The population of Russia is shrinking rapidly. The global economic downturn has hit Russia hard. Is this declining nation a serious threat to the US? It shows signs of wanting to seem menacing, but is it in fact a toothless old tiger?  Is it modernizing its armament, or letting its military striking power degrade?   

 Consider this piece of information (Debkafile) –

The Russian Kommersant reported Tuesday, Dec. 16 that Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia’s armed forces, visited Israel in November for talks on the purchase of a first batch of the unmanned reconnaissance drones which Georgia used successfully in its conflict with Russia last August.

– along with this (AP):

Russian warships have been plying the waters off Venezuela and Panama in recent weeks and are now heading for Cuba, but U.S. officials are not so much wringing their hands as yawning. Asked about a Russian warship transiting the Panama Canal earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who saw the ship while crossing the canal last week — told The Associated Press: "I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine."

The Pentagon, while puzzled by the Russians’ actions, also is taking a ho-hum attitude. The U.S. military commander for the region, Adm. James Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said that from his vantage point, there is no reason to be concerned about the Russian naval activity." They pose no military threat to the U.S.," Stavridis said in an e-mail to the AP on Tuesday. It was the first such passage by a Russian or Soviet warship since World War II.

There is no suggestion of a military confrontation, but the Russian moves are notable in part because they appear to reflect an effort by Moscow to flex some muscle in America’s backyard in response to Washington’s support for the former Soviet republic of Georgia and elsewhere on the Russian periphery. That includes U.S. missile defense bases to be erected in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russians were unhappy with a U.S. decision to send a state-of-the-art warship into the Black Sea as part of an American humanitarian aid mission for Georgia in the aftermath of last August’s war with Russia. The Russians also are angry about the Bush administration’s push to add Georgia and the former Soviet republic of Ukraine as members of the NATO military alliance.

Under the gaze of the U.S. Southern Command, Russian ships this fall held joint exercises with the navy of Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is a fierce U.S. critic. Navy Rear Adm. Tom Meek, the deputy director for security and intelligence at Southern Command, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he sees little chance of Russia teaming up with Venezuela in a militarily meaningful way."I don’t think that Russia and Venezuela are really serious about putting together a military coalition that would give them any kind of aggregate military capability to oppose anybody," Meek said. "Frankly, the maneuvers they conducted down here were so basic and rudimentary that they did not amount to anything, in my opinion."

And it’s not just the Russian navy that is showing up in the West. In September, two Tu-160 long-range bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, landed in Venezuela — the first landing in the Western Hemisphere by Russian military aircraft since the Cold War ended. Rice shrugs it off. "A few aging Blackjacks flying unarmed along the coast of Venezuela is — I don’t know why one would do it, but I’m not particularly going to lose sleep over that," she said in the AP interview Monday. She said Russia is welcome to have relations with countries in the West. "I don’t think anybody’s confused about the preponderance of power in the Western Hemisphere," Rice said.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made no effort to hide his irritation at what he considers American arrogance."God forbid from engaging in any kind of controversy in the American continent," he said, referring to his Blackjack bombers flying to Venezuela for a training exercise. "This is considered the ‘holiest of the holy,’" he said during a meeting with Western political scholars at his Black Sea residence in Sochi. "And they drive ships with weapons to a place just 10 kilometers from where we’re at? Is this normal? Is this an equitable move?"

On Monday, the Russian navy announced that a destroyer and two support vessels will visit Cuba for the first time since the Soviet era. The ships are from a squadron that has been on a lengthy visit to Latin America; they are scheduled to put in at Havana on Friday for a five-day stay, navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. Moscow’s support for Cuba fell sharply after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the Russians have bolstered ties recently.

The joint naval exercises with Venezuela were Russia’s way of "demonstrating to the U.S. that it has a foothold in a region traditionally dominated by the U.S.," said analyst Anna Gilmour at Jane’s Intelligence Review. Still, she and many Russian analysts say Moscow’s deployments of warships are largely for show. Russia’s navy is a shadow of its Soviet-era force, having suffered from a serious lack of investment since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Many ships and submarines have rusted away at their berths, and deadly accidents occur regularly.

 Mark Steyn writes (in part – read it all, for the sheer pleasure as well as the wisdom):

There remain a handful of us who think “the war” was not entirely a construct of Rove-Cheney’s dark imagination, and valiantly tootle around town with our “FEAR, NOT HOPE” bumper stickers. Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute had a grim piece in The Wall Street Journal the other day positing an Iranian-directed freighter somewhere off America’s shores capable of firing a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile that explodes in space over Chicago:

Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.

This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.

If Brian Kennedy were to switch it from an Iranian freighter to an Iranian freighter secretly controlled by a Halliburton subsidiary, he might have a scenario he could pitch to Paramount. But he’s got a tougher job pitching it to America. This is the Katrina nation: Our inclination is to ignore the warnings, wait for it to happen, and then blame the government for not doing more. That last part will prove a little more difficult after an EMP attack. I doubt there’ll be a blue-ribbon EMP Commission for Lee Hamilton to serve on, or much of a mass media for him to be interviewed by Larry King and Diane Sawyer on. “An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor,” writes Mr Kennedy. “Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World.”

Are there really people out there who want to do that? End the entire Free World? The very term sounds faintly cobwebbed. When nukes were confined to five reasonably sane great powers, the left couldn’t get enough of Armageddon: There were movies, novels, plays, even children’s books about the day after, and the long nuclear winter. When it was crazies like Reagan and Thatcher with their fingers on the buttons, the liberal imagination feasted on imminent nuclear immolation. Now it’s Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il and who knows who else with their fingers on the buttons, and nobody cares: What’s the big deal?

Well, the Iranians have held at least two tests in the Caspian Sea to launch missiles in the manner necessary to set off an EMP meltdown. And if you were, say, Vladimir Putin and obsessed with restoring Russia’s superpower status, you might reasonably conclude that that might be well nigh impossible without diminishing the superpower status of the other fellow. And, while you wouldn’t necessarily want your fingerprints on the operation, you wouldn’t go to a lot of trouble to dissuade whichever excitable chaps were minded to have a go.

But beyond that is a broader question. In Afghanistan, the young men tying down First World armies have no coherent strategic goals, but they’ve figured out the Europeans’ rules of engagement, and they know they can fire on Nato troops more or less with impunity. So why not do it? On the high seas off the Horn of Africa, the Somali pirates have a more rational motivation: They can extort millions of dollars in ransom from seizing oil tankers. But, as in the Hindu Kush, it’s a low-risk occupation. They know that the western navies that patrol the waters are no longer in the business of killing or even capturing pirates. The Royal Navy that once hanged pirates in the cause of advancing civilization and order is now advised not even to take them into custody lest they claim refugee status in the United Kingdom under the absurd Human Rights Act.

“Weakness is a provocation,” Don Rumsfeld famously asserted many years ago. The new barbarians reprimitivizing various corners of the map are doing so because they understand the weakness of what Brian Kennedy quaintly calls “the Free World”. One day the forces of old-school reprimitivization will meet up with state-of-the-art technology, and the barbarians will no longer be on the fringes of the map. If that gives you a headache, I’m sure President Obama will have a prescription drug plan tailored just for you.

 We don’t agree with everything that follows from Power Line.

First, we do want to know what contacts Obama and/or his team had with corrupt Governor Blagojevich. Obama swam in the sewers of Illinois and Chicago politics for years, and the chances that some of the sewage stuck to him and will stink again in due course are very high.

Secondly we aren’t keen on government creating an infrastructure for ‘alternative’ sources of energy. We would like to see massive drilling for oil and natural gas, the continued use of coal, and the building of many nuclear power plants. 

But we do agree that Obama manifests no understanding of  economics.

Speaking for myself, though, I’m a lot less alarmed by anything Emanuel did than by Barack Obama’s utter ignorance of economics, a subject that was raised again at today’s press conference. It’s an interesting question whether we’ve ever had a President who understands less how our economy works than Obama. There is some pretty stiff competition, but Obama has never had a job in the business world, has never studied economics, and, as far as the public record shows, has never made any effort to understand the vast and diverse economy that he proposes to regulate and transform.

I find this scary, and it gets scarier every time Obama talks about how the federal government is going to create "green jobs" having to do with wind power, etc. It’s possible that the federal government could have a role in helping to facilitate development of an infrastructure that would enable alternative energy technologies, and if Obama made a coherent argument along those lines I’d be receptive to it. But he’s never done so. As far as I can tell, and as far as his press conference today reveals, Obama suffers from the misconception that the government can create wealth and jobs by subsidizing the inefficient production of energy. If he really is that dumb, we are all in big trouble.

 From WorldNetDaily:

 A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday reports of man-made global warming – labeling them variously a lie, a hoax and part of a new religion.

Later today, their voices will be heard in a U.S. Senate minority report quoting the scientists, many of whom are current and former members of the U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

About 250 of the scientists quoted in the report have joined the dissenting scientists in the last year alone.

In fact, the total number of scientists represented in the report is 12 times the number of U.N. scientists who authored the official IPCC 2007 report.
Here are some choice excerpts from the report:

• "I am a skeptic … . Global warming has become a new religion." – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

• "Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly … . As a scientist I remain skeptical." – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology  and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called "among the most pre-eminent scientists of the last 100 years."

• Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history … . When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." – U.N. IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D. environmental physical chemist.

• "The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds … . I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists." – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the U.N.-supported International Year of the Planet.

• "The models and forecasts of the U.N. IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity." – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

• "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming." – U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

• "Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will." – Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

• "After reading [U.N. IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet." – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an associate editor of Monthly Weather Review.

• "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" – Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer-reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

• "Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp … . Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact." – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch U.N. IPCC committee.

• "Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined." – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.

• "Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense … . The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning." – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

• "CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another … . Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so … . Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot." – Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

• "The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds." – Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

 

SHMUEL ROSNER writes at the ‘contentions’ website of Commentary Magazine: 

WorldPublicOpinion.org polled 21 countries and found that most people favor an international agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons:

In 20 of the 21 countries large majorities, ranging from 62 to 93 percent, favor such an agreement. The only exception is Pakistan, where a plurality of 46 percent favors the plan while 41 percent are opposed. All nations known to have nuclear weapons were included in the poll, except North Korea where public polling is not available.

Now we know the “world” would like to get rid of nuclear weapons. What’s next? The world opposes disease? The world stands foursquare against natural disasters? Consider the uselessly hypothetical nature of the way the question was framed:

Now I would like you to consider a possible international agreement for eliminating all nuclear weapons. All countries with nuclear weapons would be required to eliminate them according to a timetable. All other countries would be required not to develop them. All countries, including [respondent’s own country], would be monitored to make sure they are following the agreement. Would you favor or oppose such an agreement?

The question doesn’t specify how all countries involved would be monitored. It just assumes successful monitoring as a given. Who wouldn’t be in favor of this fantasy agreement?

But the devil is in the details, and so, too, are specific reasons to oppose specific anti-nuke efforts. With that in mind, here’s are three questions for WorldPublicOpinion.org’s next poll: “Do you think that international monitoring of regimes in Iran and North Korea could guarantee that these countries do not develop nuclear weapons in secret? In your opinion, has international monitoring aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation been a success so far? Would you trust international monitoring to be the guarantor of the safety of your own children?”

 Burt Prelutsky writes:

Liberals are so intolerant they often can’t even bear to have people say “Merry Christmas” in their presence. In fact, they can’t even bring themselves to recognize it as a celebration of a specific event. Instead, they dismiss it as the holiday season or the winter solstice. Isn’t it funny how nobody feels the compulsion to exchange gifts or attend church services or decorate their homes for the summer solstice? Well, in spite of Kwanzaa and Chanukah, this is Christmas season because most Americans are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Even though I’m Jewish, even I have to acknowledge it’s a special occasion, and those who feel entitled to disparage it are worse than Scrooge. They are bigoted, intolerant, ignoramuses.

We entirely agree with him. 

And we think that the Jewish mother who protested about the singing of ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ at her kid’s school was being narrow, intolerant, stupid, and wrong.  

However, about that atheist statement next to the Christmas creche in a government building in Washington, D.C., and the comments being bandied about that Christianity should be treated with respect, we have this to say: No religion has to be treated with respect. While it is good to treat people with respect, there isn’t an idea ever conceived that should not be criticized, with whatever emotion the critic feels, including contempt and disgust. Religious ideas are only ideas like any others, and trying to protect them by law (as the UN is now trying to protect the horrid ideas of Islam) is narrow, intolerant, stupid and wrong. 

 Burt Prelutsky writes:

Liberals are so intolerant they often can’t even bear to have people say “Merry Christmas” in their presence. In fact, they can’t even bring themselves to recognize it as a celebration of a specific event. Instead, they dismiss it as the holiday season or the winter solstice. Isn’t it funny how nobody feels the compulsion to exchange gifts or attend church services or decorate their homes for the summer solstice? Well, in spite of Kwanzaa and Chanukah, this is Christmas season because most Americans are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Even though I’m Jewish, even I have to acknowledge it’s a special occasion, and those who feel entitled to disparage it are worse than Scrooge. They are bigoted, intolerant, ignoramuses.

We entirely agree with him. 

And we think that the Jewish mother who complained about the singing of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ at her kid’s school was being narrow, intolerant, stupid, and wrong.  

However, concerning that atheist statement next to a Christmas Nativity scene in Washington State’s Capitol in Olympia, and the comments being bandied about that Christianity should be treated with respect, we have this to say: No religion has to be treated with respect. While it is good to treat people with respect as a general rule, there isn’t an idea ever conceived that should not be criticized, with whatever emotion the critic feels, including contempt and disgust. Religious ideas are only ideas like any others, and trying to protect them by law (as the UN is now trying to protect the horrid ideas of Islam) is narrow, intolerant, stupid and wrong. 

 Jonah Goldberg writes:

There are so many things to love about the Rod Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

Wait. That’s not right. There are so many bleeping things to love about this bleeping-bleep Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

For starters, the folks at the Chicago Tribune are Christmas Pony Happy because Blago tried to strong-arm Trib ownership to fire members of the editorial board. Instead, Trib editors will get to have a big tailgate party outside Blago’s cell window.

Newspaper people love that sort of thing.

For the more historically minded, it’s a time for nostalgia. The past comes alive as Chicago’s grand tradition of corruption is sustained for another generation. As the Chicago Tribune once wrote, "corruption has been as much a part of the landscape as corn, soybeans and skyscrapers." According to the Chicago Sun-Times, as of 2006, when Blago’s predecessor, George Ryan, was sent to prison for racketeering, 79 elected officials had been convicted of corruption in the past 30 years. Among the perps: 27 aldermen, 19 judges, 15 state legislators, three governors, two congressmen, one mayor, two turtledoves and a partridge in a stolen pear tree. Especially in this holiday season, it’s so very important to keep traditions alive for the kids. In a sense, Blago did it for the children.

For partisans, there’s the schadenfreude that comes with watching the Democrats – self-proclaimed anti-corruption zealots in recent years – explain why Blagojevich shouldn’t be lumped in with Congressmen Charlie Rangel (cut himself sweetheart deals), William Jefferson ($90,000 in his freezer) and Tim Mahoney (tried to bribe an aide he was sleeping with not to sue him; and you thought romance was dead) as part of a new Democratic "culture of corruption" storyline.

There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times – which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial board meetings in a refrigerator box – created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.

Obviously the list doesn’t end there… 

Read the rest. It’s all delicious. 

 Charles Krauthammer writes:

Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public – and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history. (I include here the extrasolar planets.)

It begins with a near $1 trillion stimulus package. This is where Obama will show himself ideologically. It is his one great opportunity to plant the seeds for everything he cares about: a new green economy, universal health care, a labor resurgence, government as benevolent private-sector "partner." It is the community organizer’s ultimate dream.

Ironically, when the economy tanked in mid-September, it was assumed that both presidential candidates could simply forget about their domestic agendas because with $700 billion drained by financial system rescues, not a penny would be left to spend on anything else.

On the contrary. With the country clamoring for action and with all psychological barriers to government intervention obliterated (by the conservative party, no less), the stage is set for a young, ambitious, supremely confident president – who sees himself as a world-historical figure before even having been sworn in – to begin a restructuring of the American economy and the forging of a new relationship between government and people.

Don’t be fooled by Bob Gates staying on. Obama didn’t get elected to manage Afghanistan. He intends to transform America. And he has the money, the mandate and the moxie to go for it.

 Could you imagine a worse life to be born into – such that many millions are born into – than that of a Muslim woman somewhere in – say – North Africa?  

 Genitally-mutilated, secluded, wrapped in a black tent, forced into marriage, illiterate, frequently beaten, liable to lose her children at any time, not permitted to go out to work, and not allowed to have medical treatment because doctors are male and may not even see her, let alone examine her. If ever a life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short – and full of pain and sorrow – it is the life of this woman. 

She can be divorced by her husband at his whim, and if she has no family to return to, can be abandoned to starvation.   

Because of her clitorectomy and infibulation, it is agony to menstruate and copulate, and childbirth for her is even more excruciating than it is for most women.

Her children can be taken from her at any time. Her boys, even when they are little, can be sold into slavery, made to fight and kill, or to walk over minefields. Her daughters too can be taken as slaves, for a life of perpetual labour and sexual exploitation; or forced into marriage well before puberty, to endure the same sort of life that she endures.

If she is raped she will be killed by her own male relatives in an ‘honor killing’; or, if condemned to be executed by the state, she will be buried in earth up to her shoulders and stoned to death. 

Of course feminists of the free world are up in arms about this, making a huge fuss about it at the United Nations, doing everything they can with passionate zeal and dedication to help their Muslim sisters – aren’t they?

Actually, no. One hardly hears a peep from them about it.  Even to notice it, they pretend, would be ‘racism’. Because, you see, they are almost all on the political left. Leftism, for its devotees, trumps all; and the left, though it brags of caring about the oppressed – indeed, that is it’s very raison d’etre – is in reality compassionless, deliberately blind and ignorant, and universally actively or passively cruel.  

Jillian Becker  December 2008