CELEBRATING COLUMBUS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Today, October 12, is the 514th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landing on Guanahani (now known as San Salvador or Watlings) island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Unfortunately, Columbus Day is for most Americans just an excuse for a three-day weekend, which is why it fell on Monday, October 9. What it should be is a commemoration and celebration of Western Civilization - which is why the Left hates Columbus and his holiday. Fortunately, North Korea's botched nuclear bomb explosion shooed the Columbus Day protestors off the newspaper pages and television screens. Thankfully ignored was the usual spectacle of American Indians using the holiday to denounce the White Man and his genocidal war-mongering culture-destroying earth-murdering imperialism, blah blah blah - with White Liberals joining in, masochistically condemning their own civilization. But they will be at it again next year, so let us suggest to them now that they abandon every vestige of the civilization they hate as so evil - for else they are bottomless hypocrites. Not just every material benefit - electricity, the wheel, and all post-Stone Age inventions. Every psychological vestige as well - starting with the very concept of American Indian or Native American or any other collective term. For the reality is that there were no Indians in America when Columbus discovered it.
BRAYING JACKASSES CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO LEAD AMERICA
The BBC reported on October 10 that in the Indian state of Jharkhand, villagers fled their homes to escape a rampaging herd of grief-stricken elephants. "They say the animals are agitated because one of their herd disappeared. Officials say the missing animal became disoriented, and fell into a ditch and drowned over the weekend." There was no mention in the BBC report whether or not the village jackasses were braying with delight at the sight of the distressed elephants. Of course the Indian people are always disturbed when their elephants run amuck, because, since time immemorial they have relied on the strong, intelligent and friendly elephants to do their heavy lifting for them. The donkeys simply do not have the mental or physical capacity to substitute for the prized elephants. Meanwhile in Washington...
NORTH KOREA’S NUKE TEST FLOP
[Note: Written the day after North Korea exploded its "device," an Update with new information is now appended at the end.] The public face of Bush Administration officials regarding North Korea's nuclear test is a mask of utter seriousness, or "grave concern." Behind the mask, folks are laughing their heads off. Meanwhile, the world's dumbest nuclear scientists - namely, those in North Korea - are terrified of what Baby Kim will do to them when he finds out the truth. Essentially, we have a replay of the total fiasco of Baby Kim's headline-garnering missile test launch last July. North Korea's claim to have successfully conducted a test explosion of a nuclear bomb on Monday (October 8) has resulted in even more public hysteria that its missile tests, and even more private laughter. The test shows the entire plutonium stockpile of North Korea is worthless: It's not "weapons grade" so bombs cannot be made ot it. Here's why.
WHEN DO WE TAKE IRAQ’S TRAINING WHEELS OFF?
The time for our soldiers to depart from Iraq is most certainly not now, and seems far away. But the Iraqi army and police are getting larger and more capable with each passing month. I now think the benefits of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of American conventional units exceed the liabilities of doing so. Neither the Iraqi nor the American publics will stand much longer for an indefinite commitment. The deadline should be flexible, but a deadline should be set. The Iraqis aren't ready to stand on their own yet, but at some point the training wheels must come off.
SMUGGLERS’ PARADISE
This is a story about 21st century Persian smugglers and 19th century British soldiers driven crazy by literally going "around the bend." It takes place in one of the world's most inhospitable and strategically critical places in the world - the Strait of Hormuz. This is where the sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil, pumped out of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iranian, and Emirati oil fields, and into giant supertankers which snake through the Strait in continuous succession. That's where I am right now, writing this overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The sun is setting, and I can see it lighting up the cliffs of Iran. There's a direct flight from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. From there I drove through the other Emirates like Sharjah and Umm al Qawain, then up into the wasteland of Musandam to here. I had come to see a Persian smuggling operation running contraband across the Strait by speedboat into Iran. But first, let's talk about those crazy Brits...
TURTLE SOUP
Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands Turtle Farm. If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit - hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed like chickens and cattle and catfish.
RICE AND “REASONABLES”
She's a Renaissance woman, whose talents run from scholarship to music and sport. But in this interview with Bret Stephens of the Wall St. Journal, Condoleezza Rice often seems oddly detached from the life-and-death quality of the war against the terror masters. Indeed, she doesn't even call it a war, and the things she says about it are sometimes striking - headline quality remarks - but more often very peculiar. To begin with, she doesn't expect us to win this "battle, if you will, or a struggle," during the Bush presidency. Her mission for the next two years is not victory, but to put "some fundamentals in place." I wish the interviewer had asked her to define these "fundamentals," so that we could better judge whether or not they are worth the lives and limbs of our children.
STOCK SCAMS A GROWING THREAT
Here we are, well on our way into the 21st century. The human race has been around for at least 5,767 years as of last weekend (the Jewish New Year), and we've been working with e-mail, Internet and spam for over a decade already. With those credentials, you'd think people would know better.
Well, we do know better - but some people never learn. The proof? Many people are following the advice offered in the flood of stock-scam spam that has hit the Internet in recent months, leaving virtually no computer immune.
I'm sure that some To The Pointers are among them.
According to a recent study by Internet researchers at Harvard and Purdue Universities, the prices of "penny stocks" being touted in mass mailings to suckers actually rose significantly after a batch of messages were sent - as if recipients were rushing to their online brokers to buy the likes of Cyberhand Tech and ThermaFreeze Products in the hope that they could double their money.
Well, the come-ons are certainly appealing, but it's a scam, of course; all part of "pump and dump" schemes, where scammers buy stock in companies that exist mainly on paper and are traded on unsupervised exchanges, and then dump the shares on those who respond to their spam.
It must be working, because in the past few months stock spam has begun edging out fat pills and Viagra messages in my inbox!
WITH THE PESHMERGA
The moon was a little over a quarter full. It would be setting in an hour or so, leaving us without its meager light. I longed for night vision goggles, but the men I was with seemed to have no need of them and moved confidently in the dark. They were Kurdish guerrilla fighters known as Peshmerga, "Those who face death." We were armed, but not heavily. Holstered on my belt was a Webley Mark IV .38 revolver, and slung over my back was an AK-47 Kalashnikov, Type 2 with a wooden stock. The famous banana clip only holds 30 rounds, but I had no vest for extra magazines. One of the men showed me he was carrying eight and motioned for me not to worry. The Peshmerga were all carrying AKs of course, with vests for extra magazines and pouches for hand grenades. But that was it - no RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade launchers), no heavy machine guns. We were traveling light, as this was an insertion team. The mission was to insert me into Iran.
JOKE INTELLIGENCE
There is an "intelligence website" emanating from Israel called Debka. This Monday (September 24), it breathlessly blared Iran and Turkey Prepare for War in Iraqi Kurdistan. Debka's "exclusive military sources in Iraq" have revealed just to the website alone that "Turkish and Iranian air units as well as armored, paratroop, special operations and artillery forces are poised for an imminent coordinated invasion of the northern Iraqi autonomous province of Kurdistan." Since I am in Iraqi Kurdistan meeting with Kurdish resistance movements operating in Iran, I showed them the story. They laughed their heads off.