Sunday Scan

Who You Gonna Mourn To?

China, an atheist regime that forces "religion" into a state-run box and prosecutes practitioners of serious religion, has called for three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake.

Who will the country mourn to? A vacuum? The spirit of Mao, who, decomposed as he is, does not offer much eternal hope?

The answer is in the heart of those that suffer, as this AP story reveals:

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?"

Oh God, give them comfort. The state certainly can't.

Moral Relativism Alert!

Before straying too far from AP, let's turn our attention to a story filed by Terence Hunt earlier this morning about Prez Bush's address to assembled Arab leaders in Egypt. Hunt tells us:

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

Gosh. I wonder why the tone would be different.

One of the rules of thumb I teach my employees is that when your opposition is lying, distorting or just being ignorant, use their own words against them. That would apply with Hunt's story. Let's look at Hunt's reporting on what Bush said to the Arab leaders and see if there's a reason for the contrasting tones, shall we?

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said ...

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and are represented in government. On the other side, there's Mubarik, Assad and a host of other power-barons who have jailed or suppressed their opposition, and not one functioning democracy save the nascent one in Iraq and the crumbling one in Lebanon. Point Bush.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled ..."

Israel's' "political prisoners" are people who have carried out or planned violent attacks with real weapons against Israel. In the rest of the region, jails are full of people whose only weapon is the pen or the tongue. Freedom of speech in Israel, repression in all the Arab lands leads to point Bush.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future ..."

Israel has no prisoners of conscience, just prisoners of action. It has an open political debate, and it trusts its future to its people. Anyone want to speak from the Arab side? Anyone? Anyone?

Point, game and match Bush.

On The Wrong Foot

The EU asked Interpol to look into the state of Islamist terror in Europe. Interpol found that it's bad and getting worse ... and it blamed England.

Britain's controversial foreign and military policy has made UK the hub of Islamic terrorism across Europe, and turned the country into a fertile ground for jihadist recruiters, a report by the EU warned.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report revealed that British foreign policy presented critical dangers for all Europe: "The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have a large impact on the security environment of the EU." (Source)

So the problem isn't the EU's policy of appeasing radical Islamists who promote race hatred under the protection of the EU's tolerance laws? And it's not Islam itself and its long history of violent jihad, sharpened in recent years by the phenomena of international migration, the Internet and Saudi-funded radical education?

The EU study may be worlds off in its finger-pointing, but it's probably right about this: It predicts more terror attacks in Europe from a "rejuvenated" al-Qaeda.

Where are we fighting al-Qaeda? Well, we and the Brits are fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where aren't we fighting them? Europe.

Big News From The Nanosphere

Advances in nanotechnology appear poised to dramatically increase the efficiency of thin film solar cells. As in from a theoretical cap of 31% efficiency all the way up to 45% efficiency.

Put on your techie hat and read about it here.

Anthropomorphic Hucksterism

More indications that the global warming debate is anything but over:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce [Monday] that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. (source, via ICECAP)

The OISM list doesn't focus on climatologists, so the Warmies will discount the announcement. But all have university degrees in science and over 9,000 of them have PhD's so we can postulate that they know the difference between good and bad research methods, and the difference between evidence and proof.

Meanwhile, as we look at ten years of global cooling having no effect whatsoever on the prognostications and pontifications of our electeds, Richard Rahn writes in WashTimes that global warming constitutes the greatest intelligence failure of our era, concluding:

You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the "science" is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)

The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the "truth" of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an "intelligence" failure.

Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world's poor who are paying more for food. This is not an "intelligence" but an "integrity" failure.

This One's A Stand-Alone


SF Readies For Big Gay Bucks

While the 60-plus percent of us in CA who voted that marriage in our state is between a man and a woman are unhappy with this week's CA supreme court decision overturning our will, tourism officials in San Francisco are decidedly ... uh, gayer.

San Francisco's tourist industry is betting that gay marriage will lead to a boon in same-sex wedding and honeymoon packages.

Nationally, gay tourism amounts to a $60 billion-a-year industry. Thanks to Thursday's ruling by the state Supreme Court striking down the ban on same-sex marriage, California stands to become a destination spot for gay and lesbian couples from around the world who want to get hitched.

And San Francisco is hoping for the biggest slice of the wedding cake.

No sooner did the court decision come down than the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau fired off a release to the gay press, inviting couples to get married in the city where "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made." (source)

If the ruling stands, gays from any state will be able to wed in California, unlike Massachusetts, which only lets its own gays marry.

Cue up quickly, my friends. A constitutional amendment is likely to cut your fun short soon enough. Had gays gone the legislative route, they very well might have secured the right to marry in California, but as long as they rely on courts stripping the majority of the sanctity of their vote, the majority will stand together against gay marriage -- because they support the sanctity of a democratic, free vote, not necessarily because they support the sanctity of marriage.

Let Them Eat (Low-Carbon) Cake!

In yesterday's UN press briefing, the word "food" appeared twelve times, in keeping with the launch of a UN initiative against a growing "food crisis" -- real? made up? who knows? It's the UN, after all.

Marie Okabe, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, mentioned food crisis issuesin her comments , including specific references to Haiti and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, others in the UN press office cranked out a news release on Ban Ki-moon's big food initiative.

4 April 2008 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for both immediate and long-term measures to tackle the growing global food crisis, warning that it could not only push millions of people deeper into poverty but also have larger political and security implications.

“The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions,” he told a joint meeting in New York of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The release provides no statistical verification of the crisis, nor, for that matter, does it include any proof that all the billions we've spent on prior UN food crisis appeals have resulted in anything but short-term benefits.

("Short-term benefits" translates in part as "lives saved," so I'm all for them. But I'm also for the UN getting out of its "give us money for this crisis, and get ready to give us money for that crisis" mode of operating. If it would come out firmly and decisively for democracy and free markets, it would do more to increase food production than anything else it could do ... but as long as despots rule the General Assembly, that's not going to happen.)

But let's say there is a big new food crisis. If that's true, then it's undeniable that the push for less energy-efficient biofuels over good ol' petro-fuels is a big part of the problem. And it's equally true that the elitist snobs of the EU could care less if their feel-good Warmie attitudes result in hungry people in locales less fortunate than Europe.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a "crime against humanity" that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.

"There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels," said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

"You can't change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives," which could see the EU landmark climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said.

Their comments came amid growing unease over the planting of biofuel crops as food prices rocket and riots against poverty and hunger multiply worldwide.

You've got that right. On balance, the EU would rather have non-Europeans go hungry than have to open the debate on Europe's global warming package. Having to figure out whether to keep their goal of 10% biofuel reliance by 2020 is just too big a headache; let the Haitians, Africans and Afghans eat cake.

It's not like the EU bureau-czars made their decision in a vacuum:

The European Environment Agency, advisors to the European Commission, on Friday recommended that the EU suspend its 10 percent biofuels target.

It argued that the target would require large amounts of additional imports of biofuels leading to the accelerated destruction of rain forests. The agency also questioned the environmental benefits of biofuels.

Also in a recent report the World Bank said bluntly "biofuel production has pushed up feedstock prices".

Meanhwile Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, head of Nestle, the world's biggest food and beverage company, last month argued that "to grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible".

"There will be nothing left to eat," he added.

Why listen to your advisors, leading financiers or captains of the food industry? The EU is predicated on the belief that bureaucrats are better suited to run the world than real people, and the bureaucrats have determined that they don't want to re-open the EU's global warming program for debate.

So be it. They can offset their stupidity by giving money to a number of stupid UN food programs, thereby making everything all better.

Remember, remember, remember: Clinton and Obama want America to be more like Europe.

Warmie Psychic: EU To Go Eeeeu Over Poland

Wooo Wooo Warmie, the Global Warming psychic, has conjured up the mystical (non GHG-emitting) spirits and proclaimed this prediction: Hauty EU members from Western Europe are going to snub their Eastern Europe counterparts in Poland ... and soon.

Mystical spirits? Methinks not! Wooo Wooo's just been reading the dancing electrons again:

Coal is king in Poland, the European Union's top producer, and Warsaw is poised for a fight to keep burning as much as possible in power stations, feeding its economy despite the pollution.

Sitting on an estimated 140 years' worth of coal reserves, Poland is on tenterhooks ahead of Brussels' announcement Wednesday of final proposals for how the EU's 27 member countries will have to shoulder the burden of slashing 20 percent of the bloc's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

"We hope the European Commission is taking into account the fact electricity production in Poland remains and, unfortunately, will remain based on coal burning, which is a polluting technology. That's a Polish specific, and there's no getting away from it," environment ministry spokeswoman Elzbieta Strucka told AFP.

Fat chance they will. EU is notorious for discounting its poorer members desire to grow their economies and better their standards of living. Call me cynical, but I think it just might be due to their desire to import cheap manufactured goods and cheap workers from Eastern Europe.

Wooo Wooo tells me that what's really funny about this whole situation is that Poland is way ahead of the effete Western Europeans when it comes to meeting Kyoto protocol targets:

Poland was able to more than meet its Kyoto Protocol obligations to curb emissions of carbon dioxide -- one of the main gases held responsible for global climate change -- largely thanks to the closure of a swathe of polluting, communist-era industrial behemoths during market economy reforms after 1989.

The country's emissions are now 32 percent lower than in 1988 -- surpassing the required six-percent cut -- despite a tripling of the number of vehicles on the road amid growing wealth since the fall of communism.

Yeah, sez the EU. So what?

But the EU's executive body, the European Commission, wants Warsaw to do even more.

In March 2007, the Commission gave Polish heavy industry a carbon dioxide emission quota of 208.5 million tonnes for 2008-2012, almost 27 percent lower than Warsaw had requested.

Meanwhile, check out this Google search on EU imports from China. All their imports -- including those from China's massively polluting steel industry -- are surging to new records.

So you slap the Poles and support the Chinese, is that the trick, EU bureaucrats? Seems to me that not much at all fair sprouts from Brussels.

EU Admits Failure Of Biofuel Program

The European Union is doing a better job of admitting to the unforeseen consequences of a government push for biofuels than the US government is. Washington should pay careful attention to this BBC story:

Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production. [As shown in this photo of new palms from Indonesia.]

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.

The EU approach to the "get out of jail free" card biofuels supposedly offered was to set targets, which EU nations than set out to meet by buying palm oil, causing rain forests to be cut and replanted with palms, and various ag-based fuel sources, causing food prices to rise.

Now, as is its wont, the EU will simply change their mandates, piling on more pages of regulations in an effort to correct the errors in their initial policy. Scratch an EU bureaucrat, find a former Soviet 5-year planner.

The US approach has less Soviet influence, with targets and incentives more than mandates, but it has produced similar results, creating a new market for corn -- fine with midwesterners, but as competition for crops drove up food prices, not so nice for the rest of us. And now with higher corn prices, biofuel manufacturers are struggling to find customers.

All this for a fuel that does nothing much at all to enhance the environment.

Here's an alternative idea on alternative fuels: Stop mandating, goal-setting and incentivising and let the market sort it all out. After all, note a commenter to the BBC post,

This is what happens when soundbite-politicians quote 'bad science' in their knee-jerk reactions to events.

Quote Of The Day: Gone From The Shores Of Tripoli Edition

"You know that hope dies last. We always had hope, although we were quite skeptical and were afraid to say it." -- Kristiana Valcheva

When exactly did Muammar Gaddafi stop being an International Man of Insanity and become someone the civilized world is eager to do business with?

There's only one answer to that question, and it's not "when he gave up his nuclear program." It's "He hasn't."

Take today's news of the release (finally!) of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian/Bulgarian doctor Gaddafi held for eight years on phony charges that they deliberately gave AIDS to 438 Libyan children. It certainly is not evidence of a sane Libyan leader. It is, rather, evidence that Gaddafi has completed his diabolical plot successfully:

• He covered up the shameful condition he had allowed his nation's health care system to fall into because, frankly, he is a despotic egomaniac and could care less about "his people"
• He drummed up anti-western hatred and distrust among Libyans, many of whom apparently bought the insanely implausible story of the deliberate infections
• He blackmailed some nation or nations into giving him nearly half a billion dollars to secure the Bulgarians' release, and
  
• He feathered his nest in the process.

All in all, not bad. The only price paid was six innocent people scandalized and held unjustly for eight years ... and of course, 438 kids with AIDS.

Not that it mattered to Gaddafi, but the kids had AIDS before the Bulgarians ever got close to them, since Libyan doctors were still re-using needles long after most of the world had stopped. Gaddafi could have cared less because disposable needles would have cut into his disposable income.

Gaddafi couldn't tell the Libyan people the truth, and certainly no Libyan news outlet would cover the story. But still, he needed scapegoats, and he found them in well-meaning, good-hearted foreign health workers, who served well the dual purpose of creating a false enemy to deflect blame from Gaddafi and his useless government. That they helped flame Islamist paranoia and hatred only gilded the deal.

No EU nation will cop to paying off Gaddafi for the Bulgarians' freedom, but it's clear some deal was brokered through Qatar that involved something the Libyans are bragging to be $1 million for each of the infected kids, or half a billion dollars.

Here are the relevant quotes:

Mr Sarkozy [who, with his wife Cecelia, was instrumental in driving the release forward, fulfilling a campaign promise] and the EU denied making any financial payment to secure the medics' release.

However, the families of the 438 infected children reportedly agreed last week to a compensation deal worth $1m (£500,000) per child ....

Libya's foreign minister said both the EU and France had contributed to the fund, AFP reported. (BBC)

And:

Sarkozy "very warmly" thanked Qatar for its role in the early release of the prisoners but did not elaborate.

In response to a question about whether money had been paid to Libya for the release, Sarkozy said he wished to thank authorities of Qatar for their "mediation and their humanitarian intervention."

"It's up to them to say if they have anything to say on the subject" of their exact role, he said. (Daily Mail)

So that covers everything but the "feathering his nest" bit. That's easy enough ... follow the money. The $1 million per kid will be channeled through the Gaddafi Foundation, a "charity" run by Seif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son. Care to venture how much the kids will get?

So Gaddafi has further cemented his reputation as Islam's answer to Dr. Evil, capable of blackmailing the world in his sinister schemes. And in the process, he's sealed the EU's role of patsy, unable to deal with Islamic terror states. Now that Gaddafi has released his political prisoners, the EU is excited about trading with the terror state again ... one more reward for the bullying brat in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, the French focus their negativity not on the truly unrepentant evil of Gaddafi, but on Sarkozy. The rap? The "enlightened" French are angry that Cecelia Sarkozy stepped out of the traditional role of quiet first lady and was actively involved in brokering the Bulgarians' freedom.

Would they have been so offended is Socialist Segolene Royal had won and sent her long-time partner and father of their three (illegitimate) children, Francois Royale, to broker the deal?

Trick question. Royal wouldn't have done anything.

Earth To EU: Now What?

Fifteen months was long enough for the EU to punish the Palestinians for electing a terrorist government, so you'll recall this news from earlier in the week:

After a 15-month-long economic embargo of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, the EU bloc is for the first time opening its coffers and resuming aid to the minister of finance.

On Monday (11 June), the European Commission signed an agreement paving the way to technical assistance and training of officials in the Palestinian finance ministry, led by Salam Fayyad, a political independent and a former World Bank official.

"The European Union's first step will be a €4 million project to help the minister of finance in ensuring that Palestinian taxpayers' money is spent efficiently and that all expenditures are accounted for to the highest international standards," Brussels announced on Monday (11 June), after the deal between the two parties was signed in Ramallah.

The Palestinian Authority has been under an aid embargo since Hamas – blacklisted by the west as a terrorist organization - won elections in March 2006.

But earlier this year, the EU bloc signalled it was willing to cooperate with some "reliable" ministers of the Unity government, such as finance minister Salam Fayyad. The Unity government consists of the militant Hamas group and the more moderate Fatah movement. (EU Observer)

What unity government, EU?

"Hamas is trying to take control of everything," Mr [Ahmad Al] Afifi [Palestine's intelligence chief] said after the fighting had raged all night.

Hamas has been locked in a bloody power struggle with the rival Fatah party ever since it won a landslide parliamentary election in January last year. After months of on/off violence, the stalemate between the militant Islamists and the ousted Fatah moderates seemed destined to keep the Palestinian government paralysed.

Now, Hamas is pressing a fierce offensive in the Gaza Strip, systematically laying siege to the Fatah-dominated security services and looking at last for the decisive victory that could give it complete control of the Palestinian government.

The Fatah security services ruled the streets here for 15 years but are now holed up in fortified bunkers and a handful of neighbourhoods awaiting a threatened fully-fledged assault by Hamas. (The Telegraph)

As long as Hamas is involved, there can be no unity. As long as Hamas is involved, people as theoretically wise as the leaders of the EU should know there can be no trust.

So will a hold be placed on their €4 million project? Or will they just go on pretending you can let a group like Hamas have power and expect things to progress according to accepted international standards?