By recognizing an independent Kosovo the U.S. is playing a dangerous game in the Balkans, one that has led to war in the past and could lead to war in the near future. The independence of Kosovo was engineered by the UN.
Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if NATO exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organizations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognized Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February. (Source: BBC News)
Posted by Walt as Regionalism, War & Peace at 12:56 AM EST
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WASHINGTON, February 13, 2008 — Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid disclosed today that a hugely expensive bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic Senator Barack Obama, was quickly passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. Kincaid said that the major media's cover-up of the bill, which makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations, demonstrates the media's desire to see Senator Obama elected to the presidency.
In a column posted on the AIM web site, Kincaid noted that Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty Act" (S. 2433) through his committee without hearings. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends. It was scheduled for a Thursday vote but was moved up a day, to Wednesday, and rushed through by voice vote. Kincaid learned, however, that conservative Senators have now put a "hold" on the legislation, in order to prevent it from being rushed to the floor for a full Senate vote.
The House version (H.R. 1302) was suddenly brought up on the House floor last September 25 and was passed by voice vote. House Republicans were caught off-guard, unaware that the pro-U.N. measure committed the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Kincaid's column notes that the official in charge of making nations comply with the U.N. Millennium Goals, which are prominently highlighted in the Obama bill, says a global tax will be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.
Posted by Walt as UN Taxes at 1:33 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message.
Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly relentless, a modern version of the Mongols on horseback who swept out of the East to conquer everything before them until the reached the gates of Europe. These days the Greens have long since conquered Europe.
One thing alone stands against the Greens. The SCIENCE does not support them. Their sense of moral superiority, their contempt for all things modern, their resistance to all forms of energy except the weakest—wind and solar, and at the very heart of the Greens’ message is a contempt and hatred for the human race.
Humans have come to dominate life on Earth because we know how to adapt to the planet. We know how to use its minerals, the riches of its plant life, the domestication of its animals, and its reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission, to fuel the creation of great cities, farms and ranches, and everything that passes for modern civilization.
Long ago humans conquered the continents of the Earth and its great oceans to spread everywhere. Humans now fly between continents in hours. Everywhere on the face of the Earth humans now communicate with one another via the Internet.
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Posted by Walt as Environment Issues, Junk Science at 10:43 PM EST
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By Alan Caruba
When you’re well known as a global warming skeptic, it comes as no surprise that any scientific evidence that refutes this hoax means that your email box fills up quickly as the dissenters share the news. I am among a relative handful of people who also believe that we are heading right into a new Ice Age.
Investors Business Daily had an editorial today, Feb 7, titled “The Sun Also Sets”, in which it cited the views of Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council. In essence, Tapping wants people to know that solar activity such as sunspots, i.e., magnetic storms, “has been disturbingly quiet.”
It’s useful to know that global temperatures closely reflect solar cycles.
The lack of activity “could signal the beginning of what is known as the Maunder Minimum.” While solar cycles tend to last about 11 years, the lack of normal or increased activity can trigger the Maunder Minimum, an event that occurs every few centuries, can last as long as a century, and causes a colder earth.
The most recent such event was the mini-Ice Age that climatologists date from around 1300 to 1850. In the midst of this there was a distinct solar hibernation from around 1650 to 1715.
“Tapping reports no change in the sun’s magnetic field so far this cycle and if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.”
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Posted by Walt as Environment Issues, Junk Science at 9:08 AM EST
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