What? A Solution To War, Genocide, And Mass Murder

After writing over the years something like 500-600 blogs (See archive here), it is time to ask which of all these is most important.

I believe those are the blogs that present and underline that democracy (the democratic peace) is a solution to war, genocide and mass murder (I call democide) by governments. I prove this in my book.

But very few are aware of this solution -- even when two presidents, Clinton and George W. Bush realized it with regard to war and based their foreign policies on it.

For centuries mankind has sought a solution to war. Solutions have been proposed, such as international law, diplomacy, a balance of power, trade, and cultural exchange. Nothing has worked. But empirically and theoretically we know that historically no democracies have made war on each other. When living side by side, they promote cooperation, and peace with each other, and if perchance a crisis occurs, they manage to resolve it without violence. In a world where dictators murder their subjects by the hundreds, thousands, millions, and tens of millions, that democratic leaders murder near zero of their population is absolutely incredible.

The proofs for what I say are in my books Power Kills: Democracy As A Method Of Nonviolence, and Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. And see my websitefor the many books and documents providing further data, theory, and proofs.
An end to war and to democide! It is like the elimination of cancer or heart disease. This solution of the ages should be celebrated around the world. Not only does it fail to make the front pages, but is ignored by the commentariat. Ponder this for a moment. Why is this absolutely incredible and proven solution hidden, ignored, or missed?

47% Will Pay $0 Income Tax in 2009

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With so many serious dangers to our democracy – Obama’s far left socialists, a possible leftist coup, an EMP attack, global islamofascism, it seems a stretch to include our tax system also as a danger. It is. Consider that 47% of “taxpayers,” 71,000,000 people will pay no income tax in 2009. Zero.

Worse. Many of these people are eligible for a “negative income tax.” That is, the federal government will give them one refundable tax break, rebate, or another. On this, see the Tax Policy Center:

Refundable credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the refundable child tax credit (CTC), and the new Making Work Pay (MWP) credit will lead to negative average effective rates for the bottom two quintiles. The bottom quintile, for example, will receive an average income tax subsidy from the federal government equal to 10 percent of their pretax income. Rates will increase from 2.3 to 13.4 percent for the top three quintiles and to 17.9 percent for the top 1 percent of income earners.

These “free riders” have no reason to alter the tax system as long as their circumstance is unchanged. Since Democrats, the tax and spend party, are quite content with this system (even a higher negative tax), these free riders are their natural constituents. Thus, Democrats have a built in advantage at the polls.

With nearly half of the population paying no taxes, even if Republicans control Congress and the White House, the probability of correcting this incredibly unfair system is slim. Fear of a backlash from the 71,000,000 is highly persuasive.

So, what can be done? Nothing, except to vote at the polls for those who promise to reform the tax system, and through blogs, the conservative media, town halls, and demonstrations, ensure their seriousness.

World Nonproliferation Is Politically Asinine

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It is true that in the hands of dictators or terrorists groups, nuclear weapons endanger peace and other nations. A policy of nonproliferation pointedly directed at dictatorships such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria is wise and momentous. However, for Obama, Europe, and the UN, the goal of nonproliferation applies generally to all nations, including democracies. This is the asinine fruit of soft political realism. Historically, realism in foreign policy assumes all nations, including democracies, are driven by the lust for power. Developing and maintaining stable power balances are then the diplomacy of international politics, and peacekeeping.

Democracies, however, rely on their nukes for protection, mainly to deter attacks on them. During the Cold War, the U.S declared that a nuclear counterstrike would meet any nuclear attack on the U.S. or Europe. This kept the peace. Without American nukes, the Soviet Union might well have invaded Europe leading to World War III. Or conflicts elsewhere, as in Korea, Vietnam, or China could have also led to global war

All the nuclear powers, U.S, UK, USSR, France, USSR, China, Iindia, and yes, even Pakistan, mindful of the consequences of a nuclear war, walked on eggs in their conflicts. Their claws were generally retracted in a serious crisis, or even a limited war, such as over Cuba, Berlin, Bosnia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. The sheer horror of nuclear war kept the larger peace.

Next, consider democratic Israel’s 200+ nuclear warheads. These now maintain her security and her life. No major Middle Eastern nation would endanger Israel’s existence and risk nuclear destruction of her major cities, with the possible exception of fanatic Islamofacist Iran.

Assume now that this analysis is faulty. Nonproliferation is still crazy. Democracies do not make war on each other. So, if they have nukes, they do not endanger other democracies. Thus, eliminating nukes only removes their protection from nondemocracies.

The only informed and logical policy then, is to assure nonproliferation among the thug regimes of the world.

The Prescient Peace Prize For Appeasement

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International relations and political science are my professional areas of teaching and research. I draw on this authority to strongly recommend the following article for your reading. Charles Krauthammer's "Decline Is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy."Among other things, he says:

.... my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption thatsomehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands.

Not that decline is always a choice. Britain's decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable.

The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.

A docudrama Of The Armenian Genocide

March 30, 1916 Sambayat, Turkey

The sky was azure blue and dotted with fluffy, white clouds. Beneath it, a convoy of young women and children shuffled into the town and down the main road. All bore the look of death. Some stumbled, some were helped along; some, the youngest ones, nearly skeletons, were carried in the bony arms of their mothers. Some wore ragged clothes. Some none. All were filthy. All stared down at their bare feet with cavernous eyes and sunken cheeks.

Those who were naked were helped by a gentle, surprisingly warm breeze blowing up from the desert to the south. Combined with the bright sun, it overcame the normal spring chill and made for a comfortable coatless day. The air was clear, and the breeze wafted along the smell of cooking food from nearby buildings.

It would have been a great day to be alive. Uniformed, bearded guards, carrying their long rifles with bayonets fixed, ambled along beside the convoy. The women could no longer be hurried.

An officer at the head of the convoy lifted his head at the smell of food, then turned and raised his hands for the guards to stop the convoy. He waved to the side of the road. The guards pushed and prodded the women to a grassy area, and two of them were ordered to watch over the women. The rest formed a circle in the shade of a sweet gum tree, opened their packs, and began to eat lunch. No food was given the women, but they were allowed to dip their hands in a nearby puddle and drink from them.

One woman limped off the road and stood stock still for minutes, holding her two shriveled little girls by the hand. Then she slowly fell to her knees and toppled over, dead. Her girls sat down at her side, obviously believing she was only asleep, and again clasped her bony, cooling hands in theirs.

Another woman gave no attention to the water. She held the half-putrefied cadaver of a newborn infant tightly to her chest, cooing softly to it.

Nearby, a naked woman lay on her back, her head turned away from the sun. Her haggard face still retained some of what must have been ravishing beauty. Her body bore the bruises and slime of frequent rape. As the light in her eyes gradually extinguished, they momentarily reflected her agony before turning vacant.

After a half-hour, the officer stood and signaled for the guards to reform the convoy. Reluctantly, some at the point of a bayonet, the women and children struggled to their feet and tottered back to the road. One woman took the hands of the two children whose mother had died, and pulled them struggling away from her. The guards checked those that remained on the ground for signs of life, poking some with their bayonets. Finally, the trudging mass of despair was taken out of town on an intersecting road, heading toward the south and the desert. The guards left the corpses for the townspeople to bury.

Two nargile smokers in the rear of the Ligor Kiraathanesi coffee house along that road, each sitting comfortably next to his traditional pipe, had watched the convoy come and go. They knew exactly what was going on. Not so the young man seated at a tiny table on the patio of the coffee house. Shielded from the sun by a large Syrian juniper, Peter Kahan watched, mouth agape, only moving when the discomfort of the hard wooden chair on which he was sitting demanded it. He had traveled to several towns and was now in Sambayat on his way to the ancient city of Adiyaman. He had just had lunch and, of course, Turkish coffee, and still held the small coffee cup as though it was frozen in his hand.

He was a foreign correspondent for The Times of London, which had sent him to Turkey because he spoke Turkish. He had learned it at home from his parents, who had immigrated to Britain before he was born. As always, The Times did not trust Foreign Ministry handouts. He was to interview members of the Young Turk government regarding Turkey’s two-front war with Italy over Libya, and with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro. The Times also wanted him to appraise Turkish public opinion, and that was why he was traveling through this region. Peter had heard rumors about what he had just seen. Some Greeks swore to him that it was happening and that he must inform the world through his newspaper, but the government officials he queried about it denied it flatly. Oh, there were some deportations of Armenians from the east, they said. But they were only to relocate those sympathetic to Russia from the eastern border regions in case Russia joined the war against them. They insisted that the deportations were humanely done.

But now he had seen a deportation with his own eyes. He looked again at the two scrawny corpses, and the doner kebab—thick grilled bread stuffed with lamb shavings and cabbage, topped with a spicy sauce—he’d had for lunch weighed heavily in his stomach. It was beginning to revolt; he could taste the spicy sauce again. He quickly put the cup down and doubled over, spewing his lunch on a nearby bush.

Forty-three Miles Away

One after another, the muscular, heavily-built man hacked at their heads and necks with his axe. When they tried to shield themselves, he hacked off their arms first. His comrades, armed with their bayonets and knives, worked into the quaking, screaming crowd of women, children, and old men. He and the other soldiers were under orders to save ammunition.

Then he saw her. She stood silently, hugging her younger brother to her, her head resting on his. She was from his town of Okaris, and very beautiful. She was not one whose name he would forget, and he yelled to her above the tumult, “Quick, Siran. Come to me.”

She did not hear him.

He pushed several women aside, kicked over one who was praying on her knees, and came up alongside Siran. He put one bloody hand on her shoulder, and when she looked at him, he yelled above the terrible noise, “I will protect and save you. Release your brother, and follow me.”

She shook her head.

He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away from her brother, but she held him tighter. The hacking, stabbing soldiers were getting closer.

“I give you life,” he urged.

Again she shook her head. She turned her head to look into his eyes, and finally shouted, “If you are so kind, I ask only this favor.”

“What? Quick!” he barked.

“I know you will not save my brother. Please. Kill him now. Please, before me. Then while I wait for you to kill me, I will not worry about him. I do not want him to suffer any agony, any torture.”

The muscular soldier vigorously shook his head, and again tried to pull her away. She resisted.

“Please,” she said.

It was too late anyway. He could feel his comrades at his back, and one was approaching from the side with his bayonet pointed toward her. He nodded.

Siran quickly turned her brother to face her, and whispered into his ear, “A temporary goodbye, my brother.” She kissed him. “We will meet in the next world and be in God’s hands. Do not fear. It is a matter of seconds.”

They kissed each other for the last time, and the boy stood apart, facing him without fear. The soldier now had no choice. Orders were orders. He quickly cleaved the boy’s skull open with the axe, and he collapsed at sister’s feet, dead. He turned to the girl. She stood with her hands at her sides. Her chin was uplifted toward him, and her eyes were misty. “Thank you,” she said, barely loud enough to hear. “Please, now, do the same to me. One blow. No torture.”

He nodded, heaved back his axe, then hesitated, looking into her eyes. He saw only acceptance. He brought the axe down on her head.

Link of Note

"Statistics of Turkey's Democide:
Estimates, Calculations, and Sources"
By R.J. Rummel

Quote:

The infamy of executing this century's first full scale ethnic cleansing belongs to Turkey's Young Turk government during World War I. In their highest councils Turkish leaders decided to exterminate every Armenian in the country, whether a front-line soldier or pregnant woman, famous professor or high bishop, important businessman or ardent patriot. All 2,000,000 of them.

Books, articles, statistics

Vietnam and the Afghanistan Debate

Source—Click table to enlarge

Peter Spiegel And Jonathan Weisman have published in The all Street Journal ”Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages.” They say:

The two [books] draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now.
The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight.
It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.
The two books -- "Lessons in Disaster," on Mr. Obama's nightstand, and "A Better War" on the shelves of military gurus -- have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama's presidency.

The American involvement in and retreat from the Vietnam War embodies a critical lesson currently for Afghanistan. To see this, however, requires a correct view of the war, which (with the distortions and untruths by the left and their media) is denied the public.
In the 1950s, communist North Vietnam began a guerrilla campaign to take over South Vietnam, a movement subsequently reinforced by the North’s army. By the early 1960s, the South was losing, and consistent with American foreign and defense policy of containing communism, Kennedy escalated our involvement of military advisors, and Johnson further with American combat forces and air power in 1963.

However, by 1964, the South was in bad shape, with defeat likely. So, using an alleged attack on American ships as a rationale, Congress gave President Johnson a blank check to fully engage American forces in defense of the South. He did, and eventually 550,000 troops were involved by 1969. At that time, the North was practically defeated. Its army had lost every battle. The Viet Cong guerrillas the North used and controlled were almost wiped out in their Tet Offensive. In effect, the war was almost over with an American victory and an independent South, but the North fought on, believing that they could win the war in Washington, if not in the South.

They were right. By 1969, the noisy anti-war activists had taken their toll. A barrage of public protests, and a hostile media gradually eroded the initial strong Democratic support for the war, eventually turning them against it. There was widespread belief (fueled by the media) that the South was corrupt, authoritarian, weakly defending itself, leaving it to the American forces to fight, and were losing to the North. In 1974 Congress, controlled by antiwar Democrats, voted to curtail funding for American military activities in Southeast Asia with an eventual total cutoff of all funding. This in effect ended the American war effort in South Vietnam. Denied military aid and air support, the South was defeated by a limited offensive that with increasing success became all out. In 1975, Saigon fell as American helicopters tried to save a handful of South Vietnamese.

The communist victory over the South eventually cost 528,000 lives in executions and deaths in re-education camps, and 250,000 more Boat People fleeing on the ocean. For the totals killed or murdered, see here.

What is the lesson for Afghanistan in this sorry and bloody story. With victory in Afghanistan within our reach. We need only the will and to use the resources we have in great measure. Therefore, listen to our commanders, surge as necessary, and do not let the left snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again.

Tyranny In View--The Not So Stealth Obama Coup

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As I have written before in my Tyranny Closing In—The Stealth Coup, I fear for the future of American democracy because of the power Obama and his cronies have now amassed.

Of course, there are no certainties here. One can judge only by the character of these people, their ideologies, their capabilities, world history, and what is possible and probable. Undeniably, this is not science but informed intuition. And I submit, it is all that we can go on.

Having said that see Joshua Muravchik's ”Devastating: Obama's Abandonment of Democracy and Human Rights”

The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”

Also Kyle-Anne Shiver’s”Barack Obama, the Quintessential Liberal Fascist”

When Saul Alinsky began building his community-organization movement in 1930s Chicago, observers were watching Alinsky with one eye, while with the other eye observing the building of communist and fascist movements in Europe. It wasn't hard then to see in Alinsky's programs at home, elements of the people's revolution from Russia, as well as some of the same "in your face" tactics being employed by Hitler's Brownshirts.

What Alinsky's critics saw was the burgeoning of a national movement, the carefully manipulated construction of people's organizations, which all had two elements in common: (1) a collectivist creed, which denied the existence of personal responsibility; and (2) an amoral dogma, in which all means were justified by an imaginary utopian end.

Also Victor Davis Hanson’s ”Our Road to Oceania”

In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media.

Perceived enemies are everywhere - supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania.

In Orwell's Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers "Newspeak" - recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. "Doublethink" means you can believe at the same time in two opposite beliefs.

America is not Oceania, but some of this is beginning to sound a little too familiar.

Also Declan McCullagh’s ” Bill would give president emergency control of Internet”

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Also ” FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Locations and Executive Orders” says

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft's list.

Also John Byme’s item, “Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely” item:

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.

More here.

We must understand that in applying much of the legal structure erected to fight terror, such as the Patriot Act, the government defines who is a terrorist. Any individual or group can be labeled “terrorist”. Consider that the Department of Homeland Security’s report, ” Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment“, targets as potential terrorists “most conservatives and libertarians in the country”--Stephen Gordon.

And so on, an on, and on.

It is clear that Obama and his close advisers, his cabinet, his czars, and top Congressional Democrats are convinced that they can eliminate mass poverty in the United States, prevailing inequality, the entrenched evils of capitalism, nuclear proliferation, and violence in the world. The only hindrances are those damn libertarians, conservatives, and Republicans—the vast right wing.

They have two solutions to this perceived and believed massive social injustice and violence. One is the stealth coup I described in the link to my blog above. The other is an outright coup. Now that all the logistics (much of which has been justified by the war on terror, illegal immigration, and the current depression) are in place, one thing remains. A great national emergency, such as the the burning of the Reichstadt in 1933, for the Nazis. For us, it can be a suicide bombing of a major Federal building, the assassination of a high federal official, the loss of thousands of lives in a gas attack, and so on. This crisis can be actual or contrived. Anything that would legitimize a declaration of a national emergency, the assumption of near total power by Obama, the postponement of elections, extensive censorship and control of the major media, and the “temporary” incarceration of opponents.

Beware and be alert.

Why Such Support for the Lie that is Global Warming?

The decadal correlation strengths (r-squared) of both the Hadley and MSU satellite with
the corresponding CO2 is non-existent (r2=0.00). Source.

I have produced a number of blogs on global warming, usually with supporting figures and charts. They are:

• ”Is Global Warming A Criminal Conspiracy? Part II” 9/30/09


• ”Is Global Warming A Criminal Conspiracy?” 9/29/09


• ”Strange! Global Warming Data Disappears”9/25/09


• ”Antarctic melting! NOT” 8/22/09


• ”Yes, Global Warming Is About Political Power” 7/28/09
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• ”The Great Global Warming Power Grab” 7/17/09


• ”Global Warming Is A Scam For Power” 7/04/09

To these I add the summary overview by Bert Tassoni, “Global Warming – Nonsense!”

These blogs and linked publications should establish that “global warming” is a lie, and moreover, a possible criminal conspiracy. Then why the incredible support by scientists, nations, the major media, and international organizations like the UN? Such overwhelming support that many equate global warming denial with Holocaust denial. So much so that government agents suppress contrary evidence, and scientists refuse to divulge data that might contradict the notion of global warming.

The explanation lies in the confluence of a number if interests. One is the politically strong environmental movement that has chosen to declare global warming as the central problem, using CO2 as the way to reign in and control the hated anti-earth industrial growth and capitalism.

Second are the socialists and Marxists in and out of government who also use this as a way to eliminate the evils of capitalism.

Third are the statists or fascists for whom global warming is an opportunity to increase government control of society and the economy. They believe that government must step in and resolve a global crisis of such magnitude. Thus, the Cap and Trade Bill and the numerous proposed controls and regulations to reduce CO2.

Fourth, not to be forgotten are the grants, contracts, and funds invested in dealing with global warming. This wealth and support to many would vanish were global warming known to be a lie.

Fifth, never underestimate the egos involved. By virtue of their writing, speeches, policies, and past actions, their reputations as politicians, scientists, and commentators depend on the idea of global warming continuing and growing.

Sixth, since all these interest infest the major media, it swallows the “truth” of global warming and its cause—CO2. Rejected is any possibility that the “evidence” is wrong or cherry picked or inconsistent. Thus, for a decade, the world has been misled and lied to, possibly criminally.

And finally, seventh, the vast public also has been duped by all those drum beating scientists, commentators, and politicians. Why not? They speak authoritatively. Are well respected. Why question their claim of a global crisis?

Perhaps it is time to, “Trust, but verify.”

It is Worse Than Celebrating the Holocaust

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I have spent years documenting the mass murder (democide) of the Chinese people by Mao Tse-Tung. The resulting statistics, sources, notes, and descriptive history are in my China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. My initial estimate of Mao’s horrible toll is in two parts:

• Civil War-Sino-Japanese War 1923-1949 = 3,466,000 murdered


• Rule over China (PRC) 1949-1987 = 35,236,000 murdered

At that time, I did not include China’s Great Famine, 1958-1961. From my study of what was available in English then, I could not define it as democide. However subsequent research has convinced me that it should be included. This changes Mao’s total to 76,692,000 (rounded off to 77,000,000) murdered.

This is now in line with the 65 million toll estimated for China in the Black Book of Communism, and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s estimate in their Mao of “well over 70 million.” On this see my blog ”Getting My Reestimate Of Mao’s Democide Out.”

Even my earlier figure far surpasses the 21,000,000 murdered by Hitler, including the Holocaust conventionally estimated to be 6,000,000 Jews. Yet, New York's Empire State Building was illuminated in red and yellow to HONOR the 60 year bloody communist tyranny over China.

The souls of the tens of millions of Chinese victims cry for recognition in vain. Weep for them.

Is Global Warming A Criminal Conspiracy? Part II

Source

The story on global Warming is hidden data, data withheld from those who want to study them, indirectly getting the data, and finding the data actually yield results the opposite of what is claimed.

See arclein’s “Hockey Stick Fraud” where he says:

There is no way to be generous or to dodge this bullet. We now have outright confirmation that the data was deliberately selected to provide the dramatic eye catching result that was made it so famous. This is not science so much as a publicist’s dodgy manipulation of data to support a doubtful scheme.

I am certain every scientist has faced the frustration of months of hard work merely showing no evidence for the proposed theory. Once again our scientists had no evidence. So they merely selected the best data points in a statistical distribution and discarded the rest. I can prove anything if I am allowed to do that. Hell, I know of this great gold mine in which the grades exceed five ounces to the ton. – see this assay sheet?

When these guys floated their paper, they had no expectation anyone else would care and result were important in order to push their spurious claims. Then the world paid attention and they hid the data for ten years so no one could discover what they had done.

More here

Also, see Delingpole’s “How the global warming industry is based on one MASSIVE lie” in which he says

Those of you who saw An Inconvenient Truth may remember, if you weren’t asleep by that stage, the key scene where big green Al deploys his terrifying graph to show how totally screwed we all are by man-made global warming. This graph – known as the Hockey Stick Curve – purports to show rising global temperatures through the ages. In the part representing the late twentieth century it shoots up almost vertically. To emphasise his point that this is serious and that if we don’t act NOW we’re doomed, Al Gore – wearing a wry smile which says: “Sure folks, this is kinda funny. But don’t forget how serious it is too” – climbs on to a mini-lift in order to be able to reach the top of the chart. Cue consensual gasps from his parti pris audience.


Except that the graph – devised in 1998 by a US climatologist called Dr Michael Mann - is based on a huge lie, as Sceptics have been saying for quite some time. The first thing they noticed is that this “Hockey Stick” (based on tree ring data, one of the most accurate ways of recording how climate changes over the centuries) is that it seemed completely to omit the Medieval Warming Period.
According to Mann’s graph, the hottest period in modern history was NOT the generally balmy era between 900 and 1300 but the late 20th century. This led many sceptics, among them a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre to smell a rat. He tried to replicate Mann’s tree ring work but was stymied by lack of data: ie the global community of climate-fear-promotion scientists closed ranks and refused to provide him with any information that might contradict their cause.

….what McIntyre discovered was that Professor Briffa had cherry picked his “tree data sets” in order to reach the conclusion he wanted to reach. When, however, McIntyre plotted in a much larger and more representative range of samples from exactly the same area, the results he got were startlingly different. [rather than a hockey stick trend sharply upward to global warming, he got a trend line downward to global coolling]

More here


“

Is Global Warming A Criminal Conspiracy?

Cartoon source
In his very important badly titled publication “Paul Krugman Tries To Play Scientist, As Real Scientist Uncover Serious Flaw In Global Warming Data,” space systems and aerospace engineer Trent Telenko points out what may be a criminal conspiracy in the suppression and alteration of the data underling the belief in global and CO2 as its cause. He says

As [Paul] Krugman ably demonstrates, lay people should not jump into this debate without some experience and expertise in science, math and engineering. The real professionals, on the other hand, have discovered that the source of all the recent global warming is not CO2, but bad data used in climate models which forces the models to show recent warming – where OTHER DATA shows there is no recent warming.

Let me repeat this. The statistical models used by the High Priests of Global Warming are using a newly identified and specific data set which wrongly produces decades of warming where none exists in the raw temperature data 0r other data sets.

More here

The following is a plot from Telenko’s publication He says:

What this shows is that when you take out … suspected tree ring data, there is no global warming (black line) but actually global cooling. If you add in ALL the data sets from that region of Russia, there is no global warming (green line) at all. Only if you carefully select some special data from the world of data sets (red line) do you see something that could be advertised as global warming?

Source

Where goes Afghanistan and Iran?

Cartoon source
Here is a very important analysis of “Obama's Move: Iran and Afghanistan, by George Friedman. Published by Stratfor as one of its Geopolitical Intelligence Reports. I agree with what Friedman says:

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, now-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that like all U.S. presidents, Barack Obama would face a foreign policy test early in his presidency if elected. That test is now here.

His test comprises two apparently distinct challenges, one in Afghanistan and one in Iran. While different problems, they have three elements in common. First, they involve the question of his administration’s overarching strategy in the Islamic world. Second, the problems are approaching decision points (and making no decision represents a decision here). And third, they are playing out very differently than Obama expected during the 2008 campaign.

During the campaign, Obama portrayed the Iraq war as a massive mistake diverting the United States from Afghanistan, the true center of the “war on terror.” He accordingly promised to shift the focus away from Iraq and back to Afghanistan. Obama’s views on Iran were more amorphous. He supported the doctrine that Iran should not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, while at the same time asserted that engaging Iran was both possible and desirable. Embedded in the famous argument over whether offering talks without preconditions was appropriate (something now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked him for during the Democratic primary) was the idea that the problem with Iran stemmed from Washington’s refusal to engage in talks with Tehran.

More here

Understand the UN--It Is Thugsville

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On December 16, 2004, while addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized again the liberal, leftist line that the United Nations is not only central to dealing with global threats, but is “The only universal instrument that can bring states together in such a global effort”.

What a joke! By its own reckoning, the UN has failed in peace making, peace keeping, and conflict resolution. Sadly, it has become a weapon and a shield for the world’s dictators. It is thus corrupt to the core.
All dictators are not the same. Some are simply thugs who hide behind their guns and goons while they murder their captive citizens, condone extreme torture (a few even approve slavery and rape), and loot their country’s wealth and resources for personal gain, for power, for an ideology, or for a religion. At the present time, there are forty-three totalitarian thug regimes (rated unfree by Freedom House). These, along with the more moderate sixty partly free, but sympathetic and collaborative regimes, dominate the UN. They now defeat its mission, and have singled out one nation, Israel, for the UN’s venom, with the U.S. not far behind. Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are the rule.

Of course, Barack Obama, with his inclination to appease dictators (actual or potential), defers to the UN, embracing it as part of his plans for global socialism, peace, disarmament, and nuclear nonproliferation.

I have arrived at this conclusion about the UN reluctantly, for I was its enthusiastic supporter early on.
What’s to be done? I don’t suggest withdrawal. The UN has too many useful functions, serves as a neutral forum for contact and communication between adversaries or enemies. When there is general agreement on conflicts, interventions, peacekeeping, refugees, humanitarian aid, sanctions, criminal tribunals, human rights, and so on, the UN does help save lives and promote human welfare and security.

Nonetheless, given the UN’s overall record, when millions have perished from war, democide, famine, and poverty, the good of the organization is undermined by its dictatorship members. Two things should be done. First, a democratic-nation-only-caucus should deal with all issues before the UN. Such a caucus now exists, but is still in its teething stage. It is all but invisible. But, it must be front and center in all UN debates and resolutions.

Second, we need an international governmental organization of all democracies to deal with issues on which the UN cannot or will not act, particularly the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy. I have written on such an Alliance of Democracies, and need not say more here. Given the UN’s problems, the need for such an organization is obvious. It would buttress the UN when it acts to promote democratic values, but, if it fails to do so, particularly because of dictatorship opposition, then the Alliance would be most useful.

There is already growing movements and governmental activities toward such an Alliance. Democratic activists, practitioners, academics, policy makers, and funders, have come together to cooperate in the organized international promotion of democracy. They call this a World Movement for Democracy. It has its own website, on line publications, DemocracyNews,
courses, a steering committee, secretariat, and periodic assemblies. It now needs strong public support, and especially a formal way to deal with global issues.

Down with thug regimes and their UN power. Democracies of the world, unite.

Strange! Global Warming Data Disappears

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So, the Obama government is eager to legislate and regulate global warming as though it exists, and that its assumed cause, CO2, is based on science. But there are no good records of global surface temperatures for science to study now. They are lost. As Patrick J. Michaels says in his “The Dog Ate Global Warming,”

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

More here.

Yet, Obama and his people want to greatly nationalize America’s society and economy on assumptions for which the data are not there. But according to a EPA suppressed scientific report (permalink not working, so see the first link in the text after the cartoon), what can be tested and verified does not support global warming or the supposed cause.

Then, what is going on here? A fraudulent world global warming crisis is being wielded by the left and socialists world wide to further massive government controls and nationalization. No matter it is false. It is a weapon to win great power.

The Clunkers Fiasko. Not a Parody

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The Clunkers Fiasko. Not a Parody. See “Stung! Undercover celeb exposes Obama fiasco' Milk it, baby – It's free money': You won't believe what happens inside Cash for Clunkers operation”

While President Obama delivers speeches praising the alleged success of Cash for Clunkers, a former rebate processor for the federal program – also working undercover for WND – is calling it "complete chaos."
After the federal "Cash for Clunkers" program ended Aug. 24, the Department of Transportation reported that nearly 700,000 clunkers were taken off the roads and replaced by more fuel-efficient vehicles. Rebate applications worth $2.877 billion were submitted by the 8 p.m. deadline. The Transportation Department hired federal employees and private contract workers to process the rebates vouchers so car dealers would be compensated.
Former White House aide Kathleen Willey was hired as an employee with Vangent Incorporated, a company that provides information technology management and business process outsourcing services to the public and private sectors. Its clients include federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the U.S. Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Justice and Labor and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
But what her employer did not know was that Willey, the author of the book, "Target: Caught In the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton," was also taking notes on all she observed and experienced for [World Net Daily]

More here.

Hitler Myths

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I have published about 500 blogs here, and on the republished Democratic Peace Blog. All blogs are listed here , with a week or two delay.

Of them all, the one most ignored and that strikes at a persistent myth, even among the most knowledgeable of the commentators, is the one on Hitler’s nonelection. You have heard it. “Hitler was elected,” presumably in a national election. But he was not. He lost both national elections in which he participated (see What? Hitler was Not Elected?
)He was appointed chancellor in a backroom deal by the political elite. What gives this myth its strength is that it is that it seems to show that even democratic elections can produce the worst tyranny. Realist like this idea as do leftists.

The most controversial of my blogs is also on Hitler. For the left it is a matter of their political religion that Hitler was right wing. So, when I say he was socialist here, those with the prevailing left wing ideology cannot allow it, and have attacked my blog in various ways, including trying to destroy it with 200 page nonsense comments (all cleaned up). On this it is even worse for the left. Jonah Goldberg in his Liberal Fascism his made a strong and well supported argument that today’s left liberalism and progressivism shares many ideas and beliefs with the fascism of Mussolini and Nazism of Hitler (please, not the Holocaust). I agree. One reason I am a freedomist.

As to my blogs describing and advocating the democratic peace, there have been many comments and questions, often repetitive, on them. So, I compiled them all and my answers into a Q and A.

Of course, and comments or questions on any of this are welcome.

Growing EMP concern

EMP Cascade Effects
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Panel: Electrical grid vulnerable to terrorist attack

It sounds like a science-fiction disaster: A nuclear weapon is detonated miles above the Earth's atmosphere and knocks out power from New York City to Chicago for weeks, maybe months.
Experts and lawmakers are increasingly warning that terrorists or enemy states could wage that exact type of attack, idling electricity grids and disrupting everything from communications networks to military defenses.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is pushing Congress for authority to require power companies to take protective steps, which could include building metal shields around sensitive computer equipment.

Continue here

There is growing concern over the possibility of an EMP attack on the US. With Obama's abrogation of the missile defense promised to Eastern Europe, and his appeasement of Russia and Iran, the danger of a EMP attack is heightened. For more details on EMP, see here. Clearly, the Damocles Sword has inched closer.

Cyberdissidents.org—Great New Organization

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Founded in 2008, Cyberdissidents.org is an organization dedicated to supporting human liberty by promoting the voices of online dissidents. Our platform highlights the writings and activities of dissident bloggers in order to strengthen their voice and defend their freedom of expression.
We are a non-partisan group comprised of a diverse range of nationalities, religions and ethnicities. What unites us all is an ardent dedication to human liberty. Our staff and advisers come from a variety of countries including Syria, Sudan, Canada, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Israel, America and Jordan. We have great political differences, yet we all believe that the West has a moral duty to support those struggling for freedom. We encourage the participation of all who share our dedication to liberty, equality and human rights.
More here

Was The Democratic Peace Killed? Part VI, Death By Obama

On the Democratic Peace

ON FOREIGN POLICY

I have shown the historical progress in foreign policies (both international and American) (see here) and the context—the nature of international relations – of such policies (see here). These have evolved through international conferences, which reset the status quo after the Napoleonic Wars and adjusted power relations to the facts of colonization; the focus on international organizations, such as the League of Nations, and law after World War I; and the rise of the theory and practice of political realism after WWII. These were all attempts to keep the peace and avoid war. When war occurred, new and hopefully better peacekeeping policies were created. Such policies (really new paradigms) often originated from the research and writing of scholars, practitioners, and international lawyers and experts.

During WWI, President Wilson argued that the war was going to make the world safe for (and thus spread) democracy. This notion was Europe centered and when the League of Nations died, so did the idea in American foreign policy. It was an anomaly with little support in the international relations scholarship of the time, even though Wilson had been a Professor of Political Science.
With the defeat and military occupation of Japan, Germany, and Italy in World War II, the question was what to do with these former enemies. Democratizing them was the controversial answer of the Truman Presidency, despite the strong academic belief that Japan, an Asian country with a long history of absolute authoritarianism, could not become a democracy. Democratization answered the immediate problem but did not become a rule of foreign policy at that time. Containing communism and the Soviet Union was the rule in 1948, and became entrenched along with the political realist paradigm.

In the later 1980s, with the successful democratic transformation of former enemies, during the presidency of George H. W. Bush the idea of spreading democracy penetrated realism. Not front and center, but it was there and followed when the opportunity to promote democracy occurred. This idea was criticized by realists as idealistic, a return to Wilsonianism.

In the meantime, theoretical and empirical research on the democratic and peace had reached extraordinary conclusions (see on the democratic peace and its bibliography here). Democracies do not make war on each other, and are a way to world peace. This was accepted by Bush’s successor, President Bill Clinton, who thus made democracy promotion one of the three pillars of his foreign policies (the two others were trade, and the use of force when necessary) and a major focus. He made clear the reason was that historically there is no war between democracies (see here)

President George W. Bush, apparently equally impressed by the research on the Democratic Peace, made the democratic peace his Forward Strategy of Peace (see here). It was the basis of his policy. He saw that promoting democracy—freedom—is the way to world peace, and in the fundamental national interest. Realists hated it. It was Wilsonianism reborn, and dangerous; they mistakenly thought it led to forcing democracy on other nations and thus conflict, violence, and war. But Bush and his Secretary of State Rice, stuck to it throughout his administration.

Realists often claim that Bush failed in promoting democracy; there was more democracy in the world when he became president than when he left it. Let us check this using the freedom ratings by Freedom House. For the period of Bush’s two terms, those nations whose rating improved to be the best for Freedom—a rating of 1—went from 29 to 50 in number, almost doubled. The number of electoral democracies remained at 121, and the number of free nations—with a rating of 1 or 2, and sometimes 3—decreased from 91 to 90. To best see the overall change, I averaged the ratings for all nations, and found that for political rights and civil liberties (which range from 1 to 7), those for Bush’s term went from 3.47(last year of Clinton’s presidency) to 3.26 for Bush’s last year. Considering that this is for all 193 nations, the change is significant. Bush’s Forward Strategy Of Peace did promote democracy in the world. Also note that Iraq (rated 6) and Afghanistan (rated 5) are not counted yet among the democracies.

ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY

To characterize Obama’s foreign policy, let’s look at its major elements.

• He apologizes to friends and enemies for past American foreign policy and actions, while ignoring the good that America has done, such as the Marshall Plan, economic aid, being the world’s major source of disaster relief, saving and freeing nations from communism, and democratizing Japan, Germany, and Italy. Also saving a million lives in Somalia and saving Muslim Bosnia and Kosovo; and freeing Kuwait and Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s rule, and Afghanistan from the Taliban, while aiding the constitutional democratization of both.
  
  
• He placates and supports dictators and authoritarian “democrats,” such as Chavez of Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Hu Jintao of China, among others
  
  
• He firmly believes in the thug ruled and failed UN and wants to support and use it as much as he can.
  
  
• He believes in the smile and jaw-jaw approach to conflicts and enemies, such as North Korea and Iran. His administration has scheduled to meet with both, even one-on–one, without, to my knowledge, any preconditions.
  
  
• He has clearly sided with the Palestinians against Israel, including giving aid to Hamas and making demands on Israel that favor of the Palestinians.
  
  
• He has cut funds for missile defense, cut the defense budget overall, and has decided not to build missile defenses in Poland and Czechoslovakia against Iran as a carrot for better relations with Putin. He refuses to fund an upgrade in our nuclear weapons.
  
  
• He is anti-nuclear proliferation to stable democracies, although nukes would help defend them.
  
  
• He has set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq and ending the Iraq War on August 31, 2010, but will leave a force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops.
  
  
• He is clearly reluctant to increase American troops in Afghanistan for fear of world criticism.
  
  
• He has changed the “War on Terror” to “Overseas Contingency Operation.” He says we are not fighting terrorists but al Qaeda, and that fight being our near total focus.
  
  
• He has used the 9/11 anniversary, the memorial day to honor the innocent and the brave who perished at the hands of terrorists, to promote “community service.” 9/11 is simply another day to move his agenda.
  
  
• He is now treating incarcerated terrorists as criminals, with all the rights of American criminals. At one point, some were read their Miranda rights when captured. Also torture, regardless of the immediate need to save lives, has been forbidden. Thus, he has changed a War on Terror to a police action as in pre-9/11. He is unnecessarily closing Guantanamo detention camp by January 22, 2010 as a sop to world and domestic leftist opinion.
  
  
• He is a trade protectionist if so demanded by American unions.
  
  
• He is pursuing the legal prosecution of those CIA agents that used “torture” on terrorists, although done under the guidance of the Department of Justice, thus undermining intelligence operations.

Where is democracy and human rights in all this? They do pop up occasionally in some of his speeches, but are not central to his foreign policy. Then what is? They are “the “three D’s” of defense, diplomacy, and development, with the emphasis being on diplomacy with friends and enemies, or the use of “soft power”. This is clearly a bow to the realist’s belief in diplomacy, but ignores what also should be a focus on hard power and power balances.

The democratic peace? Gone. Dead. If he has said anything, I could not find it. In this, he a 1960’s anti-war, socialist-radical activist. These radicals believed in love not war, that peace can be had by actively opposing American policies and hands across the seas.

So given all this, how do I characterize the Obama foreign policy? Not soft power, not smart power, not political realism. Might it be then to pacify or placate friend and enemies in what he calls the world community? Yes.

Is it then also to satisfy demands of friends and enemies? Yes

Is it moreover to relieve guilt about America’s past behavior? Yes.

And is Obama making concessions at the expense of realism? Yes.

Then his foreign policy is one of appeasement and appeasement is the way to characterize it.

Was The Democratic Peace Killed?—Part V, Prs. G.W. Bush's Forward Strategy Of Freedom

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I have argued that fostering democracy abroad was part of the foreign policy of the three presidents who preceded Barack Obama. The latter two justified this by the democratic peace. For Clinton, it was one of three major goals. For G.W. Bush, the democratic peace comprised his overall foreign policy.

The democratic peace—democracies do not or virtually never make war on each other and is inherently a method of nonviolence—has been mentioned favorably by top leaders, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Clinton’s former National Security Advisor W. Anthony Lake, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The leaders of ASEAN signed a democratic peace oriented pact in October 2003, about which its spokesman M.C. Abad stated, “The introduction of the notion of democratic peace sets the standard of political norm[s] in the region. It means that member states subscribe to the notion that democratic processes promote regional security.”

That promoting a democratic peace was the center of G.W. Bush’s foreign policy is clear from his speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment For Democracy. In it he proclaimed a Forward Strategy of Freedom. Although focused on the Middle East, it was general in tone, “As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.” Specifically, “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.”

He emphasized, “There are . . . essential principles common to every successful society, in every culture:

Successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military—so that governments respond to the will of the people, and not the will of an elite.

Successful societies protect freedom with the consistent and impartial rule of law, instead of selecting applying the law to punish political opponents.

Successful societies allow room for healthy civic institutions—for political parties and labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media.

Successful societies guarantee religious liberty—the right to serve and honor God without fear of persecution.

Successful societies privatize their economies, and secure the rights of property. They prohibit and punish official corruption, and invest in the health and education of their people. They recognize the rights of women.

And instead of directing hatred and resentment against others, successful societies appeal to the hopes of their own people.

The above principles were the foundation for the President’s new foreign policy—new in the sense that he had not so clearly articulated it before. He committed the United States to promote and foster freedom, and put dictators on notice that they will no longer be “excused and accommodated.”

The media’s reviews of the speech were mixed. The New York Times opined with reluctant praise:

Mr. Bush spoke well. He is right that Washington has failed to support abroad the values Americans live by at home. Too often, putting realpolitik ahead of freedom has backfired, causing anti-American rage. Mr. Bush is not the first president to promise to put democracy at the forefront of American policy. We hope he does a better job delivering on his promises than some of his predecessors.

Wrote the Washington Post,

Some critics cast President Bush’s speech on democracy in the Middle East Thursday as merely another effort to repackage his troubled and costly mission in Iraq. But the president deserves more credit than that: Not only has he been talking about a political transformation of Arab countries since before the war, but he’s right to conclude that such a project is vital to victory in the war on terrorism.

The more conservative The Washington Times praised the speech as a “Wilsonian call for freedom.” It editorialized:

In what is likely to be remembered as a central foreign policy address of his presidency, President Bush yesterday delivered a powerful message emphasizing the importance of democratic reform throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The BBC has had few good words for recent American foreign policy, but on this speech its Washington correspondent Rob Watson wrote:

This speech may well turn out to be a defining moment in the presidency of George W Bush. Its message was unmistakable—that the countries of the Middle East must embrace democracy for the good of their peoples and the security of the world.

Although the speech was well accepted among foreign policy experts and commentators, they tended to describe it, as did William Safire on the PBS Lehrer News Hour, as “an idealistic Woodrow Wilson democracy speech.” Now, he might have meant to be complimentary, but generally for national security and foreign policy experts, and students of international relations, to label an idea or theory “idealistic,” especially, “Wilsonian,” is often, unlike The Washington Times above, to dismiss it as impractical, unrealistic, or naive. The dominant school of analysis among these people for generations has emphasized either the singular importance of superior power, or of the balance of power, in keeping the peace and securing national interests. They deem any theory that puts democracy or the type of political system at its center as unsophisticated about power and the workings of the international system. It is just not realpolitics. Many of these experts have yet to understand the massive research that has been done on the role of democracy and freedom in international relations, especially regarding peace and war. This research has established conclusively that the central concern should not be power, although it remains important, but a nation’s political system.

As shown by the documents, analyses, and data on my website, empirically and theoretically, Democratically free people have the least internal violence, turmoil, and political instability.

• Free people have virtually no government genocide and mass murder. Freedom is therefore a solution to genocide and mass murder; the only practical means of making sure that “Never again!”
  
  
• Free people do not make war on each other, and the greater the freedom within two nations, the less violence between them.
  
  
• Freedom is a method of nonviolence—the most peaceful nations are those whose people are free

Regarding human welfare, consistent with President Bush’s description of successful societies:

• Freedom—free speech and the economic and social free market—is an engine of economic and human development, and scientific and technological advancement.
  
  
• Freedom ameliorates the problem of mass poverty.
  
  
• Free people do not suffer from and never have had famines, and by theory, should not.
  
  
• Freedom is therefore a solution to poverty, hunger, and famine.

By virtue of all this, those who continue to believe that a foreign policy focus on freedom is naïve, idealistic, and contrary to a realistic foreign policy are the unrealistic ones.

Two days after his speech, as if to double underline it, the President issued a proclamation naming November 9th as World Freedom Day. He proclaimed:

Fourteen years ago, freedom-loving people tore down the Berlin Wall and began to set a nation free from Communist oppression. On World Freedom Day, the United States joins with other countries in commemorating that historic day. The United States is committed to liberty, freedom, and the universal struggle for human rights. We strive to advance peace and democracy and to safeguard these ideals around the world.

Over two decades ago, in the last sentence to the last paragraph of the last chapter of my five-volume Understanding Conflict and War, Vol. 5, I wrote:

In total, some violence is inevitable; extreme violence and war are not. To eliminate war, to restrain violence, to nurture universal peace and justice, is to foster freedom.

And this idea was explicit in the diplomacy of Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was educated in international relatons as a realist and converted to the democratic peace. In a December 11, 2005 speech, titled “The Promise of Democratic Peace: Why Promoting Freedom Is the Only Realistic Path to Security,” she said:

… we live in an extraordinary time -- one in which the terrain of international politics is shifting beneath our feet and the pace of historical change outstrips even the most vivid imagination….in times of unprecedented change, the traditional diplomacy of crisis management is insufficient. Instead, we must transcend the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests. What is needed is a realistic statecraft for a transformed world.
….
Our statecraft today recognizes that centuries of international practice and precedent have been overturned in the past 15 years. Consider one example: For the first time since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the prospect of violent conflict between great powers is becoming ever more unthinkable. Major states are increasingly competing in peace, not preparing for war. To advance this remarkable trend, the United States is transforming our partnerships with nations such as Japan and Russia, with the European Union, and especially with China and India. Together we are building a more lasting and durable form of global stability: a balance of power that favors freedom.
….
The phenomenon of weak and failing states is not new, but the danger they now pose is unparalleled. When people, goods and information traverse the globe as fast as they do today, transnational threats such as disease or terrorism can inflict damage comparable to the standing armies of nation-states. Absent responsible state authority, threats that would and should be contained within a country's borders can now melt into the world and wreak untold havoc. Weak and failing states serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons.
Our experience of this new world leads us to conclude that the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power. Insisting otherwise is imprudent and impractical. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. Attempting to draw neat, clean lines between our security interests and our democratic ideals does not reflect the reality of today's world. Supporting the growth of democratic institutions in all nations is not some moralistic flight of fancy; it is the only realistic response to our present challenges.
In one region of the world, however, the problems emerging from the character of regimes are more urgent than in any other. The "freedom deficit" in the broader Middle East provides fertile ground for the growth of an ideology of hatred so vicious and virulent that it leads people to strap suicide bombs to their bodies and fly airplanes into buildings. When the citizens of this region cannot advance their interests and redress their grievances through an open political process, they retreat hopelessly into the shadows to be preyed upon by evil men with violent designs. In these societies, it is illusory to encourage economic reform by itself and hope that the freedom deficit will work itself out over time.
Though the broader Middle East has no history of democracy, this is not an excuse for doing nothing. If every action required a precedent, there would be no firsts. We are confident that democracy will succeed in this region not simply because we have faith in our principles but because the basic human longing for liberty and democratic rights has transformed our world. Dogmatic cynics and cultural determinists were once certain that "Asian values," or Latin culture, or Slavic despotism, or African tribalism would each render democracy impossible. But they were wrong, and our statecraft must now be guided by the undeniable truth that democracy is the only assurance of lasting peace and security between states, because it is the only guarantee of freedom and justice within states.
Implicit within the goals of our statecraft are the limits of our power and the reasons for our humility. Unlike tyranny, democracy by its very nature is never imposed. Citizens of conviction must choose it -- and not just in one election. The work of democracy is a daily process to build the institutions of democracy: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free media and property rights, among others. The United States cannot manufacture these outcomes, but we can and must create opportunities for individuals to assume ownership of their own lives and nations. Our power gains its greatest legitimacy when we support the natural right of all people, even those who disagree with us, to govern themselves in liberty.
The statecraft that America is called to practice in today's world is ambitious, even revolutionary, but it is not imprudent. A conservative temperament will rightly be skeptical of any policy that embraces change and rejects the status quo, but that is not an argument against the merits of such a policy. As Truman once said, "The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred." In times of extraordinary change such as ours, when the costs of inaction outweigh the risks of action, doing nothing is not an option. If the school of thought called "realism" is to be truly realistic, it must recognize that stability without democracy will prove to be false stability, and that fear of change is not a positive prescription for policy.
After all, who truly believes, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that the status quo in the Middle East was stable, beneficial and worth defending? How could it have been prudent to preserve the state of affairs in a region that was incubating and exporting terrorism; where the proliferation of deadly weapons was getting worse, not better; where authoritarian regimes were projecting their failures onto innocent nations and peoples; where Lebanon suffered under the boot heel of Syrian occupation; where a corrupt Palestinian Authority cared more for its own preservation than for its people's aspirations; and where a tyrant such as Saddam Hussein was free to slaughter his citizens, destabilize his neighbors and undermine the hope of peace between Israelis and Palestinians? It is sheer fantasy to assume that the Middle East was just peachy before America disrupted its alleged stability.
Had we believed this, and had we done nothing, consider all that we would have missed in just the past year: A Lebanon that is free of foreign occupation and advancing democratic reform. A Palestinian Authority run by an elected leader who openly calls for peace with Israel. An Egypt that has amended its constitution to hold multiparty elections. A Kuwait where women are now full citizens. And, of course, an Iraq that in the face of a horrific insurgency has held historic elections, drafted and ratified a new national charter, and will go to the polls again in coming days to elect a new constitutional government.
At this time last year, such unprecedented progress seemed impossible. One day it will all seem to have been inevitable. This is the nature of extraordinary times, which Acheson understood well and described perfectly in his memoirs. "The significance of events," he wrote, "was shrouded in ambiguity. We groped after interpretations of them, sometimes reversed lines of action based on earlier views, and hesitated long before grasping what now seems obvious." When Acheson left office in 1953, he could not know the fate of the policies he helped to create. He certainly could never have predicted that nearly four decades later, war between Europe's major powers would be unthinkable, or that America and the world would be harvesting the fruits of his good decisions and managing the collapse of communism. But because leaders such as Acheson steered American statecraft with our principles when precedents for action were lacking, because they dealt with their world as it was but never believed they were powerless to change it for the better, the promise of democratic peace is now a reality in all of Europe and in much of Asia.
When I walk past Acheson's portrait upon departing my office for the last time, no one will be able to know the full scope of what our statecraft has achieved. But I have an abiding confidence that we will have laid a firm foundation of principle -- a foundation on which future generations will realize our nation's vision of a fully free, democratic and peaceful world.

Now, with all this background on foreign policies, what is President Obama's and was the democratic peace foreign policy killed?

Health "Reform"? Big Sigh

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The most irritating aspect of the current health care debate is the use of the word reform, as in Health "Reform". Again, the left and its major media mouthpieces have won the rhetorical war. Because the public responds to them, the terms used to characterize a policy may make the difference between acceptance or defeat of a policy. The choice of words can cause public opinion to shift between positive and negative. The left, well aware of this, choose terms tactically. Conservatives seldom do, and often seem not even to realize there is a battle to fight.

Consider that "reform" means connotatively to improve, to make better. But what is involved in the health bills and plans being discussed is the nationalization of health, a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Hardly an improvement. Judging by what has happened in other countries with nationalized health care, it will mean treatment delays, rationing care, health care distortions, bureaucratic red tape galore, and bureaucrats making life and death medical decisions.

It is not "health care reform". It is health care "takeover" (or the clumsy, but correct, "nationalization"). Not "At stake for the president is getting Democratic factions on board with his plan and convincing Americans of the need for health care reform," but "At stake for the president is getting Democratic factions on board with his nationalization and convincing Americans of the need for an health care government take over."

But I despair. Even Fox has accepted the rhetoric. The left has won the rhetorical war again. "Reform" is set in concrete.

47 Million Uninsured? No, It is 13.6 Million

Source

Robert Romano points out

According the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 report, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States,” 46.9 million people are uninsured in the U.S. There’s only one problem with this statistic: approximately 31.85 million of them do not actually exist.

The numbers really cannot lie, although the report does. Out of a total population of 297.05 million, the report states on Page 20 that the “number of people covered by private insurance was… 201.7 million in 2006” and the “number of people covered by government health programs was… 80.3 million in 2006.”

Therefore, 282 million had insurance. Which means that out of a total population of 297.05 million, 15.05 million did not have insurance. Right?

Not at the U.S. Census Bureau. There, 297.05 million minus 282 million equals 46.9 million Americans uninsured. How?

Answer here