Timely new tax in America

Anyone can say “I told you so” and crow, right? But sometimes there’s no jubilation in having been right, just a wearying sadness.

Anyway, on with the show: “I told you so!” (Often enough, too …)

Top marks for perspicacity if you can guess the subject before I tell you—

” … Americans are turning against the war. Congress is fretting over its mounting costs: US $300 billion for 2009 in a $1.4 trillion deficit year. This war is being waged on money borrowed from China … some Democrats are rightly calling for a special war tax on all Americans rather than continuing to conceal the war’s huge expenses on the national credit card … It costs the US $1 million to keep each American soldier in Afghanistan. Renting Pakistan’s assistance will cost $3 billion per year (overt and black payments combined) … “

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis172.html

Well done. The question that now floats lightly on my New Zealand lips: “Why is China funding the US ‘war’ in Afghanistan?” but the answer is possibly just a little too obvious.

China is feeding a fool rope* .

How much rope is enough rope, and is it rope if the fool can’t see that it’s rope? And now for the bit that delights me even more—is China likewise a fool? What would you call a maladroit who tries to juggle a razor sharp scimitar in a darkened room?

Of course, when I say ‘China’ (or ‘America’ for that matter) I don’t refer to the country per se, I refer to the leadership of that country.

No part of the human race has a monopoly on idiots, they are found as much at the top as the bottom. Humanity is homogenous in idiots, we humans are sort of democratic like that. I get the image of a fool halfway along a branch a hundred feet up a tree, he has his enemy cornered way out on the branch and has started sawing through it … behind him, cutting through the bit between him and the trunk. It takes all sorts and I await the next installment.

However, would the Chinese people — you know, all the millions of little guys scratching a living from the soil — be happy to know they are funding the Americans their gas guzzlers, plasma TVs (made in China, is that ironic or what) and jolly little wars? I doubt it.

Thank heavens, then, for the Chinese leadership without which the Yanks would have to print their own war-chest funds.

What? They’re going to?

A new ‘Special War Tax’? you say? Naaaa … I can’t see that working. If the American people had to fund their own wars they’d very quickly stop bombing the snot out of everybody and sober up. Supplying a few sons and daughters is in the main a winnable lottery, but actually fronting up with cash, everybody having to do it, is an entirely different thing.

Would that we did the same in Godzone, and would that our own wars (we have wars? No, we take part in wars. Other people’s wars. American wars) were funded only by voluntary contribution.

KISMET

* Old saying: “Feed a fool enough rope and eventually he will hang himself.”

[Via http://provoco.wordpress.com]

The Snow has arrived

Hoorah it's snowing

I’ve been looking forward to the return of the snow, although I am sure I won’t be saying that for long. Looks like Mother Nature has taken a major dump all over the city and it’s still snowing.

Of course living in an apartment it’s easy to like winter weather. I feel incredibly sorry for those people with drives and those that have to drive to work, it will be a complete nightmare and we will have this for month to come. However, as I do live in an apartment I can go yippeeeeeee.

[Via http://anthonyjstewart.wordpress.com]

Operation Keelhaul - WWII

Albert Burns

We just passed a significant anniversary.

On October 16, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt granted diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. The Communist government was about to collapse for lack of financing. Granting them diplomatic recognition literally saved the Soviet government which had been ostracized by virtually every other government in the world.

Throughout the rest of the 1930s and the 1940s, two disparate groups infiltrated dozens of agents or members into the executive branch under Roosevelt. Those two groups were the Communist Party and the Council on Foreign Relations. While these two groups had radically different motivations, they both had the same ultimate goal, i.e., to weaken and eventually destroy American freedom and independence.

Very few people today remember that World War II started in 1939 because Germany AND RUSSIA invaded Poland at the same time.

The Soviet Union was exactly as responsible for STARTING that war as Germany was. This was known and condemned at the time. However, in 1941 when Hitler attacked Russia, suddenly our mass media made a 180 degree about face and Russia became our “noble ally” in fighting the war. Of course, it was up to the United States to supply Russia with the armament to fight the war.

 

The world went to war to “save” Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe. Yet, at Yalta, before the war was over, the United States State Department AGREED that the Soviet Union would be allowed to add Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, half of Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria to its territory in Europe. Before the addition of those countries and peoples, at the end of the war, Russia had a population of about 160 million people and controlled a land area smaller than the Russia of the Czars. Soviet industry had been almost totally destroyed by the Nazi war machine. Communism was a third rate power, militarily, industrially and economically. There was, literally, no reason for Eastern Europe to be handed over to the Communists other than the influence of the Communist agents in OUR State Department.

   

Operation Keelhaul

In Operation Keelhaul  what we see follows “During World War II, some 2.5 million Soviet citizens found themselves in Germany and the occupied countries as prisoners of war, slave laborers, or refugees. From 1944 to 1947, these people were forcibly repatriated in a number of operations, the best known of which many committed suicide rather than return to Soviet slavery.

To the best of my recollection, I have NEVER seen ANY still or moving pictures of similar trainloads of men, women and children which OUR government was responsible for shipping off to a similar fate.

   

In 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered that “Operation Keelhaul” be put into effect. This involved rounding up and shipping back to “their countries of origin” ALL the refugees from communism: men, women and children, soldier or civilian, male or female — even though many of them had been fighting on OUR side during the war.

Since all of Eastern Europe was then under Communist domination, sending these people back was, quite literally, a sentence of death, some by immediate execution and the rest by slow extermination from overwork and malnutrition in the Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia.

These people were rounded up at bayonet point, forced into freight cars and shipped off to a terrible fate. There was no accurate count kept but the MINIMUM figure was 2,000,000 people and a maximum of 5,000,000. The elimination of all these anti-Communist people made the Communist domination of Eastern Europe MUCH easier. And the American people were kept blissfully unaware of this action which Eisenhower enforced rigidly, even though it violated international law, the laws of his own country and laws of humanity.

Germans were prosecuted at Nuremberg for similar crimes but control of the news ensured that Eisenhower, and those under his command who took part in this outrage, were never even officially accused of wrong doing. Ike carried out Operation Keelhaul deporting innocent refugees from eastern Europe to Stalin’s clutches. The Communists often machine-gunned these people as they arrived in Soviet territory -sometimes while still on the trains. Most of these people were nothing more than White Christian refugees, who didn’t want to live in a communist tyranny.

[Via http://elliotlakenews.wordpress.com]

Seminar Parenting Terbesar di Indonesia

Ini adalah acara yang diadakan oleh promotor Ticket Station dimana BAHTERA JIWA H.R. & Psychology Consultant -biro konsultan SDM & Psikologi- yang saya kelola ikut berpartisipasi sebagai sponsor dan pembicara. Acara ini menghadirkan pembicara utama Nanny Stella dari  NANNY 911 (didatangkan langsung dari USA, di Indonesia acaranya tayang di Metro TV) dengan pembicara pendamping Dr. Seto Mulyadi (kak Seto)-Ketua Komnas Anak dan Pauline,S.Psi.,CTEI-General Manager BJ-Consultant.

Info acara dapat diklik di http://www.bahterajiwa.com.

Mengenai tiket bisa dipesan di http://www.my-ticketstation.com.

[Via http://lifeschool.wordpress.com]

God is with us Everyday

這是由一位八十多歲的老婆婆跟我說的一句話

她現在一整天都在病床，年青的時候在教會是讀經員

對主滿有信心，現在年老多病，仍對我說：主每天與我們同在

那是一種從她的信仰所散發出來的力量

面對病仍然處之泰然的態度

生離死別之中

主仍要與我們同在，從今時直至永遠

jasohill’s photo

[Via http://unpretentiousness.wordpress.com]

Climate change: Before Copenhagen

Climate change: Before Copenhagen; (Nov. 29, 2009)

            Before 1992 six States accounted for over 80% of the total accumulated 6 gases related to environment global temperature increase such as CO2 and methane. These countries are USA (27%), Europe’s major States (23%), China (10%), Russia (9.25%), Germany (5.5%), and Japan (5%).  In 2005, the same countries emit more than 70% of the gases.  They are: China (19.5%), USA (18.5%), The EU (13.5%), Russia (5.25%), India (5%) and Japan 3.5%).

            Only three countries have managed to reduce their CO2 equivalent emissions since the Kyoto agreement reference of 1992.  They are: Russia by 40%, Germany and England by almost 20% each.

The major themes in the coming conference are eight:

            First, the long term objective for 2050 is to staying below 2degrees increase in global temperature. This is not acceptable: it means that the world community has already condemned 30% of animal and vegetable species to go extinct, 30% of sea shore swamps will disappear, and a qualitative jump in desertification and rate of inundations; potable water will become scarce resource. For that purpose, the most industrialized States should reduce by 80% the equivalent CO2 emissions.  The overall reduction is to be 50% with the contribution of the developing countries in going green. To that effect, the target is not to exceed 450 particles of CO2 concentration.  This is not acceptable. Currently we have a concentration of 390 particles and the temperature just increased by 0.8 degrees in the last three decades and we are already witnessing the melting of the Arctic Pole. 

            The target should be to drop to 350 particles at most. The main reason is the emission of methane (a gas worse by 20 times the effect of CO2) that the hard frozen ground are emitting and which kept this nasty gas trapped underground before this melting phase.

            Second, the medium term objective is a reduction of CO2 equivalent to 30% in reference to the year 1990.  The actual engagement is 13%.  The US administrations are not ready for even that modest reduction of 13%.

            Third, an engagement to adopting industrial processes with low CO2 emissions.

            Fourth, reducing deforestation by 50% and replanting new trees.  Brazil has already started policies of saving the Amazon forest areas from further plantations.

            Fifth, pumping $3 billions a year into the poorest States to encourage them switching to alternative cleaner energy resources.

            Sixth, pumping additional $ 2 billions a year for innovative green technologies.

            Seventh, allocating $ 10 billions, each year, till 2012 to finance green alternatives.

            Eight, developing an alternative program that will substitute the “Carbon market” due to terminate in 2012.

            According to the Bangkok Post the US President Obama and China Hu Jintao have agreed to lower expectation in Copenhagen. Most probably, the reference for lowering gas emission will be of 2005 instead of 1992, a move that will encourage accepting raising the CO2 concentration beyond the 400 particles. All indicates that the US is going to the Copenhagen conference empty handed in home legislations.  Many leaders are encouraging President Obama to raise the standard unilaterally as a sign of personal commitment and set the psychology of the US people in motion. Everything might restart from scratch.

            The Kyoto agreement had for purpose to encouraging the heaviest state polluters to invest in the poorer States with less polluting technologies to stabilize the overall concentration of gases.  The idea was to deter the emerging economies from emulating the same industrial processes that the developed countries have previously used and thus, saving future deterioration of the environment. A tax of 2% on the heaviest industrial polluters was to generate $1.6 billion by 2012.  Nothing was done so far and the US administrations refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on the basis that climatic changes are mostly a myth.

            The hardest hit states are located in Africa (the western and eastern states), Afghanistan, Bangladesh (17% of its land will be submerged).  The next worst hit states are Mexico, Pakistan, Iraq, India, the western states in Latin America, and many States in South East Asia. The actual facts and trends are changing priorities for the worst hit states; for example, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, North of China, and India are witnessing the lowest rain precipitations in decades for two consecutive years.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

The Dredge

One of the few shining lights in the grim, hamster-wheel professional/ social-obligation darkness that is the October – December period is The Dredge, otherwise known as the Great Lakes Dredge and Philharmonic Society (don’t ask …).  It’s a male voice choir, celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year, which is rooted in this part of Chicago.  It forms up every October and rehearses a repertoire of Christmas carols, which we then perform in hospitals, retirement communities and other venues throughout December.

I love it.  Unabashedly.  I admit that, when invited to join, I at first approached it with some caution:  (a) never having sung in a choir before;  and (b) being a perfectionist, I wasn’t at all sure I’d be ‘good enough’.  Now: who cares?!

Tonight was great:  I hosted the last rehearsal of the year at home;  and Tony took some photos and video.  If I manage to work out how to post a snippet of video, I’ll do so … but in the meantime you’ll just need to make do with a (silent) still …

[Via http://softedges.wordpress.com]