James Dunnigan goes over the situation in Iraq, and asks “Who is winning?” Pretty good stuff.
James R. Rummel
An Emission Control Study That May Actually Do Some Good
The family of a dear friend of mine was invited to China on a cultural visit. She said that the most striking thing about visiting The Middle Kingdom was the shabby hygiene. Many of the people there didn’t have access to the technology that we take for granted, and so lived at a more primitive level.
But the one thing that bothered her the most was the smell. Besides the open sewers that were common in every city, the air became filled with smoke at meal times as people burned whatever they could to cook their food.
This news story reports that a team of researchers led by Chandra Venkataraman of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay have discovered that soot and other particulates are a greater factor in potential climate change in south Asia than greenhouse gasses. The best way to avoid any future problems would be to introduce more advanced ways to cook a meal.
This is hardly surprising, considering my buddy’s tales of the conditions when she visited. One thing that is surprising is the news article itself. The author, Randolph E. Schmid, makes an effort to write an even-handed account. No mention of the Kyoto Protocols or the US reaction to them is anywhere to be found.
I’d have to say that it certainly sounds like a good idea if the Chinese make an effort to upgrade their cooking technology. It would make the air in the region easier to breathe, if nothing else.
Don’t Know Which Way They Will Jump
The reason why the Social Security system is in the news is easy enough to understand. The population of the US is aging, and when that big bubble of elderly demographic slides over into retirement age there won’t be enough people working in the country to support the people who want to see a benefits check sitting in the mailbox every month.
So the debate in the US is about a benefits package that, for most people, doesn’t provide enough after-retirement money to live on. This means that most people have to make some other arrangement in order to maintain their standard of living after they stop going to work every day. Heartless as it sounds, even if SS fails it won’t be a terrible tragedy for the majority.
This is the big debate in the US. What about the increasing number of old people in other countries?
Another Example of Spin
One of the things that frustrates those who are involved in self defense issues is the media’s stance on firearms. According to many news stories, guns aren’t merely weapons but are instead demonic devices that force otherwise peaceful people who come in contact with them to explode into violence and slaughter the innocent.
What’s carefully left out of these thinly disguised op-eds is the fact that firearms in the hands of average citizens save many more lives than are taken by criminals.
Taking Credit, Taking the Blame
Remember back when you were a kid. Did your Mom or Dad ever say that you were supposed to tell the truth if you did something bad? Own up to it and take your lumps?
If you’re a productive, supportive member of society then something like this must have happened. Personal responsibility is the lesson.
Cori over at Rantingprofs has the scoop. MSNBC reported that the lead judge in the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein was assassinated. The spin was that Iraq was such a dangerous and out-of-control place that the terrorists can kill anyone, even someone who had been living under such extreme security measures that his identity was kept secret.
Cori points out that the author of the MSNBC report seems to have forgotten that the judge’s identity wasn’t so secret after all. It had been published by Robert Fisk.
It eventually turned out that the first reports were in error, and the judge was safe. That still doesn’t excuse what appears to either be an attempt to ignore the facts in order to present a negative image, or an effort to cover for a fellow journalist that put an innocent man’s life in danger.