THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMERICA’S WILL
The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US's indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America's most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades. The US has responded to Chinese aggression with ever-escalating attempts to placate Beijing - while China has responded to these US overtures by demonstrating contempt for US power. As for Europe, the Obama administration's responses to Russia's annexation of Crimea and to its acts of aggression against Ukraine bespeak a lack of seriousness and dangerous indifference to the fate of the US alliance structure in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, it is not only the US's obsessive approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel that lies in shambles. The entire US alliance system and the Obama administration's other signature initiatives have also collapsed. The key examples are Iran and Syria. Yet the problem is not limited to Obama and his advisers or even to the political Left. Their delusional view that the US will suffer no consequences for its consistent record of failure and defeat is shared by a growing chorus of conservatives.
EARTH DAY TRAGEDY
A tragedy occurred for all the greenies celebrating Earth Day yesterday (April 22). The Associated Press released an AP-GfK poll revealing that more Americans believe in God than in man-made global warming. Can't you just hear the wailing and gnashing of greenie teeth? They will seize on this as proof that Americans are credulous and anti-scientific, but I'd draw the opposite conclusion. The survey instead shows how remarkably resilient Americans are in the face of relentless environmental brainwashing. The schools, the universities, the government, the green NGOs, Hollywood and the Enemedia have invested billions of man hours and dollars trying to persuade Americans that climate change is the greatest threat of our age. But according to this survey, only 33 per cent are buying it - while another 37 per cent remain thoroughly unconvinced. In the survey, respondents were asked how confident they were in a range of scientific statements. The ones in which they had fullest confidence were:
HOW DANGEROUS IS TREASURY’S WAR ON RUSSIA?
The United States has constructed a financial neutron bomb. For the past 12 years an elite cell at the US Treasury has been sharpening the tools of economic warfare, designing ways to bring almost any country to its knees without firing a shot. The strategy relies on hegemonic control over the global banking system, buttressed by a network of allies and the reluctant acquiescence of neutral states. Let us call this the Manhattan Project of the early 21st century. "It is a new kind of war, like a creeping financial insurgency, intended to constrict our enemies' financial lifeblood, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness," says Juan Zarate, the Treasury and White House official who helped spearhead policy after 9/11. "The new geo-economic game may be more efficient and subtle than past geopolitical competitions, but it is no less ruthless and destructive," he writes in his book Treasury's War: the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare. Bear this in mind as Washington tightens the noose on Vladimir Putin's Russia, slowly shutting off market access for Russian banks, companies and state bodies with $714bn of dollar debt (Sberbank data). And be aware of the clear risk of an "asymmetric" riposte by the Kremlin.
THE WARMIST APOCALYPSE HAS COME AND GONE ONCE AGAIN
When do you think the Associated Press reported this? "The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable." The Washington Post published this AP report on Nov. 2, 1922. You may have noticed that the predicted disaster 92 years ago did not happen, nor have other predicted catastrophes from the global-warming crowd. Yet the warmists' apocalyptic predictions continue unabated. Why?
SPRINGTIME IN LIBYA
Tripoli, Libya. I - and events - are moving fast here, so I'm writing this on the fly. I got here over the weekend after an incredible time in Socotra - which is more amazing than any pictures could show but no internet. The night I arrived, Saturday 4/12, there was an attack on the family of Libya's latest Prime Minister, Abdullah al-Thinni. The next morning, Sunday 4/13, he resigned. Day before yesterday, Tuesday 4/15, Jordan's ambassador to Libya, Fawaz al-Aytan, was kidnapped by masked gunmen in broad daylight right here in downtown Tripoli. I only learned of these events on CNN's website. There was no evidence of anything unusual driving around the city, no one I talked to thought they were worth mentioning. By all outward appearances, everything seems normal. Lots of traffic, everyone going about their business, traffic cops behaving normally, no military police with checkpoints all over, no heightened security that I could see. The same outside the city. There are two astounding World Heritage Sites - Sabratha 40 miles west of Tripoli, and Leptis Magna, 80 miles to the east. I've been to both since I got here, and not a single checkpoint on the way to either, government soldiers nor any militia. Everything and everyone seemed normal, no problem. There are some weird things, of course. Libya is one of the world's major oil producers, yet there are long - really long - lines of cars at every gas station. An appreciable number of drivers, over 10% at least, are majnoon, reckless madman crazy. Huge auto junk yards filled with horrifically wrecked cars attest to their winning Darwin Awards. The positive surprises, however, outnumber the negative. You could say it's springtime in Libya.
FORGETTING FREEDOM ON PASSOVER
Passover, which began on Monday night (4/14), is the festival of freedom. We repeat the story of enslavement, flight, redemption and freedom each year at Passover, because our sages wanted to ensure that we never forget the value of freedom, and remain vigilant in our fight for it. In Israel, where our freedom is physically threatened, most Jews understand and live by the lessons of Passover. But something is happening to the Jews in America. More and more, every day we see American Jews embracing intellectual bondage. We see American Jewish leaders embracing the intolerant, who seek to constrain freedom, and shunning those who fight for freedom and the rights of Jews and other threatened peoples and groups. To a large degree, this rejection of the lessons of the Exodus among the American Jewish community reflects the growing intolerance and tyranny of the political Left, to which most American Jews pledge their allegiance. Here are the latest odious examples.
RUSSIA’S ACHILLES HEEL
Russia is at increasing risk of a full-blown financial crisis as the West tightens sanctions and Russian meddling in Ukraine pushes the region towards conflagration. The country's private companies have been shut out of global capital markets almost entirely since the crisis erupted, causing a serious credit crunch and raising concerns that firms may not be able to refinance debt without Russian state support. "No Eurobonds have been rolled over for six weeks. This cannot continue for long and is becoming a massive issue," said an official from a major Russian bank. "Companies have to roll over $10bn a month and nothing is moving. The markets have been remarkably relaxed about this, given how dangerous it is. Russia's greatest vulnerability is the bond market," he said. The warnings came as EU foreign ministers agreed to draft plans for "Stage III" sanctions - this time hitting economic and financial targets - if Russian president Vladimir Putin sends troops into East Ukraine or tries to seize territory. Washington is forcing the pace in any case as is tightens the noose by other means, using regulatory "stealth" power to force banks across the world to pull back from Russia.
THE KEY TO A WINNING MARRIAGE
An acquaintance the other day asked me what I do, and I told her that I'm a marriage counselor and a life coach. Then she asked an interesting question: "Is compromise the key to a happy marriage?" At first I was tempted to say yes. Compromise is certainly one part of two different people sharing a life together. We can't do everything we want whenever we want it; we have to find ways of adapting to each other's needs and inclinations. But thinking about it a little more closely, I instead said an emphatic, "No." Compromise is not really the key. Compromise is kind of like when one person wants a room painted yellow, the other wants it painted blue, and we compromise and get green. Compromise is sometimes win/win, sometimes not. There are certainly times when we compromise, but it isn't the driving force of a great relationship. What, then, is the driving force of a great relationship?
THE CRIME OF CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE LAWS
Do you think the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies should have the right to seize your assets, including your bank accounts, when you have not been convicted of wrongdoing? The fact is, the IRS and other government agencies do this all the time, and often without even a formal accusation of wrongdoing. Thus, in criminal cases, the government has to convince a judge and jury beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed. Under civil asset-forfeiture laws, no such proof is required -- and, as a result, many innocent people have had their property taken by agents of the federal government. Anyone who is awake knows that the IRS has been politicized -- and thus critics of the administration live in fear that their property will be taken for the mere act of speaking out against the government. There is only one solution.
SHERLOCK HOLMES COULD NOT SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF MH370
On Tuesday (4/08), we learned that "crews searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have failed to relocate the sounds previously heard deep in the Indian Ocean, raising fears that the batteries in the plane's black box may have died." The tragic disappearance of all 239 people on board flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean has one really peculiar feature to it: none of the possible explanations is remotely plausible, yet one of them must be true. The usual rule on these occasions - choose the simplest explanation or, as William of Ockham taught, make the fewest assumptions - simply does not work. There is no simple explanation. Whether the cause was an accidental decompression, a terrorist act or a suicide, all three require us to assume that an outlandish and bizarre sequence of events happened. I don't know about you, but I have had conversations about MH370 with many people recently, some of whom were fairly confident that they knew what had happened. Yet every story they told was baroque in its contrivance to the point of implausibility, requiring a chain of events that stretched my credulity. Yet, as I say, one such story will turn out to be right. Consider the sequence of events.