Reuters Worries About 'Diplomacy' with News of North Korea-Syria Nuclear Cooperation

In their April 24 article, "U.S. lays out Syria intelligence, may harm diplomacy," reporters Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert seek to lay blame at the feet of the Bush administration should "diplomacy" fail and/or Syria grow belligerent towards Israel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it believes shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year, a step that may complicate its diplomacy both on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East.

In breaking its official silence on the mysterious September 6 Israeli air strike, the Bush administration is taking the risk that Syria could be angered by the public disclosures and could seek to retaliate against Israel.

While the disclosure may make some diplomatic initiatives more difficult for the Bush administration, that this is the angle of the story is rather telling. After all, doesn't the nuclear proliferation, pose greater problems?

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Keating: Engagement With China May Clarify Its Military Intentions

“We have expressed to them our concern for their development of certain kinds of weapons: aerial-denial weapons and satellite technology and the growth of their submarine force, for example,” he said. “They counter by telling us they only want to protect those things that are theirs.”

“We at Pacific Command seek not just transparency, but clearer intention, expressed by our Chinese colleagues,” he said. “And it is our firm desire and intention to continue the dialog with our Chinese colleagues so as to develop an even better understanding of their intention.”

“They profess to seek a peaceful rise and harmonious integration,” he said, quoting Chinese leaders’ own words. “We are all for that. But they have to show us, in our view, how they intend to achieve that while developing these certain weapons. We think there is some contradiction in the stated goals vs. the practices we are observing.”

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Britain hit by mass strikes

London - Britain has been hit by the most wide-ranging wave of work stoppages in a decade, with more than 100,000 public sector employees, from teachers to coastguards, striking against the Labour government. Today's strikes were another blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown after he was forced by party rebels into a humiliating policy reversal over tax cuts yesterday. The industrial action comes a week ahead of local elections that will be his first major test at the ballot box.

['public sector employees' - government 'civil servants'. We're headed down the same path]

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Gazprom and the Kremlin, Inc

The Kremlin has made little secret that its energy policies are unlikely to change in the wake of the 2 March presidential poll. Russia's president-elect Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly pledged to sustain what he has described as political "continuity." The first deputy prime minister still serves as chairman of the board of natural gas monopoly Gazprom and has tended to defend the gas giant against what he has called unfair criticism by the West, including claims of "energy blackmail." From 3 March, Gazprom cut gas supplies to Ukraine by 25 percent, and the following day it again limited gas supplies...

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[I'd call them idiots but it would be hypocritical, given that just this week our Speaker of the House, rather than develop our own reserves, called on OPEC to supply us more oil - thereby increasing our reliance on or 'friends' in the Middle East.]

Russia says has no plans to cap carbon emissions

MOSCOW - Russia will not accept binding caps on its greenhouse gas emissions under a new climate regime, currently being negotiated to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, top officials said on Monday. Kyoto puts a cap on the average, annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-12 for some 37 industrialized countries, including Russia.

[of course not, their scientists are saying we're on the brink of another ice age. Why don't they say so publicly? We're about to garrote ourselves economically via this scam - why exactly should they point that out to us?]

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Russian scientist says Earth could soon face new Ice Age

... According to the scientist, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen more than 4% in the past decade, but global warming has practically stopped. It confirms the theory of "solar" impact on changes in the Earth's climate, because the amount of solar energy reaching the planet has drastically decreased during the same period, the scientist said.

"However, the thermal inertia of the world's oceans and seas will delay a 'deep cooling' of the planet, and the new Ice Age will begin sometime during 2055-2060, probably lasting for several decades," Abdusamatov said. Therefore, the Earth must brace itself for a growing ice cap, rather than rising waters in global oceans caused by ice melting.

[5 year window - isn't he good. Point: who the hell knows - let's not spend TRILLIONS and throw all our liberties out the window to boot]

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Canadian Scientists Fear Global Cooling

Investor's Business Daily is reporting something we haven't seen much of in the media since the 1970s: concerns about global cooling. You read that correctly: cooling. Kenneth Tapping, a researcher at Canada's National Research Council, wants to look for evidence of increased sunspot activity:

"The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century."

A "solar hibernation" in the 17th Century "corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715.

"Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe."

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THE REAL COST OF TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE

Many environmentalists claim that nothing less than an 80 percent reduction in emissions by the year 2050 will suffice to combat global warming, says Steven Hayward, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

These targets would send us back to emissions levels last witnessed when the cotton gin was in daily use:

• In 2006 the United States emitted 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, or just under 20 tons per capita, according to the Department of Energy.

• An 80 percent reduction in these emissions from 1990 levels means that the United States cannot emit more than about one billion metric tons of CO2 in 2050.

The United States last emitted one billion metric tons around 1910; but in 1910, the country had 92 million people, and per capita income, in current dollars, was about $6,000.

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Less Gas at the Pump

This week, American truckers staged protests against the rising cost of diesel fuel while members of the U.S. House of Representatives competed to see who could do the best job of hectoring oil-company executives -- on-camera -- about the high price of gasoline.

Also this week, the House voted to double the size of two national marine sanctuaries off of the Northern California coast, which now are permanently protected from offshore-oil drilling. This is the same House that has supported a ban on new offshore drilling off the entire California coast and opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

It's a mystery of modern life that educated voters can grouse about the high price of gasoline, yet see no nexus between rising prices and dwindling domestic supply...

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[meanwhile...]
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Opec says oil could hit $200

Opec’s president on Monday warned oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help. The comments made by Chakib Khelil, Algeria’s energy minister, came as oil prices hit a historic peak close to $120 a barrel, putting further pressure on global economies.

[ready to drill yet - or are we going to wait until the 200$ mark?]

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Overzealous government at Tigers game lands son in foster care

... And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade. [snip]

Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars". The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor. "You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label... [snip]

Mistake or child neglect?

An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

An ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol. "Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house...

[we are turning the government into our parents]

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Bet on the Homeschoolers

The California Court of Appeals judge who ruled recently that parents "do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children" probably thought the point was obvious. He lives in California, where liberalism is still a flourishing belief system, and where parents are widely regarded as simply the mechanism whereby new generations of youngsters are created and turned over to the state for polishing.

But he is a loser nonetheless, as he will discover when his ruling is overturned on appeal or, failing that, struck down by the legislature or, if necessary, by an amendment to the state constitution. The parents of California are not about to surrender the right to decide what fundamentals their children shall be taught.

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[let's hope. better: let's act]

CA Governor > http://gov.ca.gov/interact
CA State Legislators > http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

Smoking bans stoke global warming?

Fewer cigarettes get lit indoors in bars and restaurants because of smoking bans from California to Ireland but something else is going up in smoke from a sidewalk in central Oslo – about $100,000 a year in extra outdoor heating bills. The heated pavement, installed at a cost of about $400,000, may be the most extreme example of an environmental side-effect of smoking bans: rocketing power use...

[like I've always said, everything started with the smoking bans!!! {that was for LH}]

http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/04/28/smoking-bans-stoke-global-warming/

[ It's a joke MN]

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