in to harms way on a lie and then failed to ensure that have all that is required to execute the mission.President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair lied to both their countries that Iraq had weapons of mass of destruction and that Iraq had a hand in the events of 9/11.Yet despite all these lies, what have the electorate been able to do to bring Bush and Blair to book for their actions? Nothing. And this is the kind of democracy that Bush, Blair and NATO want to impose around the world, off the blood of too many of our military.If those countries that are regarded as the Arab Spring, think that our democracy is better than what they had, they should look harder at what is being offered.Is it better?

Episode #104: Budget Battles

2011-09-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Faltering economies around the world are forcing governments to rethink how they allocate their funds. Increasing politics hostilities don't bode well for the average tax payer. How does all this impact the 2012 Presidential race?

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China economic march into Africa rolls on

2011-09-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

If you want proof that China has arrived in Africa, look no further than Zambia, which is gearing up for parliamentary and presidential elections on Tuesday.
Its capital Lusaka has recently become the first African city to offer Chinese currency banking services.
The city's Bank of China branch now handles counter deposits and withdrawals in yuan.
It is expected longer term that Chinese businesses operating in Zambia will start using the currency amongst themselves to reduce the amount of commission paid when changing from the Zambian kwacha via the US Dollar.
Source

While Most Western economy's are dealing with the fall out from the Credit Crunch the march of China in Africa goes on. Make no mistake the Chinese may be many things but they are not stupid . In Zambia China is looking to create a small ruling class of Chinese people , as well as controlling the government via donations to political party's. China influence is growing in the Pacific as well . New Zealand political leaders are extremely naive to this fact , I have no doubt that China leaders want to make Frank Bainimarama a Chinese puppet . There tool to achieve this is known Foreign Aid , or put more bluntly influence buying.
So while China influence grows around the world and they undertake a massive naval build up lets examine what western nations are up to . The EU is twiddling its thumbs in preparation for Greece to default on its debt . Look for Ireland and Iceland to do the same . The USA is struggling with high unemployment thanks to a bumbling Congress and President Obama . New Zealand will default on its debt unless the economic growth forecasts from Treasure actually come true. Australia is in a much better position then the rest of the western world . Yet at present the Australian government is tearing it self a part over the minor issue of boat people and they should be processed .

China is the smartest guy in the room . No prizes for guessing who the dumbest ones are .

Episode #103: The Future of Africa

2011-09-17T02:42:00.001-07:00

Luke Herbert, Martin Bain, and Justin Oldham the past, present, and future of the nations in Africa. How do countries like Zimbabwe avoid the fate of Somalia? Who is to blame for Africa's misery? What should be done?

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Episode #102: Lessons Learned From 9/11

2011-09-17T02:40:00.001-07:00

Justin Oldham, Martin Bain, and Fern Crossley look back on the events of
9/11. What did we do right? More importantly, what did we do wrong?