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We’re Doomed. What’s for Dinner?
Now, you might ask yourself, why would anyone have any confidence in a report from an international institution that perpetrated the greatest fraud, "Oil-for-Food", in modern history? Or that stacked its Human Rights Commission with representatives of the most repressive nations? Or that initiated a ban on DDT, thus leading to the needless deaths of millions from malaria? Or that is currently dawdling around while thousands continue to die in Darfur? I mean, just how much credibility does the United Nations have these days? Or, for that matter, its International Panel on Climate Change that has issued various assessments of the climate since it was created in 1988 under the aegis of the U.N. Environmental Program. Despite the Oscar statuette waiting for Al Gore’s dubious documentary, do you really want to take the word of Hollywood celebrities, politicians, and a U.N. panel that, according to the Sunday news story, involves a "group of 50 researchers, representing thousands more, (who) will then meet in secret to put the finishing touches on the report." "Meet in secret"? Excuse me, but isn’t real science about being able to actually prove one’s conclusions are accurate, as opposed to conjuring up a scarifying report that predicts that, by 2080, millions of people will go hungry and that there will be "critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States…"
When he accepted the prestigious 2006 Craaford Prize, Wallace S. Broecker, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and universally deemed the world’s foremost climate interpreter, said, "My lifetime study of Earth’s climate system has humbled me. I’m convinced that we have greatly underestimated the complexity of this system. The importance of obscure phenomena, ranging from those that control the size of raindrops to those that control the amount of water pouring into the deep sea from the shelves of the Antarctic continent, makes reliable modeling very difficult, if not impossible." Despite the endless deluge of global warming claims there is also a mountain of climate data to dispute them. The primary reason for disputing the claims is that they are based on computer models. These are the same computer models meteorologists use to predict next week’s weather. How often are these predictions wrong? The answer is (a) daily, (b) weekly, (c) frequently or (d) all of the above. Coming soon there will be another huge propaganda paroxysm about global warming. Let me put your mind at ease. It is common knowledge among meteorologists that the Earth has natural cycles of warming and cooling, and that over the last 740,000 years there have been eight cycles, including four ice ages. Has the Earth been warming? Yes, since the end of the last Ice Age. Is it rapidly warming now? No. If you want to believe a bunch of guys meeting in secret to write horrible scenarios of stuff that is not going to happen, be my guest. What really scares me is proposed federal legislation based on the latest U.N. report. The damage it will do to our thriving economy is incalculable. The National Anxiety Center is looking for a few good men and woman with the financial means to sponsor our work. Since 1990, we have struggled to maintain our communications program and the issues of our times require a more vigorous response. Quite purposefully, we have avoided seeking grants from foundations or corporations in order to maintain our independence. We are forever grateful for the donations received, but we need greater stability for growth. If you would like to assist the Center, let us know. The Long Ugly History of U.S. Relations with the Middle East Iraq is hardly the first time the United States of America found itself tangling with Muslims who have bad intentions. Indeed, we owe our Constitution to a group of Barbary pirates demanding tribute from America before we even had a navy of our own. It was the need for a navy that forced the States, then loosely operating under the Articles of Confederation, to scrap them and come up with our Constitution in order to raise the money for a navy and some Marines to retaliate. So, in an odd way, it was the long-established culture of thievery and slavery practiced by Arabs to which we owe, in part, our current system of government. The Constitution that was adopted on March 4, 1789, empowered Congress to declare war and "to provide and maintain a navy." At last, the former colonies would be able to defend its coastal borders and vital overseas interests. For some fifteen years since having declared its independence, United States merchant ships had been at the mercy of Barbary pirates operating out of Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia. In 1794, President Washington signed a law authorizing the building of six frigates.
From its earliest days, Americans held Islam in low regard and it is only in more recent, politically correct times that it has been accorded some virtues. For most of our own and European history, it has been regarded with cause as primitive, sordid, and cruel. After Thomas Jefferson’s vigorous response to the pirates opened safe access to the Mediterranean, the U.S. generally regarded European imperialism as a good thing that would bring a measure of civilization to the Middle East. In the meantime, Americans funded many missionary efforts that, in turn, founded schools, universities, and hospitals that would educate and heal enough Muslims to lay the groundwork for what would become modern Arab nationalism. The region had long been regarded as exotic by generations of Americans who read the popular novels of the time and later absorbed this message from movies. As Americans became more prosperous, a vigorous tourism industry grew after the Civil War when many began to visit Egypt and the Holy Land. What they discovered was a generally dirty, rancid smelling place filled with people for whom personal hygiene was unknown. The term, the "Middle East", was coined by an American, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who would pen the most seminal book, Sea Power and America, published in 1897, giving rise to ever greater world-power status for America and the recognition of how essential it was to control the world’s major sea lanes to protect trade. Before Mahan, the Middle East and Africa had been referred to as the "Orient." By the late 1880’s, America had built "the Great White Fleet" of sixteen battleships that would become our first global fighting force. The nation’s growing need for oil was playing an increasing role in our relations with Middle Eastern powers and has ever since. Oren’s book takes on particular importance in light of our current conflict there. He provides an excellent history of how, following WWI, the British and French carved up the Middle East as part of their imperialist view of the world. In the process, they unleashed new anti-Western forces in the region. He reminds us, too, that it was Africa’s northern tier that the U.S. invaded as its first campaign in World War II, deterring the German effort to seize oil fields and the Suez Canal. In the wake of WWII, the question of what to do with millions of Holocaust survivors who did not want to remain in Europe led to the creation of Israel after years of effort to establish a nation for the victims of anti-Semitism. Israel and the return of Jews to their former homeland had long been seen for generations of Americans as necessary to bring about the return of Christ. The chapters devoted to the period leading up to and since nationhood in 1948 are worth the price of the entire book. A vigorous "restoration" movement preceded and followed the Civil War. The enmity of Muslims toward all infidels was sharply focused on the Jews whom they increasingly found in their midst, thanks to European anti-Semitism and Russian pogroms. For Arabs, the Jews came to be seen as an invasion from the West. However, it was the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust that over-rode all Arab hostility to the establishment of Israel, an early project of the newly created United Nations. Despite being offered a separate Arab nation of Palestine that hostility remains to this day. In combination, too, the rise of Arab nationalism, the Cold War, and the growing dependence on Middle East oil that would put the region into continual turmoil, drawing American military intervention from time to time, almost always with casualties and consequences Americans wanted to avoid. The problem for recent generations of Americans is that, from the days of the Barbary pirates, forces in the Middle East have repeatedly reached out to harm our fellow citizens and national interests. With the rise of Islamo-fascism, American military, diplomats, and ordinary citizens would be killed until this war finally came to our shores on September 11, 2001. From our earliest years, America has been locked in combat and conflict with the Middle East and, as it is frequently said, those who do not learn from the past are bound to repeat its errors. The Center needs your donation to insure we can maintain this website and our communications program. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. And thank you very much!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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On Sunday, Jan 28, the front-page story in my daily newspaper was "A chilling conclusion on global warming." By Tuesday, the front page story was "Climate Study: Millions will go hungry and dry." Soon more revelations about a United Nations report on climate change, due in April, will be in the news, but let me tell you its conclusion. We’re doomed. 
You can learn more about this in a brilliant book by Michael E. Oren, an historian, who has written Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East - 1776 to the Present ($35.00, W.W. Norton & Company). While most readers will draw its greatest value from his chapters on the period from World War I to the present, many will find it surprising to discover that, in one way or another, the U.S. had been compelled for centuries to deal primarily with the Ottoman Empire that held sway over the Middle East and much of northern Africa until WWI put an end to it.