http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577623504274512294.html The U.S. is harder on its ally than on Iran’s nuclear program. Barack Obama is fond of insisting that he “has Israel’s back.” Maybe he should mention that to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In remarks to journalists in London quoted by the Guardian, General Martin Dempsey warned that any Israeli attack on […]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/afghanistan-violence-children-beheaded_n_1846164.html KABUL, Aug 31 (Reuters) – An adolescent boy and a young girl have been beheaded in two separate incidents in Afghanistan, local officials and police said on Friday, in the latest brazen attacks that have raised fresh questions about a splintering Taliban. A 12-year-old boy was kidnapped and killed in southern Kandahar province on […]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-09-01/arizona-sheriff-arpaio/57492192/1 PHOENIX — The U.S. Attorney’s Office has closed its long-running abuse-of-power investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — without any charges to be filed. By Dave Seibert, AP Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, talks with Media members Friday night at his offices in downtown Phoenix. EnlargeClose By Dave Seibert, AP Maricopa County Sheriff […]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-light-bulb-ban-illuminates-power-struggle-in-brussels-a-852931.html
Beginning Saturday, it will be illegal to import or produce traditional incandescent light bulbs in EU member states. The move has upset consumers and many environmentalists, but it serves to highlight the EU’s democratic deficiencies.
From the front, the item the defendants dragged into the courtroom looked like an ordinary mobile heater: a vertical, slightly ribbed metal plate with a power cable. Only when seen from the back did the device reveal itself to be a battery of interconnected 100-watt light bulbs. Packed closely together, the bulbs heat the metal plate, which in turn radiates heat into a room.
This was the way the “Electric Resistance Society” was trying to circumvent European Union bans and bring traditional incandescent light bulbs back to Europe. It argued that there could be no legal objection to selling them as miniature heating units for homes.
But the judges at the administrative court in the western German city of Aachen were not impressed by Siegfried Rotthäuser and Rudolf Hannot’s attempt to outsmart the system. The judges prohibited the sale of 40,000 “Heatballs” seized by customs authorities that the two engineers had had made in China. In fact, the “Heatballs” were nothing but ordinary tungsten light bulbs. And that makes them hot goods since the European Commission issued Regulation No. 244/2009. The regulation calls for a gradual ban on sales of all traditional incandescent light bulbs. The first to go were 100-watt bulbs, on Sept. 1, 2009, and it will cover all remaining bulbs as of Sept. 1, 2012.
The reason is that incandescent light bulbs waste 95 percent of the energy they consume. If the EU’s climate objectives are to be met, the reasoning goes, Europeans can no longer afford to use such energy-gobbling devices. As a result, the classic — and popular — light bulbs have been gradually disappearing from store shelves in the EU.
Gabriel’s Eco-Offensive
Now that 100-, 75- and 60-watt bulbs have already been eliminated, as of Sept. 1 the smaller 25- and 40-watt bulbs will also slowly disappear from the lives of 500 million Europeans — without any of those citizens having ever been asked about the ban. Nowhere is the bureaucratic influence of European government agencies as powerful as in the delirium of energy efficiency.
“The EU has made a decision without consulting citizens and, in doing so, it has massively intervened in our quality of life,” says Hannot, the light-bulb activist. This paternalism and lack of transparency almost aggravates him more than doing without the stronger, warmer light of incandescent light bulbs. The makers of the documentary film “Bulb Fiction” even speculate that the European light-bulb lobby, including major companies like Philips and Osram, are behind the demise of the cheaper incandescent light bulb given the much larger profit margins associated with more expensive energy-saving light bulbs.
But there is also someone else behind the phase-out of incandescent bulbs: Sigmar Gabriel, the current chairman of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), Germany’s largest opposition party.
The 53-year-old — who is undoubtedly a shining light for the Social Democrats today — wanted to make a name for himself in 2007, when he was the federal environment minister. At the time, Germany was ruled by a grand coalition made up of the SPD, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and Germany had just assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council presidency in Brussels. Gabriel was seeking the international spotlight.
In February, after Australia announced a ban on incandescent light bulbs, Gabriel wrote to the EU environment commissioner, saying: “Europe can no longer afford products with a degree of efficiency of only 5 percent, such as conventional light bulbs.”
http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/08/31/rnc-convention-speech-you-may-have-missed/?print=1 If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are to win the White House, they have to succeed in getting the votes of the still-undecided swing voters. With the Democrats in an all-out war based on painting the Republican nominees as the devil incarnate who hope to destroy the well-being of the poor, the dispossessed, women, […]
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/08/arise-sir-ludwig.html
As one of my regular readers has emailed me this morning, prompting this short post, it’s gratifying to see neurosurgeon Sir Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980), “Father of the Paralympics,” arise from relative obscurity to all but the cognescenti and be given his due place in the media spotlight this year. To its credit, the BBC has made a fascinating documentary about this Jewish refugee from Nazism who, like so many of his type, contributed so appreciably to their host societies. (The video is below; hat tip Ian)
Thanks in large part to the dedication and expertise of Dr Michael Jolles, a London physician and an historian of Anglo-Jewry, the Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History contains potted biographies of numerous highly distinguished medicos and scientists from Nazi persecution who fled to Britain, much to Britain’s enrichment.
Here’s the in-a-nutshell entry for Sir Ludwig:
“Born in Tost, Upper Silesia, the son of an innkeeper and distiller, he took refuge in Britain in 1939. In 1944 he became foundation Director of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Convinced that paraplegics would gain physical, therapeutic, and psychological benefits from sport, an idea that was revolutionary at the time, he organised, in 1948 on the hospital lawn, competitive games for the disabled to coincide with the Olympic Games that were being held in London. In 1952 the so-called Stoke Mandeville Games involved over 130 competitors, and were awarded the Fearnley Cup in 1956 for their promotion of the Olympic spirit. They developed into the Paralympic Games, first held in Rome in 1960 and held ever since immediately after the Olympics. In 1960 Guttmann founded the Association of the Disabled. He retired from Stoke Mandeville in 1966 and in 1976 published his Textbook of Sport for the Disabled. Appointed OBE (1950) and CBE (1960) he was knighted in 1966.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/introducing_the_ujr_the_united_jihadi_republic.html
Cairo and Damascus — always at the heart of Arab politics — are again starring in the real-life drama of Arab turmoil that the media’s idiot-savants called the “Arab Spring.” Somehow, the “Arab Spring” does not look so rosy.
Egypt may be the most important Islamic country, centrally located and equipped with thousands of advanced U.S. tanks and fighter jets. It is run by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood — an organization that essentially fathered al-Qaeda.
Egypt’s new leader, Muhammad Morsi, has decapitated the pro-U.S. heads of his army. He put large forces on his border with Israel, violating the treaty with Israel. Meanwhile, Egypt now flirts with Iran, catching Western intelligence flat-footed.
Syria, armed to the teeth with chemical and biological weapons, is splitting apart, and its weapons may fall into the hands Syria’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and rogue elements tied to al-Qaeda.
For decades, Egypt and Syria led the Arab world to militant nationalism and war. Briefly, Egypt and Syria came under the pan-Arab umbrella of Egypt’s Gamal Abdul-Nasser to produce “The UAR — The United Arab Republic.” Today, militant Islam unites them, and they might call themselves “The UJR — The United Jihadi Republic.”
Mass protest in Egypt and bloodshed in Syria did not bring the moderate democracy foreseen by Tom Friedman of The New York Times, Fareed Zakaria of CNN, or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the USA.
Today, our “experts” and leaders have no answers, only pretense. President Obama and Secretary Clinton plan to meet Egypt’s Morsi in New York, after he meets again with Iranian leaders. They have not condemned Egyptian treaty violations.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/russia_unfortunately_being_russia.html Before the pundits start telling you the Romney campaign stepped into a time-warp on the subject of Russia, it’s worth considering what adviser Rich Williamson said and what it means. “They’re trampling civil rights,” and “they’re our foe,” and “they’ve chosen a path of confrontations, not cooperation.” Pierre-Richard Prosper, another campaign adviser, added that […]
http://times247.com/
Why all the bowing hasn’t helped
FrontPage mag
Friday, August 31, 2012
Commentary
Why all the bowing hasn’t helped
It’s a good thing that President Obama isn’t running on his foreign policy record, because it’s every bit as bad as his economic record. The Obama 2012 website only lists National Security as an issue. That is already a backhanded admission that the only thing he can run on is Osama bin Laden. Read more…
U.S. reduces role in joint drill with Israel
Israel National News
Saturday, September 1, 2012
News
Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation in a massive joint military exercise with Israel, sources told TIME Magazine on Friday. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz25DbPKZFz
Navy SEAL soldiers on despite Pentagon threat
Former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette is…
Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz25Db4wyXB
Follow the leader: Obama hurries after Romney
The Daily Caller
Friday, August 31, 2012
News
President Barack Obama announced Friday that he’s heading to Louisiana, but he’ll arrive after Mitt Romney has toured the storm-damage state in company with the state’s popular Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz25DbvxeOX
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ THAT SHOULD GO WELL WITH HIS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE The White House Press Office announced today that President Obama will soon be inducted into the Special Forces Association and receive an honorary Green Beret. Come on. That tank photo op has to come any day now. Maybe he’ll drive up in it to the […]
