HALF FULL REPORT 2/29/08

We start off this week's HFR with a marvelous confirmation that Yes, Virginia, Hollywood really is that stupid and shallow.

An Academy Awards TV show that nobody watched, that gave Oscars to movies that nobody's seen and to actors and actresses nobody's heard of, featured a number of "stars" displaying the latest in Hollywood ribbon chic.

You know, those stupid little ribbons worn on a dress or lapel the color of which proclaims the wearer's devotion to some liberal cause, like sympathy for folks with AIDs. 

At last Sunday's Oscars (2/24), the ribbon Hollywoodistas were wearing was orange – representing the orange jump suits worn by Moslem terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nothing in sympathy for the countless numbers of Cubans murdered and tortured by Fidel Castro.  Of course not.  Sympathy for Moslem terrorists coddled and cared for by the US military.

The Orange campaign is the brainchild of, surprise, the ACLU.  And it's not only ribbons.  Some stars sported an orange rubber bracelet with an embossed message:  Silence+Torture=Complicity. 

Yes, Hollywood's and the ACLU's silence over the murder and torture of countless Cubans by Castro does equal complicity.  But they are far too stupidly and shallowly filled with hatred of their own country to admit or understand it.

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Next up is the exhilarating photo flap over Hussein Obambi's looking like a Moslem girlie-man in drag.

This is a win-win all the way around.  He looks ridiculous, his campaign's over-the-top reaction to the "smear" shows how freak-out frightened he is over even a hint he's really Moslem, and – best of all – the whole thing is blamed not on nasty mean Republicans but Hillary!  Even tribes in Kenya are protesting and demanding her apology.  This is just too cool.

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The HFR announces that its Hero of the Week award goes to General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who had the courage to publicly state that "global warming is a total crock" of fecal material.  Then he displayed more courage by refusing to back down, standing up against the outrage and demands that he recant.  Nope, not Lutz.  What a stand-up guy.

He was bolstered by hard scientific data released this week confirming Global Cooling:

"All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously."

The report reveals that scientists "link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases."  But you knew that, and learned just how the mechanism works, back in September 2005 (!) in Solar Warming.

Somebody – preferably Lutz – needs to explain all of this to John McCain.

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The front page headlines on North Korea this week were all about the New York Philharmonic playing in Pyongyang – a performance not attended by Kim "I'm so rone-ry" Jong-il.  Far weirder is to juxtapose these two non-front page stories:

The first is that six million North Koreans are starving.  The second is that North Korea has $2 trillion (yes, trillion) worth of natural resources.

It turns out that North Korea has, in addition to large deposits of iron, zinc, uranium, and coal, it has the world's largest deposit of magnesite, an increasingly valuable lightweight metal.

The Chinese are eager to exploit the deposits, but can't do business with the Norks.  "North Korea is a country of scoundrels," says the manager of one of China's largest mining companies, which has now canceled all its contracts with Pyongyang.

Looks like the perfect assignment for Lee Myung-bak to ride to the rescue.

Last April in Regime Change in Korea I predicted Lee Myung-bak would be elected president of South Korea.  He was, in a total landslide, in December.  This Monday (2/25), he was inaugurated.  North Korea doesn't stand a chance.

Lee is an amazingly smart businessman.  He is going to make a deal with Beijing to divvy up that $2 trillion between China and South Korea – or rather a unified Korea with Beijing selling Pyongyang down the river.

And speaking of rivers, Lee will cede to China Korea's side of the last 11 miles of the Tumen River, which forms its border with Russia and thus blocks all of Chinese Manchuria from sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean (see map in the linked article).

In other words, I expect all of what I predicted in that article to come to pass, and soon.

$2 trillion can buy a lot of Nork generals, a lot of Chinese businessmen and politicos, a lot of food for starving people.  Say goodbye to Norkland.  Say hello to a unified Korean Asian powerhouse.  And oh yes – Lee loves America.  He'll remain our friend.

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Lastly, there appeared this week two astonishingly hopeful signs of moderation in Islam.

The first is a "revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam" by Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs.   It has commissioned a team of Islamic scholars at Ankara University to conduct a radical revision of sacred Islamic teachings.

These teachings as presently interpreted provide the basis for Islamic "Sharia" or Moslem religious law.  An abolishment of the basis for such Sharia practices as treating women like chattel would allow Islam to come out of its medieval theological prison – and end the threat of "sharia-ization" threatening western societies.

More importantly, such reinterpretation brings with it the greatest killer of fanaticism:  doubt.  Once doubt enters the mind of a Moslem fanatic, his days of being a Jihadi are numbered.

The second is that the Moslem school in India that provided the theological justification for the terrorist practices of the Taliban – the Deobandis – has now renounced terrorism as "completely against the teachings of Islam."

You may have never heard of the Deobandis, but they are incredibly influential.  They operate some 6,000 religious schools.  When their leaders announce that suicide bombing or terrorist acts that kill innocent people "of any religion" is "prohibited by the Koran," this is a big deal.

Maybe, just maybe, we can raise a half-full glass this week to the start of Islam beginning to tiptoe into the 21^st century.