Shoot It Down!

By Alan Caruba

When North Korea launches its intercontinental ballistic missile called the Taepodong, Japan and/or the United States should shoot it down. News reports suggest it could occur as early as 6 PM, April 11.

Japan has more at stake being much closer to North Korea, but the United States has its reputation on the line. If it takes no action, the world will conclude it is gutless and its leadership position will be weakened. Shooting it down will not set off a war, but it will signal that America is not going to continue being played for a fool after years of having acceded to North Korea’s blackmail schemes.

The Taepodong is an ICPM and a very big risk to America’s west coast, to Hawaii, to Japan, and other targets. The first one was launched in 1998 so the North Koreans have had plenty of time to improve their technological mastery. The same, of course, can be said for their nuclear weapons.

In 2004, William C. Triplett II, a former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with more than thirty years of experience working on China’s threat national security, wrote a book, “Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America.” I doubt anyone in the Obama administration has read it.

It is uncanny how a nation so poor that it cannot feed its own people—other than its million-plus military—can find the money to build ICBMs and develop nuclear bombs. That answer is staring everyone in the face. “Communist China serves as its life support system. Beijing will not let the regime in North Korea die,” wrote Triplett.

The Chinese have a term for it. It’s called “killing with a borrowed knife” and involves having another nation do its dirty work. “It is true that North Korea is the front man delivering the missiles to terrorist countries,” wrote Triplett, “But behind North Korea, the Chinese are enriching themselves by selling parts, service, production tools, training, and the development of future models.”

It’s worth noting that before the Chinese in the mid-1960s, it was the Russians—then known as the Soviet Union—that had helped North Korea establish a small five-megawatt nuclear research reactor at Yongbyon, sixty miles north of its capitol of Pyongyang. In time the Chinese would provide the assistance for a growing program. In the 1980s, the regime began to build three newer and larger nuclear power reactors.

It is ironic that, despite the capacity to produce electricity with nuclear power, North Korea remains in darkness when night falls.

The U.S. has shown a weak hand in dealing with North Korea. In the 1990s the Clinton administration engaged in classic appeasement, standing by for eight years while the North Korea-Chinese missile export joint venture moved ahead. No American administration going back to the days of Jimmy Carter has done much to restrain the North Koreans and the United Nations has an even worse track record.

There are eight known nuclear bomb explosion sites in North Korea. In 2003, it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelling the IAEA inspectors. In 2006, it tested a nuclear device and fired off six missiles, including a Taepodong II. Since 2007 the usual useless diplomatic kabuki dance has been conducted between North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S.

President Obama needs to “grow a set” and give the order that the missile is to be shot down when it is launched. Japan may do so for us. It would be a breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is manifestly a threat to our national security.

If we did shoot it down what would China do? Nothing. It would issue a statement denouncing the action and then it would be back to business as usual. It would, however, send a message to them and the North Koreans that the U.S. is not a paper tiger.

If the Obama administration takes no action regarding the missile, it will no doubt find an excuse to ship 240,000 tons of food aid for “humanitarian” reasons. It’s been done before. It didn’t change or slow down North Korea’s missile and nuclear program. It just gave them more time to perfect it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Wheat, Bread, Noodles and Global Competition

By Alan Caruba

My late Mother used to bake her own breads, along with cookies, cakes, and pies. I miss the taste of freshly baked bread and I miss the aroma that floated from the kitchen to the rest of the house. The author of several cookbooks, she knew a lot about the history of foods. Much of history was shaped by the development of agriculture, the growing of grains.

In the Middle East, it wasn’t called the Fertile Crescent for nothing. In Rome there were public ovens. The bakers of ancient Greece had a worldwide reputation. Much later when French peasants could not get bread, it sparked a revolution. “Let them eat cake” cost Marie Antoinette her head!

Great famines have marked history as well. There is a reason why bread is called the staff of life and there is a reason to keep an eye on today’s worldwide market for wheat. It reflects the competition between nations for the sale of this vital commodity.

Casting an eye over the world, one learns that Syria, in the midst of the riots to overthrow the Assad dictatorship, the more mundane business of the country goes on including the announcement that it plans to sell 50,000 tons of durum in extra stock bought from farmers last year.

Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Growers of Wheat Association, monitors the global wheat market for its readers. Suffice to say that wheat is a major export for the U.S., generating billions in revenue every year. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. wheat exports will reach 31.3 million metric tons (mmt) in 2011 and 2012.

Farmers, as always, are dependent on the weather and other factors over which they have no control. In the U.S. the environmental movement has often been responsible for shutting off their access to water to “save” some reptile or other species. The EPA is trying to define “dust”, a by-product of farming, as a “pollutant.” This kind of regulation has a serious impact on the availability of all manner of foods at your local supermarket, in restaurants, and bakeries.

Since the growth of all vegetation, including wheat, is dependent on an abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, the demand by global warming hucksters that emissions of this vital gas be reduced is idiotic, either domestically or worldwide.

But I digress. The fact that the world is now home to seven billion hungry humans will put a lot of pressure on farmers to produce more wheat, rice and other grains.

In 2007 India banned the export of wheat, but “large crops and inefficient storage centers means large quantities of India’s crop is spoiled every year.” India’s politicians are under a lot of pressure to ensure that the price of wheat remains within reach of its millions of poor people. Recently, however, India announced that it would allow private companies to export two million metric tons from its 86 mmt annual yield. That would make India the world’s second largest wheat producer after China.

China, however, is paying a price for the expansion of its wheat production. The Chinese Academy of Sciences says that the overuse of chemical fertilizers for the past thirty years is causing the deterioration of arable soil. When you have more than a billion people to feed, it poses a problem that could translate into political unrest, so the Chinese leadership pays a lot of attention to such things.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Russia’s export of wheat is expected to quadruple from last year to 16 mmt. In 2010, a hot summer that resulted in poor production led to a ban on wheat exports. The demand for Russian wheat has “outstripped the ability of the ports to handle it.” Former Soviet satellite nations such as Bulgaria and the Ukraine have had a banner year for wheat production.

This in turn has knocked Pakistan’s wheat producers out of the competitive marketplace despite the fact that it is the Middle East’s third largest wheat producer. Its expected exports of 3 mmt have been reduced to 1.8 mmt. Along with all its other problems, the excess wheat is likely to be dumped on the domestic market, driving prices downward.

From nation to nation, wheat, whether in abundance or the lack thereof, affects their internal affairs in ways that only rarely make headlines, but it remains as valuable as oil and other commodities that shape policies.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

China is Blocking America's Economic Recovery

By Alan Caruba

Americans of the generation that fought World War II and lived through the next fifty years of the Cold War never lost sight of the fact that the Soviet Union was Communist and therefore lacking anything resembling the moral values of our nation or the West. Why then do a more recent generations ignore the fact that Red China is Communist and operates in the same predatory fashion?

One of the major reasons why there is no new job creation in America is tied directly to its policies toward Red China. Both the Bush and Obama administrations were reluctant to challenge China’s deliberate strategy of not just destroying America’s manufacturing base, but all other nations, making itself the center for manufacturing.

A new book, “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—A Global Call to Action”, by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry spells out the threat and explains why letting China be America’s biggest lender, while luring more and more corporations to set up shop there is destroying the nation’s ability to recover.

There are, of course, other factors affecting recovery, not the least of which is Big Government with its massive regulatory stranglehold and the need to reform America’s tax policies, but beyond that is the growing threat of a China that is deliberately breaking all the international rules of trade and getting away with it.

China’s “industrial policy (is) aimed at nothing shore of the total domination of world manufacturing, the total penetration of global markets, and the economic subjection of the Western World.” That may sound like hyperbole, but the authors back it up in a book filled with frightening details and data.

One area that remains largely a mystery to most Americans is addressed in its chapter, “Death by Currency Manipulation.” The authors say “If money is the root of all evil, then China’s manipulation of its currency, the yuan, is the tap root of everything wrong with the U.S.-China trade relationship. China has dramatically slowed America’s economic growth rate and spiked our unemployment rate.”

“China manipulates its currency by artificially ‘pegging’ the Chinese yuan to the U.S. dollar at a grossly undervalued fixed exchange rate.”

The U.S. trade deficit with China is appalling. “In terms of absolute size, America imports almost $1 billion a day more than it exports from China every business day of the year. That’s not a typo: it’s billion, not million.”

“America’s trade imbalance,” the authors point out, “could never persist in a world of free trade where China allowed its currency to float freely alongside other floating currencies around the world like the euro, Japanese yen, Swiss France, Brazilian real, Indian rupee, and the U.S. dollar.”

“It is precisely China’s massive accumulation of dollar-denominated foreign reserves that now allows the Chinese Communist Party to credibly threaten to nuke our financial system.” Beyond the U.S. it threatens “the entire global economic fabric and free trade framework.”

American corporations have been lured to China with the illusion of 1.3 billion consumers there, but the vast bulk of China’s population has yet to have achieved a middle class status with the money to spend on our goods. In the meantime, companies like General Electric are transferring entire elements of their assets to China in order to have them manufactured there for less. With those assets, however, go the technological and intellectual property they possess.

This is a violation of World Trade Organization rules, but there is ample evidence that WTO rules are routinely violated by China and only the most desultory efforts are made by WTO member nations to protest.

“Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and falsely promised to end its mercantilist and protectionist practices, America’s apparel, textile, and wood furniture industries have shrunk to half their size—with textile jobs alone beaten down by 70%. Other critical industries like chemicals, paper, steel, and tires are under similar siege, while employment in our high-tech computer and electronics manufacturing industries has plummeted by more than 40%.”

These days, I look at the packaging of everything I purchase to determine if it is “Made in China” because, if it is, there is a strong likelihood that it poses a real danger. “Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding world markets with a range of bone-crushing, cancer-causing, flammable, poisonous, and otherwise lethal products, foods, and drugs,” the authors warn.

Eating food produced in China poses a very real threat because of the immense levels of pollution in its environment and the fact that there are ample examples of food producers deliberately adulterating their products.

Thus, America’s economic recovery is directly related to its trade practices with China and its financial system is now mortgaged to China. We must disenthrall and disengage ourselves from China if we are to survive, let along remedy our growing legion of unemployed.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

GE Stabs the US in the Back

By Alan Caruba

In 1876 Thomas Alva Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey for the purposes of exploring how to produce and distribute electricity. History records that he invented the incandescent electric light bulb there. By 1890, he had established the Edison General Electric Company, now know simply as GE.

In 2011, Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE and the chairman of President Obama’s “Jobs Council” is eliminating jobs for American employees of GE at a furious pace. To add insult to injury, in 2010 GE paid no federal taxes at all despite worldwide profits of $14.2 billion. GE claimed a tax benefit of $2.3 billion.

From an America corporate icon to an American disgrace, GE epitomizes how federal policies, cronyism, and rent seeking is destroying America from within by avoiding taxes and shipping jobs overseas. Keep in mind, none of this is illegal. It is, however, unconscionable.

A recent article at TheEconomicCollapseblog.com took a look at the way GE is “moving jobs and economic infrastructure to China at a blistering pace.” For example, “GE makes more medical-imaging machines than anyone else in the world and now GE has announced that it is ‘moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing.”

The article notes that, “Under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States.” Even the liberal learning Huffington Post reported that “As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. Since Immelt took over in 2001, GE has shed 34,000 jobs in the U.S. according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But it has added 25,000 jobs overseas.”

“At the end of 2009, GE employed 36,000 more people abroad than it did in the U.S. In 2000, it was nearly the opposite.”

The last GE factory in the U.S. that made light bulbs closed last September. This came on the heels of the federal government’s ban on the 100-watt incandescent light bulb and its push to require Americans to purchase the new CFL light bulbs as part of Obama’s green jobs initiative. The CFL bulbs have been universally denounced as providing less equivalent light, costing more, and using mercury as part of their manufacture.

When John Rice was appointed GE’s head of global operations, responsible for growth in markets that include China, India, the Middle East and Brazil, the Huffington Post revealed that GE planned to spend $500 million on research and development and new customer innovation centers in China, adding more than a thousand jobs there. “More than $1.5 billion is expected to be put toward joint ventures with Chinese state-owned enterprises in high-technology sectors.”

At the same time, Daily Finance.com revealed that GE “is arming China to compete with Boeing—and America.” Peter Cohen that “General Electric plans to sell its aircraft electronics to Chinese companies” noting that China just flight-tested a prototype stealth fighter” as it continues to build up its military. GE is selling technology “it developed for U.S. companies like Boeing to Boeing’s Chinese competitors.”

“America is being de-industrialized at lightning speed and very few of our politicians seem to care,” says TheEconomicCollapseblog while noting that in 1979 there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States and today there are 11.6 million.

“The United States has lost a staggering 32% of all its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.”

While President Obama berates the Congress for the lack of free trade agreements, he neglects to say that several such agreements with Latin American nations linger on his desk and none can be acted upon by Congress until he sends them for approval.

While Jeffrey Immelt flies around in his corporate jet and issues vacuous, hypocritical statements about jobs for Americans, he and his close friend in the White House are undermining the economy. Other U.S. corporations are following suit.

The U.S. corporate tax is the highest in the world, but you will not hear any talk of lowering this tax rate, only meaningless class warfare blather about taxing “millionaires and billionaires” more when, in truth, those taxes will fall heaviest on small business owners.

This is the deliberate destruction of the U.S. manufacturing sector.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

China is NOT the Future

By Alan Caruba

Last year I read a book, “China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society” by John and Doris Naisbitt and was so entranced I completely neglected my normal skepticism and missed all the signals that what I was reading was essentially propaganda.

I wonder now how I could have missed this after reading just the first page in which the authors said, “the constancy of the Communist Party has worked not against but for the well-being of the Chinese people. Long-term strategic planning could be carried out without the distractions and disruptions of elections that characterize western democracies.”

Oh, wow! This line from the second paragraph of the book says everything you want to know about its justification of a completely authoritarian system whose brief history has put millions of Chinese in their graves, invaded and occupies Tibet, and is most famous for the slaughter in Tiananmen Square where mostly young Chinese were expressing a desire for real democracy.

The other clue about John Naisbitt is that he is “currently a professor at both Nankai University and Tianjin University of Finance and Economics. His wife has been a professor at Yunnan University and now directs the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin. Did I really expect to read a book that was anything but pro-China in every respect?

A new book provides a far different perspective. Troy Parfitt is a Canadian who has lived for years in South Korea and in Taiwan as a teacher of English. He has previously written “Notes on the Other China”, but his new book is titled, “Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas” ($20.95, Western Hemisphere Press, New Brunswick, Canada, softcover). It is, for all intents and purposes, a travelogue of a three-month odyssey the former Taiwan-based author took throughout 17 provinces of China until he could no longer stand being in the Middle Kingdom.

Parfitt is his own man and one with an eye for detail and a talent for describing his journey in ways that do not ignore some obvious and ugly truths about the real China, not the tourist China, and most certainly not the China created by media myths.

He has the added benefit of having actually studied the history of China, past and modern, to the point where the book’s “select bibliography” runs to nearly 70 titles. As much as he made a point of visiting the places a tourist is expected to visit, because he spoke Chinese he was able to speak with the locals along the way in ways most tourists cannot. He was not taken in by the “exotic” aspects of China because he had spent enough time in Asia to have lost any naiveté.

Thus, Parfitt, looking for a description, concludes that China is “the epitome of George Orwell’s most famous novel. It is ‘Nineteen-Eighty Four with Chinese characteristics.”

Orwell’s book is about an authoritarian future ruled by Big Brother where truth is what the state says it is. It is a world inhabited by “proles” who are not encouraged to have any thoughts other than those approved by the state. It is, in short, Communism.

“China’s great rise is a great illusion,” says Parfitt. “Modernization in Chinese society is little more than window-dressing, the welding of superficial constructs—Pepsi signs, department stores, state-of-the-art production methods—onto an antique mindset. To say that China is rising is exceedingly vague. To say that it is already great or slated for greatness is a mindless mantra at best and a cheap marketing ploy at worst.”

One is brought up short when told that “China’s economic advances are certainly impressive, although it’s important to remember that foreign companies are responsible for roughly 60 percent of all Chinese exports and 85 percent of all high-tech exports.” (Emphasis added)

And then Parfitt adds, “Politically, culturally, socially, and historically, China has practically nothing to offer the Western world…or any other non-Confucian country or culture.”

“China does not even meet the definition of a developed state,” notes Parfitt. “As of 2009, it was listed on the United Nations Human Development Index as being in the 92nd spot.”

“Chinese culture remains locked in a self-replicating state of chaos, myopia, inefficiency, intolerance, violence, and irrationality. It is, in a word, backward,” says Parfitt. “China may be embracing Western trends and technology, but so what? It’s been doing that for more than a century. Culturally, and psychologically, it remains anchored to the distant past.”

For my part, I have long thought that a nation with 1.3 billion people is not likely to function well under the best of circumstances, even with the most enlightened leadership. If you want to see a country that has real potential to emerge in a leadership position among nations, look instead to India which had the great good fortune of being a British colony long enough to adopt its best qualities.

If the U.S. ever gets around to reducing its hideous debt and, in particular, reducing the amount of it owned by China, we may also begin to treat China more realistically. In the meantime, let’s not romanticize China.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

North Korea, China's Hidden Dagger

By Alan Caruba

The Korean War ended in a stalemate in 1953. Having begun on June 25, 1950 with the blessings of Joseph Stalin, an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953 left the peninsula divided between the Republic of South Korea and the Peoples Republic of North Korea. How long ago was that? Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected largely on the promise to go there and secure an end to the conflict

By the time it was over the Red Chinese had intervened and American casualties were around 54,000 with 103,000 wounded. The North Koreans and Chinese were estimated to have lost ten times that number. The war was immensely unpopular with an American public that was still recovering from World War Two that had ended in 1945.

To his credit, President Truman did not hesitate to commit troops. Within two days after the invasion, Americans were fighting another war in Asia. The United Nations provided cover and the conflict was officially a UN action.

It was a proxy war, part of the long Cold War that had begun at the end of World War Two. The Chinese got involved when Gen. Douglas McArthur’s strategies put U.S. troops close to their border. He wanted to finish off not just the North Koreans, but the fledgling communist Chinese government as well. Truman relieved him of command after he neglected the fact that U.S. armies fight under civilian control in the form of an elected Commander-in-Chief and authorization from Congress.

In time, China for reasons of proximity and other factors became the power that controlled North Korea. Under Kim ill-Sung, known as the “Great Leader”, a Soviet protégée of Stalin’s, and his son Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader”, North Korea has evolved into the classic rogue nation. It was named one of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.”

China provides life support for North Korea, the supplier of food and energy. In his 2004 book, “Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America”, William C. Triplett II, noted that “communist China is central to all North Korean issues, from human rights to weapons proliferation.”

Whatever North Korea does is sanctioned by China. This fact has been largely shielded by U.S. policy from the American public. North Korea is known in diplomatic circles as “China’s hidden dagger.” The phrase is taken from an ancient Chinese military text called “36 Srategems.” It means the covert use of another country to annihilate your enemy. North Korea threatens South Korea and Japan, and by extension the U.S. which is committed to come to its defense.

American administrations have negotiated with North Korea and each has learned that they will not adhere to any agreement, using negotiations to secure bribes of all kinds, including one in which the U.S. agreed to build two nuclear facilities there! Recent news revealed they have increased their ability to produce nuclear weapons to the utter astonishment of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Its nuclear program was begun by Moscow and Beijing converted it to a weapons program. Triplett said that Beijing uses North Korea as a proxy distributor of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles to terrorist nations that include Iran and Syria. They in turn, provide weapons to their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Like Iran, no sanctions and no threats of military reprisal have ever had any serious affect on North Korea.

Writing during the George W. Bush administration, Triplett said “There is no endgame strategy. North Korean aggression and provocations still go unpunished.” Together, the North Koreans and China “have successfully bogged any progress in endless diplomatic meetings and conferences while North Korea’s nuclear research marches on.”

America is in no position to fight another war on the Korean peninsula and is dependent on China (and Japan) to purchase its securities to keep its economy functioning in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. America’s manufacturing base has largely been undermined by the transfer of many of our industries to China.

Americans have largely forgotten the threat of communism.

The latest North Korean attacks are China’s way of reminding the U.S. of its dilemma and dependence.

The failure to secure a victory over North Korea in the 1950s, too much dithering since then, and too much distraction fighting recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have combined to render America a paper tiger who, despite our vast military power, will not or cannot pull the trigger.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Voters are Distracted in a Dangerous World

By Alan Caruba

It is natural that Americans would be focused on the November 2nd elections, but it is worrisome that they are also distracted from a world that grows more volatile and dangerous by the day.

Just across the southern border, Mexico is disintegrating into anarchy with mass murders occurring all the time. The government gives little evidence of being able to gain control because, as often as not, holding a position in its government will get you killed. A recent CNSnews.com article reports that 1,200 children have been killed by cartel violence in Mexico since 2006. Overall, more than 28,000 Mexicans have been killed as the result of drug trafficking related-violence between December 2006 and July 2010.

At what point must Mexico be put under martial law to crush the drug cartels or cease to be a modern state? At what point would the U.S. have to invade militarily to impose security on our shared southern border?

While Americans ponder the elections, the U.S. has moved a second carrier group to the Persian Gulf, perhaps because military intelligence has picked up signals that the Iranian leadership which normally works through proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas is preparing for either an offensive or defensive state of war.

Iran has managed to stir the cauldron of the Middle East for decades now. Closely allied with Syria and the main support for Hezbollah, Lebanon is poised for yet another civil conflict and no matter what the outcome it will not bode well for Israel. A huge arsenal of rockets and other weapons have been moved into Lebanon since the 2006 conflict with Israel.

The failure of the Iraqi elections to result in a ruling coalition in its parliament is a sign of instability and it is known that Iran has played a massive role in the provision of weapons that were used against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion.

Economic sanctions against Iran are having some effect, but not enough to destabilize the ruling junta of ayatollahs even in the face of major protests in the streets of Tehran following the rigged reelection of Mamoud Ahmadinejad.

Afghanistan has proven to be a total loss for U.S. policy and the exercise of its military efforts. Participating nations are withdrawing from the NATO military coalition there. General Petraeus has noted that the Taliban are safely harbored in Pakistan, a nation into which the U.S. has poured billions to no obvious effect.

China is achieving hegemonic ambitions as its economy continues to grow, keeping Japan on edge and manipulating North Korea, always a potential trigger for conflict. While many see it as a military enemy, its real strength is the enormous U.S. debt it owns in the form of our treasury securities. Its human rights record is dismal and it continues to hold a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner in jail.

Europe is only just beginning to recognize the threat posed by a huge population of Muslims in its midst. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has recently declared that “multiculturalism has failed.” In France, there are areas in its cities that are “no go” zones controlled by their Muslim population and this is true in other European cities as well. In England, the most popular name for new baby boys is Mohammed!

South America is a patchwork quilt of nations either friendly to the U.S. or led by communists like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who continues to seek alliances with Russia, Iran, and South American neighbor states.

A visit to a website of Freedom House.org provides a map illustrating that much of the world; in particular Russia, China, the Middle East and large portions of Africa do not offer any freedom to their vast populations.

Foreign relations are a duty allocated to the president of the United States. The midterm elections which are mostly about domestic issues will not likely affect the policies of the remaining two years of President Obama’s first and hopefully last term. He is weak on Middle Eastern affairs, seemingly indifferent to Mexico and illegal immigration issues, and has alienated many leaders in Europe.

A fragile U.S. economy and, in particular, its dollar, leaves America vulnerable to its enemies.

Depending on the outcome of the midterm elections, we may either see an energized Republican Party, supported by the Tea Party movement, take dramatic efforts to end wasteful spending, repeal Obamacare, and ensure the Bush tax cuts do not expire, or we will enter upon a period of political gridlock and compromise that will endanger the nation’s future in ways that defy the imagination.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Wheat is more than just a crop

By Alan Caruba

Long ago I was in a class studying history and a professor said something I never forgot. He said that no nation is more than two weeks away from revolution if it cannot feed its people.

We know, however, that dictatorships like the former Soviet Union used famine as a political weapon against the Ukraine, that China has experienced famines, and that North Korea barely manages to feed its people. Food is so essential to political control that all nations pay attention to its provision.

Perhaps no single crop is more essential than wheat. In the 1980s I traveled everywhere in the U.S. as a writer and often visited farmers, learning about what new techniques and products they were using to enhance crop yield. It gave me a lesson regarding the role of agriculture that this suburban New Jersey boy could never have acquired.

With a tip of the hat to Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, here’s a quick look at the role of wheat around the world. Though farmers represent only about two percent of America’s population, they produce an abundance of wheat and other crops, enough to feed all of us and to export internationally. They are a major contributor to the nation’s economy.

The share of the world’s wheat market in 2008 showed America’s dominance with 29%. This was followed by 14% from Russia and 12% from Australia.

A word of caution about any foods coming out of China; there have been too many cases of adulterated foods whether it was pet food, milk, or flour. One firm, Yuzhong Food Additive Company, has occasioned a flurry of warnings against doing business with it.

For years, self-anointed environmentalists have warned against the greatest advance in crop growth of modern times, those that have been genetically modified to withstand drought, fend off various insect pests, and increase vitamin A so children in nations where it is not naturally available can benefit. The Canada Wheat Board led the fight against GMO wheat, but has now recognized that a zero tolerance policy makes no sense.

Iceland was in the news when its unpronounceable volcano, Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted, but scientists worry that another volcano, Katla, could erupt. It is considerably larger and could affect northern hemisphere farming. It erupted in 1918 and is estimated to be a hundred times larger than Katla. Scientists say it is overdue to erupt.

Saudi Arabia is a big importer of wheat because it does not have much arable land to grow it. It has announced that it plans to stop growing wheat in the spring of 2016 and that means US, Argentine, European, and Australian growers will benefit. In 2010-11, it is expected to import two million metric tons.

Iran, when it isn’t secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons and rule the entire Middle East, is a wheat producer and is expected to export two million metric tons to Oman, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates this year. Its wheat crop is expected to reach nine to twelve million tons. Connect the dots and you will see why its wheat crop influences the decisions of Gulf states.

Despite diplomatic and other differences we may have with Russia these days, Deere & Company, the iconic tractor and implement manufacturer, plans to expand its investment and operations there. Russia has nearly 9% of the world’s arable land, 20% of its forested land, and 8% of its fresh water. The Chairman of Deere says it has the potential of being one of the world’s major food-producing areas.

It doesn’t matter where you look on the globe of the world, wheat, the stuff of bread, cakes, pizzas, pasta, and just about anything you will eat today plays a significant and subtle role in the economies of nations. That means you can count on the governments of the world and its international institutions to always pay it close attention while meddling as much as they can.

With a population of more than six billion people, keeping them fed is fundamental to maintaining peace no matter what other threats exist.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Superpower China

By Alan Caruba

As the sun begins to set on an America whose dollar set the standard and whose capacity for manufacturing was unchallenged, a new superpower is emerging and it is China.

Many of the economists and China-watchers have been quick to seize on any bad news coming out of the Asian giant, but for the most part they have marveled how, since the new century began, China has proven adept at maintaining a fast growing economy. Indeed, so fast, it is beginning to show signs of protectionism.

In July 2007, an article in The Washington Times noted that “China, this year for the first time, has dislodged the United States from its long reign as the main engine of global economic growth, with its more than 11 percent growth eclipsing sputtering U.S. growth of about 2 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund’s 2007 projections…”

Further down in the article, the IMF’s deputy director of research, Charles Collyns, was quoted saying, “if you add together Russia and India as well, you get over half of global growth coming from the emerging-market countries.”

C-Span recently aired a segment in which John and Doris Naisbitt answered questions from a group of students at Tenafly High School (NJ) when they launched a tour to promote their book, “China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society.”

Why, I wondered, start a book tour in a school, but it later occurred to me that these students will grow up and live in a very different world than either their parents or grandparents. It will be a world in which China will be a superpower and American may be in decline if current trends continue.

Up until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China had suffered grievously from the communist takeover he had led, beginning with the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Prior to that from the 1930s on through World War Two, the Chinese had suffered from Japanese occupation. Mao, a dedicated Communist, was clueless regarding how to create a successful economy.

The story of how China embraced capitalism while retaining its communist government is quite remarkable, if for no other reason, than the progress it has made. John Naisbitt authored “Megatrends” in 1982, a book that was on The New York Times bestseller list for more than two years, was published in 57 countries, and sold more than eight million copies. Many of those copies were bought by an emerging generation of leaders in China after Mao had decimated much of the nation’s educated classes.

Naisbitt, long before most others, knew that China was embracing change on a scale that most Americans and others could barely comprehend. He and his wife began to spend a lot of time there. Today, his wife Doris is the director of the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin and is a professor at the prestigious Nankai University where John is also affiliated.

My generation enjoyed all the fruits of the post-WWII bounty that accrued to an America that had no real economic rivals. Along with the Soviet Union, China was regarded as a threat because it was communist, but to his credit President Richard Nixon understood China should not be ignored and began the process that has led to an extraordinary economic partnership.

The Naisbitt’s book focuses on how China rose from the ashes of Mao’s horror show, asking “Why has ‘autocratic’ China succeeded while many other, democratically governed states have failed to make economic progress? Why is it that despite all efforts by westerners to push China toward western-style democratization, there is no similar outcry for such a shift in China?’

They conclude that “the constancy of the Communist Party has worked not against but for the well-being of the Chinese people. Long-term strategic planning could be carried out without the distractions and disruptions of elections that characterize western democracies.”

That transformation has been overseen by Deng Xiaping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, three remarkable CEOs who created “an entirely new social and economic society with a ‘company culture’ that serves the needs of the enterprise and its people on its own path to modernity and prosperity.”

In the process, the Communist Party itself changed, adapting a “top-down, bottom-up” approach to governance that set the objectives at the top and allowed the people to introduce their “bottom-up” answers. As a result, “China, often thought as a monolith, is actually decentralizing power more than any other country in the world.” It has unleashed a torrent of entrepreneurial activity.

When one considers how the battle over healthcare “reform” has torn apart Americans in the struggle to avoid turning the nation into a European-style socialist economy and society, China’s “highest goal is a harmonious society and governance that is based on trust.”

This has worked in China because “Chinese gain power and self-confidence in the family, in a group, in the network in which they are integrated.” Not surprisingly, “The first reforms took place in agriculture, where today 40 percent of the Chinese still work…” What is often overlooked, however, is that by 2008 two-thirds of China’s economy was in the private sector!

Some of the results are remarkable. With a population of more than a billion people, “China has a literacy rate of 90.9 percent; life expectancy at birth is 73 years; and the per capita GDP is $5,962.” India, often noted as the other emerging economy, still has a lot of catching up to do. Its literacy rate is 6l percent, life expectancy is 69 years, and a per capita GDP income of $2,762.

It is not my purpose to load you down with statistics. It is to say that, while America suffers from a surfeit of too much government spending and borrowing—debt—the Chinese are forging ahead and doing so, ironically, with an economic system that has to be considered western in origin.

It is folly to not recognize the economic and societal miracle that has allowed the Chinese to move from a rigid system to one in which its people had a GDP in 1980 of $209.3 billion to about $1.2 trillion by 2000. A decade later, it continues to show growth.

Some time ago my nephew asked me what language his little girl should begin to study. I told him it should be Chinese.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

A Vital Difference Today Between China and America

By Alan Caruba

“The joke among China hands goes like this,” says Michael Economides. “If the Americans and the Chinese start talking about a major project today, in two years the Chinese will be done and the Americans will still be talking and applying for permits.”

Economides is an internationally recognized expert on energy. The Editor-in-Chief of Energy Tribune, he is the author of “From Soviet to Putin and Back: The Dominance of Energy in Today’s Russia”, co-authored with Donna Marie D’Aleo, published in 2008. This year has seen the publication of a new book, written with Xina Xie, a Research Professor at the University of Wyoming, “Energy: China’s Choke Point.”

The joke, as his new book makes clear, is on us. After many disastrous decades under the leadership of Chairman Mae Zedong, China in effect retained communism as its government model, but threw it away as its economic model. In effect, it embraced capitalism and, in sharp contrast to America’s economy, its economy is growing at a rate of nine percent per year.

It is doing this by building new coal-fired plants for the generation of electricity and is doing so at breakneck speed. Every week to ten days, it opens a new plant. China ranks third in the world in recoverable coal reserves after the U.S. and Russia. Fully 79 percent of its electrical energy will come from coal.

By contrast, President Obama has declared war on coal as an energy source for America despite the fact that the U.S. is virtually the Saudi Arabia of coal in terms of its recoverable reserves. Writing in September on WorldNetDaily, Jerome Corsi noted that “President Obama declared war on oil and natural gas at the United Nations global warming summit, and he made the same pitch the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.” At the time, Obama said, “I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge.”

Only there is no climate challenge. Revelations beginning on November 20 have mushroomed into “Climategate”, as it became known that the data on which the claims about “global warming” is based were deliberately falsified by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and other IPCC contributors.

There is only one way to explain Obama’s war on U.S. energy and that is the intention to destroy the nation’s capacity to power any new economic development and growth. One of the two major legislative initiatives of his administration has been “Cap-and-Trade”, in essence a huge tax on all energy use. The other, of course, is Obamacare, a healthcare industry takeover opposed by the vast majority of Americans.

Economides new book provides an excellent synopsis of China’s history in the modern era and a chilling look at the way millions died as the result of Mao’s ignorance and inability to understand how to build an economy. His “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” rendered China without the intellectual community required to teach a generation of young Chinese and played havoc on its agricultural sector.

It was his successor, Deng Xiaoping, who is credited with rescuing the nation and setting it on its present path. It has made amazing strides, but to understand China one must always keep firmly fixed in mind that it is hope to a huge part of the Earth’s population.

The most recent figures for the Peoples Republic of China put it at 1,338,612,968 as 2010 begins. Though the Han represent 92% of the population, there are many other ethnic groups and the nation, for purposes of agricultural production, are sharply divided between urban Chinese and those in its rural areas who are discouraged from leaving for better jobs and opportunities in its cities.

China not only has to feed more than a billion of its people, it needs to catch up with and even exceed economic giants like America. That will be greatly facilitated by current U.S. policies that discourage use of our own vast coal reserves and discourages exploration and extraction of huge oil and natural reserves off the long coastal areas of our continental shelf.

While America is being starved for energy—no new oil refineries or nuclear facilities have been built in three decades—China’s economy requires it to double its oil imports by 2015 from its 2009 levels. And it has some twenty nuclear facilities under construction!

Ironically, as Economides notes, “Even if it is rarely uttered explicitly, the American dream has served as the blueprint for the emerging Chinese lifestyle. For the Chinese, America has been the country to emulate in many ways, from its can-do attitude to its educational institutions to the apparent ebullience of its people, and of course, the lifestyle.”

As the American economy stagnates, “In their lives and workplaces, the Chinese today are burdened with fewer regulations than are their Western counterparts, the latter having to cope with the suffocating political correctness or moralisms that have emerged in Western societies.”

Economides bluntly warns that “although the much more advanced United States can afford to talk liberal flimflam about alternative energy luxuries, and can even attempt societal economic hara-kiri, it is clearly not an option for galloping China.”

Unless America shakes off the “liberal flimflam” denying us significant growth in our oil, coal and natural gas industries; unless we avoid the hara-kiri of Obamacare and Cap-and-Trade; unless we reduce the tax burdens on corporations and wage-earners alike, the future will belong to China.

China Will Surprise Obama

By Alan Caruba

President Obama loves to travel. He cannot wait to descend the steps from Airforce One to the sounds of welcoming bands, honor guards, and awaiting dignitaries. On his whirlwind November 13-19 trip to Asia, however, he is likely to be sternly lectured behind closed doors from Tokyo to Beijing and Seoul. It will come as a surprise to him.

That’s because he will be around grownups who don’t much like the way the United States’ economy is being overseen and directed these days. All that splash and dash that keeps Americans thinking that everything will get better doesn’t work in Asia. Worse yet, Obama will arrive with very little to offer.

Already we have seen him in his usual holier-than-thou mode lecture the Chinese on their need to extend more freedom and be more tolerant; themes that must sound naïve to his hosts who must meet the challenge of providing a better life for more than a billion Chinese.

The most amazing aspect of the story of modern China is the way, following the demise of Chairman Mao, they threw communism overboard, except politically, in favor of capitalism.

In early 2009, observers wondered if the recession that hit the United States and rippled out around the world would also set back China. By October, however, they were marveling that its aggressive stimulus had led to a growth of its GDP by 9% by its third quarter. Meanwhile, other economies, including the U.S., saw their GDP fall.

The Chinese mix caution with risk well. As The Economist noted in October, “Until recently China’s recovery was driven largely by state spending, but thanks to a rebound in construction, private-sector investment rose by 30% in the year to August, double its growth rate in December.”

Unlike the U.S. stimulus that has barely had an impact on our economy, the Chinese stimulus was directed to new infrastructure, especially railways and roads, both of which are expected to improve future productivity, moving people and goods more swiftly around the huge expanse of that nation.

Noteworthy as well has been China’s forward thinking energy program, building coal-fired plants at a brisk pace to extend electricity and, with it the prosperity that comes from affordable energy. By contrast, Obama recently visited and lauded a $150 million Florida solar power array that will only produce electricity for an average of four hours daily.

Most of America’s “shovel ready” projects are still waiting for the first shovel while most of the stimulus money spent to date was a bailout of states to cover Medicare and other federal mandated costs.

My concern is that Obama is probably clueless regarding economic issues and realities. If it doesn’t involve unions, Obama isn’t much interested in the welfare of American industry. He has even less knowledge of agriculture.

When General Motors was bailed out before and after declaring bankruptcy, Obama made sure that it was the unions that were put in charge. Quietly, Chrysler recently announced it would not be manufacturing electric cars. The auto company that refused government assistance, Ford Motors, is thriving.

Someone has probably briefed Obama on the fact that China is both America’s key trading partner and rival. China has been paying a lot of attention to trade of late, signing what Business Week described as “a bewildering variety of free-trade pacts with neighbors.” It is even making nice with Taiwan while talks are underway to liberalize trade terms with South Korea and the Persian Gulf states.

While the U.S. trade deals cover lower tariffs they also tend to incorporate all manner of other objectives such as intellectual property rights, government procurement rules, and even labor and environmental codes. The Chinese focus on more narrow, achievable goals. As Business Week noted, “Most manufactured goods made in Southeast Asia will now enter China duty-free, but goods shipped from the U.S. will still face average duties of 9%.”

Many U.S. manufacturers will decide to set up shop in Southeast Asia in order to have better access to China. Increased exports to China cushioned Japan’s economy as its exports to the U.S. plunged.

So, what is the Obama administration doing to improve the situation at home? It has proposed a healthcare “reform” to take control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy. It has a “cap-and-trade” bill that will impose higher taxes on all energy use. The proposed cap-and-trade bill will make it nearly impossible to sell one’s home without pouring thousands into it in order to meet environmental and energy conservation standards.

The first job for all Americans these days is to survive the Obama administration long enough to rescue the nation from further losses at home and abroad.

America's Enemies

By Alan Caruba

Listening to President Obama one might think that America doesn’t have a single enemy that could not be turned into a friend if only he was given the opportunity to just talk to them. He is a great believer in diplomacy even though diplomacy has rarely stopped a war if one party was determined to wage it. War doesn’t need the consent of both.

Perhaps because I was born just prior to the outbreak of World War II and grew up aware of terrible things happening in both Europe and Asia, followed by having an older brother who served during the Korean War, plus my own service in the U.S. Army, my attitude about wars has been shaped by a lifetime in which I cannot recall a minute when America wasn’t at war, engaged in a war, or threatened by a war.

To this day I have considerable antipathy for “peaceniks” and war protesters even though, as the ill-fated Vietnam War dragged on, I joined a march or two. If ever there was a wrong war in the wrong place, Vietnam was it. For those unfamiliar with it, it was essentially a civil war into which the U.S. inserted itself due to a “domino theory” that, if Vietnam fell to communism, all the other Asian nations would as well. At the time, the Cold War was still raging since the end of WWII and Chairman Mao was still in charge of China.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t plotting against you, so it’s always a good idea to take a very general survey of those nations who wish us ill.

After a slow start, the U.S. is contemplating putting North Korea back on its list of terror-sponsoring nations. I suspect many Americans with no memory of the Korean War during the 1950s dismiss North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile capability. Not only will this thugocracy sell its WMDs to anyone, but the renewal of the Korean War is never more than 24 hours away. The U.S. is committed to intervene.

Iran, despite being on the other side of the globe, is working toward having its own nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. As far as the Middle East is concerned, that’s a war just waiting to happen.

Americans seem to have forgotten that Saddam Hussein fought a war with Iran for eight years, settled for a stalemate, and then invaded Kuwait. If ever there was a good reason to fight a war to rid the region of this troublemaker, I cannot think of one. Now the problem has shifted to Pakistan, under attack from an enemy of its own making, the Taliban. Since Pakistan has nukes, it cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of fanatical Islamofascists.

Right next door India keeps a wary eye on Pakistan. Bordering Pakistan to the north is Afghanistan, a nation of tribes that, though occupied over and over again, has resisted all invaders for centuries. Just because 9/11 was planned there doesn’t mean the U.S. needs to maintain a military presence there. The prospect of an effective central government is quite distant despite the money, military manpower, and other efforts the U.S. is making.

So the enemies we can identify include any and all Muslims who support the view that Islam must rule the entire world. There are more than a billion of them.

Russia is no friend to the United States, but Russia is no friend to Europe or China either. Almost entirely dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, its fate rises and falls with the cost of a barrel or cubic foot of both. The fall of the Soviet government and the loss of its satellite nations in Eastern Europe have not significantly brought about a change of attitude in the Kremlin although much of the population would be more than happy to embrace the free market capitalism of the United States.

China is no friend either even though it is highly dependent on its ability to manufacture and export its goods to the United States. Our current economic woes worry the Chinese who own billions in U.S. treasury bills along with the fact that Americans aren’t buying as much of their stuff lately. China has perhaps the largest espionage effort regarding the U.S. of any other nation in the world.

Americans have been slow to respond to yet another enemy, Mexico. The U.S. has been literally invaded by Mexicans though they came looking for jobs and a better life. The result, however, has been enormous financial burdens on all aspects of our society from schools to hospitals to welfare and to crime. There are an estimated 12 million illegal Mexicans and others from south of the border and Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leaders, wants to push through another amnesty bill.

The last amnesties only resulted in a greater rush to enter the U.S. Only a handful in public office will address the fact that the Mexican government has openly encouraged this invasion because the money sent home is a significant part of its economy. It is a major trading partner, but it looks to become totally controlled by the narco lords.

We have been slow to say or do anything about Venezuela, led by the dictator, Hugo Chavez. This likely has much to do with the oil that nation exports to the U.S. Chavez, however, is closely allied with Hezbollah which, in turn, is allied and controlled by Iran. Chavez has been buying up a lot of weapons of late and it has nothing to do with defense and everything to do with his bad intensions. Once a democracy, Venezuelans are now totally under the control of their government.

The U.S. just got around to arresting two former members of the State Department who had allegedly been spying for Cuba for thirty years. President Obama wants to lift restrictions on that dictatorship that have been in place for at least 50 years. Since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, Cuba has fallen on hard times, but it is still an enemy.

Africa is fairly dormant though Somalia has fallen to the Islamofascists. The U.S. has conspicuously done little to relieve the horrors in Darfur, inflicted by the Muslim Sudanese government. Overall, there is little likelihood that the U.S. will become embroiled in a war in Africa. It too is a significant source of oil.

If there is a common theme to our present threat levels, it is oil and, more precisely, the failure since the 1970s of the U.S. to access the abundant reserves of our own oil in the interior of the nation and from its offshore continental shelf. Since the Obama administration is hell bent on covering the U.S. with wind turbines and solar panels, we shall remain hostage to oil-producing nations.

The enemy that is only beginning to make himself known to Americans is President Barack Obama who has swiftly created an administration that ignores its many cabinet departments in favor of “czars” that have been ceded power over all elements of our nation. They rarely hold any press conferences, nor do they seem responsive to the inquiries of Congress. The only function of the cabinet secretaries appears to be to stand behind the President when he makes various announcements. No wonder he greeted Hugo Chavez with a big smile.

Taking control of automobile companies is unconstitutional. Giving bailouts to them is unconstitutional. Permitting the Federal Reserve to print money without regard to the inflationary impact this will have is reckless. Voting for a “stimulus” bill without reading or even debating it is reckless. Running up the national debt is reckless. Putting the value of the U.S. dollar in doubt is criminal negligence.

Trying to take over the nation’s health systems and to require all Americans to purchase health insurance flies in the face of free market capitalism and cedes control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to the government.

We now have a Homeland Security Department that identifies any American who disagrees with the Obama administration as an “extremist.” This includes people who oppose abortions, oppose illegal immigration, support the Second Amendment right to own and bear weapons, and veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism is no longer part of its vocabulary, but “man-caused disasters” is.

If Americans don’t besiege and change Congress to reverse these assaults on the economy and the Constitution, this nation will fail and our liberties will be memories.

Our Nobel Prize Moron

By Alan Caruba

I know you’re thinking the title refers to Al Gore, but no, it belongs to Paul Krugman, an economist best known as a New York Times columnist, and winner in 2008 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He is widely regarded as an expert in international economics and has very impressive curriculum vitae. By all the standards of our times, the man is a genius.

Anyone who has worked for an institution of higher learning as I once did soon loses his awe of PhDs. Their expertise is usually very narrow. The intellectual hot house which they share also includes immense pressure to demonstrate through research and publication that they are productive. There is a herd mentality and some vicious politics that goes on as well.

Krugman may know about economics, otherwise known as the “dismal science” because I suspect the capacity to be very wrong is equal to or greater than the chance of getting things right. Most certainly, his May 15 column, based on a trip to China demonstrated he knows nothing about meteorology, climatology, the science of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Nobel Prize winner demonstrated what a moron he is when he strayed into the usual discredited blather associated with “global warming.” He spouts the nonsense about greenhouse gas emissions like some Red Guard reading from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.

“The scientific consensus on prospect for global warming,” wrote Klugman, “has become much more pessimistic over the last few years.” Firstly, the Greens have been predicting global warming since the 1980s, always concluding it was due to arrive ten, fifteen, twenty or fifty years from now. This is usually a good indicator of how flawed and false such predictions actually are.

Second, there is no such thing as a scientific “consensus” about global warming, unless you include the growing consensus that it is a huge scam designed to further a hidden agenda to destroy the economies of industrialized nations.

In March I attended the 2nd annual Climate Change Conference sponsored by The Heartland Institute. It was wall-to-wall seminars by climatologists and others demonstrating why carbon dioxide in particular plays no role whatever in determining the Earth’s climate trends and never did.

But for Klugman, like Al Gore, facts are of no value when writing about global warming. “Indeed, the latest projects from reputable climate scientists border on the apocalyptic. Why? Because the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are rising is matching or exceeding the worst-case scenarios.”

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Since carbon dioxide, a gas as vital as oxygen to all life on earth, plays no role in climate change, this assertion is just a regurgitation of Al Gore’s boldfaced lies. As to worst-case scenarios, that is the stock-in-trade of the Greens who conjured up the global warming hoax. It is based entirely on flawed and deceptive computer models.

The Earth has been cooling for the past ten years and, given the low activity of the Sun, the primary determinant of the Earth’s climate and temperature, solar scientists and others are predicting we could be on the cusp of a new little ice age or worse---a full-scale ice age that will render civilization’s short rise moot as nations find themselves buried under miles of ice for the next 100,000 years until the next interglacial period. It is, quite simply, colder everywhere.

Krugman’s main criticism of China, where he had visited prior to writing his column, was that “In January, China announced that it plans to continue its reliance on coal as its main energy source and that to feed its economic growth it will increase coal production 30 percent by 2015.” Good for China! I wish that the United States would permit, nay encourage, coal-fired plants to provide the electricity we will need by 2015 and beyond.

The opposite, however, is happening in the United States which has elected a President who’s on record saying he’d prefer to “bankrupt” any company that dared to build a coal-fired plant. Meanwhile, coal is the source of just over 50 percent of all the electricity we currently use!

If the U.S. continues to refuse to permit more coal-fired plants and continues to delay the building of more nuclear plants, we will not have the energy the economy needs to grow and Americans will begin to experience blackouts and brownouts like the banana republic we shall surely become.

Krugman was annoyed that the Chinese, more than a billion of them, seem to believe they have as much right to a lifestyle similar to ours, most of which was built on the availability of cheap energy and remains dependent on its affordability. If Congress passes the insane “cap and trade” emissions legislation, it will crash the nation’s economy. And they know it!

“The burden should fall,” wrote Krugman, “on those foreign consumers instead, that shoppers who buy Chinese products should pay a ‘carbon tariff’ that reflects the emissions associated with these goods’ production.” So, instead of benefiting from affordable Chinese exports, Americans should pay more for something—global warming—that is not happening and punish China and themselves in the process.

It just gets worse from that point on as Krugman writes that, “Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports.”

Great! That’s just what we need with China, a trade war!

If this is the best a Nobel Prize winning economist has to offer then the process of destroying our economy is already under way. Lesser mortals will instantly identify his remedies as idiotic.

North Korea 'Nukes' Obama Blather

By Alan Caruba

There’s one thing to be said about North Korea; it knows how to make the United Nations, President Obama, and all talk of ending nuclear weapons a very bad joke.

Presidents since the days of Harry Truman have been talking about a world free of nuclear weapons and that is just not going to happen. They are possibly the best deterrent on Earth when it comes to the potential of being invaded. Like the Colt revolver in the days of the Wild West, nukes are the great equalizer among nations.

Every time India and Pakistan get really angry at each other, someone in the room reminds their respective leaders that the other has nukes. After that, it’s a nice chat between diplomats over a cup of tea and some lovely cookies.

Japan, a nation that knows something about being nuked by two atomic bombs, has been reluctant to add nukes to their arsenal. The increasing belligerence of North Korea, however, is likely to change that. The umbrella of protection that the United States has provided since the end of World War II has been giving way to the realization that Japan needs its own defense capabilities.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations we witness once again how utterly useless it is. When you have China sitting as a permanent member of the Security Council, you’re not likely to get any action regarding North Korea. It provides China with the leverage to make the West and other nations worry a great deal about sales to nasty people in Iran and elsewhere.

It would not have surprised me at all to learn that, after letting the North Koreans begin building a nuclear facility in Syria, the Chinese slipped the map coordinates to the Israelis.

Why no President has ever simply sent in the Air Force to bomb the known North Korean locations of missile launch sites and facilities is answered with one word: China.

What makes this even worse is the long record of “humanitarian” aid that North Korea has received from the United States over the years.

A 2006 State Department report reads as follows:

“Since 1995, the United States has provided over $1.1 billion, about 60% of which was paid for food aid. About 40% was energy assistance [oil] channeled through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the multilateral organization established in 1994 to provide energy aid in exchange for North Korea’s pledge to halt its existing nuclear program.”

“U.S. assistance to North Korea has fallen significantly over the past three years, and was zero in FY2006. The KEDO program was shut down in January 2006. Food aid has been scrutinized because the DPRK government restricts the ability of donor agencies to operate in the country. Compounding the problem is that South Korea and China, by far North Korea’s two most important providers of food aid, have little to no monitoring systems in place.”

North Korea is not just “a rogue nation”; it is a gangster nation that has long engaged in every form of criminal activity you can name. In addition to its weapons program, it is a major counterfeiter of U.S. and other currencies. It has imprisoned countless thousands of its own citizens in labor camps.

I am reminded that George W. Bush named it as one of his “Axis of Evil” that everyone got upset about; naming Iraq and Iran as the other two elements. I already miss his refreshing candor.

This is what President Obama will do: NOTHING

This is what the United Nations will do: NOTHING

A Map of Freedom or the Lack of It

By Alan Caruba

Every July, Freedom House, an organization that tracks the progress or the lack of freedom around the world, releases a map that identifies those nations where freedom exists and where it does not.

Find it here: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2008

A copy of this map should be sent to the incoming Obama administration, starting with the President, because it makes it instantly clear as to where the problems of the world exist and where the enemies of freedom live, scheme, and control the lives of billions.

All of the North American continent and much of the South American continent is free. That is to say its nations practice democracy and exercise the rule of law. Exceptions to the rule are all found south of the U.S. border. Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay, are deemed to be “partly free” along with a string of Latin American nations between Mexico and Panama. Cuba, of course, is not free at all.

As one casts one’s eyes over the map, it is abundantly clear that large sections of the world, primarily Russia and China, are deemed “not free.” The entire Middle East with the exception of Israel, Jordan and Turkey is considered “not free.” It will be interesting to see the July 2009 map and its judgment on Iraq. If it is deemed free or even partly free, it will be the first time in at least three decades or longer. Thank you Uncle Sam!

The continent of Africa is a patchwork quilt of nations that are free, partly free, and not free. Those across the northern part, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt are not free. Moving south, you can add the Sudan, Chad, the Congo, Angola, and the most accursed of all, Zimbabwe. Somalia barely passes for a nation these days. The most obvious factor uniting these freedom-hating nations is that all are Muslim.

The least prosperous nations, in terms of how their wealth is distributed among their population, are those under the rule of communism or Islam. Some nations, of course, are “oil rich” but Venezuela stands out as an example of how one can be both oil rich and still have a population rendered dirt poor by communism.

Cuba, once a thriving tourist destination, producer of sugar and fine cigars, could be a lot better off economically if it wasn’t communist. It is barely ninety miles off the coast of Florida. It began its descent in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over. It was previously run by another despot named Batista. With the exception of Haiti, most of the Caribbean nations are relatively free.

The European nations enjoy freedom. Great Britain, the home of the Magna Carta, is free and it is obvious that former British colonies, such as Australia, South Africa, and India, are free nations too. Japan is free because the U.S. conquered it and, after World War II, stuck around to ensure it had a constitution and learned how to apply democracy. We did the same with South Korea.

It took five years, but Iraq looks like it’s on its way to establishing a degree of freedom that does not exist in other Middle Eastern nations. Next door in Syria, the Baath Party is still in power under Bashar al-Asad, the son of the former dictator. Syria continues to threaten Lebanon, a nation that used to be run by a coalition of five powerful families that ensured peace and prosperity. Those days are long gone and Hezbollah, an Iranian puppet group of Palestinian terrorists, controls it today. Both now threaten Israel.

Americans today, who live in freedom because so many of their countrymen were willing to fight and die to preserve and protect it, are often criticized for sending their countrymen to far-off places like Iraq to spread freedom and for maintaining a military presence on the high seas and on bases around the world. It is obvious, though, if one looks at the map, that Americans are the world’s greatest hope of freedom.

It is only by extending freedom, creating and encouraging new functioning republics, aiding struggling, but real republics, and never failing to speak out against injustices in those nations that masquerade as being free, that we will ultimately protect our own freedom.

America is, astoundingly, the oldest functioning republic on Earth. We date our birth from the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, but the real birthday of America was June 21, 1788 when the Constitution became effective. It became a beacon of freedom when the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments, was ratified on December 15, 1791.

The first job of every American is to read, understand, and then demand that our elected leaders act within the limits imposed by the U.S. Constitution. It is not a blank check. It has, quite frankly, been chewed to bits by those we have sent to Congress since early in the last century. If or when it ceases to function as intended, Americans will cease to be free.

The Olympics: A Political Game

By Alan Caruba

I am one of those people who rarely watches any sport. I was not into sports as a kid and, while I would occasionally attend a University of Miami football game as a student, I could never get into the mass hysteria that seems to afflict any crowd that watches any sport in a stadium.

It’s a “game.” The people involved are called “players” because it is a form of play. That said, I can and do appreciate the mastery of any game whether it’s Tiger Woods playing golf or some kid competing in gymnastics. I enjoy seeing anyone do anything well, be it a billiards championship or a poker tournament with a million bucks at stake.

Sports has become a mega-billion dollar industry with all manner of spin-offs for the often costly gear involved, the fan’s purchase of team-related items, and even the sale of baseball cards or other paraphernalia. I am all about capitalism, so you won’t find me complaining much about obscene salaries, although I do draw the line on universities paying a coach more than a professor or building a huge stadium while ignoring academic facilities and raising the tuition at the same time.

The Olympics, however, have always struck me as political. It’s what the author George Orwell called “mimic war” as nations compete to field teams that will hopefully bring home the glory and the gold. For that reason, it's well to keep in mind the reality that Beijing is under virtual martial law. President Bush is being urged to speak out on behalf of human rights in China. Though a worthy goal, it is an exercise in futility so far as China is concerned.

I am not likely to watch much of the China-based Olympic Games. I am happy that China has opened itself to the world to host them, but I am far less happy that the world has ignored its annexation of Tibet by armed force. As for the Chinese people, I want them to prosper as capitalists and hopefully to rid themselves of their Communist bosses some day in favor of a more democratic system.

One cannot be anything other than amazed at the progress China has made since it jettisoned the dead hand of the communist economic system. The Chinese have an ancient history of innovation and culture. Long suffering, the Chinese are an extraordinary people who were writing poetry while most of the West was still rubbing two sticks together to make fire.

The Games are China’s opportunity to demonstrate they have begun to join the modern nations of the world, competing in the arena of sports, playing host to athletes, tourists and the press of the world.

It is instructive that its current leaders are all engineers by profession. Engineers know how to create a nation’s infrastructure, building bridges, roads, plants to generate energy, and cities for its billion-plus population. They also know how to build prisons.

Across the narrow straits from China is Taiwan, an island nation that has long since demonstrated how to create a thriving democracy and economy. It did not escape the notice of China’s leaders. Despite the bellicose statements and actions of China toward Taiwan, they realized the example Taiwan set could be their own as well. This occurred only because the United States extended its protection to Taiwan after it broke away from mainland China. In order to open China to the world, however, the United States under Nixon had to undertake the diplomatic pretense that Taiwan did not have sovereign standing among the nations of the world.

So, thank you, Taiwan, for your courage and your example.

Previous Olympic Games have often suffered from the public’s disinterest in the 24/7 television coverage devoted to them. I will surely be among those watching something else for the duration of the Games, but I will be watching China for a very long time to come.

Dropping the Olympic Torch

By Alan Caruba

I confess I have been enjoying scenes of mayhem as the Olympic torch, destination China, gets doused and various runners find themselves in the middle of bedlam.

Given the seizure and annexation of Tibet, a quite separate and ancient nation, the trouble that China is encountering as it prepares to host the games is entirely appropriate. China literally had to ditch Communism as an economic system in order to survive. There are more people fluent in English in China than in America. Why? Because if you want to get rich, you have to learn how from us!

Holding the Olympics there is just wrong for a lot of obvious reasons.

On Tuesday, a friend and fellow blogger put it this way, “Those ‘non-political’ Olympic Games are SO political they are a hot potato which has become nothing but a gigantic soap box from which the hosting nation publicizes it’s brand of despotism! It has become a humongous propaganda engine… and very little else.””I lost interest in the Olympic Games along about the time Mark Spitz won all those metals (seven) at the Munich Games in 1972. Oh… yes… that was the year the “Black September” took the Israeli athletes hostage, inside the Olympic Village, and murdered eleven of them before the incident was brought to a bloody close. That was 36 years ago. Nothing much has changed, except that we, as a country, are at war against the terrorists.”

His suggestion is that the games be played permanently in Greece where they originated. It’s a very good idea.

An earlier Munich games in the 1930s had permitted the Nazi regime to show its whitewashed Hitlerian face to the world and, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, probably one of the few intelligent things Jimmy Carter ever did was to disallow American athletes from participating in the Moscow Olympics. The latter Munich games were an equal abomination for their determination to continue while the bodies of dead Israelis were being shipped home.

These days the primary concern for any of the games is security, security, security. For this we can thank the Palestinian terrorists whose memory and remorseless hatred of Israel continues.

The Olympic games have been plagued, too, with problems of corruption, bribery and judges more attuned to their nation’s politics than the merits of the athletes.

Granted that it is hard to ignore China and its billion-plus citizens, but why should this nation, famed for its on-going oppression of Tibetans, the Fulong Gong religious group, and just about anyone it wants to oppress, be given a pass?

Shouldn’t games aimed at increasing international friendship begin by requiring the host nation to not throw dissidents into ghulags or engage in public executions of criminals and the like?

As things are now, why not just drop the farce of soaring Olympic rhetoric and hold the next games in the Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea, any place where intolerance and repression is the national sport?