HALF-FULL REPORT 3/25/11

Week after week after week – when will this torrential deluge of news stop or at least slack off?  It hasn’t let up for a couple of months now.  Well, let’s jump in and go with the flow.

We’ll start with a follow-up to Islam in Libya, since everyone’s so focused on what Zero is doing there.  What’s confusing us all is Zero’s state of confusion regarding no clearly stated end-game.  As Sarah Palin told Greta Van Sustern on Fox Wednesday (3/23), "Be in it to win it, or if there’s doubt we get out."

Palin sees the purpose of the mission in Libya is for Gaddafi "to end up dead," or the mission is a failure.  That would be the best outcome (see Roger Simon make the case), but there better be a Plan B.  Here it is.

From the history discussed in Islam in Libya, we saw that Libya has from its inception 2,600 years ago been divided in two:  Greek Cyrenaica and Punic Tripolitania.  The two were unified by King Idris only in 1951 – and even then there were two capitals:  the parliamentary one of Tripoli and the royal one of Benghazi.

This bifurcation has emerged once again today, with the Libyan Opposition controlling Eastern Libya or the old Cyrenaica, and Gaddafi controlling Western Libya or Tripolitania.  So obviously, Plan B is to split the country in two, with "reunification" a la East/West Germany a goal of the future.

Bill Gertz at the Washington Times reports that this may be what’s coming with US recognition of the Libyan Transitional Council in Benghazi.

Who gets the oil?  Here’s the map:

 
Obviously Benghazi gets the lion’s share, for that’s where most of the refineries and terminals are.  Eastern terminals exported on average 825,000 bpd (barrels per day) before current disruption, while those in the west averaged 250,000.

That said, Libya’s oil reserves are the 9^th largest in the world (41.5 bbl), and that’s just proven.  Most of the west hasn’t been explored, and geologists thinks there’s lots of oil there.  So there’s enough to go around.

There’s just no way for Gaddafi’s forces to hold the east.  The supply lines are way too long and way too vulnerable.  Eastern Libya is gone for him.  If we can’t kill Gaddafi, then a doable goal is for Cyrenaica to become a viable state on its own.  There’s 2,600 years of history to back that up.

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Speaking of Zero and Sarah Palin…  Yesterday (3/24), Rush Limbaugh had some fun claiming there is a real word – "you can look it up" – called "obamulate," a verb meaning to walk or wander around aimlessly.  Close, Rush.

The actual word is obambulate… Rush forgot the second ‘b’ – which goes back to 1640s England according to the OED, and sure enough, Zero sure does obambulate, doesn’t he?

But how about this for another perfect word – so perfect it’s spooky.  Did you know that palin is a word in Greek?  The Greek is πάλιν, meaning again or once more.  It is the root of another word of the Ancient Greeks that has an old history in philosophy, theology, and biology:  palingenesis –  πάλινγένεσις.  Genesis in Greek means birth.  Palingenesis thus means rebirth, restoration, regeneration.  Born Again.

There are a lot of folks who believe that a Palin Presidency will usher in the rebirth of America, the restoration of American values and liberty, the regeneration of American prosperity.  Turns out there’s a word for it.  Somebody tell Rush.

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Sarah was in Jerusalem at the start of the week (3/20-21), and as she was taken to the Western Wall by prominent Israelis, she was told that Jews were not allowed by Moslems in Israel to pray on the Temple Mount, the most sacred place on earth for them.

In response, she asked, "Why are you apologizing all the time?" 

This encapsulates why I think so highly of her:  she has no fear of envy.  She will not appease the envious.  In the TTP right side bar, there is an article category entitled The Evil Eye.  Click on that and up will come a series of articles on envy, on how envy motivates Communists, Nazis, and Moslem Terrorists – and on how the fear of envy motivates liberals, Democrats, and RINOs.

What we need in our next president more than anything else is the courage to reject envy.  Palin has it.  I’m not sure who else has.

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The second most important thing we need in our next president is to reject ethanol subsidies.  If they can’t do that, they can’t stand up to either crony capitalist special interests or the warmist hoax, nor can they cut the budget in any meaningful way. 

This is the canary in the presidential aspirant coal mine:  can they go to Iowa and say, as president, I will immediately eliminate all subsidies for ethanol?

This immediately eliminates Pawlenty, Gingrich, Huckabee, Romney, and Mitch Daniels.  All Michele Bachman will say is that the subsidies should be "re-examined." 

Sarah Palin seems to avoid mentioning the very word ethanol.  She needs to have a heart-to-heart with Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of the world’s largest food company, Nestlé.  This week (3/22), he publicly condemned US ethanol subsidies as "immoral."

The US exports 60% of the world’s corn supply, and almost 40% of US corn production goes not for food but for ethanol "biofuel."  As a result, corn prices have doubled in the last 12 months throughout the world.

"From an environmental point of view this is nonsense, but more so when we are running out of food in the rest of the world, " said the Nestlé chairman.  "It is absolutely immoral to push hundreds of millions of people into hunger and into extreme poverty because of such a policy, so I think – I insist – no food for fuel."

Unless a presidential aspirant can say those words – no food for fuel – he or she is not worth consideration.  So I hope Sarah is listening to Brabeck-Letmathe, for the rest of them are on the Dark Side on this.

Ethanol subsidies have to be eliminated to have the slightest hope of avoiding the Financial Armageddon we talked about in A Tsunami of Insanity. 

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Richard Fisher underscored this on Tuesday (3/22), when he publicly warned that the Federal Government is headed towards insolvency – and the process to avoid it will necessarily be "very painful."

The pain couldn’t start in a better place than no more ethanol subsidies.

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Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is a good candidate for the TTP Hero of the Week – but so is an Arizona school teacher named Tony Hill.

On March 15, he wrote a letter to state senator Russell Pearce, expressing his frustration at his class of 8^th graders, almost all of whom refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance because, in their words, "We are Mexicans and America stole our land." 

Hill explained that  "in these areas (where he teaches in greater Phoenix) most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters. They hate America and are determined to reclaim this area for Mexico."

Pearce sent the letter around to his colleagues, one of whom, Lori Klein, then read it aloud on the floor of the state senate during a debate on illegal immigration.  That was this Monday (3/21), and since then the frijoles have hit the media fan.

"It upsets me," Hill explained to a local Phoenix journalist, "to see this disregard for America and their hatred towards it and their entitlement."

For telling the truth, for being willing to bear the outpouring of hate coming down upon him simply for his honesty as a patriotic American, Tony Hill is the HFR Hero of the Week.

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How about this for the coolest headline of the week:  China Open to Cyber Attack.

"Dams, oil and gas pipelines, factories and other computer-controlled infrastructure are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks in China than in other countries, security specialists say…

China’s vulnerability lies in its fledgling domestic software industry, which Beijing nurtures and promotes, and in the lack of transparency in its computer-defense organizations, which makes hacking into its systems easier than gaining unauthorized access to Western systems, say the specialists."

Now who do you suppose those specialists are, firing this leaked-to-the-media shot across China’s cyber-bow?

You might recall this item (scroll to the end) from Unleashing America, written the day after November 2^nd last year:

The Pentagon is subject to astronomical numbers of attacks every day on its computers.  By far the greatest number of them, and the most sophisticated, are from the Chicoms.  The DOD’s Cyber Defense Team is staffed by amazingly brilliant 25 year-old whiz kids who get burned and bummed out playing nothing but defense.  They quit and newbies hired because they can’t stand just protecting their goal line and never being allowed to play offense.

"You have no idea what we could do to Chinese military computer systems if my guys were greenlighted to take them down," the leader of one of the cyber teams told me.  "We’d teach the Chicoms to never dick with us ever again.  We could take down practically the entire Chinese economy if we wanted to.  My guys are light years better than theirs – but our hands our tied behind our backs."

So expect a delegation of majority members of the House Armed Forces Committee to pay a visit to the Pentagon early next year and start untying those hands.  The message will be:  The Chinese must be taught a series of very instructive lessons that cyber-war with the US is a game they will seriously lose.

Right on schedule, folks.  Aren’t you so glad you subscribe to TTP?

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On February 1^st, I wrote The Opportunity of Egypt.  While all kinds of pundits on the right were hysterically demanding the US keep Mubarak in power no matter how many demonstrators he gunned down, I said he was totally toast, and we should instead look at the situation as an opportunity to expand freedom in the Moslem world.

And yes, I’m saying the same thing about Libya.  But may I also direct your attention to Syria?

The evil of the Al-Assad regime in Syria rivals that of Gaddafi’s.  Israelis would say it far exceeds it, and there is no question that the current government of Syria, besides being one of the worst state sponsors of Moslem terrorism on earth, is an existential threat to Israel.

Syria provides the primary support and armaments for Hezbollah and Hamas, and is fervently aligned with Iran.  Next to regime change in Iran itself, there couldn’t be a greater contribution to freedom in the Moslem world, than regime change in Syria.

Protestors were shot down by the score in a dozen cities by Syrian soldiers today (3/25).  A dictatorship could snuff out riots in one or two places, but this is rapidly reaching a threshold of uncontainability.  It’s the Triple U Strategy:  Uncontainable Urban Unrest.

Mossad agents are of course doing their very best to make the Triple U worse.  Let’s wish them, and the Syrian people luck.  The least Zero could do is to call for Bashar al-Assad to resign, to call for democracy and freedom in Syria, instead of "we condemn the violence" wimp-out pap.

For the latest efforts by Syrians to liberate themselves, check in at The Reform Party of Syria.

We are living in chaotically perilous times, folks.  Always hope for the best, and don’t be afraid to take a chance on its possibility – but never fail to prepare for the worst.