To the conservative right (which is to say, us “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals”), the nation-state is a Very Good Thing.

To the collectivist left (if you’ll pardon the tautology) it is an abomination from which in their imaginations they have long since moved on (“Forward!” their slogan commands) to International Collectivism under all-powerful, wealth-redistributing, environment-preserving, energy-rationing, contraceptive-distributing, abortion-enforcing, euthanasia-practicing, dissident-eliminating, (Obama-headed?) global governance.

Don’t say “world government”, even though it means the same as “global governance”.

John Bolton, who should be Secretary of State, explains (in a book review* to be found here):

Global governance, the next new thing in trendy international thought, has been typically portrayed as the nearly inevitable evolution upward from the primitive nation-state and its antiquated notions of constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. Not “world government,” wildly unpopular among knuckle-draggers in America, but a rebranded alternative, more nuanced and sophisticated, would creep in on little cat feet before the Neanderthals knew what was up.

American exceptionalism was on its way to the ash heap. Terms like shared and pooled sovereignty were bandied about like new types of cell phones rather than fundamental shifts in the relationship between citizens and state. Multilateral treaties on an astounding array of issues were in prospect — not just the usual subjects of international relations, but matters heretofore quintessentially decided by nation-states: gun control, abortion, the death penalty, among others. …

Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration was surely the high point of global governance’s advance. Here was a president who saw global warming as the threat it was, promising to stop the seas from rising. This self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” rejected U.S. unilateralism, took the United Nations seriously, and understood that European Union-style institutions were the real future. Not only would America have social democracy domestically, but it would join its like-minded confreres worldwide to celebrate global governance’s emerging transcendence. What could go wrong? …

The United States is the main threat to global governance, with its antiquated attachment to its Constitution rather than to multilateral human rights treaties and institutions. …

For Americans, sovereignty is not an abstract concept of international law and politics, nor was it ever rooted in an actual “sovereign” as head of state. … Americans see themselves as personally vested with sovereignty, an ineluctable attribute of citizenship, and they therefore react with appropriate concern when globalistas insist that “pooled” or “shared” sovereignty will actually benefit them. Since most Americans already believe they have too little control over government, the notion of giving up any authority to unfamiliar peoples and governments whose tangible interests likely bear little relation to our own is decidedly unappealing. …

In considering traditional foreign affairs issues, the laws of war, the ICC [International Criminal Court], and the isolation of Israel are all excellent examples of the globalist approach. They seek to exploit both international law and domestic U.S. law to limit, constrain, and intimidate the United States and its political and military leaders from robustly defending our national interests abroad.

One should begin … with skepticism for the very idea of international law ….

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the proponents of “lawfare” have used this strategy successfully against Israel, and increasingly against the United States. By threatening U.S. officials with prosecution for alleged war crimes or human rights abuses, asserting jurisdiction over them when they travel abroad, for example, the globalistas seek to impose their version of international law over our own constitutional authorities. The American response should be that we recognize no higher earthly authority than the Constitution, which no valid treaty can supersede or diminish. And we certainly do not accept that “customary international law” which we do not voluntarily follow can bind us, especially today’s variety, formed not by actual custom but by leftist academics who hardly have our best interests at heart. …

He concludes with a warning that “the struggle to preserve our constitutional system of liberty and representative government is a great unfolding political war, and the outcome is far from certain.”

First, the political battle over the future of America, by which will be decided whether it will be a thriving capitalist nation or a stagnant socialist region, has to be won by us Neanderthals this coming November. (Likely.)

Then the United States should withdraw from the UN and send it packing from Turtle Bay – to the Antarctic, for instance.  (Unlikely.)

But the UN must be destroyed.

* Sovereignty or Submission:Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others? by John Fonte, Encounter Books, New York, 2011

Munir Muhammad’s Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is one of the fragmented organizations squabbling over the vicious legacy of the Nation of Islam … one of the country’s oldest hate groups. [It] has an ugly fratricidal history. Along with its violent attacks on those outside its circle of race and religion, fueled by a belief that white people are subhumans created by a black mad scientist, it has carried on an equally violent campaign against its own. The list of Nation of Islam dissidents murdered or assaulted by their own people stretches back nearly eighty years. …

Daniel Greenfield writes about Munir Muhammad, the Nation of Islam, and the Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and how they stand in high favor with powerful Democrats in Illinois, at Front Page:

The difference between the Nation of Islam and most hate groups is that NOI members and groups can receive government contracts and plum posts from the Democratic Party.

Munir Muhammad … has spent the last nine years sitting on the Illinois Human Rights Commission, with a nearly fifty thousand dollar salary …

How does the business manager for a hate group get appointed by two Illinois governors to a human rights commission? It’s surprisingly easy. It’s just a matter of knowing the right people. …

CROE-TV, the Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s broadcasting arm …  puts out several television shows featuring Munir Muhammad. … Guests  include Valerie Jarrett [senior advisor and assistant to President Obama], Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Barack Obama. …  former Chicago mayor and brother of the former Chief of Staff, Richard M Daley, .. Senator Dick Durbin, … Louis Farrakhan …

When Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan wanted to get rid of one of his critics, he just swapped him out with Munir Muhammad, who became Vice-Chairman of the Board of Corrections, not to mention also serving on the Cook County Sheriff’s Committee on Religious Tolerance …

Ponder that: a man notorious for his intolerance serves on a County Sheriff’s Committee on Religious Tolerance …

… and the Chicago Police Department’s Multicultural Forum.

Illinois politicians didn’t just give Munir Muhammad lucrative policy gigs, they donated thousands of dollars directly to his organization. An organization whose reason for existence is promoting the ideas of a bigot, whose views, aside from skin color, have little to distinguish them from those of Aryan Identity groups.

Governor Blagojevich had doled out some 50,000 dollars in state money to Munir’s hate group and even proclaimed February 12, 2006 to be “Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah Muhammad Day” and encouraged citizens of the state to recognize the organization for its “ongoing commitment to ensuring the legacy of this influential African-American leader”—an influential leader who had described white people as devils and “born murderers”.

Similar proclamations from the governor’s office in 2004 and 2005 described the Coalition as “an important voice in both the African-American community and the general public”. …

After Blagojevich was gone, Governor Pat Quinn renominated Munir Muhammad to the Illinois Human Rights Commission.

But this time – confusingly to observers like us, resigned to the extreme cynicism of most politicians – there was a sudden astonishing upsurge of decency, or conscience, or revulsion, or something we don’t know about, in the minds of some Democrats, and this notorious racist was voted down:

The result was a brief debate and a close vote with the Illinois Senate splitting mostly down party lines. Twenty senators voted to reappoint Munir Muhammad and thirty voted against—with only seven Democrats crossing party lines to vote against him. … The Illinois State Senate transcript for Munir Muhammad’s original appointment shows that it was carried without a single opposing vote. Obama appeared to be present at the session, which means that he voted to confirm Munir Muhammad.

In 2001, 75,000 dollars was allotted to the Coalition for the purchase of television cameras for its production studios, courtesy of Illinois State Senator Donne E. Trotter. When Gilad Atzmon, a figure so repulsive that even Anti-Israel groups have deemed him too Anti-Semitic to be associated with, appeared on Munir Muhammad’s show, the cameras filming the whole thing may well have been the ones paid for by taxpayer dollars. At the time Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate and his funding requests appear next to those of Trotter.

But wait, there’s more:

It would be nice to think that Munir Muhammad’s success was an individual blind spot in the system, but it wasn’t. Claudette Marie Muhammad, Chief of Protocol in the Nation of Islam, had been appointed to the Illinois Anti-Discrimination Panel.

And there was Willie Barrow, the Chairwoman of the Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes, an enthusiastic admirer of Farrakhan and one of Obama’s Faith Endorsers. A woman whom Michelle Obama described as “our friend”.

Munir Muhammad has lost his position and his fifty thousand dollar salary, but there is little doubt that Illinois politicians will continue trooping down to the studio to chat with the bigot …

Corruption is the way things are done in Chicago and that includes turning a blind eye to black racist groups who may believe that white people are the devil, but can be counted on to deliver the votes from Elijah Muhammad’s mothership.

Chicago’s dirt is no longer just the property of that city; it belongs to all of us. And Munir Muhammad also belongs to all of us. The men and women he sat across from are no longer just big wheels in state politics — they run the country. And the Chicago Way has become the American Way.

Only for a little while longer, we hope.

The forthcoming presidential election in the US is about socialism versus capitalism.

“Capitalism” was Karl Marx’s word for what Adam Smith called “the natural order of liberty”. To be for capitalism is to be for individual freedom. 

Obama, whether he admits it or not, is a socialist, and his agenda is to change America into a socialist welfare state. As the collapse of one after another of such states in Europe demonstrates, that is the road to economic ruin.

Romney is a capitalist. He would keep America the free market country it has always been. The free market is the only road to general prosperity.

Here’s Milton Friedman on Socialism versus Capitalism – as the short video clip is titled – in a 1979 Phil Donahue show:

The Obama administration will go to any length to prevent America developing its own mineral resources.

Why?

This is from Townhall Finance, by Lincoln Brown, writing on May 24, 2012:

The news came out today that the administration imposed its 20 year ban on uranium mining on federal land in Arizona with no scientific basis to support the move. In fact, an email from a National Park Service hydrologist states that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement fails to establish links between impacts on water and uranium mining. The leaked email states in part:

This is obviously a touchy case where the hard science doesn’t strongly support a policy position. Probably the best way to ‘finesse’ this would be fall back on the ‘precautionary principle’ and take the position that in absence of even more complete certainty that there is no connection between uranium mines and regional ground water, we need to be cautious.

One thousand jobs and $29 million in revenue are on the block in this situation.

Utah Congressman Rob Bishop who is the chairman of the House, National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee released this statement [which he quotes in part and we have shortened further]:

I am concerned and troubled by the Department of Interior’s decision to proceed with the ban despite the fact their own experts cautioned that scientific evidence was lacking. It is now increasingly apparent that the decision was motivated by politics rather than science as the Administration would have us believe. … These emails illustrate that  Secretary Salazar blatantly ignored the scientific analysis in order to advance the Administration’s narrow-minded political agenda.

It’s one thing to oppose nuclear energy. It is another thing to curtail it without scientific evidence.

Lincoln Brown obviously reckons as we do that the “progressive” Left’s objection to the mining of uranium has nothing to do with any threat to water, but because it is used to produce nuclear energy.

Its hatred of nuclear energy derives irrationally from a hatred of nuclear weapons (if owned by the United States, that is – not necessarily if owned by Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, or Iran).

Uranium is not the only mineral that the Left-in-Power is against extracting from American soil.

This is from American Resources Policy Network:

Sounding the alarm on the possible impact of hypothetical mining — in spite of the fact that no permit application or specific plans have been submitted — the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a cursory review of the Bristol Bay Watershed in Alaska.

The EPA is the main instrument of Obama’s dictatorship.

The EPA’s unprecedented early action is part of the agency’s effort to derail the development of one of the largest domestic deposits of key strategic mineral resources (Copper, Molybdenum, Gold, Silver and Rhenium) – the so-called Pebble Deposit in Southwestern Alaska.

While the project has not even entered the permitting process, EPA seems ready to hit the kill switch — preemptively vetoing the project before any application has been filed. Here are some key facts:

· While the U.S. is the world’s third-largest Copper producer, the related risk exposure to possible supply disruption is disproportionately greater than it is for any other mineral. On the national security front, the Pentagon has already reported a “significant delay” to a major weapons program due to inadequate copper supply.

· The unilateral expansion of EPA powers under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act would effectively give the agency ultimate authority to derail any project in the United States that touches on water — with potential impact for projects in every sector of the US economy, from mining to farming, manufacturing, building, energy, and water treatment.

· The EPA has asserted this preemptive power before, and it has been rebuffed in Federal Court. In April, a District Court judge ruled that the EPA’s previous unilateral expansion of its authority to revoke permits already granted for a coal mining project in West Virginia was illegal. In issuing the ruling, the judge termed EPA’s argument for such an expansive power a case of “magical thinking.”

American Resources principal Dan McGroarty’s statement on the issue:

The EPA’s decision to conduct a premature watershed study on a mining
project that has yet to enter the established permitting process is a 
dramatic expansion of the agency’s authority. When it comes to critical
metals and minerals, the US is heavily dependent on foreign sources of
 supply. The EPA’s actions will have a chilling effect on domestic resource
 development, which will impact our national security, manufacturing
 competiveness, and ability to innovate.

(See also our post Elements of future conflict, February 18, 2012)

That great injustice has been done by a court in Pakistan cannot come as a surprise, but it must be angrily deplored. A brave man, Dr. Shakil Afridi, who should receive honor and reward for carrying out an act beneficial to the whole world, including his own country, is instead to be punished for it, by imprisonment for 33 years.

AP reports:

A Pakistani doctor who helped the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden was convicted of high treason Wednesday [today] and sentenced to 33 years in prison, officials said, a verdict that is likely to further strain the country’s relationship with Washington.

Could any strain be great enough to persuade the Obama administration that Pakistan is not an ally of the US?

[Dr. Shakil] Afridi was also ordered to pay a fine of about $3,500 and will spend an additional three and half years in prison if he does not …

Afridi was tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulations, or FCR, the set of laws that govern Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region. Human rights organizations have criticized the FCR for not providing suspects due process of law. There is no right to legal representation, to present material evidence or cross-examine witnesses. Verdicts are normally handed down by a Khyber government official in consultation with a council of government elders.

Dr Shakil Afridi, at personal risk, helped to identify bin Laden.

Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the al-Qaida chief last May.

The operation outraged Pakistani officials because they were not told about it beforehand.

Considering that bin Laden was sheltering under the wing of the Pakistani government, and that their secret services are buddies of the Taliban, it was not only sensible but essential to keep them ignorant of the plan.

Indeed the verdict, which treats Dr. Afridi’s courageous act as treasonous, proves that the Pakistani authorities are on the side of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

What is the US government going to do to help the man who, at his own peril, did such vitally important work for it?

Senior U.S. officials have called for Afridi to be released, saying his work served Pakistani and American interests. His conviction comes at a sensitive time because the U.S. is already frustrated by Pakistan’s refusal to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The supply routes were closed six months ago in retaliation for American airstrikes [with helicopters]  that [mistakenly] killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

It is morally imperative that the US government bring all the pressure it can to bear on the Pakistani authorities to reverse the conviction of Dr. Shakil Afridi. But will the Obama administration do any such thing? To judge by its past form, the Obama administration is more likely to increase the aid it gives to Pakistan than to threaten it with punitive action.

(Hat-tip to reader and commenter Frank)

It has been reliably estimated by many researchers into the subject of “Global Warming” (or any of the other sobriquets by which it is known) that in fulfilling the draconian prescriptions of the Kyoto Accord or its successors, such as the United Nations IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, millions of jobs will be lost in the developed world, the quality of life in the industrialized nations will sink to substandard levels, and the inhabitants of the Third World will be deprived of the minimal immunities, comforts, and amenities to which they aspire.

Are the warmists aware  of that? Do they want to spread poverty?

Seems so. But they are not succeeding.

This is from PJ Media, by David Solway:

Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, has vehemently denounced the attempt to impose energy restrictions on African nations in the name of fighting global warming. “These policies kill,” she writes. As for the combustible Al Gore, he “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year.” Her conclusion: “Telling Africans they can’t have electricity — except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels — is immoral. It is a crime against humanity” . …

H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis, would clearly agree. He correctly argues that recommendations based on “flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles” should be taken “into account before enacting laws to counter global warming — which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.” Such consequences are already in evidence. Benny Peiser, editor of CCNet science network, speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 2009 climate conference in New York, sounded the death knell of the green movement in Europe owing to huge costs and minimal results …  Environmentalist Lawrence Solomon quotes Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada, whose studies show that “every green job created ploughs under 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy” and that green jobs are proving to be unsustainable since the creation of even one such job costs $1 million in government subsidies …

These are costs that may be suffered in other, frankly ludicrous, ways as well. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its 2008 Annual Report, published in 2009, jubilates over the replacement of motorized vehicles by “bicycle rickshaws”—which, it must be admitted, will certainly help to decongest metropolitan traffic. That it would reduce America and the West to Third World Status does not trouble UNEP overmuch. Perhaps that is the plan.

The much-ballyhooed T. Boone Pickens strategy of introducing large-scale windmill technology is now proving to be a similarly quixotic project, unsightly, land-consuming, bird-killing, neurosis-inducing, expensive and totally inadequate to its declared purpose of meeting even a fraction of our electricity needs. Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute has laid the cards on the table for all to read: green electricity bills are rising exponentially; Europe is gradually abandoning many of its green energy programs as cost-ineffective and injurious to both wildlife and human health; and, as of the end of 2008, American solar and wind-power stocks had lost 80% of their value …  Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission has rejected a deal to build an offshore wind farm that would have entailed “hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs…”  New Zealand has repealed its carbon tax scheme and Australia’s opposition party is vowing to follow suit.

The writing is on the wall in majuscule. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has closed shop, putting an end to its estimated $10 trillion carbon trading scheme. In August 2011, President Obama’s pet green project, the California-based Solyndra solar plant, filed for bankruptcy, costing the U.S. $535 million in wasted stimulus funds and 1,100 jobs …  Other such futilities are impending. The Beacon Power Corp, recipient of a $43 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, has filed for bankruptcy after being delisted by the NASDAQ …  The solar cell company Spectrawatt, recipient of a federal stimulus boost, and Nevada Geothermal, which profited from Federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies, are on the brink of failure …  Ener 1, which received a $118 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop lithium storage batteries for electric cars, has filed for bankruptcy protection … This is bad news for the plug-in Chevy Volt, the president’s car of choice, which is beset with problems anyway; GM had to suspend production to cut inventory owing to anemic sales …  Abound Solar, which makes cadmium telluride solar modules to the tune of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, has laid off 300 workers, amounting to 70% of its workforce … And now the electric vehicle battery company A123 Systems, beneficiary of $300 million in Obama’s Recovery Act funds and $135 million in state tax credits and subsidies, courtesy of Michigan’s former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, is about to go belly up …

The reason for many of these failures in green energy-production companies is simple. … As author Rich Trzupek explains, the energy density of convertible wind and solar is risibly low and dispersed, which renders electricity-generating power plants, whether large or small, “the most inefficient, least reliable, and expensive form of power we have” …  As happened in Spain, Europe’s bellwether country for climatophrenic ruination, Obama’s “solar alchemy,” which demonizes traditional forms of energy extraction and application, has become a recipe for an American economic debacle.

Finnish professor Jarl Ahlbeck, a former Greenpeace member and author of over 200 scientific publications, points out that “real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” Contrary to common belief, he continues, “there has been no or little global warming since 1995” …  His findings have been supported by many other studies. To adduce just a few instances: geophysicist Phil Chapman, basing his results on careful analyses from major weather-tracking agencies, reports that global temperature is “falling precipitously” ;  …  geologist Don Easterbrook, associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University and former U.S. representative to UNESCO, is also convinced that recent solar changes suggest the advent of a new cooling cycle which could be “fairly severe” ; … and a new study conducted by three Norwegian scientists, Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum, indicates that the next solar cycle, which is imminent, will see a “significant temperature decrease” over and above the current decline …

Moreover, as Robert Zubrin has decisively shown in his recent Merchants of Despair, there exists robust scientific proof derived from ice core data and isotopic ratios in marine organism remains that Earth’s climate is a stable system, that CO2 emissions create surplus plant growth that in turn absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus restoring climate equilibrium over the long haul, and that under cyclical conditions of global warming agricultural productivity naturally increases and human life immensely improves.

In a brilliant article for the Financial Post …  analyzing the eleven logical fallacies on which the argument for man-made climate change rests, Lord Christopher Monckton, known for tracking and exposing scientific hoaxes, has effectively proven that the anthropogenic thesis has absolutely no basis, neither in fact nor in theory. So-called climate skeptics need nerves of steel to oppose the reigning ideology. It takes no less courage and perhaps even more for a climate “Warmist” to buck the trend, as culture-hero James Lovelock has recently done. Lovelock, who in his 2006 The Revenge of Gaia prophesied the charring of the planet, now admits he had been “extrapolating too far.” Despite predictably hedging his bets and deferring catastrophe into the indefinite future, he avers that “we don’t know what the climate is doing” and disparages his previous work, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, as “alarmist” (MSNBC.com, April 30, 2012).

Nevertheless, the Global Warming meme continues to circulate in defiance of the accumulating evidence, which leads one to wonder who the real “deniers” are. In my own country of Canada, “Warmist” foundations are determined to continue issuing environmental fatwas, in particular to tie up state-of-the-art, economically productive oil pipelines in endless litigation. That such a move would impact national revenues and cost thousands of potential jobs is a matter of no concern.

But the cost of environmentalism is becoming of ever greater concern. Must do.

If the deceit and self-righteousness of Big Green don’t rouse voters and tax-payers to vocal opposition, the cost will surely do it.

There are millions of people in the Western world, hundreds of thousands of them in the universities, the media, the “Occupy” movement, in comfortable houses and apartments in the great cities, and at  least a few hundred in the present US administration, who “think” that Communism is really really good. The best. The ideal. The golden future that good people must work to establish.

Yeah, yeah – Paradise on earth.

They may know how the Russians suffered under Stalin, the Chinese under Mao Zedong, the Cambodians under Pol Pot. But they won’t allow such right-wing narratives to change their minds. No siree! “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,” they declare bravely to each other over their well-loaded dining tables, “we’ll keep the Red Flag flying in our faithful hearts and hopes and dreams.” Besides, they say, that wasn’t true Communism, what Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot did.

You know the names of some of them: Anita Dunne, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, Bernadine  Dohrn, Saul Alinksy, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, Noam Chomsky …

They love humanity and Che Guevara. They feel sorry for the poor and downtrodden and are willing, eager, to kill policemen. They wish heroically to overthrow the rich, capitalism, bankers, the military-industrial complex, dead white men, Bush, Sarah Palin, and … and … you know …

Here’s an extract from an article by Jeff Jacoby at Townhall. It provides more information about life under Communism for them to brush aside:

SHIN DONG-HYUK grew up in North Korea’s Camp 14, one of the monstrous slave-labor prison complexes in which the world’s most tyrannical regime has crushed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, working them to death in conditions of excruciating brutality and degradation. Though the North Korean concentration camps have lasted far longer than their Soviet or Nazi counterparts did, Shin is the first person born and raised in one of them to have successfully escaped abroad. His story is told in journalist Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14, a heart-crushing reminder that man’s inhumanity to man has no limit.

It is a book filled with harrowing passages. At the age of six, Shin was forced to watch as one of his classmates — a short, slight, pretty girl — was beaten to death by their teacher when he discovered five kernels of corn in her pocket. When Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine while working at the camp’s garment factory, half of his middle finger was chopped off as punishment. Time and again he sees other inmates maimed or killed when they are forced to work under appallingly dangerous conditions. And time and again he joins in collective punishment, unhesitatingly obeying when ordered to slap and beat a classmate or some other prisoner singled out for abuse and discipline.

When Shin was 14, he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother for attempting to escape. His dominant emotion as he watched them die was not sorrow, but anger: He was furious at what they had caused him to be put through. Because of their infraction, he had been savagely tortured, suspended in mid-air over a charcoal fire as interrogators demanded information about where his mother and brother were planning to flee after their escape.

“Shin, crazed with pain, smelling his burning flesh, twisted away from the heat,” Harden writes. “One of the guards grabbed a gaff hook from the wall and pierced the boy in the lower abdomen, holding him over the fire until he lost consciousness.”

North Korea’s slave-labor gulag would be horrific even if its inmates were guilty of actual crimes. But most prisoners are guilty of nothing except being related to the wrong family.

Under a demented doctrine laid down by Kim Il Sung, the communist tyrant who founded North Korea, “enemies of class … must be eliminated through three generations.” The regime therefore fills these unspeakable camps not only with “enemies” who dared to practice Christianity or failed to keep a picture of Kim properly dusted, but with their entire families, often including grandparents and grandchildren. Shin’s father ended up in Camp 14 because two of his brothers had fled south during the Korean War. He and Shin’s mother were assigned to each other by camp guards years later as prizes in a “reward” marriage. They were allowed to sleep together just five nights a year. Shin was thus conceived — and spent the first 23 years of his life — behind the electrified barbed wire of Kim’s ghastly hellhole. …

There is no cruelty so depraved that people cannot be induced to do it, or to look the other way while it is being done.

Or deny that it is being done. Or will assure you that even if it is, it’s better than … than … being exploited in “employment” by people whose only aim in life is to make a profit. Yucks!

Those noisy windmills that uglify many a rural landscape are not only doing no good, they are doing much harm, not just to birds but to the economy and so to all Americans.

The subsidizing of the wind power experiment is a racket.

Politicians take billions from taxpayers, ratepayers and profitable businesses, to provide subsidies to Big Wind companies … and then they contribute millions to the politicians’ reelection campaigns.

So writes Paul Driessen, who explains all that’s wrong with the experiment in an article at Canada Free Press:

It is impossible to have wind turbines without fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Turbines average only 30% of their “rated capacity”—and less than 5% on the hottest and coldest days, when electricity is needed most. They produce excessive electricity when it is least needed, and electricity cannot be stored for later use. Hydrocarbon-fired backup generators must run constantly, to fill the gap and avoid brownouts, blackouts, and grid destabilization due to constant surges and falloffs in electricity to the grid. Wind turbines frequently draw electricity from the grid, to keep blades turning when the wind is not blowing, reduce strain on turbine gears, and prevent icing during periods of winter calm.

Despite tens of billions in subsidies, wind turbines still generate less than 3% of US electricity. Thankfully, conventional sources keep our country running—and America still has centuries of hydrocarbon resources. It’s time our government allowed us to develop and use those resources.

In fact, rather than having “only 2 percent of global oil reserves” as Obama likes to pretend because he has an irrational hatred of fossil fuels and a love of windmills, “the U.S. actually has 82 percent as much oil as the rest of the world combined, and almost twice as much as the Middle East” (to quote Steven Hayward at PowerLine).

It is likewise impossible to have wind turbines without perpetual subsidies — mostly money borrowed from Chinese banks and future generations. Wind has never been able to compete economically with traditional energy, and there is no credible evidence that it will be able to in the foreseeable future, especially with abundant natural gas costing one-fourth what it did just a few years ago. It thus makes far more sense to rely on the plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity sources that have powered our economy for decades, build more gas-fired generators — and recycle wind turbines into useful products (while preserving a few as museum exhibits).

As Spain, Germany, Britain and other countries have learned, wind energy mandates and subsidies drive up the price of electricity — for families, factories, hospitals, schools, offices and shops. They squeeze budgets and cost jobs. Indeed, studies have found that two to four traditional jobs are lost for every wind or other “green” job created. That means the supposed 37,000 jobs (perpetuated by $5 billion to $10 billion in combined annual subsidies, or $135,000 to $270,000 per wind job) are likely costing the United States 74,000 to 158,000 traditional jobs, while diverting billions from far more productive uses.

Industrial wind turbine projects require enormous quantities of rare earth metals, concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and other raw materials, for highly inefficient turbines, multiple backup generators and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. Extracting and processing these materials, turning them into finished components, and shipping and installing the turbines and power lines involve enormous amounts of fossil fuel …  Offshore wind turbine projects are even more expensive, resource intensive and indefensible. …

Wind turbines, transmission lines and backup generators also require vast amounts of crop, scenic and wildlife habitat land. Where a typical 600-megawatt coal or gas-fired power plant requires 250-750 acres, to generate power 90-95% of the year, a 600-MW wind installation needs 40,000 to 50,000 acres (or more), to deliver 30% performance. And while gas, coal and nuclear plants can be built close to cities, wind installations must go where the wind blows, typically hundreds of miles away — adding thousands of additional acres to every project for transmission lines.

And about those birds, how they get chopped up by the useless giants:

Sometimes referred to as “Cuisinarts of the air,” US wind turbines also slaughter nearly half a million eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and otherwise protected flying creatures every year. (Those aren’t song birds killed by house cats, and this may be a conservative number, as coyotes and turbine operator cleanup crews remove much of the evidence.) But while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of even a dozen common ducks, turbine operators have been granted a blanket exemption from endangered and migratory species laws and penalties. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a formal rule to allow repeated “takings” (killings) of bald and golden eagles by wind turbines …

So the Left’s passion for preserving species and protecting the wilderness gives way to its apparently greater passion for conjuring “green energy” out of the air.

“Windmills help curb global-warming,” claim their FANS. (Feminist Americans for National Socialism – an entirely fictitious organization, speaking here for a multitude of real left-wing eco-nuts.)

Scientific support for CO2-driven catastrophic manmade global warming continues to diminish. Even if carbon dioxide does contribute to climate change, there is no evidence that even thousands of US wind turbines will affect future global temperatures by more than a few hundredths of a degree. Not only do CO2 emissions from backup generators (and wind turbine manufacturing) offset any reductions by the turbines, but rapidly increasing emissions from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and other rapidly developing countries dwarf any possible US wind-related CO2 reductions.

Skyrocketing electricity prices due to “renewable portfolio standards” raise heating and air conditioning costs; drive families into fuel poverty; increase food, medical, school and other costs; and force companies to lay off workers, further impairing their families’ health and welfare. The strobe-light effect, annoying audible noise, and inaudible low-frequency sound from whirling blades result in nervous fatigue, headaches, dizziness, irritability, sleep problems, and vibro-acoustic effects on people’s hearts and lungs. Land owners receive royalties for having turbines on their property, but neighbors receive no income and face adverse health effects, decreased property values and difficulty selling their homes.

Public anger was aroused, vexed citizens took action and blocked plans for more of the same:

Unprecedented! As bills to extend seemingly perpetual wind energy subsidies were again introduced by industry lobbyists late last year, taxpayers finally decided they’d had enough.

Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives — and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.

Upon which enfuriated Cohorts of the Windmill Cult flung themselves into battle with intensified zeal:

A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors … to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations. This “emerging industry” is “vitally important” to our energy future, supporters insisted. It provides “clean energy” and “over 37,000” jobs that “states can’t afford to lose.” It helps prevent global warming.

None of these salespitches holds up under objective scrutiny, and their growing awareness of this basic reality has finally made many in Congress inclined to eliminate this wasteful spending on wind power.

Entitlement advocates are petrified at that possibility. Crony corporatist lobbyists and politicians have built a small army to take on beleaguered taxpayers, rate payers and business owners who say America can no longer afford to spend more borrowed money, to prop up energy policies that drive up electricity costs, damage the environment, and primarily benefit foreign conglomerates and a privileged few.

It may be too much to hope for, but how good it would be if a new administration blew them away.

May those who sowed the wind reap the whirlwind.

Don Quixote de la Mancha  May 15, 2012

– with the implementation of Agenda 21.

No freedom, no private property, no rights, no math, no hope …

Watch, learn, fear – and act?

This video is from 2009.

Agenda 21 is being zealously carried out now in our town. How about yours?

Look for the building of many large blocks of very small apartments  – reminiscent of the kind built by Communist regimes in Eastern Europe between 1950 and 1990 – along railway lines. They are mentioned in the video, and we can see them going up near where we are headquartered. People will be corralled into them. Families will be separated. They provide space for bicycles but not cars. You will cycle or walk in your home town, and be taken to more distant destinations by train or bus, if you are permitted to travel at all.

This is the spread of world government from the tower of evil, the UN.

It is not scare-mongering. It is really happening.

Agenda 21 must be stopped.

The UN must be destroyed.