Hastening Down the Wind

Conventional wisdom holds that even if Ahmadinejad is crazy, this is not a problem because the mullahs hold the real power, and they're hopefully rational. Amil Imani argues in The American Thinker that the mullahs subscribe to a different reality entirely. Their watches, he says, are running fast:

The cabal of fanatical mullahs ruling Iran has lost its patience, not only with the unbelievers, but also with the Mahdi as well. They aim to force his arrival. The mullahs believe they have the means to make it impossible for the Mahdi to tarry any longer by causing unprecedented death and destruction—conditions deemed essential for his coming. The world must hit the very bottom, before the Savior of the world comes to the rescue, so they firmly believe.

Read the whole piece.

Keep Honking. I’m Reloading.

Between France refusing overflight rights and China pressuring the Crapistan nations to pull our bases, aerial rearmament of aircraft is one idea you wish could be fully realized before it becomes obsolete.

Barry Fox reports:

The US Air Force's research lab in New York is developing a system will allow fighter planes to be rearmed, as well as refuelled, in mid-flight.

A supply plane, such as a C-141 or C-17 would incorporate a telescopic boom that extends from its rear. This boom would boast its own miniature wings, to give it stability and lift while deployed. And mounted on top would be a looped conveyor belt to move bombs and missiles from the supply plane to the boom's end.

Rube Goldberg would have been proud.

Get Small

If you are feeling unusually self-important today, or if someone just stopped payment on your reality check, maybe it’s time for a little perspective. Remember: On the long scrolling screen of life, you are the pixel.

Farming Village, Sichuan Province

  

Sansheng Village

  

Chengdu Giant Panda Research Base

  

And This is Your Economy on 10% Growth

 
Ever wondered how many cranes you can see at one time from a highway? Probably not. 

Beijing After Sunset

 Nitrogen dioxide pollution and construction dust may not smell great, but it can give Beijing an appealing Hound of the Baskervilles look. 

A Suspect Commitment to Recycling

Under a proposed Pentagon program, Trident II missiles armed with conventional warheads would be available to accurately hit a terrorist target anywhere on the globe, in about an hour.

However, the idea of using a three-stage SLBM for anything but scrap metal is too much for some to process:

But the program has run into resistance from lawmakers concerned it could increase the risk of an accidental nuclear war. Under the Pentagon plan, both non-nuclear and nuclear-tipped variants of the Trident-2 missile would be loaded on the same submarines.

"There is great concern this could be destabilizing in terms of deterrence and nuclear policy," the newspaper quoted Senate Armed Services Committee member Jack Reed as saying.

"It would be hard to determine if a missile coming out a Trident submarine is conventional or nuclear," the Rhode Island Democrat said.

It wouldn’t be “hard to determine,” as Reed (2005 ADA rating: 100) knows, but impossible. Fortunately, the success of the program wouldn’t hinge on the rapid discrimination of Reed's impossible test, but on: 1.) quick notification of other nuclear powers (implementing telephone hotlines with all ICBM-armed countries would be desirable); and, 2.)whether other countries' command, control and communications could reliably get the message out in a compressed time frame.

Thought for the Week

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."
- John 14: 5-7

Hugo Channels Algore

Hugo Chavez is in London to embarrass Tony Blair, have a photo-op with Red Ken, and (huge surprise) promise cheap heating oil to oppressed workers. He even finds time to channel Algore:

Senor Chavez said that Western countries needed to have a good look at their energy consumption, as there was not enough oil to supply the world’s population if global economic development followed the US model.

"The planet can’t take a car for everybody," he said. "This model, the so-called American way of life, will end the planet if we carry on this way. It is a crazy waste of energy."

Yes, Hugo, a car for everybody. Walk all you like, but everyone rides in a Cadillac once.

Bible Banned in Australian Hospitals

The Australian reports that Victoria hospitals have banned Bibles for the usual multi-culti reasons (e.g., not wanting to offend ROP):

BIBLES have been banned in Victorian hospitals and some schools out of concern of offending non-Christians.

Almost all Melbourne's main hospitals have withdrawn Bibles and several schools no longer hand out free Bibles.

Royal Melbourne spokesman Rod Jackson-Smith said the Bible was not banned, but said: "We don't (have Bibles in each room) any more."

"Because we have so many people from different religious backgrounds it is considered inappropriate. It is also an infection control measure."

Infection control measure?!? What in the -- I think Hillary has found her White House Press Secretary.

Hat tip: Michael Savage

Any Colour You Like

In another move to cope with open source competition, Microsoft has raised the bar with a partly open high-powered RTOS for the small but fast-growing mobile and embedded market.

At their annual Mobile and Embedded DevCon in Sin City, the company gave attendees a beta version of Windows CE 6, which again gives access to miles of source code. This will allow developers to customize user interfaces while retaining IP rights over their innovations.

A lot of tech gadgets you probably use daily, from PDAs to GPS devices, use the current Windows CE 5.0. With a September release date likely, CE 6 will power the next generation of devices starting in 2007.

Eurabia, Outskirts of

Vladimir Putin references Russia’s Topol-M and Bulava missiles in his state of the nation address, but avoiding payload destruction with hypersonic maneuver is arguably a less pressing matter for Russia than avoiding the demographic destruction he alludes to in the same address:

Expressing concern over what he said was an annual decline of nearly 700,000 people a year, Putin said that childcare benefits should be increased and other incentives created to raise the birthrate.

``We must at least stimulate the birth of a second child,'' said Putin, lamenting that concerns about housing, health care and education and income prompt many families to stop at one.

The excuses he wheels out are a red herring, as these factors are often worse in other countries. Russia’s 2-to-1 ratio of abortions to live births (still the world’s worst) needs the trajectory change.

Ahmadinejad Harmless?

Juan Cole argues unconvincingly that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a harmless fellow:

It is often said that Ahmadinejad is more dangerous because he is a millenarian, i.e. he believes in the near advent of the messianic Twelfth Imam, the promised one of the Shiites. But in fact, most millenarians are fatalists, and are willing to wait passively for God's will to intervene in history. So, his belief in the near advent of the last days may actually make him less dangerous than a practical, hardnosed secularist might be. Besides, he cannot be dangerous if he is not a commander of the armed forces, which the president in Iran is not.

Putting aside the notion that someone who might one day supply nuclear material to terrorists can't be dangerous because he is not a "commander of the armed forces," I'll grant Cole that many millenarians are indeed passive fatalists. However, Ahmadinejad’s history of incendiary rhetoric immediately excludes him from their number. Even on his best behavior (and meds?), the guy is more Shoko Asahara than Joachim of Fiore.

I think Charles Krauthammer, not Cole, understands Ahmadinejad's incentives:

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

Advertisers Hanged Last?

In “Money is a Curse,” Air America co-founder Sheldon Drobny really brings the scare with that time-tested way of achieving socialism: The threat of mob violence.

A few years ago I visited my daughter in Spain while she was an exchange student. One of our tour guides was politically savvy and asked me why the rich and powerful in America are insensitive to the needs of the masses. He explained to me that after the death of Franco in 1975, the emerging socialist movement gave the wealthy classes two possible choices. Plan A was an insurrection in which they would lose all their property. Plan B was that they pay higher taxes to create the safety net needed by the masses and more fairly redistribute the wealth. Given that choice, the wealthy in Spain chose plan B.

I am afraid that in our country, it may come to the fear of losing everything through an insurrection that will finally convince the wealthy class that it is time to make a change. But, it will take a massive grass roots effort to make that happen. Hopefully the very wealthy will recognize this before they self-destruct.

It’s not the scariest threat, is it? I mean, even if it weren’t so vague, the idea of our socialist knuckleheads organizing a “massive grass roots effort” to scare “the wealthy class” just makes you giggle.

How to Handle Belarus

Russian natural gas colossus Gazprom plans to charge its ally Belarus market rates for natural gas when new contracts are negotiated in 2007. At current prices, such a move would more than triple the $47 per thousand cubic meters the former Soviet republic pays, effectively swinging a wrecking ball into the Belarusian economy.

Just don't expect Russia to follow through on Gazprom's threat. Putin wants to gain operating control of gas pipelines in Belarus, as he has gotten in neighboring countries. But yanking subsidies completely would trigger economic collapse in Belarus and breathe life into a democracy movement that had been badly defeated in the country's rigged March 19 presidential elections.

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, known as "Europe's last dictator," has bet the farm politically on his belief that Belarusians prefer sclerotic stability to the roller coaster capitalism in neighboring countries. In his 12 years of rule, the former collective farm director has implemented "market socialism," a fancy name for dodging badly needed structural reform at every turn.

This policy has spared his subjects the painful transition to democracy but left the economy mostly government-owned, uncompetitive, and money-losing. A quarter of the population is mired in poverty, an economic voucher system has failed, and inflation is brewing. Meanwhile, trade deficits and a lack of foreign investment foretell a grim future.

Despite this, a vote for Lukashenko has been a vote for subsidized decrepitude, whereas a vote for reform has carried the threat of freezing in the dark. It's a ratchet effect: the weaker the economy, the greater the threat. Yet Putin knows that threat goes away if Belarusians actually are freezing in the dark.

If Russia keeps gas subsidies in some reduced form in exchange for control of the gas pipeline network in Belarus, Lukashenko will retain power but come under increased economic pressure. This will not be good for the democracy movement in Belarus or for democracy movements around the world.

Belarus has a Soviet-era arms industry that earns hard currency selling to shady regimes that don’t want to pay a lot to fix their civilian or rebel problems. They also sell more advanced weaponry to rogue states that Putin would just as soon not be linked to. With increased economic pressure, Lukashenko would certainly test the industry’s surge capacity, raising the ability of rogue regimes to crush budding democracy movements around the world.

The United States, E.U., and many of Belarus's neighbors have reacted angrily to blatantly rigged March elections in which Lukashenko awarded himself nearly 83 percent of the vote (while leaving his nearest opposition candidate in single digits). Yet with Belarus isolated -- and insulated -- from the West, Lukashenko's future lies squarely in the geo-strategic calculations in the Kremlin, not in any privileges or memberships the West can remove.

The free world can best help the democracy movement in Belarus -- as well as others around the world -- by going beyond mere visa bans and asset freezes. The focus should be on imposing costs on the rogue regimes that source weaponry from the increasingly proliferation-minded Lukashenko.

*****

Note: Also posted earlier today at Human Events Online.

Now Make Him Wave

When Russell Feingold committed political suicide on the floor of the Senate, liberals' first impulse was to avert your eyes: "Move along, nothing to see here." The Washington Post respectfully buried the sad event on A8 (or was it A9? I can't remember). But when the feet sticking out from under the tarp didn’t go unnoticed, they quickly picked him up, applied some makeup, and -- hey presto! -- today he's a "maverick," right smack on the front page.

[Read the rest of the post at The Right Angle at Human Events Online]

Another One Jumps the Couch

George Clooney's a liberal, he'll have you know. A huge one.

In an obscenity-laden post at HuffPo (remember: profanity = passion), the activist-actor admits, "I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it."

Well, I'm not so much proud of him as in awe of the career risk he's invited. After this, he won't so much as see a script in Aramaic. And imagine all the hurtful emails he'll get from the left-wing websites. They've been weaning people off of "liberal" for the relatively pristine "progressive," and with one post Clooney sets their exodus back a year.

A word of caution, though, George: They love you now, but they'll turn on you after they've used you up. They'll throw you away just like, um, just like…what's her name, um…Cindy Sheehan.

[Note: Originally posted at The Right Angle, a Human Events blog]

Quote of the Day (and perhaps month)

I think my paranoid schizophrenia has improved my ability to be a good ruler of my fellow Aztec citizens. - Anonymous