Day: July 9, 2009

A Fossil Of Days Gone By

The Prez has made a trip to Itlay to meet with the leaders of countries of the G8 and a couple of other guest countries.

From the NY Times:

While the richest countries have produced the bulk of the pollution blamed for climate change, developing countries are producing increasing volumes of gases. But developing countries say their climb out of poverty should not be halted to fix damage done by industrial countries.

As various sides tried to draft an agreement to sign Thursday, those tensions scuttled the specific goals sought by the United States and Europe. The proposed agreement called for worldwide emissions to be cut 50 percent by 2050, with industrial countries cutting theirs by 80 percent. But emerging powers refused to agree because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in the next decade and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help for poorer nations.

They are trying to tackle all problems and issue a statement…but the G8 is a dinosaur of the 20th century that needs to be displayed with other dinosaurs in a museum.  It should be shelved to be studied by students of international relations.  The days of the G8 have lasped, the members are of the industrialized nations, that has exluded the developing countries like Brazil, China and India.  Granted they have been in attendence now for several years, but why continue with the G8 dinosaur.

There is a G20, which is basically the finance ministers of 20 countries that include all major economies, why disband the G8 and let the G20 stand in its place.

I must agree with the French president and the German chancellor.

As reported by Reuters:

Among the G-8 leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been particularly vocal that the G-8 needs to be expanded to better represent the world’s population and economies. Sarkozy told reporters on Wednesday that a possible formula would be to have the G-8 meet within the structure of a G-20, major economies taking the lead on ways out of the economic crisis, or a G-14, combining the industrialized nations and emerging economies forums.

The G8 accomplishes nothing…they meet…they talk…they issue statement and all remains the same.  I realize it is a show of diplomacy, but at least they could accomplish something other than spending money on a working vacation.

The G8 is a fossil and serves NO important purpose….time for it to be religated to history.

Al Franken, Chicken Hawk

I was reading about the swearing of Al Franken and the stories about the “super majority” that Dems now have in the Senate and then I came across this article and thought I would share it with my readers.

The article was written on the Independent Institute website blog, The Beacon by Anthony Gregory:

I used to love Franken on Saturday Night Live. Although his Stuart Smally character got old very quickly, he did a wonderful Paul Tsongas impression. I’d link to an example on YouTube, but NBC takes its intellectual property very seriously and therefore hundreds of the most humorous bits ever to air on late night television have been tragically withheld from us.

But this is what has always stuck in my mind about Franken’s book. It includes an illustrated chapter called “Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One” in which he characterizes many modern war advocates as hypocrites for their effortless success in dodging “service” in Vietnam. The chapter discusses such prominent hawks as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill O’Reilly, and Bill Bennett. But one big problem with this humorous chapter is it includes Pat Buchanan, who, although we might all agree holds many bad positions, including on the Cold War, did not support the Iraq War. But do you know who did? Al Franken.

Besides, even if he did believe every single piece of propaganda about Saddam’s non-existent weapons program—and here, by the way, is my Independent Institute article from before the war, explaining why we could not trust the propaganda and why the case for war was so transparently without credibility—he should have still opposed the war. There was never any justifiable reason to support Bush’s plan to wage aggressive war on the people of Iraq, to murder many thousands of them, even if you believed Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is an act of aggression to start a war, even if the enemy has scary weapons. The U.S. has a weapons stockpile that makes all the Middle East countries combined—even including Israel—seem minor in comparison. But that sure didn’t justify 9/11, did it?

Al Franken is a warmonger who turned against Bush only after it became politically correct to do so, and only turned against the war to score partisan points. He is, in principle, no less committed to U.S. imperialism and mass killing than are the neocons, even if his rhetoric isn’t nearly as offensively bloodthirsty as theirs is. In fact, his book also reveres Lincoln, one of the greatest warmongers in U.S. history.

Am I being too harsh? I’d be happy to see Franken prove me wrong. Next chance he gets, he can refuse to finance Obama’s bloody exploits in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He can stand by principle and resist the urge to vote with the hordes to continue to appropriate our tax dollars to slaughter abroad. If he turns out to be a consistent critic of the Obama administration on questions of war and peace, I will apologize and praise his principle to the skies. But if he does vote to continue sending Americans to die and kill, he is no better than the lying liars he has made a fortune criticizing. He is no better than the chickenhawks he lambastes, and certainly not nearly as good an opponent of jingoism and aggressive war as the much more thoughtful, if sometimes inconsistent, Pat Buchanan.

So the question is will Franken hinder or help the progressive agenda of the Obama Admin?  Your thoughts please.

Blackwater Has More Trouble

In an article written by William Fisher, the woes of Blackwater just keep getting deeper and deeper.

New charges filed against private security contractor Blackwater accuse the
company of murder, destruction of audio and videotaped evidence, distribution
of controlled substances, tax evasion, child prostitution, and weapons smuggling.

The new charges were filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Act (RICO) by several of the Iraqi civilians who were injured or who lost family
members when Blackwater personnel opened fire in Nisoor Square in Baghdad in
September 2007.

The new allegations, which have been added to an ongoing civil lawsuit in
Virginia federal court, charge that then Blackwater chairman Erik Prince “has
created an enterprise that has engaged in a series of illegal acts that suffice
as RICO predicate acts extending over a substantial period of time beginning
at least in 2003.”

The complaint alleges that Xe-Blackwater “created and fostered a culture
of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company’s financial interests at the expense of innocent human life … and contrary to the interests of the U.S. military and State Department, and the nation of Iraq.”

The suit also seeks a court order requiring Erik Prince to “divest himself
of any direct or indirect interest in the RICO Enterprise or dissolve the RICO
Enterprise after making due provision for the rights of innocents, imposes
reasonable restrictions on Prince’s future activities or investments, and prohibits Prince from engaging in any mercenary or private military business.”

Blackwater still holds lucrative government contracts in Afghanistan and elsewhere and is reportedly marketing “CIA-type services” to Fortune 1000 companies through Prince’s Total Intelligence Solutions.

The complaint alleges that Xe-Blackwater, “in addition to hiring persons
known (or should have been known) to use steroids and other judgment-altering drugs, has been hiring as mercenaries former military officials known to have been involved in human rights abuses in Chile.”

It contends that “Xe-Blackwater knows that the former Chilean commandos
hired by Xe-Blackwater received amnesty from punishment for their wanton disregard
of human rights in exchange for being forbidden from taking part in any military or security activities in Chile.”

The suit also charges that “Xe-Blackwater has been hiring mercenaries
from the Philippines, Chile, Nepal, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras,
Panama, Peru, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Jordan, and perhaps South Africa.”

America’s number one private army is in deep do-do.  Never fear the cash from Blackwater will continue to pour into the Repub coffers.