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David Warren writes on who will pay the price for our ethanol foolishness.
A few weeks ago I wrote in this space – facetiously – that an effective response to global warming and/or the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide would be to cut the world’s food consumption by half. This could be achieved if we would all agree to eat only on odd-numbered days.
Among the advantages of having our environmental commissars enforce this scheme, I mentioned the halving of the factory and transport infrastructure that delivers the planet’s food. But beyond this, the food industry’s billion or so poorest customers, who barely get enough to eat now, would be removed from the carbon account entirely. Think of it on the analogy of a corporate buy-out, I suggested:
“At first, there is a net increase in CO2 ‘costs’ as people die and their corpses decay. But later, after they have finished decaying, there are substantial and permanent net savings.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t joke. A scheme to kill off the world’s poor, through starvation, has already been launched on the advice of environmental “experts,” and is showing promising results. The tactics are cleverer than mine, by half.
“Biofuel” is the means. By turning much of the planet’s limited arable land, including especially the lower-cost breadbaskets of the Third World, into grain generators for biofuel, the environmental revolution is creating the conditions for famine on a colossal scale. …
… Biofuel has joined the list of environmental catastrophes caused by environmental scares. That list began with the DDT scare in the early 1960s. Tens of millions have died from malaria and other diseases that could have been eradicated by spraying with this pesticide.
The triumph of “environmentalism” is symptomatic of the madness that has gripped our power elites, under the thrall of “political correctness” – for there is real insanity in creating an actual and predictable disaster, to avert an imaginary one.
Noting food riots already in Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Mexico, and food rationing in Pakistan and China, the Indian development economist Deepak Lal writes: “For the Western ‘good and the great,’ their academic acolytes and the pop stars grandstanding to save Africa and to end poverty, this latest Western assault on the world’s poor by their promotion of biofuels to replace food on the limited land in the world, can only evince contempt.”
The American thinks we should listen to the French – sometimes.
Counterterrorism, like espionage and covert action, isn’t a spectator sport. The more a country practices, the better it gets. France has become the most accomplished counterterrorist practitioner in Europe. Whereas September 11, 2001, was a shock to the American counterterrorist establishment, it wasn’t a révolution des mentalités in Paris. Two waves of terrorist attacks, the first in the mid-1980s and the second in the mid-1990s, have made France acutely aware of both state-supported Middle Eastern terrorism and freelancing but organized Islamic extremists.
In comparison, the security services in Great Britain and Germany were slow to awaken to the threat from homegrown radical Muslims. Britain’s gamble was that its multicultural approach to immigrants was superior to France’s forced-assimilation model. But with the discovery of one terrorist plot after another being planned by British Muslims, as well as the deadly transportation bombings that took place in London on July 7, 2005, the British have begun to question the wisdom of their “Londonistan†approach to Muslim immigration. Similarly, until recently, the belief in Berlin was that Germany was safe from homegrown Muslim terrorism; but two major bomb plots over the past year and a half—one aimed at German trains, the second at American installations and interests in Germany—have raised serious doubts in the minds of many German security officials about that previous assumption.
And French scholars and journalists have been way ahead of their European and American counterparts in dissecting Islamic extremism and in analyzing the phenomenon of European-raised Muslim militants. French officials who work in counterterrorism are well apprised of this intellectual spadework, often maintaining friendly relationships with scholars and journalists working in the field. …
John Fund, who has written often on voter fraud, says it would be a mistake to use postal primaries in FL and MI.
“There’s talk in some Democratic circles of letting the states of Michigan and Florida revote. . . . They’re talking about a revote primary where people would mail in their ballots. That’s a great idea, combine the reliability of the people in Florida who count the ballots with the efficiency of the Post Office. What could go wrong there?”–Jay Leno
It’s unclear if either Florida or Michigan, whose delegations are barred from voting at the Democratic National Convention because they held early primaries in violation of party rules, will figure out a way to hold a revote between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
What is clear is that the Democratic Party in both states is likely to reject using privately funded mail-in elections as the solution. A mail-in vote is less secure than a ballot cast in person, and both Michigan and Florida have long histories of both voter fraud and election official incompetence.
For too long, both parties have encouraged the growth of mail-in ballots (also known as absentee voting), to the point that some 3 out of 10 votes in national elections are now cast before Election Day. Little thought has been given to the security problems attendant to absentee voting.
Carl Hiaasen, who has written often on Florida fraud, writes on another FL primary.
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8. After what happened here in 2000, why would the Democratic leadership jeopardize its chances to win back the White House by putting Florida in such a pivotal position?
That would be a good question for Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party. Another good question for Dean is: When are you going to stop acting like an addled hamster and do something smart?
9. If another primary were approved, is it true that the Democratic candidates would be allowed to campaign and advertise throughout Florida?
Tragically, yes. After months of peace and quiet, the Sunshine State finally would be invaded full-bore by the Obama and Clinton forces.
Remember back when Rudy Giuliani was the only one hanging around? Heck, we hardly knew he was here.
Those were the days . . .
Jennifer Rubin likes McCain’s earmark record compared to Obama and Clinton.
The Economist tells us how we will soon get real time traffic and road info on our car’s GPS gear.