QOTD:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

No longer will we leave the room with the television on, use disposable batteries, attend insufficiently integrated churches that discriminate against same-sex marriages, be allowed to drive one person to a vehicle, mow your yard once a week, have more than one punishment child, eat whatever you want, use log burning fireplaces, get married in a differently sexed union without even trying to be gay once, own non-hunting firearms, spend more than two hours a day on the internet, not maintain a healthy exercise schedule, take hot showers daily, or keep your home heated at 72 degrees during the winter.

It’s one thing for him to say that he’s going to tell us how we’re going to live and yet another that we need permission from the rest of the world to tell us what our thermostat should be set.

I’d ask who in the hell this guy thinks he is if we didn’t already have a category devoted to it.

“Leadership” tells you how to run every detail of your life.  It listens to people in other countries tell you how to live.  And it knows that if you think you can stand up against it that “it’s not going to happen”.

It’s like Oil-For-Food without producing either commodity. In other words, the perfect opportunity for U.N. collusion and fraud:

A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good.

[...]

The issue came to a head in December, at a meeting between U.N. officials and auditors during a U.N. conference on climate-change policy in Bali, Indonesia. A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called “collusion” between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.

Ms. Figueres confirms that she used the term in the December meeting, but says she didn’t intend to suggest that auditors are purposely recommending that the U.N. approve projects whose legitimacy the auditors doubt. Rather, she says, she was suggesting “a systemic collusion in which the [U.N.] board is being put in a position of having to do an in-depth review of these projects because [the auditors] are not doing it.“

Help me separate the two issues, Ms. If the U.N. board is too stupid to do an in-depth audit of these projects, how did they approve them in the first place?

Something tells me this risky Carbon Credit scheme is going to back fire. We should probably keep all these “credits” some place safe (like a lockbox) until we can impose Sarbanes-Oxley requirements like we would expect from, say, a legitimate business.

We’ve had the tech bubble and the sub-prime bubble already. Can this steaming pile of greenhouse graft be far behind?

I believe it was Boutrous Boutrous-Gretzky who once noted: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Darfur mission ‘may fail’ says UN:

The lack of agreement from Sudan on the make-up of the troops could also threaten the mission, he warns.

Sudan wants it to consist predominantly of troops from African countries, and is unhappy that peacekeepers from Thailand, Nepal and Norway have been added to the force.

The UN says that the force will still be three-quarters African, and that alternative troops from African countries do not meet appropriate standards.

“If those issues are not addressed it means that the mission in 2008… will not be able to make the difference that the world wants it to make and that it may become a failure,” said Mr Guehenno.

Ah, affirmative action UN-style.

If we apply the new “May Fail” Corollary to every situation the UN cannot possibly handle, will they quit bothering everyone about global warming? I mean if you “may fail” in policing a ragtag, third world country, how can we expect you to save the world?

The UN “may fail” at something. Excuse me for a moment while I rock back and forth in the corner trying to resolve how that could even be possible. If only we had their backing, the Taliban could be negotiating the terms of the multi-lateral peace force to be deployed never.

But perhaps I’m just looking at this all wrong as it was decided some time ago that the cause of the Sudanese genocide was a foregone conclusion:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon…”The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change,” Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

“It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought,” Ban said.

That was Ban Ki’s conclusion 5 months ago. Since then he took a 45 minutes flight over Antarctica and witnessed global warming first hand.

Which completely makes sense because I got my degree in Climatology after a 3 hour flight from BNA to Denver.  Expect rampant Plains States genocide from southern Missouri to northern Kansas in about four years.

Over at Jenn’s place. I wholeheartedly concur.

Dangerous chemicals found at UN HQ in NYC.

Unfortunately, the chemical vials were removed before anyone was seriously injured.

The U.S. is the most armed country on Earth with 90 guns per every 100 people.

By my math, we’re short about 10 firearms per every 100 people, so some of you pansies need to get cracking. We’ve already got one per household member in our house, so we’ve done our part.

Sources within the Bush Administration are said to be “emotionally overwrought” as a result of the theft of Project Codename Tugboat – known informally as Rumsfeld’s Fantastical Weather Machine.

The missing contraption was developed in the late 1990′s and has been used to generate a massive tsunami in late 2004, which was aimed almost entirely at brown-skinned people, as well as an entire series of hurricanes in the summer of 2005, also aimed at brown people in Louisiana and Texas. The combination of the weather-machine-generated Hurricane Katrina and some well-placed explosives resulted in the flooding of one of America’s greatest bastions of government dependency ever created.

This photo of the machine’s development
was leaked to the press by unidentified government sources.

Whoever has made off with this technological marvel has apparently created Hurricane Dean and aimed it directly at the country of Mexico, also known within the Bush Administration as Magical Hardworking Family Values Land.

“It is an absolute crime against humanity for this evildoer to aim such a destructive force at a country full of hardworking family values type folks. This is not the kind of thing I want to see exported to the good, hardworking people of Mexico. The only things that we should be exporting to Mexico are American dollars, jobs, our national sovereignty, our collective dignity and my tongue into Vinnie Fox’s sweet sweet mouth,” the President said.

Sadly, Dean’s path has been aimed
directly at Magical Hardworking Family Values Land.

Below is an artist’s rendering of the suspect. If you see this person or locate the Fantastical Weather Machine, please contact your local North American Union Diversity Enforcement Official.

Evildoer

Big Brother Bushie has sunk billions of US taxpayer dollars into efforts to monitor our internet activities, medical records, and cellphone bills. Wuzzadem alerts us to the latest rollback of our civil rights by exploiting the GPS features in our cellphones by Krazy Karl and the rest of the sneaky snoops at BushCo.

And while some of the more cynical among us may think that it’s “cool” to check up on your cheating spouse or your kids for staying out too late by simply typing their cellphone number into this free to the public GPS website, the potential for abuse is frightening. Like destroying the trust that the entire mental institution of marriage is founded upon.

Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve ADT’s $24.95 a month monitoring service or something.

This is just getting stupid. But if you want stupid – look no further than our Federal Government. They take stupid to new levels every time they convene.

Global warming as a national security issue? The Pentagon taking on hurricanes?

Only in our current socialism-infected, idiotic political climate could any of this even be talked about without resulting waves of laughter from everyone within earshot.

I realize that our “new” congress views the man-made global warming fantasy as a bigger national security threat than the islamic beheaders who are actually trying to kill us, but how about just a shred of common sense up there, Feds? I realize that would probably result in some type of seizure or stroke, due to the traumatic nature of such a shift, but give it a shot.

The London Times finds an unexpected valentine in it’s commentary pages today as the current Tsar of Russia breaks out the candy and flowers in a selectively inaccurate portrayal of the history between Europe and the Evil Empire. Prompting two questions. Why now? And what’s in this for you?

Russia is Europe’s natural ally

(ed. note – Ignore that whole Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact thingy)

Vladimir Putin
[...]
A stable, prosperous and united Europe is in our interests (As long as that’s *in your interests*). European integration is an integral part of the emerging multipolar world order (Wonder who he’s referring to there). That the EU is becoming an increasingly authoritative and influential centre of world politics, considerably contributing to regional and global security, is important (your global penis is large in size).
(more…)

Mad Dog Madeline Halfbright’s hoof prints are all over the “flood the zone” coverage the Council on Foreign Relations is giving to Iran and Russia. From the NY Times, to the Tehran Times to an upcoming Newsweek piece, the CFR’s Dukakisinian helmeted think tank operators are pre-emptively striking an unconditional surrender pose as the best course of action for dealing with Ahmadinejad/the 12th imam and the rising Neo-Soviet interference in Iran and the world over:

The bottom line: Washington must accept certain distasteful facts—beginning with Iran’s ascendance as a regional power and the staying power of its regime. It should open talks with Iran, not in order to limit its growing power—an impossibility—but with a view toward regulating it and curbing potential excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of détente, just as it did in the past with such seemingly intractable enemies as China and the Soviet Union.

Could Tehran ultimately prove to be as willing a negotiating partner as Beijing and Moscow once were? There are reasons to hope so.

That last sentence is so loaded that it’s practically dripping with sour cream and bacon bits. And it’s a telling portent of what the Surrender Caucus of the Democrat Party inhabiting the CFR thinks our diplomatic efforts should be towards Tehran. As if our policy towards China and Russia is something worth emulating.

(more…)

RWN has a pretty interesting interview with one of the few remaining scholars who hasn’t been bought off with grant money by the global-warming-research-lobby. The guy’s name is Dennis Avery and he’s just put out a book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years.

He pretty much pinches a loaf onto the whole man-made global warming industry. Some nuggets:

So Mamaw can go ahead and drive down to Revco and get her prescription without feeling too guilty this morning. What is at the core of the whole man-made global warming panic?

Despite all the scare tactics the Old Media wants to throw at you, the planet has had fluctuations in temperature for millions of years. When you compare the length of time mankind has been recording temperatures with the age of the planet, you have to laugh at the “inconvenient truths” they derive from their tiny samples.

The real motivator behind the movement is the U.N.-backed Socialist utopians who want to cripple American industry in whatever way they can – whether through increasingly burdensome regulation or global taxes to redistribute America’s wealth to the turd world. The socialists in American academia, the federal government and the mainstream press are only too happy to do their part in pushing the agenda, as the end result advances their causes as well. It doesn’t matter how they get to the one-world socialist government of their dreams, just as long as they get there. And the fastest way to secure their dream planet is to destroy the world’s only military and economic superpower.

This is why the global socialists come up with bullshit like Kyoto, which only hands down mandates to the U.S. and lets the world’s worst polluters get off scot free. It’s not about saving the planet, it’s about destroying the American economy.

This is also why the scare-merchants viciously attack those who don’t fall in line with their bunk conclusions. Once the left starts equating the dissenters with “holocaust deniers,” you know they don’t have a leg to stand on.

So go ahead and shit your pants like a good little leftist lemming when Al Gore puts out another bullshit eco-mentary. The rest of us will be enjoying life, in spite of your desire for us to do otherwise.

The tenure of UN Ambassador John Bolton – one of the few things President Junior has done right in his administration – is over.

Bolton’s tendency to take no shit from the corrupt cesspool that is the U.N. was obviously too much for liberal Republicans like Link Chafee and George Voinovich, who no longer needs consoling.

Add this one to the list of reasons why the GOP was booted out on its collective ass in November. The base stayed home not because they want pacifist Donks in power, but because they’re sick of assholes like Chafee prancing around as pansy-ass leftist sheep in wolves’ clothing. Good riddance to you, Link. May your return to the private sector be as failure-riddled as was your public career.

Death to Israel! Death to America!

Nothing helps prepare the future tinpot dictators of tomorrow like brainwashing our youth with some delusional Kumbaya “hands on” training today. The daily disgrace that is the Gannett owned “Tennessean” newspaper, puffily covers how the YMCA is hosting a “Mock UN” conference that should, at the very least, mock the international joke that is the real-life UN. Once you get past the hilarious resolutions, like Afghanistan sponsoring legislation to fight AIDS in Africa, the Congo demanding that an armed UN force invade their country and overthrow local warlords, or Burma (aka Myanmar) condemning itself for all of the opium it slangs to the world, you get down to the honest-to-Allah’s truth of what the UN’s about. Take the Saudi Arabian delegation’s proposal for example:

Acknowledging that the 9 million Palestinian people do not currently have a homeland due to the Zionist revolution of the 1940’s, Fully aware that the Zionists have taken control over what was once Palestinian land, Conscious that attacks on Israel and the United States of America will be increased if the Holy Land is not restored to its proper owner,
Stressing that the Palestinian people will not settle for half or only part of their own land,

The delegation for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hereby:

Calls for the expulsion of the Zionist terrorists that currently occupy the Holy Land and request that control of the land be handed over to the Palestine National Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. We request that the United Nations and several of its member states assist in the building of the Palestinian nation.

Emphasizing: May praise be for Allah and peace upon the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam)!

Is our chirren learning? I think so. Though I could not find any cultural exceptions for honor stonings in the YMCA’s Codes of Conduct.

The delegation comes complete with the patented UN Build Your Own Misogynistic, Theocratic Regime Kit ™ as seen here. Dressing up high school students in burqas while calling for the destruction of Israel and threats of future attacks on the US, finally, someone has taught these kids what the United Nations is all about.

The only real question is whether the YMCA, whose mission statement is allegedly “A worldwide charitable fellowship united by a common loyalty to Jesus Christ for the purpose of helping persons grow in spirit, mind and body”, is living up to it’s creed by worshiping this false idol of feigned tolerant multiculturalism.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the only man in the world willing to stand up to the UN is getting ready to be handed his walking papers. But is refusing to go gently into that good night.

This week Vietnam is taking center stage. Admittedly, the stage is the only thing “center” about Vietnam given it’s hard left Communist regime. But in light of the commies desire to join the WTO, which is being backed by Bush, it seems that I must be An Insufferable Prick and ask that everyone make a ruckus until this is defeated:

Vietnam Convicts 3 US Citizens on Terrorism Charges
By Matt Steinglass
Hanoi
10 November 2006

A Vietnamese court has convicted seven people, three U.S. citizens and four Vietnamese, on terrorism charges. They will all be out of jail in a month, however, and the Americans will be required to leave Vietnam quickly.

US Terrorists in Vietnam!?! What did they do?

Plant roadside bombs? Send anthrax to public officials in the mail? Have CNN embeds videotape them as they sniped public officials with deadly accuracy?

Per a state house organ:

The indictment of the Supreme People’s Procuracy said Vietnamese-born US citizen Chanh, who called himself head of a US-based organization named “Government of Free Vietnam”, organized to send people to Vietnam in 1997 to undertake terrorist activities with explosive at public places and big works such as Lotus statuary, statue of late President Ho Chi Minh in Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh cities.

The group brought to Vietnam 23 kilograms of explosive, 19 detonators, grenades, and over 10,000 propagandizing leaflets to terrorize and undermine the country.

Chanh and his group continued to bomb the Vietnamese embassy in Thailand and the Philippines in mid-2001.

They also plotted to use radio broadcast of the Voice of Vietnam and localities to call upon people to overthrow the Vietnamese government early last year.

This is no defense of their tactics but one of their end goal.

For argument’s sake, let’s not put “terrorists” in scare quotes. But given the oppression of people in the old-school-Stalinists-meet-new-school-business nation, would this not be the time to apply the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” maxim?

Free Trade with these nations isn’t making the people any freer. It’s simply making their repressive governments stronger and multi-national corporations richer. I have no qualm with corporations getting richer but to do so by helping to apply the jackboot to the throat of a people struggling for freedom is un-American at best and complicit at worst.

So look in the corner of your desktop for this final tidbit.

Communist-run Vietnam gave Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s largest chipmaker, a license to treble its investment there to $1 billion, a week before President Bush is due to visit.

In February the California-based firm announced it would put $300 million in Vietnam to package and test microchips that power computers and mobile phones, the biggest investment in the country by a U.S. company.

How presumptuous. It seems that the shortest straw has already been drawn for the Vietnamese people. Again.

The fallout from the Nork Nuke tests continues to travel across the globe in the upper atmosphere, surely bringing with it widespread death via low-dose radiation to everyone in its path.

However, while he can’t help you with your radiation-related medical affliction, Sharpy has pegged exactly what will happen politically as a result of this historical event.

Eager to find out how it all ends? Read the rest. It ain’t pretty.

Allah covered this yesterday but I still found myself unprepared for portly portent of cinema – The Ecofascist Roger Ebert’s dusty-kneed knobgobble of al-Gore’s speaking inconvenient truthiness to power:

When I said I was going to a press screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” a friend said, “Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor…ing!” This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore’s concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless.

Didn’t Leni Riefenstahl do the same thing? Ebert’s love of “relentless” propaganda documentaries is well established. But I digress.

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

And this is the point that too many people on the Right take for granted. Leftard ecofascists like Ebert are the norm on the other team. Deep Ecology as it is called. They do not believe that people strapping bombs to themselves or flying planes into buildings full of civilians is inherently wrong or even constitutes a threat worthy of much attention. Indeed, it can be morally justified if you will just pull your fat face out of your McMeatIsMurder burger (with cheese no doubt) and look at the way America treats dark-skinned people.

Environmentally Concerned 20th trimester fetus: Grandpa?

Grandpa: Yes, Billy?

Environmentally Concerned 20th trimester fetus: Where were you when Al Gore was trying to save us all from ourselves?

Grandpa: Uhhhhh……

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be “impartial” and “balanced” on global warming means one must take a position like Gore’s. There is no other view that can be defended.

I can’t emphasize that enough. “There is no other view that can be defended.”

This is an article of faith so strong that it can’t even be questioned. Usually when it’s being spoken, an embassy is being burned somewhere or a cartoonist is being sentenced to a stoning. What makes a topic so very right that someone is not even allowed to have a differing opinion? I know this is just a movie review but this is nothing short of the Islamofascism of the Left. A fanatical belief held so deeply that your grandchildren should pillory you for the grievous offense being committed not just to your fellow man but future man as well.

What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and, yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize the fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth.” I went around the house turning off the lights.

And that’s really the solution. We should all sit in our homes with the lights off, put down the buttered popcorn and King Size Reese Cups. Excrete the spoils of our existence into our al-Gore sanctioned low flow toilets, wipe our tails with corrugated, recycled toilet paper and never again should a free blade of grass be trampled under our enviro-unfriendly bootheels. This is nothing if not scaremongering, self-hating, nutballery whose only Final Solution is our own suicide.

Somewhere between St. Albans and flunking out of Vanderbilt Divinity School to AWOL on his Vietnam service, this Senator’s Fortunate Shutterbug Son learned that he had figured it all out. For his plans to be implemented, he will need to have the full authority of the Presidency to be behind him – and then some. Be it Prince Albert In Your Can or Prince Albert’s debut at Cannes, campaigning for Mother Earth’s Mad Mullah has been decided by the Big Conservative Corporate Media to be our lot this summer. And if no one’s noticed, this is another foray by Democrats to politicize movies months prior to elections in order the circumvent campaign finance laws.

Al Gore came less than 600 votes away from becoming President of this country and held the 2nd highest office in the land for eight years. If that doesn’t scare you enough to try to reform the Republican Party from within, I don’t know what will.

UPDATE: al-Gore is on This Week with Jorge Stephopottamus.
For some reason, he’s ditched his famous black preacher dialect that he likes to engage in so often at black churches.

Mister Middle-of-the-Road then goes on to say that John Kerry is wrong and that troops should not be immediately withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year because we don’t want to leave to soon and “make things worse than we already have”. He then says that we should immediately withdraw sooner than that.
Classic Gorespeak.

Stephopottami then asked, “How would the country be different if you’d been President?”

Gore’s response – “we would have focused on the climate crisis”.
[...]
“The Biggest Crisis We’ve Ever Faced”.

And there you go, in a proverbial nutshell. September 11th never happened to al-Gore just like it never happened to many other leftists like him. He is a one trick pony. Global Warming, Global Warming, Global Warming. You don’t always get to choose the issues.

Sometimes the issues choose you.

Tiananmen Square is now happy time with Jingjing

No, it’s not Jesus. It’s Jingjing! The next closest thing to a god you’ll be coming into contact with in Communist China. Jingjing represents the super, happy, new public relations tool of the Chicom’s proud campaign to suppress all dissent. But Jingjing is not alone. He comes equipped with Chacha – an elite cyber Sino-assailant who has already escaped death once by the seditious act of being born a female and working for the very government that tried to have her dispatched in the womb. While the Despotic Duo may be omnipresent and omniscient, they are sorely lacking in the Forgiveness Department says one Chen Minli, Maoist mouthpiece of the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau’s Internet Surveillance Centre, in today’s Financial Times:

“In my family, if my child does not lay her chopsticks down properly, then I will smack her, but maybe in your family you are too relaxed about such things,” Ms Chen says. “Each family has its own rules and countries are the same.”

Me Oppress You Long Time!

Except replace “lay her chopsticks down properly” with “toe the Communist Party line” and “I will smack her” with “life in prison” or “death”. However you slice it, it’s a virtual nightstick to any pro-democracy activists in the backroom of a Beijing Police station:

“Now internet users know the police are watching them,” Ms Chen says in an interview at the Bureau’s gleaming new 28-storey building in central Shenzhen.
[...]
Jingjing and Chacha operate by appearing as clickable adverts on local websites and as virtual users of the hugely popular QQ instant messaging system operated by Nasdaq-listed Tencent.
[...]
“He is just like a policeman, interactively moving along with you. Wherever you go, he is watching you,” Mr Xu says.

I feel safer already. But what if this pesky brain of mine starts thinking about inconvenient words like “freedom” or “Tiananmen Square”?

Ms Chen says the mere appearance of the icons makes users think twice before posting sensitive messages. When Jingjing and Chacha arrived on local websites, the number of postings that had to be filtered out because of suspect content fell more than 60 per cent.

When the pair send warning messages to websites under investigation for alleged fraud, the sites’ operators often immediately shut them down, she says.

China’s internet laws do not stop at such crimes. Users are also barred from a range of offences including the posting or even consultation of content judged to challenge the political order, incite secession, promote “feudal superstition” or harm the “honour of national institutions”.

Such laws have been used to jail people who peacefully question the Communist party, and they lie at the heart of debate overseas over the role international internet companies should play in China.

In honor of US companies’ historic complicity in the oppression of freedom around the world, Microsoft has released a new marketing campaign that’s sure to catch on – whether you like it or not.

Let’s try this again comrades.
Where else did you want to go today?

(hat tip: Cranky!)

After wreaking havoc for days, it seems now that violent protests in the Ivory Coast are dying down.

Throwing gasoline bombs at the U.N. Headquarters? This is a bad thing?

“I won’t go home until the U.N. and France leave my country.”

That sounds like a mission I could get behind in this country.

The Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is in jeopardy as it’s been some time since we’ve witnessed President Junior donning the orange neckties. A year ago we were treated to this lip service following Yushchenko’s stunning Pro-Western victory after almost being assassinated several times by the Kremlin:

“The United States wants to do everything we can to help you meet the expectations of the Ukrainian people after this turmoil,” (Colin) Powell said at the start of the meeting.

“I’m sure that on Independence Square you will see hundreds of thousands of people with very bright eyes,” Yushchenko said. “None of that would have been possible without our partners who share the same democratic values as we do, in which I include President Bush and you.”

Bush called Yushchenko on Saturday to congratulate him on his election and on “democracy’s victory” in Ukraine, White House spokesman Brian Besanceney said in Washington.

“The two leaders also discussed their support for the people of Iraq and for democracy in that country,” Besanceney said.

As of a few weeks ago, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was given a sweetcake position in the recently nationalized Russian oil firm Gazprom as remuneration for abusing his position to push for the Northern European Gas Pipeline and to use his Euro connections to apply pressure on former Soviet republics to stay loyal to Snake Pootie-Poot. Ray D. at Davids Medienkritik is, of course, all over it like kraut on a bratwurst:

It is so heart warming to see Gerhard Schroeder looking out for the little guy this holiday season. Not long after leaving office this past November, he took on two lucrative jobs, one with his old Maennerfreund Vladimir Putin at Russia’s state-controlled gas giant “Gazprom.” Of course while he was in office, Schroeder was instrumental in negotiating a multi-billion dollar pipeline deal with Russia and Gazprom on behalf of the German state. His decision to join the company was met with a bit of token outrage in the German media before the subject was promptly dropped. No Watergate knives were brandished and the ex-Chancellor has been largely left to continue about his merry business.

And Schroeder is certainly a busy man these days. As always, he’s deeply committed to the ideals of democracy and social justice. Now his new company, Gazprom, is being used by the Putin government to twist the arm of the newly elected, democratic Ukrainian government led by Victor Yushchenko.

In a few hours, Yushchenko’s fledgling democracy will have to respond to the extortion letter delivered from the Kremlin with the help of Herr Schroeder. They can either accept an almost 500% arbitrary increase (from $50 to $230 a cubic meter) for Russian oil imports or they can have the gas spigot cut off at the start of winter. Snake Pootie-Poot has magnanimously offered the Ukraine a $3.6 billion loan to help cover his punitive pricing that has been rejected just moments ago. Indeed, the borrower would be slave to the lender.

The mods at the Pravda forums have dubbed the situation as the start of “A New Cold War”. Get it? They’re going to freeze them to death. Last century they were just starving them to death. My how times change.

From mod Chornyvolk who is creepily “watching your every move”:

PICTURE the families shivering in apartments without heating, factories grinding to a halt, frozen water pipes bursting in the depths of winter. Welcome to the new Cold War.

At 10am on Sunday, Russia is threatening to unleash the most powerful weapon in its post-Soviet arsenal: unless Ukraine agrees to a fourfold increase in the price it pays for gas, Russia will simply turn off the tap.

We expect no better from the murderous rotten commies but is this the repayment the Ukraine gets who, at one time, held the 4th largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq? Silence from across the ocean from the President who wants to talk like Reagan, walk like Reagan, but Mister – you are no Reagan.

There are two things that should never be mixed: the United Nations and the Internet. Here’s a quick summary of why:

That’s just a start. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

As you’re probably aware, a bunch of dictators, diplomats and whores are getting together in Tunisia (how appropriate) for “The World Summit of the Information Society”.

The goal of the meeting is to decide how best to confiscate income from the United States and redistribute it in the form of laptops to turd worlders all across the globe. That’s what they mean when they use the phrase “closing the digital divide”.

Tunisia, itself a turd-world dictatorship, didn’t appreciate the way the proceedings began…

Such delicious irony. You will see a lot more of this kind of censorship if the U.N. is ever to – God forbid – get its blood-soaked hands on the management of the Internet.

There has, however, been a temporary stay of execution for the Internet, though, as an agreement was reached between 100 countries to create an intermediate international forum to address global internet concerns instead of turning control of internet names and addressing over to the U.N.

Unless your U.S. Senator is Norm Coleman (who is one of the few who understands what a human rights and economic disaster it would be to give the U.N. control of the Internet), you need to contact your U.S. Representatives and Senators and let them know that you don’t want the U.N. in charge of anything – especially the Internet.

While you’re at it, tell your congresspeople to kick the U.N. out of the country for good. We’ve got enough enemies-within without giving them a fucking home in Manhattan.

2008 Democratic Presidential hopeful Robert Mugabe, launched a blistering tirade against international mealticket The United States at a UN conference on hunger that the US no doubt paid for. No stranger to hunger (or genocide or mass rape), as he killed and forcibly removed “colonial” farmers (both white and black oddly enough) from his country, Mugabe spoke Truth to Power ™ and let it be known that Hillary was going to have a fight on her hands. On Bush and Blair:

Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed an unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?”

As if we needed further proof of the need for John Bolton at the UN, our pussy of an ambassador let it be known:

“I believe I can speak for the U.S. government when it comes to Mugabe. They feel he has abused his country, he has abused his people,” ambassador Tony Hall told Reuters at the weekend.

Way to let him have it Tony. He’s shitting his pants as we speak.

Visit IMAO for more.

(via Protein Wisdom)

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has come out blasting the U.N.’s latest attempt to take over control of the Internet.

This time Coleman made it official by reading into the Congressional Record a strong denunciation of the U.N.’s report that suggests that the U.N. should govern the internet WORLDWIDE. Finally, a Senate Republican displays some balls.

Unfortunately, Senator Coleman, that would be wasted effort. It’s time to admit that the United Nations has lost complete control of its own behavior and shouldn’t be allowed to manage the hot dog cart that peddles its wares in front of the U.N. building in Manhattan.

The money quote:

Regulation of the internet has been (thankfully) mild and its expansion and improvement has been largely due to private sector innovation – AMERICAN private sector innovation. If we were to turn the web over to these corrupt international cro-mags, not only would the blogosphere disappear, but within a decade we’d be back to pencil and paper.

The best course of action is to shut down the United Nations and start over. The opportunity for reforming the institution has long since passed. Any replacement organization will have to be run by democratically-minded countries that can provide the kind of leadership that doesn’t put countries like Libya and China on human rights commissions.

But back to the Wide World of Webs. Coleman says that U.N. governance is “out of the question.”

I may consider moving to Minnesota to vote for Norm next time around.

John Bolton a recess appointment to the U.N.?

Personally, I don’t think the President has the stones. Surprise me, POTUS.

8/1/05 UPDATE:

Holy crap! He did it. Good for you, President Junior. Nobody – even the President – can withstand a DOUBLE DOG DARE.