At least, according to the UN. I couldn't make this up if I tried (source: GMA News);

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection," Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.
[...]
In an interview with the Inter Press News Agency, Marita Rodriguez of the Centre for Empowerment and Resource Development, Inc. said women are taking the brunt of climate change.

"Aside from their household chores and participation in fishing activity, they have to find additional sources of income like working as domestic helpers in affluent families," she said.
[...]
The UNFPA suggested five measures to mitigate climate change and overpopulation:

* Bring a better understanding of population dynamics, gender and reproductive health to climate change and environmental discussions at all levels;

* Fully fund family planning services and contraceptive supplies within the framework of reproductive health and rights, and assure that low income is no barrier to access;

* Prioritize research and date collection to improve the understanding of gender and population dynamics in climate change mitigation and adaptation;

* Improve sex-disaggregation of date related to migration flows that are influenced by environmental factors and prepare now for increases in population movements resulting from climate change; and

* Integrate gender considerations into global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

What a load of crap. No, not the part about poor women turning to prostitution; rather, the attempt to shoehorn everything into climate change. Given that anthropogenic global warming has attained the status of a religion among the self-styled global intelligentsia, it is no surprise that everyone with a pet cause wants to attach it to climate change. Doing so helps immunize you from oversight and criticism. Further, it helps one distract from the true causes of problems like this. What the poor areas of the word need is more freedom, more capitalism, more connectivity to the global economy...basically, to become more like the US (even as the elements of the leadership in our country want us to retreat from those very things).

Rather than try and tie women's rights to global warming, perhaps people like Suneeta Mukherjee should be demanding more free market economics. That's a proven method of getting people out of poverty and away from having to make decisions like turning to prostitution to make a living.

This is from Spiegel;

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
[...]
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
[...]
The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue.

Does this mean that we should ignore the potential for catastrophic climate change? Of course not. What it does show is that our understanding of how the Earth's climate is regulated is incomplete and our ability to predict future trends limited. It also means the absolutist tones of those who think we are destined to create a greenhouse effect unless we undergo radical economic changes is ill conceived. If humanity was the primary cause of climate change, one would assume that the temperature would continue to warm, since industrial activity and greenhouse gas production has not gone down.

Al Gore not-withstanding, there is simply a lot we do not know. We should keep that in mind when we hear that only a single course of action can "save the world."

Daniel Henniger had the following to say in today's WSJ;

If it accomplished nothing else, the Obama administration's announcement last Friday to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan blew the Nidal Hasan murders out of the news. The KSM fiasco deserves all the attention it gets. What Hasan represents, however, is a more immediate concern.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an old-school jihadi. They sit in far-off redoubts, assembling terror teams of foreign nationals who now must figure out how to get themselves and their plot inside the U.S. Not impossible, but harder than before 9/11.

Hasan is new school. He is what's known as a homegrown terrorist. Virtually all the Islamic terrorist plots thwarted here in recent years were homegrown, not designed from afar by a KSM.

Najibullah Zazi, the Colorado airport-shuttle driver arrested in New York this September and charged with conspiring to detonate bombs, came to the U.S. in 1999.

The Fort Dix Six, convicted in December of conspiring to attack U.S. military personnel, were mainly ethnic Albanians whose family came to New Jersey in the 1980s.

Zakaria Amara, the leader of the Toronto 18, who were planning to blow up skyscrapers in Canada, was born in a Toronto suburb.
[...]
The biggest controversy surrounding Maj. Hasan is that the Army knew about his radical Islamic sympathies, from the Walter Reed lecture and the monitored emails to the English-speaking, American-born Yemeni imam Anwar Awlaki, whose Facebook page, with a reported 4,800 "friends," is depicted nearby.

The argument is that the Army should have mustered him out of the service and thereby avoided the 13 murders. Really? After kicking him out of the Army, there was no probable cause for authorities to surveil a civilian Nidal Hasan. In time he as easily could have killed 13 Americans in a suburban Texas mall.
[...]
A violent ideology is just an ideology, and that is protected speech. It requires acts to put in motion aggressive surveillance, such as wiretapping.

I think the Hasan case shows this is wrong, or at least too dangerous. First Amendment law has never dealt with a widely distributed ideology that has as its raison d'être the mass murder of Americans and destruction of American property.

For now this is the way it is: Future Hasans can get jacked up all day on kill-the-Americans Web sites, and we have to wait until they put in motion a conspiracy like Fort Dix or the Colorado jihadists. Or until they start shooting.

Check out the full article here.

Check out this article in The Atlantic on the "prosperity gospel." Agree or not, it is an interesting look at a socio-cultural root for our current economic woes.

Michelle Malkin has a good article comparing the President's "I like dissent" speech in China with the way his Administration, the Dems and their allies actually handle people who are members of the loyal opposition.

I'm not the biggest fan of Malkin - I'm not a social conservative - but she is spot on with this article. This Administration and the Democrats in general seem particularly thin-skinned. Perhaps it is because they know just how shallow their support is and how even a marginal shift in the vast middle of the electorate could put republicans back in charge. That's about the most charitable interpretation I'm willing to make.

Anyway, check it out.

President Obama campaigned on closing Gitmo immediately and took office saying he'd do it within a year. Well, reality has reared its ugly - and completely predictable - head.

This from the BBC;

US President Barack Obama has for the first time admitted that the US will miss the January 2010 deadline he set for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Mr Obama made the admission in interviews with US networks during his tour of Asia.

He said he was "not disappointed" that the deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard".
[...]
He did not set a specific new deadline for closing the camp, but said it would probably be later in 2010.

"We had a specific deadline that was missed," he told NBC television.

And he told Fox News: "People, I think understandably, are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keep terrorists out."

Closing the facility was "also just technically hard", he added, and depended on co-operation from Congress.
[Jeff's note: Given that the facility is run by the military and the President is the C-in-C, he could close it today and transfer the prisoners to other military facilities if he wished. His "let's blame Congress" line is a bit of misdirection.]
[...]
On 22 January 2009, just two days after inauguration, he set a deadline of a year for closing the heavily-criticised prison.
[...]
[T]he issue of detainees assessed as dangerous but who for legal reasons could not be successfully prosecuted in US courts remains unresolved.

Again, most rational people knew this was going to happen. This, of course, excludes his most devout followers. It will be interesting to see if there is any backlash among Obama's people.

Newsweek has a cover story on Palin this week (at right). The nontroversy...is the cover sexist? Palin thinks so;

Palin denounced it—and us—to her million-strong Facebook following last night. "The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this 'news' magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant," she wrote on her fan page, adding, "The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now." She also told ABC's Barbara Walters that she found the cover "a wee bit degrading." Others, like CBN's David Brody, said our cover was a new low: "biased and sexist at the same time."

To which, I - someone who hopes that Palin has a long, fruitful career in politics and looks forward to the chance to vote for her in a future presidential election - say to her and her supporters who are worked up about this..."lighten up." Palin looks amazing...legs like that are worth a few million votes on their own :-)

You know...I think this is the first time I've ever wanted to buy a Newsweek...for the articles, of course...:-)

Okay, I'll stop.

(Source: Newswekk)

As usual, Krauthammer writes a great article, this one about Nidal Hasan.

What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs.

"I cringe that he's a Muslim. . . . I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?
[...]
How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won't find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as "compassion fatigue." The poor man -- pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. His business card had his name, his profession, his medical degrees and his occupational identity. U.S. Army? No. "SoA" -- Soldier of Allah. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It's a danger, clear and present.
[...]
One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question -- condescending, politically correct and deadly -- is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center."

Ah yes, those Jersey men -- so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.

And, as can be seen here people like Klein still refuse to accept that Hasan was motivated by Islam and his view of America's treatment of Muslims. What does it take, exactly, for people like this to admit the obvious: that Hasan is a terrorist, motivated by a view of Islam that is held and practiced by many and a view of Western/Islamic relations that is probably embraced by even a greater number of people?

AP, which couldn't be bothered to fact check Obama or Biden's books, has 11 reporters going over Palin's book for factual errors. Which only shows one thing: that the Leftwing media sees her as a threat to their ideology's hold on power. She should be flattered...actions like this make her a player. Her supporters are only going to be energized by this treatment. People who are open enough to give her a hearing might seen this as unfair treatment and, therefore, a point generating sympathy. And, those who are ideologically opposed to her, however much they may like this treatment at the hands of the media, think that Palin, the GOP and those who are centrist or Right-wing are the enemy anyway.

The BBC is reporting that a 20-year-old woman has been stoned to death in the part of Somalia controlled by the Islamist al-Shabab for commiting adultry. Her partner recieved 100 lashes. Here's some further sickening details about how Islam is practiced in this sad part of the world;

A 20-year-old woman accused of committing adultery in Somalia has been stoned to death by Islamists in front of a crowd of about 200 people.

A judge working for the militant group al-Shabab said she had had an affair with an unmarried 29-year-old man.

He said she gave birth to a still-born baby and was found guilty of adultery. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes.
[...]
According to reports from a small village near the town of Wajid, 250 miles (400km) north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, the woman was taken to the public grounds where her lower body was buried.

She was then stoned to death in front of the crowds.

The judge, Sheikh Ibrahim Abdirahman, said her unmarried boyfriend was given 100 lashes at the same venue.
[...]
President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was sworn in as president after UN-brokered peace talks in January.

Although he says he also wants to implement Sharia, al-Shabab says his version of Islamic law would be too lenient.

Are all Muslims like this? No. But enough are - and I think the number of adherents to what is normally called 'radical Islam' numbers in the hundreds of millions - to justify the view of Islam as a threat to global civilization.

This guy's stimulus package is creating jobs in non-existent Congressional districts. Amazing!

I'll keep this short. I went in hoping for a visually stunning homage to films like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. I got the visual parts...but the story was the most soulless, by the numbers, Hollywood factory work I've seen in a while. This in and of itself would not be a killer. After all, the movies this is patterned after were not exactly Shakespeare. The problem is, at almost three hours, the film is far too long for the story it is telling. There was ample time to develop characters and present the audience with a story that would hold their attention between the sequences of carnage. Acting, dialog, characterization...just horribly bad and indulgent of extremely tired stereotypes.

Pass.

Are you a fan of the horror genre? In particular, do you like B horror movies from the 60s and 70s, horror comics and magazines, etc? If the answer is 'yes' go pick up Trashfiend. Scott Stine has written a fun and informative collection of movie reviews, interviews with horror comic artists and horror movie hosts, articles on monster toys and the like.

If movies like Squirm or Blackula aren't your thing...if you never read The Haunt of Horror...if you never counted down the hours as a kid until the next Sir Graves Ghastly show...well, then you probably won't get much of this book. However, if you did any of these (hey, both Blackula and Prophecy (giant mutant bear) were part of my last Halloween movie marathon, so my tastes in cinema have evolved...not at all) you'll fins a lot to like.

From the issues of the day, go to Youtube (here) and check out the new Victoria's Secret bra commercial. No, really, that's it. Because, sometimes, you have to remind yourself about what's really important in life. Not the ebb and flow of geopolitical power, clashes between civilizations or ideological struggles that will shape the future of our nation and our world; rather, insanely hot women wearing scraps of cloth.

Regular rants to follow.

Well, as exemplified by Senator Jack Reed (D RI) some of them are so muddle headed, it makes one wonder how they get through the day. While being asked on Fox News about the decision to put KSM through the civilian court system, Chris Wallace had the follow exchange with the Senator;

REED: The upside [of trials in civilian court], I think, is you are vindicating this country's basic values. And it's not to condone terrorism. But it is to stand as a symbol in the world of something different than what the terrorists represents, blind violence directed at those they dislike.

This is an opportunity to show that we're better than they are, we're much better than they are.
[...]
WALLACE: We've got about 30 seconds left. What if one of these guys gets off?

REED: Well, if — that is highly unlikely. The evidence is compelling.

WALLACE: But there are no guarantees in a trial.

REED: There are no guarantees, but under basic principles of international law, as long as these individuals pose a threat, they can be detained, and they will.

WALLACE: But — and very briefly — if someone is acquitted and then he's picked up again...

REED: I...

WALLACE: ... what's the message that that would send to the rest of the world?

REED: I do not believe they will be released, because under the principle of preventive detention, which is recognized during hostilities, we held...

WALLACE: No, no, no. What I'm saying is if he's acquitted and then picked up again and held...

REED: Well, but you...

WALLACE: ... what's the message that sends?

REED: ... you presume that he'll be acquitted and released.

WALLACE: I'm just...

REED: I don't presume...

WALLACE: ... raising the issue.

REED: ... he'll be released.

So...we hold the trials to show the world how different we are, how we are better than the terrorists, how our system dispenses justice...but, if our system provides an outcome we don't like - say, the case being dismissed because the evidence is tainted by the methods used to gather it - we'll just ignore that decision and keep these guys in cages forever. Well...what's the message that attitude sends to the world?

(Source: Fox News)

Apparently, the Obama Administration has decided to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others in civilian court in NYC. This is going to be a disaster. Why? Because the terrorists are going to turn this into a circus. And, there is a chance (slim, but a chance) that these guys will walk. Why? Because of how information was extracted from them. Evidence gathered that is in any way associated with EIT is going to be tossed out. Our security services will also be reluctant to present information in open court that could compromise other operations.

So, we could see the guy who was the main planner for 9/11 walk. At the very least, the trial is going to go on for months, if not years. It is going to provide a platform for the terrorists to spout their ideology. It has the potential for exposing sensitive intel to the public. It further reinforces a dangerous shift in mindset from warfighting to some half-baked notions of law enforcement. And there is the danger that the Administration will use this as a forum for attacking the Bush Administration, rather than prosecuting some of our worst enemies.

It's simple...these people should never be tried, in civilian or military court. They should just be held until the end of the war. Assuming that ever happens, we can then create a special tribunal to handle war criminals, like KSM.

This is a non-nonsensical decision from my point of view. But, then again, I see us engaged in a war, not a police action. And I'm right, of course. Why? Because our enemies certainly think they are involved in a war with us. As I said, the halls of justice should have play a role in this conflict. Either when it involves an American citizen - like the Fort Hood terrorist - or when the war is over, when we can oversee a Nuremberg style court designed to punish whatever barbarians are left. Until that time foreign nationals involved in a war with us should be held indefinitely.

(Source: Washington Post)

There is a serious piracy problem emanating from the failed state of Somalia. Anyone who even has a passing interest in current events knows this.

Most people who are aware of the problem are also aware of our efforts as part of international task force to combat this piracy.

Our efforts have been, for the most part, ineffective. Some of this is because of the scope of the problem versus the amount of assets assigned. Most of it is because of the lack of thought put into out strategy and rules of engagement.

A good example of this is exemplified by the following (from the BBC;

The US military has deployed its Reaper unmanned drones to scour the Indian Ocean with their all-seeing, infra-red eye.

Somali pirates are attacking farther and farther from home; previously safe areas are now very much within range.

The farthest attack from shore has just taken place - an oil tanker managed to evade two skiffs some 1,000 nautical miles (1,850km) off Somalia - 400 nautical miles (741km) north-east of the Seychelles.

In total, close to 200 crew members are being held hostage for ransom and hardly a day passes without news of another attack.
[...]
"It has multiple zooms and is very good for the mission for scanning very large areas," said Cdr Gregory Hand of the US military, as he watched one of the three grey drones taxi along the runway besides the turquoise waters of the Seychelles.

"These aircraft have the capability of carrying weapons, but there are currently no plans to place weapons on them," he says.
[...]
"One of the major problems we face is the fact that you need sufficient evidence to bring these people to trial and justice. We all know they are pirates but proving they are is another thing," said Joel Morgan, who heads the Seychelles government's anti-piracy drive.
[...]
The Seychelles government has signed agreements with several European countries allowing fishing trawlers to carry weapons to defend against pirate attacks.

Japan and Thailand have also requested permission to arm their boats operating in Seychelles waters.

But while there have been calls for tougher action against the pirates, some analysts warn that more guns at sea could raise the stakes and put the hostages' lives in more danger.

Putting Reapers into the area and not arming them makes no sense; but it is indicative of our ineffectual strategy. If a Reaper catches an act of piracy in progress, arming it would allow us to neutralize hostile ships and crews. We know where at least some of the pirate havens are in Somalia. A simple and obvious solution is to spin up a joint task force composed of US, British, French, Chinese and Indian special forces or marines and use them to raid and destroy these facilities. And we arm merchant vessels. Some governments don't want armed cargo ships in their ports. Ok, we're not talking about putting cannons or missiles on board these vessels. It should be pretty straight-forward to organize a system by which armed ships can "check their guns at the door."

Essentially, we need to look at what other nations did to combat piracy in the past: aggressive patrols, the destruction of pirate vessels and on-shore havens, organizing convoys and arming merchant ships, as well as a more organized system for ensuring that those pirates who are captured are brought to justice. Treat as what it is; a low-level war being fought against non-states actors.

Will this result in some hostages being killed? Probably. And, that's unfortunate. But, our policy has to be to do everything necessary to end the threat of piracy. That is the primary goal; to create conditions in which no subsequent hostages are taken.

While I yammer about the President calling Americans nasty names, other parts of the world are experiencing slightly larger problems.

Like, say, ships from North and South Korea shooting at each other. This from the BBC;

A South Korean warship has exchanged fire with a North Korean naval vessel, reports from both countries say.

Officials in Seoul say the South Korean vessel opened fire when the Northern ship crossed a disputed sea border. The North Korean vessel then fired back.
[...]
There are however a number of precedents, exchanges of fire between the two navies that have led to casualties on both sides but no further military escalation.

The South, though, has accused the North of deliberately provoking these kinds of naval clashes to raise tension and increase its leverage in negotiations.

Multilateral disarmament talks have broken down, and the North is seeking bilateral talks with the United States, a forum analysts say it sees as more likely to win it the concessions it seeks.

Seoul's military has also demanded an apology for the incident.

South Korean officials said none of their troops had been hurt, while the North's boat had been set ablaze before it sailed away.
[...]
In 1999 a North Korean ship was sunk and several vessels from both sides were damaged during an exchange of fire.

In 2002 four South Korean sailors and an estimated 30 North Koreans were killed in a 20-minute battle.

According to Representative Earl Blumenauer (D OR) - a supporter of Obama's health care proposals - The President thinks that, if you oppose him, you are a "teabag, anti-government" person and an "extremist."

Assuming that a supporter of the President wouldn't just make this up, is that the appropriate attitude for the President of the United States - not just the Democrat Party - to have? And, if so, I assume that those who support that attitude are prepared for the consequences.

You cannot have a government that sees any opposition as making one an enemy of the state without fracturing the body politic and creating conditions ripe for civil discord, perhaps even civil war. This is not inevitable, of course; but the President and the Democrat leadership seem to be completely unaware of just how perilous a course of action they are taking.

(Source: New York Times)

As usual, the foreign press is doing a better job of reporting the news than our own media. The Telegraph (UK) has a great article looking into the background of the Fort Hood terrorist and what may have set him off, examining religious, political, professional and personal factors. Worth the read. Go here.