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2016

Whereabouts Unknown of Dozen Afghans Who Went AWOL During Military Training in U.S. By Bridget Johnson

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon today said that the U.S. government has pinpointed the whereabouts of most — but not all — of dozens of Afghan troops who came to the United States for training and went AWOL.

Reuters reported today that 44 Afghan troops have gone missing since January 2015, including eight who have left U.S. bases without authorization since last month alone.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters today that all Afghan trainees who come to the United States “first of all go through a vetting process to be able to qualify to come here to the United States.”

“In those instances where they have gone missing — and this has been something we’ve had to deal with over the years — we’ve been training Afghans in this country for some time. I think more than 2,000 have been trained even in the last few years alone — there’s a notification process that we go through, of course trying to determine where these people are,” Cook said.

“Of the people who have been missing in — over the last two years or so, I believe the number that was provided to you was somewhere around 40 — more than 40 individuals; 32, we understand the status of those people.”

He added that “every effort’s made to try to determine where these people are going, what the reasons are.”

“In some cases they’ve gone home. In some cases there have been efforts — as I understand it — to go to Canada. Some have sought to legally remain in the United States,” Cook continued. “And so there are different explanations for each one of these circumstances.”

So much for that Nobel Peace Prize By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Once upon a time, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? First, he was not President Bush. And second, the silly Norwegians behind the prize fell for “hope and change” as bad as anybody.

It’s a little different today, as we see in this post from Kathleen Hennessey:

Seven years ago this week, when a young American president learned he’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize barely nine months into his first term — arguably before he’d made any peace — a somewhat embarrassed Barack Obama asked his aides to write an acceptance speech that addressed the awkwardness of the award.

But by the time his speechwriters delivered a draft, Obama’s focus had shifted to another source of tension in his upcoming moment in Oslo: He would deliver this speech about peace just days after he planned to order 30,000 more American troops into battle in Afghanistan.

The president all-but scrapped the draft and wrote his own version.

The speech Obama delivered — a Nobel Peace Prize lecture about the necessity of waging war — now looks like an early sign that the American president would not be the sort of peacemaker the European intellectuals of the Nobel committee had anticipated.

I remember a Canadian friend, who did not support President Bush, sending me an email after the Nobel announcement. He said in so many words: this is silly and it certainly proves the Messiah thing that you’ve talking about.

Well said, Canadian friend.

Obama, the so called man of peace, has actually set the table for more conflicts and wars than any recent U.S. president. The Russians are flying MiGs over our aircraft carriers. Iranian boats bully U.S. warships. President Obama is not welcomed by Raul Castro in Havana and then has to go out what the Chinese called the “you know what” hole of the airplane. And let’s not talk about Iraq, Syria, etc.

Obama sacrificed over 1,600 lives to the global warming religion in 2016 By Ed Straker

The New York Times had an article stating that vehicular deaths jumped 10% in the first half of 2016. The Times was very careful, however, not to speculate on the cause.

Traffic deaths in the United States rose 10.4 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2015, maintaining a steady climb … to 17,775 in the first six months of 2016 from 16,100 in the same period in 2015

The dire statistics were the latest bad news from the traffic safety administration. Beginning in the final months of 2014, the rate of fatalities has increased for seven consecutive quarters compared with the corresponding quarters of previous years.

Officials have not identified a specific cause for the most recent increase.

“It is too soon to attribute contributing factors or potential implications of any changes in deaths on our roadways,” the agency said.

No, it isn’t. It’s called CAFE standards. Automakers are under obligations to make cars more and more fuel-efficient. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Everyone wants his car to be more fuel-efficient – until he realizes that fuel-efficiency is achieved not with some kind of engine out of Star Trek, but simply by making cars lighter and lighter. Every year there are tighter and tighter targets, and cars have to become lighter and lighter.

When you are in a car crash, the less your car weighs, the less protection you have and the more likely you are to be injured or killed. Obama bullied car companies into agreeing to make cars less and less safe. Why?

Partially out of the erroneous fear that gasoline is a non-renewable resource, and we will run out of it. We actually have enough proven reserves of gasoline for several hundred more years, longer than we have been using gasoline as a source of fuel.

The other reason for fuel efficiency mandates is fear of imaginary global warming. The high priests of the imaginary global warming religion fear that car exhaust causes global warming. Even though it hasn’t been getting warmer in recent years. Even though most carbon dioxide emissions are produced naturally, not by cars or manufacturing.

Why Environmentalism Became Both a Religion and a Con Game By Chet Richards

I am a Conservationist. I am not an Environmentalist. What? Aren’t the two the same thing? No, they are not. In fact the two movements are diametrically opposed.

John Muir was a Conservationist, not an Environmentalist. He saw the wilderness as a “primary source for understanding God: The Book of Nature.” Muir did not worship Nature, as modern environmentalists do. Muir worshiped God, the Judeo-Christian God. So, here is the difference: Conservation derives from the Hebrew Bible. Mankind is to be Stewards of the Land. We are charged to husband God’s creation.

Environmentalists, for the most part, believe that the Earth’s biosphere is God. And, that human beings are destructive parasites, eating away at the life of their deity. In effect, most environmentalists are atheists searching for something larger than themselves to worship. But environmentalists see themselves as not being the riff-raff parasites that the rest of mankind are. Environmentalists believe they are the elect, the knowing, the superior beings, the priests, the Gnostics.

This notion that people are parasites really got started in the 1960’s. A couple of highly promoted bad actors started this environmental heresy. The first was Rachel Carson with her hysterical polemic about DDT and its purported harm to birds and other wild life. Her ideas proved to be, at best, problematic, but millions of people have died as a consequence of the resulting international banning of DDT. The second, and even more dangerous, problem child was Paul Ehrlich. This curmudgeon has even greater responsibility by amplifying environmental hysteria. Ehrlich should have known better. After all, he is a biology professional. But his mistakes suggest that he may not be all that professionally gifted.

Ehrlich predicted the death of the oceans due to insecticides and other chemicals washing into the sea. He did not account, as he ought to have, for the rapid evolution of plankton to adapt to these foreign substances. (The smaller the organism the faster its evolution – witness antibiotic resistance.) It was a bonehead mistake that no competent evolutionary biologist should make. More famously, Ehrlich predicted mass famine and hundreds of millions of deaths within a few years because of the so-called “population bomb.” He completely ignored the 1960’s technological “Green Revolution” which today has China and India exporting food. And, he completely missed the natural reduction in birth rates, and the consequent leveling of population, as the standard of living of Third World countries increased. Again, that process was something that population experts already knew and understood.

And then came James Lovelock with his “Gaia Hypothesis.” This is the notion that the biosphere is an environment-regulating ensemble of living organisms. In the large, the biosphere, together with its non-organic matrix, could be considered an organism, itself. The idea is interesting. Indeed, it has proven to be scientifically fruitful.

But other people latched onto the biosphere and made Gaia a god. And, with it, made environmentalism a religion. A religion, which Lovelock himself rejects as misinformed – if not dangerous. Lovelock went through his hysteric period in the early years of the ecology mania, but he has since moderated his outlook now that his predictions of imminent environmental doom have proved unfounded.

Why do people do it? Why do they fall into these overblown quasi-religious enthusiasms? I speculate that there are three complementary reasons: Ignorance, Insecurity and Hubris.

Palestinians: Abbas “The Jew” by Khaled Abu Toameh

The unprecedented outcry over Abbas’s participation in the funeral of an Israeli leader is further proof of the degree to which Palestinians have been radicalized.

This is what happens when you unleash a tidal wave of hate against Israel and its leaders in the media, mosques and public rhetoric. In light of this brainwashing, how do you expect your people to respond when you, in any way, associate with an Israeli leader?

If attending the funeral of an Israeli leader, especially one who devoted the past two decades of his life to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, draws such condemnation, it is easy to imagine the result of a Palestinian leader making a peace overture to Israel.

Even if the current condemnation eventually dies down, it will have sent a message to future Palestinian leaders: “No peace with Israel, not in our time, and not in any time.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is facing a barrage of criticism for attending the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. The fury directed towards Abbas comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with the unrelenting campaign of anti-Israel incitement that has been taking place for many years in Palestinian society.

If attending the funeral of an Israeli leader, especially one who devoted the past two decades of his life to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, draws such condemnation, it is easy to imagine the result of a Palestinian leader making a peace overture to Israel.

President Abbas is now receiving a dose of his own medicine. This is what happens when you unleash a tidal wave of hate against Israel and its leaders in the media, mosques and public rhetoric. This is what happens when you inform your people that Israeli leaders are “war criminals” who ought to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court. This is what happens when you drive into your people that Jews are desecrating with their “filthy feet” Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. This is what happens when you accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing”, “extra-judicial executions” and “poisoning” Yasser Arafat.

Steve Kates Razing Kaine

Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice-president, Jack Garner, described the office as “not worth a quart of warm spit”. Yesterday’s debate between GOPer Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine suggests there’s more to it than that: a worthy and solidly conservative successor if Trump wins.
The most interesting thing about yesterday’s US vice-presidential debate was that there was not a dime’s worth of difference between the arguments put by Republican Mike Pence and the views of running-mate Donald Trump. The difference was entirely in presentation. Pence has a professional politician’s skills in knowing how to phrase what he says and how to craft his arguments just so. But so far as what they amount to, they are exactly the same as Trump’s.

Kaine, on the other hand, was a much worse version of Hillary. She was more polished in the first presidential debate, understood her position and how to present it. By contrast, I found Kaine both irritating and shallow to a startling degree. I have always recognised that anecdote is the replacement for analysis when you are dealing with people unused to complex ideas. But if, underneath anything Kaine said, there actually was a complex idea of any sort, I missed it.

Pence described how a Trump administration would deal with national defence, illegal immigration, economic revival and racial tensions. He defended removing illegals, along with stop-and-frisk policing. What surprised me most about Kaine was the extent to which he repeated Trump’s policy proposals over and over – under the assumption, I imagine, that merely hearing what Trump wishes to do is automatically to oppose it. That’s what comes from locking oneself in the media’s echo chamber, where the prevailing wisdom of the chattering classes is the only acceptable position. My suspicion, however, is that for those who like what Trump has to offer, it is exactly what he proposes that they like. Kaine did no more than reinforce in the minds of Trump’s supporters the reasons to vote as they will on November 8.

Who knows if any of the more difficult parts of the Trump agenda can be done? But there is little doubt that most Americans want a stronger military, the defeat of ISIS, renewed border security, the revival of the economy, a tax system that promotes economic growth and a more cohesive community.

And then there were the two personalities on display. Kaine had no presence and seemed a man of little substance. Pence came across as a deeper thinker, someone whose ideas have been forged in the fires of debate with those who disagree with many of the things he says. As a conservative, even in a party of the right, he would be a lonely presence. It was a positive pleasure to hear him.

Peter Smith: He Will Fight Them on the Beaches

Lord Halifax might have made a good PM if not for Hitler. As it happened, a man of singular talent, though not to everyone’s taste, was required. Now it’s true that Trump is no Churchill, but he’s also the only hope in these, our latest, current and unforgiving times.
People have strong feeling about political leaders. They love ‘em or hate ‘em, so to speak. I, too, suffer from partisan-political feelings.

Donald Trump isn’t the very model of a modern PC gentleman. Nonetheless, I am inclined to believe that beneath his unrefined exterior he is fundamentally decent. I struggle to see how you can raise such accomplished and loving children if you are an outright jerk. On the other hand, I find Hillary Clinton thoroughly disagreeable. I believe that her actions rank with those of infamous liars, shysters and carpetbaggers of yesteryear.

Do you see what I mean? I am hopelessly compromised. And so are those in the other camp. When it comes to Clinton and Trump the gap between opposing views, as the Donald might say, is huge. I regularly correspond on politics with an American lady I met on a trip to Israel. This is what she wrote in the course of a recent exchange.

I’m simply flummoxed that someone as [over-kind compliment deleted out of modesty] as you would find a bloated, thoughtless, mendacious, self-aggrandizing playground bully “the only candidate for the times… the best candidate by far, not the least worst.”

Here is Jody commenting on QOL on a recent piece of mine:

Trump is a dangerous narcissist of the type the Phillipines people are dealing with right now; he’s every bit as vulgar, offensive and unstable as Duterte.

There will no meeting of minds on the character of the two candidates. There seldom is when it comes to presidential politics, but this time the order of disagreement is on a different scale. Trump is uniquely polarizing. For the sake of the argument let us say that he has some worrisome personality traits. The question is whether his foibles are fatal to being a good president.

I don’t know for sure. No-one knows exactly how a potential leader will perform until they assume leadership. Bill Clinton, for example, had a foible or two and seemed to do OK, particularly after his ‘pivot’ towards the conservative side. What is clear to those paying attention is that the times are crying out for ‘a disrupter’ not someone who offers more of the same.

Dwelling on personality must be put in context of the perilous situation facing America and, by extension, Western civilization. American voters face two starkly different futures. Here is just a taste.

Islam inside and out has to be confronted. Trump will do that. Clinton won’t. Allowing in job lots of tens of thousands of Muslim refugees is a never-ending recipe for bringing the European problem to America. Once done it can’t be undone. It will metastasize and bring misery. No matter what how peaceful you know your Muslim neighbour or workmate to be, the goal of their creed is to take over. If you don’t get that, you don’t get anything — and your granddaughters will get what they don’t deserve.

The Third World’s population is rising rapidly as the West’s is static or declining. Strong and secure borders are required to keep out hordes of political and economic refugees. Trump will build strong borders. Clinton won’t. Don’t get that? Then face being inundated by welfare recipients and seeing neighborhoods change in ways that you won’t like. Keep your daughters indoors after that.

The US economy is in a mess, as are most Western economies. Even without a moment’s study of economics, or even with the dubious benefit of a course of study delivered by some left-wing economics hack, do you really believe that raising taxes and doubling down on environmental regulations will rescue the economy? Lowering business taxes and reducing regulatory obstacles, including on fossil fuel development, are the only effective tools left in the locker. Trump will use them. Clinton can’t. Don’t get that? Then you will see more industrial wastelands, more unemployment, more inner-city disenchantment and violence.

North Korea Activity at Nuclear Site Raises Speculation Over New Test Satellite images show vehicles and people around the tunnel entrances of nuclear test site By Alastair Gale

New satellite photos show activity at all three of the tunnel complexes at North Korea’s nuclear test site amid speculation that Pyongyang will stage another nuclear test around major national anniversaries in the coming days.

The photos, taken on Oct. 1, show vehicles and people around the tunnel entrances. While activity occasionally takes place at individual portals it is unusual to have activity at all three at once, experts say.

The activity could be for several reasons, including the collection of data from North Korea’s Sept. 9 nuclear test at the site, or preparation for a new test, said Jack Liu, an analyst for the North Korea-focused website 38 North, which first published the photos.

South Korea’s government says North Korea appears ready for another nuclear test whenever the order is given from its leader, Kim Jong Un. Speculation among analysts has centered on two days: the 10th anniversary of North Korea’s first nuclear test on Sunday and the 71st anniversary of the founding of its ruling Workers’ Party on Monday.
The West Portal at the nuclear test site shows mining carts nearby and a pile of spoil likely from excavation work. Mr. Liu said the pile doesn’t appear to have grown over the last two months, based on previous satellite images. ENLARGE
The West Portal at the nuclear test site shows mining carts nearby and a pile of spoil likely from excavation work. Mr. Liu said the pile doesn’t appear to have grown over the last two months, based on previous satellite images. Photo: U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies/Airbus

North Korea has a pattern of staging major events on key anniversaries. The September test was held on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding as a state.

A new nuclear test would likely intensify discussions at the United Nations Security Council on a response to North Korea’s provocations, which also include a long-range rocket launch in February. North Korea is banned from testing nuclear bombs and ballistic missile technology by several U.N. resolutions.

Despite international condemnation, Mr. Kim has pledged to press ahead in developing an advanced nuclear program, which he says is needed to deter an invasion by the U.S. and South Korea. Many analysts say Mr. Kim uses the nuclear buildup to bolster his own standing with North Korea’s military. CONTINUE AT SITE

In Syria Crisis, Russia Expands Alliance With Iran, Increases Missile Presence Military adds small warship to growing presence off Syrian coast By Thomas Grove

MOSCOW—Russian officials intensified their rhetoric over the Syria crisis Thursday, saying Moscow was stepping up cooperation with Iran and boosting its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Russian military said Thursday that a new small warship armed with cruise missiles will join Russian’s naval grouping off the coast of Syria in the coming days, adding to Moscow’s naval presence in the region. Russia’s sole aircraft carrier is also expected to join the grouping before the end of the year.

Russia also boosted contacts with Iran over the Syria crisis. Following a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said he had discussed “immediate renewal of the coordinated international efforts aimed at an inclusive inter-Syrian dialogue,” the news agency Interfax reported.

Tehran and Moscow have supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the conflict. U.S. and Russian-led attempts to broker a truce recently collapsed, with Washington warning that Moscow’s role in a major offensive against the city of Aleppo had prompted discussions about giving more powerful weaponry to rebels fighting Mr. Assad’s government.

Russia’s military said Thursday that the U.S. should think twice about any future strikes on Syrian military positions, suggesting Russian antiair defenses could strike them.

The U.S.-led coalition erroneously bombarded a Syrian military site Sept. 17, prompting outrage in Damascus and Moscow. Russian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Thursday that the Syrian army had S-200 and Buk missile systems, while Russians had S-300 and the latest-generation S-400 systems on their base at Hmeimim, the news agency Interfax reported. CONTINUE AT SITE

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Seven Years Later Europe got the kind of transnational American president it wanted. What it didn’t get was peace and security.By Sohrab Ahmari

Seven years ago this week the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Barack Obama. The decision was greeted with ridicule in the U.S., and it unsettled even supporters of the president, who hadn’t finished his first year in office. Still Mr. Obama flew to Oslo and delivered one of his trademark speeches. The philosopher-president was the toast of Europe.

Mr. Obama today almost never mentions the prize, and the Nobel Committee’s former secretary has expressed regret over the choice. Barack Obama the Nobelist is a bad memory among Europeans, who face more pressing concerns, chief among them a Syrian civil war that has flooded the Continent with more than a million refugees.

Yet this Nobel indigestion is unfair to Mr. Obama. On its own terms his prize has been a resounding success. Seven years later the president has achieved the future-tense victories first celebrated in Oslo.

The committee that awarded the prize hoped for an America that would no longer play the hegemon. The Norwegians wanted a U.S. president who would “strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” as the Nobel citation put it. A leader who would emphasize “the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” whose decisions would track the “attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

This was the heyday of transnationalism, the philosophy that says all states—strong or weak, free or unfree—must submit to “norms” drawn up by law professors and global organizations such as the U.N. and European Union. The transnationalist view can’t tolerate an exceptional nation that imposes its will on others, even with the best intentions.

Mr. Obama was (and remains) a committed transnationalist, and he staffed his foreign-policy team with like-minded thinkers such as the journalist Samantha Power, the Yale Law School dean Harold Koh and the Princeton scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter. At his Nobel lecture in Oslo, Mr. Obama declared: “I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.”

The real-world results are a different matter. They are on display in Aleppo, where the Bashar Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian patrons are close to bringing to heel Syria’s last non-Islamic State opposition stronghold. Syrian forces shell houses and drop shrapnel-packed barrels on what remains of the city’s civilian buildings. Vladimir Putin’s pilots stalk the skies, setting women and children alight with incendiary ordnance.

In Oslo in 2009, Mr. Obama said of situations like the one unfolding in Syria: “Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.” How costly?

During Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Republican Gov. Mike Pence spoke of creating no-fly zones to protect civilians while Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine floated a “humanitarian zone” in Aleppo. The trouble is that the Kremlin this week deployed the SA-23 Gladiator anti-air system to Syria for the first time. The SA-23 can take down aircraft as well as missiles. It is an insurance policy for the Assad regime that will raise the stakes in any future U.S. military action.

With his endless patience for rogues, in other words, Mr. Obama has tied the hands of his successor. Set aside the human misery in Syria. Set aside, too, the destabilizing effects of millions of refugees on Syria’s neighboring states and Europe. The expansion of Russian and Iranian influence in the Middle East represents a long-term strategic setback for the West. CONTINUE AT SITE