This morning Senator Chambliss was interviewed on Fox's morning program. He thanked all those Republican heavyweights who had come into the state to campaign for him -- Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee among others. Sarah Palin came at his invitation the day before of and the day of the election. Chamblis said this:

“You want to peak on the last day, and we had John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Governor [Mitt] Romney and Rudy Giuliani. But Sarah Palin came in on the last day and man, she was dynamite. We packed the houses everywhere we went.”

Kilmeade asked, “You saw all the heavyweights in the Republican Party show up . . . tell me about Sarah Palin. Will her popularity last?”

“I cannot see it diminishing," the senator answered. “I can’t overstate the impact she had down here. All these folks did a great job, they all allowed us to add momentum, but when she walks in a room, folks just explode. She’s a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she’s got a great future in the Republican Party.”

In Mumbai, Islamic killers murdered 172 or more. Random killings in restaurants, hotel corridors, shopping malls, aiming at foreigners and rich Indians to strike terror, hurt commerce and destroy terrorism. Ramdom, except for Mohammad's favorite target, Jews, whom they sought out in a small Orthodox synagogue serving Jews passing through Mumbai. Those there were all tortured and killed, except for a 2-year old left crying hysterically over the twisted bodies of his mother, six-month pregnant, and rabbi father.

Not that far away Muslim pirates terrorize shipping lanes for hostages and ransom, much as Muslim pirates did in the Mediterranean for centuries till President Jefferson put an end to it.

There is no right or wrong as the West knows it in Islam. The model is the perfect man Mohammad. If he raped, pillaged, raided caravans and killed Jews, why, then, true believers in Islam can do what their founder did. And they do.

As Mohammad did it for wealth and power, so too do his modern day followers.

A personal note: This summer a wonderful cruise took place on the Regatta, an identical sister ship of the Nautica, both owned by the cruise line Oceania. So the Nautica's brush with Muslim pirates has special meaning.

Allowing this alien ideology into the West is a serious mistake that hopefully will be corrected before it is too late. It is late already for Europe.

Cruise passengers describe "cheeky" pirate attack
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 3, 5:12 pm ET

MUSCAT, Oman – Ordered to get inside and stay down, Oregon tourist Clyde Thornburg heard the pirates' rifle shots hit the side of the luxury cruise liner — "Pop! Pop! Pop!" — then felt the ship speed up to escape.

At this port north of the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, passengers told The Associated Press on Wednesday they had been warned of the danger even before they embarked, and the crew used a device that blasted painful high-decibel sound waves to keep the marauders at bay.

The attack on the nearly 600-foot-long cruise ship in the dangerous waters between Yemen and Somalia was the latest evidence pirates have grown more brazen, viewing almost any vessel as a potential target — even a large luxury liner with hundreds of tourists on board.

But the assault on the M/S Nautica lasted only five minutes Sunday, and the ship with about 650 passengers and 400 crew members sped away quickly and was not seized.

"We didn't think they would be cheeky enough to attack a cruise ship," said Wendy Armitage, of Wellington, New Zealand, shortly after disembarking for a daylong port stop in the Omani capital of Muscat.

During the assault, pirates on one of two skiffs fired eight rifle shots at the ship, according to its American operator, Oceania Cruises, Inc. The captain ordered the passengers inside and accelerated the cruise liner quickly, leaving the pirates far behind in their 20- to 30-foot wooden speedboats, powered with twin outboard motors.

"I couldn't see them shooting, but I heard them hitting the ship, 'Pop! Pop! Pop!'" said Thornburg, of Bend, Ore. "It wasn't really scary because the captain announced for the safety of everybody to get inside and get down, and by that time he was pouring on the coals to the ship and was outrunning them."

Lynne Pincini of Australia said she was heading to a friend's cabin when the order came to keep their heads down and stay inside.

"We heard the announcement, and of course we went straight out on the balcony to have a look," she said. "It was like a very large speedboat. It was running alongside the boat."

The passengers were on a monthlong cruise from Rome to Singapore, a route that took them through the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen, where pirates have hijacked dozens of vessels this year.

Cargo ships, cruise liners and other vessels use the route — the only access to the Suez Canal shortcut between East and West — unless they are willing to add weeks to the trip by traveling around the southern tip of Africa.

At the beginning of the journey, the Nautica's captain briefed the passengers on what the vessel could do to ward off pirates.

Alicia Moorehead said they were told the Nautica could outrun pirates and was equipped with high-pressure water hoses and a device that blasts painful sound waves at any bandits. Such devices can emit sounds up to 150 decibels — well above the normal pain threshold of 120 decibels — focused on targets several hundred yards away.

"We had been reassured that they had these ghetto blasters that could go through them. And we could outrun anything that they had," Pincini said.

Moorehead's husband, Pat, said the crew laid out the water hoses before the vessel entered the Gulf of Aden.

"They had laid out the fire hoses for a high pressure repellant. They never did fire them up, but they were ready for them," said Moorehead, a native of Long Beach, Calif.

"I will say the crew was very calm. They had prepared for this. Every staff member has an assignment in case of an emergency, and every one of them did it calmly and quickly," he added.

Some passengers said the crew used the long-range acoustic device to ward off the attack, and at least two passengers described hearing two booms after the pirates fired their rifles.

Oceania Cruises would not comment on specific details of the ship's security other than to say the ship's captain and crew used "evasive maneuvers and took all prescribed precautions."

Roger Middleton, author of a recent report on piracy for the London-based think tank Chatham House, said such non-lethal defenses are preferable to having armed guards on board — but their effectiveness is limited. Earplugs can foil the sound device, for example.

The ship's high speed and the difficulty of boarding such a large ship probably were the reasons the pirates were not successful, Middleton said.

"Lots of pirate attacks fail ... They will go for anything and keep trying until they get on board," he said. "I think they see these things as how much money they get out of them. And lots of Western tourists is very valuable."

International warships patrol the Gulf of Aden and have created a security corridor under a U.S.-led initiative, but attacks on shipping have not abated.

In about 100 attacks off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been seized. Thirteen remain in the hands of pirates, including a Saudi supertanker filled with $100 million worth of crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 battle tanks.

Large ransoms are usually paid for the release of hijacked vessels, but a Somali official maintained Wednesday that a Yemeni cargo ship and its eight crew members were freed without a ransom after an appeal by local clan elders and regional officials.

The ship, released Tuesday, was seized last month in the Arabian Sea. A Yemeni security official had said the pirates were demanding a $2 million ransom

Orphan of New York Rabbi and Wife Killed in Mumbai Attacks Leaves India
Monday , December 01, 2008

The 2-year-old orphan found drenched in the blood of his parents at the besieged Jewish center in Mumbai left India on Monday on an Israeli Air Force jet, accompanied by the Indian woman who rescued him.

Moshe Holtzberg's parents, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, ran the headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement in Mumbai — one of 10 targets besieged by gunman over the 60-hour rampage.

During the attack Thursday, Sandra Samuel, a nanny who worked there for years, had locked herself in a laundry room when she heard Rivkah screaming for her to help. Then the screaming stopped, and it was quiet, said Robert Katz, a New York-based fund-raiser for an Israeli orphanage founded by the boy's family.

Samuel cracked open the door of her hiding place and saw a deserted staircase. She ran up one flight and saw the rabbi and his wife, covered in blood and shot to death. The child was crying beside his parents' bodies, his pants drenched in blood.

She snatched the boy, bolted down the stairs and out of the building.

"She's been there with him throughout," Katz said.

Six civilians were killed in the center — all of them Jewish and four of them Israeli, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David said. In all, more than 170 died in attacks on 10 targets across the Indian city.

Moshe was accompanied on the trip to Israel by his maternal grandparents, Yehudit and Shimon Rosenberg, who were reunited with their grandson when they arrived in Mumbai on Friday.

"It was pure raw emotion, tears of joy, tears of sorrow, incredible emotion, understandably out of control," said Katz.

Asked about Moshe's condition, he said: "I don't know that he can comprehend or that he will remember seeing his parents shot in cold blood."

Before the child's departure, dozens gathered at a synagogue in Mumbai for a memorial service for the Jews slain at the Chabad center. During the service, Moshe burst into tears and called out "Ima," Hebrew for "mother."

Weeping, Shimon Rosenberg delivered a eulogy for his daughter and son-in-law, reciting the Hebrew phrases from the Book of Job: "The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Moshe's father was a dual American-Israeli citizen and his mother was Israeli. The couple lived in Israel and Brooklyn before they moved to Mumbai in 2003.

Samuel, an Indian resident, will live with Moshe in Israel "so at least he has someone he knows and recognizes and loves," said Katz.

Though Samuel has no passport or papers, Moshe's grand-uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak David Grossman, helped arrange for her to get a visa to Israel. In a sad coincidence, Grossman is founder of the Migdal Ohr, which says it is Israel's largest facility for orphaned and disadvantaged children.

The Israeli jet that carried Moshe and Samuel also carried the remains of his parents and the others killed at the Chabad House, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.

Government officials planned a small ceremony upon the plane's arrival.

"There are going to be thousands of people at this funeral," said Katz, executive vice president of Migdal Ohr's fundraising arm in New York. "This couple wasn't living in the West Bank. They weren't settlers. They weren't occupying anyone's land. They were killed because they were Jews, simple and plain."

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From the Hadith, the sayings and actions of Mohammad:

.“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: `Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’; but the tree Gharkad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985).

Read the story that will appear in tomorrow's WSJ:

DECEMBER 3, 2008

India Names Mumbai Mastermind Article

By GEETA ANAND, MATTHEW ROSENBERG, YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and ZAHID HUSSAIN

MUMBAI -- India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week's terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group.
Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

U.S. officials agreed that Mr. Muzammil was a focus of their attention in the attacks, though they stopped short of calling him the mastermind. "That is a name that is definitely on the radar screen," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

Information gathered in the probe also continues to point to a connection to Lashkar-e-Taiba, that official said. Along with a confession from the one gunman captured in the attacks, officials cited phone calls intercepted by satellite during the attacks that connected the assailants to members of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and the recovered satellite phone from the boat.

It also emerged Tuesday that U.S. authorities had warned Indian officials of a pending attack by sea. Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai police commissioner, told reporters there was a general warning issued in September that hotels could be targeted as well, after the bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad.

Two militants arrested in early 2007 also told police officials then that they were part of a band of eight Lashkar members who slipped into India by boat from Karachi, Pakistan, and made their way to Mumbai, an Indian police official in Kashmir said in an interview Tuesday. The group broke into pairs -- just as last week's attackers did -- and made their way north using safehouses provided by local sympathizers, the police official said.

The evidence cited by investigators is giving fresh ammunition to the Indian government, which has long tried to pressure Pakistan into cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba. India claims the group enjoys support from elements of the Pakistani intelligence agency. Pakistan denies that and outlawed the organization in 2002, but has done little to curtail its operations.

Mr. Muzammil's name is on a list of people -- numbering about 20 in all -- that India gave Pakistan earlier this week, demanding their immediate extradition, a senior Pakistani official told the Journal. The official said Pakistan was examining India's list of suspects and has assured New Delhi that action would be taken against them if there is evidence of involvement in the attacks.

Any move by the shaky civilian government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari against Lashkar-e-Taiba could create a huge backlash, however, particularly from Islamic groups, said a senior official in Pakistan. On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani convened a meeting of all of the country's political parties in the capital to develop a joint response to Indian demands for extradition.

"The government of Pakistan has offered a joint investigation mechanism and we are ready to compose such a team which will help the investigation," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a televised statement. Mr. Qureshi, however, declined to say whether Pakistan would hand over any of those sought by India.

The Mumbai attacks have ratcheted up tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, who have been exchanging verbal fire for the past several days and sparking fears of a conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to arrive in India Wednesday, as is Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Indian authorities say evidence highlights how Lashkar has broadened its operations to include recruitment of both Indian and Pakistani Muslim extremists.

Lashkar-e-Taiba -- literally Army of the Good -- has been implicated by Indian officials in several recent terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The group initially focused on fighting the Indian army in the disputed state of Kashmir. Over the years, it has expanded its cause into the rest of India and aims to establish Islamic rule.

India has told Pakistan that the latest attacks in Mumbai were masterminded by Mr. Muzammil, aided by others in Lashkar's senior ranks including an operative named Asrar Shah, according to a senior Pakistani official. Mr. Muzammil, a Pakistani in his mid-30s, became head of Lashkar-e-Taiba's anti-Indian planning cell some three months ago, according to Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, an independent think tank in New Delhi. Indian authorities believe he is in Pakistan but officials there haven't acknowledged that.

India also claims the attacks were approved by Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, the Pakistani official said. Mr. Saeed is the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organization of the Lashkar group. Mr. Saeed, who is free in Pakistan, denied the accusations. "India has always accused me without any evidence," he told Pakistan's GEO News television channel.

Indian investigators -- helped in part by the testimony of the one terrorist they captured alive, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab -- say they now possess solid proof. "We have made substantial progress in the investigation," said A.N. Roy, director general of the State Police of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located.

According to Mumbai police chief Hasan Gafoor, Mr. Kasab told interrogators that he and fellow gunmen spent between a year and 18 months in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp.

An armed policeman guards the Victoria Terminus station on Tuesday in Mumbai.
The 10 militants left Pakistan's port city of Karachi on Nov. 23 aboard a ship called the Al Husseini, which also carried a crew of seven, another senior police official said. Investigators believe that all the 10 gunmen were Pakistani because they spoke Punjabi or Punjabi-accented Urdu.

When they entered Indian waters, the terrorists hijacked a fishing trawler called the Kuber and took its five crew members prisoner. The terrorists transferred four of them to the Al Husseini and they were subsequently killed, police believe. The terrorists kept the Kuber's lead crewman alive and sailed close to Mumbai.

The terrorists abandoned the Kuber in haste, fearing detection by an approaching vessel, the senior police official said. In the process, they forgot their satellite phone on the Kuber. Investigators found in the call log the numbers of five people, including Mr. Muzammil, two of his deputies and his personal aide, the senior police official said. Indian officials had already intercepted phone conversations made while the terrorists were traveling to Mumbai.

Indian Muslim leaders are skeptical of Lashkar's reach into India. But police say Lashkar has increasingly sought contacts and recruits among Indian extremists. In October, for instance, five Muslims from the southern state of Kerala were recruited into Lashkar-e-Taiba and traveled to the Indian part of Kashmir, according to T.K. Vinod Kumar, Kerala's deputy inspector-general of police. They tried to cross the line of control that runs between India and Pakistan and reach training camps on the Pakistani side.
Four among the group were killed in a firefight with the Indian military during that attempt. The fifth, construction worker Abdul Jabbar, was arrested two weeks ago, Mr. Kumar says.

Unlike other Pakistani-based jihadist organizations, Lashkar draws its recruits across a broad social spectrum, from universities as well as among unemployed youths. The majority come from Punjab; Mr. Kasab used to live in the Punjabi village of Faridkot, according to Indian investigators.

In March 2007 when two militants were arrested in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir, the pair told police that Lashkar was looking to start slipping people into India from the sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders. The sea also provided a winter route to Kashmir for Lashkar members, when high mountain passes crossing to India's part of the state are often blanketed by deep snow.

—Siobhan Gorman, David Crawford, Tariq Engineer and Peter Wonacott contributed to this article.

Freedom and the Left
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom.

Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don't approve that you are free.

One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left's many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do "community service."

There are high schools across the country from which you cannot graduate, and colleges where your application for admission will not be accepted, unless you have engaged in activities arbitrarily defined as "community service."

The arrogance of commandeering young people's time, instead of leaving them and their parents free to decide for themselves how to use that time, is exceeded only by the arrogance of imposing your own notions as to what is or is not a service to the community.

Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as "community service"-- as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community.

Is a community better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play?

This is just one of the ways in which handing out various kinds of benefits to people who have not worked for them breaks the connection between productivity and reward, as far as they are concerned.

But that connection remains as unbreakable as ever for society as a whole. You can make anything an "entitlement" for individuals and groups but nothing is an entitlement for society as a whole, not even food or shelter, both of which have to be produced by somebody's work or they will not exist.

What "entitlements" for some people mean is forcing other people to work for their benefit. As a bumper sticker put it: "Work harder. Millions of people on welfare are depending on you."

The most fundamental problem, however, is not which particular activities students are required to engage in under the title of "community service."

The most fundamental question is: What in the world qualifies teachers and members of college admissions committees to define what is good for society as a whole, or even for the students on whom they impose their arbitrary notions?

What expertise do they have that justifies overriding other people's freedom? What do their arbitrary impositions show, except that fools rush in where angels fear to tread?
What lessons do students get from this, except submission to arbitrary power?

Supposedly students are to get a sense of compassion or noblesse oblige from serving others. But this all depends on who defines compassion. In practice, it means forcing students to undergo a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the left's vision of the world.

I am sure those who favor "community service" requirements would understand the principle behind the objections to this if high school military exercises were required.

Indeed, many of those who promote compulsory "community service" activities are bitterly opposed to even voluntary military training in high schools or colleges, though many other people regard military training as more of a contribution to society than feeding people who refuse to work.

Just ten men paralyzed Mumbai for three days, killing at least 174. Only one survived and he's from Pakistan.

This gripping account by the Wall Street Journal is a tale of horror and sheer incompetence on the part of the Indian police and much of the military.

DECEMBER 1, 2008

India Under Fire for Security in Wake of Attacks

At Tourist Haunts and Train Station, Swiftly Launched Assault Overwhelmed Police; Home Affairs Minister Steps Down

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, GEETA ANAND, PETER WONACOTT and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

MUMBAI -- As waiters started setting dinner buffets in Mumbai's luxurious hotels, the killings that would ravage this Indian metropolis began out of sight, in the muddy waters of the Arabian Sea.

In the dusk hours of Wednesday, fisherman Chandrakant Tare was sailing his boat about 100 yards from a fishing trawler when he spotted young men killing a sailor on board. He says he saw them toss the body into the engine room. Assuming he had stumbled upon pirates, Mr. Tare says, he sped away.

Hours later, at least 10 terrorists, having arrived by small craft on the shores of Mumbai, began to sow death and destruction at will across India's financial capital.

Pieced together from interviews with dozens of witnesses and officials, this account of the three days of the battle for Mumbai shows just how a small but ruthless group of skilled militants, attacking multiple targets in quick succession, managed to bring one of the world's largest cities to its knees. The human toll -- currently at 174 fatalities, including nine terrorists -- was exacerbated by the Indian authorities' lack of preparedness for such a major attack. But the chain of events also points to just how vulnerable any major city can be to this type of urban warfare.

A special approach to bankruptcy to take account of the needs of continuing financing diffiiculties and warranties along with a drastic overhaul of unsustainable costs could be the best way of saving the American car industry and as many jobs as possible at the Big Three and all the suppliers they work with.

A Real Bailout for Auto Makers

By JAY PALMER
November 29, 2008
Barron's

Detroit's only hope may be to let ailing auto makers file for prepackaged bankruptcy.

IS A BANKRUPTCY THE BEST OPTION FOR GENERAL MOTORS, Chrysler and Ford ? While their CEOs insist otherwise and the risks would be high, a growing chorus of outsiders says yes. "It's the only real option that would allow GM to take the steps necessary for its long-term survival," asserts John Casesa, managing partner of New York's Casesa Strategic Advisors.

Unless the companies solve their problems, they're hurtling toward an ignominious fate: liquidation.

Al Gore and Barack Obama have great ambitions for conversion of existing energy sources to green ones: Gore wants all electricity to be powered by wind and solar in a decade. Obama wants our use of oil to end in ten years.

Delusional, our author says:

The historical verdict is unassailable: because of the requisite technical and infrastructural imperatives and because of numerous (and often entirely unforeseen) socio-economic adjustments, energy transitions in large economies and on a global scale are inherently protracted affairs.

That is why, barring some extraordinary commitments and actions, none of the promises for greatly accelerated energy transitions will be realized, and during the next decade none of the new energy sources and prime movers will make a major difference by capturing 20 percent to 25 percent of its respective market.

A world without fossil fuel combustion is highly desirable and, to be optimistic, our collective determination, commitment, and persistence could accelerate its arrival—but getting there will demand not only high cost but also considerable patience: coming energy transitions will unfold across decades, not years.

Unfortunately, this delusion and another one, the unproven assumption that human activity is having a significant impact on the earth’s climate, will be driving our political leaders into making expensive mistakes that will harm the national security.

The nation should have as a goal becoming independent of hostile and unstable producers of energy as soon as possible. The quickest way to that end is developing the energy resources of this country – offshore, in the Rocky Mountains’ shale, in Alaska. And all of this can be done by job-creating American companies with more environmental sensitivity than will be done in energy development almost anywhere else in the world. Ten years from now the world will be using more oil, not less, and certainly it will not be an oil-free world. To the extent elected delusionists prevent the United States from developing our own resources, they are adding to global pollution – in waters, on land and in the air as well as handicapping our drive to national security independence from overseas energy suppliers.

Pouring all money into "acceptable clean" energy development puts the goal of energy independence off longer and does not take utilize the obvious advantages we have, such as the world's largest repository of coal. Furthermore, switching to alternatives to coal, oil and natural gas will require enormous additional investment in infrastructure and the junking of trillions of dollars of investment already made. The nation needs to consider carefully the effects on our economy and national security before embracing costly, unproven assumptions that will lead to little if any good and probably do great harm.

As for what cannot be done in a decade or two, consider this.

Moore's Curse and the Great Energy Delusion

By Vaclav Smil From The American (A Magazine): Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Our transition away from fossil fuels will take decades—if it happens at all.

During the early 1970s we were told by the promoters of nuclear energy that by the year 2000 America’s coal-based electricity generation plants would be relics of the past and that all electricity would come from nuclear fission. What’s more, we were told that the first generation fission reactors would by then be on their way out, replaced by super-efficient breeder reactors that would produce more fuel than they were initially charged with.

During the early 1980s some aficionados of small-scale, distributed, “soft” (today’s “green”) energies saw America of the first decade of the 21st century drawing 30 percent to 50 percent of its energy use from renewables (solar,wind, biofuels). For the past three decades we have been told how natural gas will become the most important source of modern energy: widely cited forecasts of the early 1980s had the world deriving half of its energy from natural gas by 2000. And a decade ago the promoters of fuel cell cars were telling us that such vehicles would by now be on the road in large numbers, well on their way to displacing ancient and inefficient internal combustion engines.

These are the realities of 2008: coal-fired power plants produce half of all U.S. electricity, nuclear stations 20 percent, and there is not a single commercial breeder reactor operating anywhere in the world; in 2007 the United States derives about 1.7 percent of its energy from new renewable conversions (corn-based ethanol, wind, photovoltaic solar, geothermal); natural gas supplies about 24 percent of the world’s commercial energy—less than half the share predicted in the early 1980s and still less than coal with nearly 29 percent; and there are no fuel-cell cars.

The world financial network hangs together because of confidence.

What shattered that confidence was the bursting of the housing bubble and the defaults beginning with the subprime loans encouraged, indeed, required by Democrats in Congress led by the likes of Massachusetts' own Congressman Barney Frank. Frank and other Democrats also twisted arms at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy the risky loans and package them up and send them around the world with the implicit U.S. guaranty behind them. Frank, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives on financial matters, kept telling concerned Republicans that Fannie and Freddie were in great condition and that no reform or new regulation was needed. Frank convinced fellow Democrats in the Senate this was the case and together they blocked reform legislation in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.

What percent of Massachusetts -- and U.S. -- residents know that Democratic policies and actions cost them 30-50% of their life savings?

"Who blew that hole in your IRA?" Barney Frank. But he wasn't alone.

Of course, the voluble Frank is on the airwaves regularly blaming everyone else but himself and his colleagues, The Democrats in Congress worked hard to get their constituents who couldn't afford homes to get "subprime" (that is, very risky) mortgage loans. They got the loans all right, they got their homes, but when the housing bubble burst their mortgage defaults caused them agony and in many cases the loss of their homes.

The collapse of the subprime market triggered the financial panic that has cost the world trillions and frozen the credit system, leading to job as well as financial losses.
Democrats are now once again hard at work, this time figuring out how much of taxpayers' money will be poured into the black hole they created in the hope they will avert the Depression that their good intentions and bad judgment has hurtling towards us

After all, as Frank says, there are plenty of rich people out there to tax.

The whole sorry tale of Democratic responsibility is still being written, but a good start would be here and here.

Professor Thomas Sowell sees the frenzy whipped up by the media as a wonderful opportunity for politicians to spend money on their favorite groups which they will take away from those who have earned it. Could that be?

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them . . . .

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Professor Sowell's timely warning is of what looks like a good imitation of totalitarian socialism. But who can stop them?

Read "Jolting" the Economy

While they don't currently have military might to attack the U.S. frontally, they can inflict damage through terrorist attacks, as happened on 9/11/2001. The attack of just ten Muslim terrorists in Mumbai is illustrative as well. Fortunately, since the Bush Administration quickly went on high alert immediately after 9/11 and strengthened national defenses, it has became much more difficult for Islamic forces to launch a major strike in this country. In fact, several significant plots have been thwarted and the nation has been able to protect itself successfully in the years since.

However, there is a quieter offensive underway to weaken our culture to advance the cause of Islamic supremacism that largely escapes notice. One of the foremost experts on Islamic supremacism who is very much focused on Islamic efforts to undermine society is Robert Spencer. He calls this under-the-radar, quiet offensive to establish Islam as the ruler in the U.S. "Stealth Jihad," which he describes in detail in his book of that name.

Jihad in common parlance means violent war against unbelievers, which, according to Mohammad, is to be unrelenting until victory is achieved. Stealth Jihad is part of that same war, but it is being being waged by non-violent means. Among other things, it involves raising money for "charity," which gets funneled to support terrorist organizations and Islamic fighters in other parts of the world -- as well as Stealth Jihad in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere..

A major victory was won last week in a Dallas courtroom when the Holy Land Foundation and several of its leaders were found guilty of knowingly funding the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. During the course of this trial and a prior one it was revealed that the Holy Land Foundation was but one of up to 70 Islamic organizations in a network established by the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the United States from within with the ultimate goal of replacing the U.S. Constituton with Islamic law, Sharia. To be specific, the goal is to conduct in the United States

"a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

As everyone but President-elect B. Hussein Obama's base knows, many of the Guantanamo detainees cannot be sent to their home countries, cannot be released and cannot be tried. They need to be held in some form of extra-legal limbo the rest of their lives, sort of like Phil Spector.

Will we send them all to Afghanistan where they can resume jihad? Does anyone -- except some nutty judge -- want them released in the United States if no one will take them?

One story illustrates the challenge.

TERRORISTS' RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME

Guantanamo detainees not exactly philanthropists
by Ann Coulter
November 26, 2008

I thought the rest of the world was going to love us if we elected B. Hussein Obama! Somebody better tell the Indian Muslims.

As everyone but President-elect B. Hussein Obama's base knows, many of the Guantanamo detainees cannot be sent to their home countries, cannot be released and cannot be tried. They need to be held in some form of extra-legal limbo the rest of their lives, sort of like Phil Spector.

And now they're Obama's problem.

As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

Already Muslims in the Netherlands are 6% of the population and a tipping point is close,he believes.

He acknowledges that "the majority of Muslims in Europe and America are not terrorists or violent people." But he says "it really doesn't matter that much, because if you don't define your own culture as the best, dominant one, and you allow through immigration people from those countries to come in, at the end of the day you will lose your own identity and your own culture, and your society will change. And our freedom will change -- all the freedoms we have will change

We have just seen what ten determined Islamic terrorists can do to a city of 15 million in India.

Wilders says all the circumlocution about the Global War on Terror is missing the point.

Since 9/11, American political leaders have struggled with the question of how to describe the ideology of the enemy without making enemies of the world's billion or so Muslims. The various terms they have tried -- "Islamic extremism," "Islamism," "Islamofascism" -- have fallen short of both clarity and melioration. Melioration is not Mr. Wilders's highest priority, and to him the truth couldn't be clearer: The problem is Islam itself. "I see Islam more as an ideology than as a religion," he explains.(emphasis added)

What would he do?

He says he would end Muslim immigration to the Netherlands but work to assimilate those already there.

A key requirement of Wilders' would be to give up the Koran, from which the problem that is Islam springs. Islam, he believes, is an ideology, much as HItler's National Socialism was..Since the Koran is the ideology's handbook inciting hatred and violence it should be outlawed.

A proposal to halt Muslim immigration into the United States and to work to assimilate those already here has been made as well by an American scholar of Islam Hugh Fitzgerald.

Read all of the Wilders interview.

From NRO's The Corner yesterday, November 28th:

Both of the above [Mark Steyn]

Andy [McCarty] wrote yesterday about our confused thinking re events in Bombay:

The obsession over whether al Qaeda or its endless jumble of affiliates pulled off the operation is a misguided attempt to mimimize the challenge. The bin Laden network is not unimportant, but it is tapping into something that is much bigger than itself.

We're reluctant to address that "bigger than itself" elephant. All jihad is local: If rockets are fired at Israel, it's a failure to settle the Palestinian question. If an NHS doctor drives a flaming Cherokee into the check-in desk at Glasgow Airport, it must be Tony Blair's foreign policy. The Jerusalem Post's headline writer poses the question:

Homegrown Terror Or International Jihad?

False choice. The answer is: Homegrown terror in the service of international jihad. Clearly, India has had a Muslim problem to one degree or another in the 60 years since partition, but increasingly those locally driven grievances have been absorbed within the global pan-Islamic ideology. What strikes you, as the dust clears in Bombay, is that one assault provided an umbrella for manifestations of almost every strain of Muslim grievance.

There's the local element - the fatal shooting of the city's anti-terror squad, and other prominent officials. There's the crusader element - the targeting of British and American passport holders. There's the Jew-hating element - the Munich massacre nesting within the more general carnage.

And there are the more ironic nuances of jihad: British subjects were to be found not just among the victims but among the perpetrators.

To pose the question as that Jerusalem Post headline is to miss the point. Moreover, the global ideologues correctly see our determination to attribute every attack to purely local phenomena unconnected to any bigger picture as a sign of weakness.

This can't be said often enough:

In so many of the reports about Islamic terrorist attacks the media wonders what the connection to Osama Bin Laden might be. The answer is simple: In all cases the connection is the Koran. All Islamic true believers are doing what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded: Wage unrelenting war against the infidels untiil Islam rules supreme over the world.

Islamic supremacism is mandated by the Koran and Mohammad, the "perfect man" as Muslims call him, whose example provides all the latitude for violence one can imagine. As Muslims learn more about their core ideology, more true believers who become a danger to the world are born. At heart, Islam is a political ideology carrying a religious banner to justify its expansionism by whatever means work, including murder. Conquering the world today requires such things as instilling fear to force submission, damaging if not destroying economies, assassinating leaders and undermining the values of targeted civilizations, be it Europe's or that of the United States.

Among the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are many good people who simply believe in one god and live good lives. They probably have never read the Koran or the Hadith (the sayings and doings of Mohammad). It's when they do that problems can arise. Saudi Arabia has spent and is spending tens of billions around the world to "educate" those who are in ignorance.