My Beauty Best Teacher

Until 1980, the United States was the world's leading producer of uranium, but today there are only three operating uranium mines left. This may have been due to the fall in uranium prices, which hit a low of $7.92 per pound in 2001. But with the price climbing to over $50 today, there is renewed interest in mining uranium, which is essential to powering nuclear power plants and important for national security- and it gets even better, because there are still considerable deposits of uranium in the United States, including fairly large deposits that were discovered in northern Arizona over recent years.

Uranium mining leads to cheaper nuclear power which leads to cleaner domestic energy production and a better environment- its just the sort of win-win-win scenario that only someone like Barack Obama could reject.

Via RadioViceOnline:

Last week, without much media attention, President Obama, this time via Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, put the nix on certain uranium mining on federal lands in northern Arizona. Sadly, this too, is political pandering, as, apparently nuclear power is as toxic to the left as is coal and oil power. And, per this fiat, the land in question is off limits to uranium mining for the next 20 years.

Let’s look at the process. The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of analyzing whether uranium mining is good or bad for the environment in this area. It found that the

mining would have ‘no direct impacts’ on protected wilderness areas. The impact on drinking-water supply in the Colorado River was also found to be ‘negligible’... The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the northern Arizona parcels [withdrawn from mining] contain uranium that, mined to capacity, would generate enough electricity to power Los Angeles for 154 years.... [t]he land bureau’s impact statement estimates that [the administration's decision] will cost the region $160 million in average annual economic output…

Northern Arizona currently has an unemployment rate of 17%. But, then again, Arizona in general, and northern Arizona in particular, is “red”. Let me suggest an ugly Presidential thought- "I’m not going to win Arizona anyway, so, it makes more sense to appease the left and perhaps pick up some votes."

One of the earlier actions undertaken by the Obama administration was to put in place bans on mining for a range of precious resources. It was bans such as these that have delayed the recovery in our nation and led to tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes and jobs- and even if the economy revives over the next couple months that does not take away from the fact that policy actions such as bans on mining hurt Americans lives, liberty, and property.

One such ban was a ban on mining for uranium in northern Arizona, which was originally put in place for 2 years so that officials could study the situation further. Obama officials were hoping that their meme that energy mining was destructive and bad and wrong would be proved true and so they could stop mining permanently, but then when the report came back that the mining wasn't in any way bad, they just shrugged their shoulders and banned it anyways.

And the cherry on to- President Obama then has the audacity to argue that they did this to SAVE JOBS and ENCOURAGE ECONOMIC GROWTH, and that now he is going to campaign on this theme- that by stopping the extracting of valuable resources he actually made our nation more wealthy; that by stopping thousands from being employed to extract these minerals he created more jobs; and that he has protected the environment even though the environmental impact from the mining was declared to be 'negligible' by liberal bureaucratic agencies which were likely pressured by Obama administration officials.

This double-speak, hypocrisy, and lying is characteristic of this administration, and the quicker it is gone, the quicker its actions can be reversed, we can begin to safely and responsibly mine valuable minerals, produce cheaper domestic energy, lower the costs of electricity for poor people, and help the working man to get ahead.

The Big picture photo-journal reports on unregulated mining in Madagascar.One wonders if there are local efforts to organize the participants into local cooperative mining bodies of a sort?
(photo courtesy of ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Update: Ethan Zuckerman at WorldChanging profiles the "Mines of Ilakaka"

Mike Mande writes about the almost complete absence of indigenous Tanzanian multinationals in the countries Mining Industry.

With Tanzania having very few companies with the capacity to undertake large-scale works projects such as drilling, mining activity has not created major opportunities for Tanzanian business.
Tanzanian banks have not participated in the financing of these activities partly because they are risk averse in the sector but mainly because of lack of capacity to fund such capital intensive projects.

The obvious benefits of a much more value added industry apart, the question needs to be asked, How can the country begin the process of building its own Southern multinationals? The IPO route? The Organic method? or the Creation Path? Can Tanzanian and or other African expatriates be coaxed into setting these companies up? Can external investment vehicles be put together?

The Cheetah Index carries an article from The Standard Times Press News on Sierra Leone's recovering mining industry:

The ease of artisanal diamond mining has meant significant cash flow into the economy even during the worst war years, but sadly it also fed the rebellion. It is now helping to speed the recovery, finance imports, and generate needed employment. Yet it also draws labour power away from agriculture and into a highly speculative activity which holds the promise of wealth for a few and continued poverty for the majority. One cannot discuss trade and poverty in Sierra Leone without understanding the mineral sector.

Liberals, including those who have seized control of the modern-day Democratic Party, often talk fondly about China and its economic model. But what they fail to recognize about the economic model employed by China is  that it is inherently unsustainable because of its current methods of energy generation. Oh, I know many watermelons (people who pretend to care about the environment just to advance their statist communist desires) like to talk about China's wind power, nuclear power, solar power, or hydro-electric power, but in reality, the majority of China's energy production comes from coal.

Energy production from coal production does not have to be environmentally damaging or harmful to those who work in the industry. In nations like the United States, where there are clear property rights and freedom of labor, workers are treated better, the environment is better protected, and businesses are free to produce as much coal safely as possible in order to maximize profits. For example, there are only about 30 people killed per year in coal mining in the United States, and the United States has embraced clean coal technology which does a much better job of controlling emissions. The United States has made the difficult transition from energy generation to sustainable energy generation, and only needs to continue and expand its efforts in oil drilling, coal mining, and nuclear technology in order to become the cleanest and safest energy producer in the world.

Sadly, environmentalists in America have a different agenda. In their noble desire to make the world a better place, they are putting in place policies in America which force it and other nations to obtain energy from nations around the world that are producing energy in destructive, deadly ways. Rather than encouraging the expansion of safe, natural, and efficient methods of energy generation such as oil, coal, and nuclear, they are forcing America and nations that could be buying energy from America to turn to nations like China for energy generation and resources. And the end result of these environmentalists policies is a world that is less safe, less secure, and were more people die.

China currently generates around two thirds of its electricity from coal-fired power stations, and is the process of dramatically expanding its coal-fired capacity in recent years with the introduction of 562 new coal-fired plants- in fact, an average of two new plants were being opened every week. China uses this coal-production to satisfy its own energy needs and also export energy to other nations.

To sustain it economic growth and growing energy needs through coal power, China is paying a heavy price. Thousands of people die every year in coal pits, premature deaths due to indoor air pollution is at 420,000 per year, deaths due to outdoor air pollution is estimated at around 300,000 deaths per year, and rural populations in particular are suffering from a range of diseases related to coal production, including arsenic poisoning, skeletal fluorosis (over 10 million people afflicted in China), esophageal and lung cancers, and selenium poisoning. A report by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese government found that about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year from air pollution.

China's economic model, which people like the head of the SEIU say should be the future of the United States, is unsustainable and killing its own people. It's model emphasizes state control of people and businesses and the de-humanizing of both. It is a model which stands in marked contrast to the economic model of the historical United States, a model which emphasizes little state control, more liberty given to people to make free economic choices, and strong individual and business property rights, and is a model that embraces the humanity of life. We can see the difference in the two models when we look at China's coal mining industry and electric power generation, and see the difference in the contrasting visions.

Elections have consequences- in the coming elections for US President, Senator, Representative, or even at the local level, ask yourself whether the candidate you support has a vision of the future that pushes for more state control over people's lives or less state control. Those who push for more state control will boast of the economic growth in nations like China- while ignoring the enormous cost in terms of human life and damage to the environment. Those who push for less state control over people's lives will point to the United States, which in contrast to those with state control have much better records on life, liberty, and wealth creation- although not perfect, because man is not perfect.

And for readers of my blog around the world, this applies to you as well- although China's economy is growing, there is a real cost to humanity for their growth, and in the end its statist economy will collapse like the Soviet Union's did. Only economic models that give more power to people and more freedom to individuals and more rights to businesses and corporations and individuals are successful in creating wealth in a sustainable manner while protecting life and liberty. You have a real choice to make in your nation too- state control for short term unequally distributed wealth, or less state control for longer term more equal distribution of life, liberty, and property.

For those who are interested in reading more about China and its coal production methods and coal-powered economy, I suggest you check out an article called China’s Dark Power.

From the Goldman Prize website:

Marc Ona led efforts to publicly expose the unlawful agreements behind a huge mining project threatening the sensitive ecosystems of Gabon’s equatorial rainforests. Ona’s efforts led to an unprecedented victory for civil society in Gabon, with the government adopting new environmental oversight regulations and significantly reducing the size of the mining concession...[continue reading]

On this blog and around the internet, 'The People" is one of the most frequent justifications that are provided by liberals and Democrats for taxing the rich, forcing people to join a healthcare plan, stopping a mining company from mining for minerals on land that it purchased, and generally controlling people's choices and taking away their property.

So just who exactly are 'The People' who benefit when those who are successful are forced to pay higher tax rates when their investments do well or who gain when oil companies are not allowed to safely drill for oil?

I'm sure they don't mean that humanoid extraterrestrials who have paranormal powers will benefit- that would just be silly. (Zenna Henderson?)

What these liberals and Democrats usually mean when they cite 'The People' is that the so-called national community will benefit when the state gains the power to take away peoples property and choices, and that for the good of the people we need to return back to the land through green living and urban farming, lead more self-sufficient lives, and fight back against Big Business which is grinding us under its crushing foot of industrialization. Liberals and Democrats believe that 'The People' will benefit from an enlightened government that helps to progress society, and if this means that the principles of the free market or even popular elections are broken, than so be it- the People are more important than these concepts.

To liberals and Democrats, 'The People' mean the proletariat and traditional middle classes- union workers- who will benefit from a more government that is more progressive and friendly to workers.

As someone famous once said, when liberals talk about 'The People', they are talking about the basic ideas of a national government based on building social safety nets for 'The People' because 'The People' are the national government of progressive socialism.

The way that liberals throw around 'The People' is not new- in fact, the concept was pretty well established by the early 1900's. The German's called the concept of 'The People' the Völkisch movement, and it was one of the motivating factors behind Adolf Hilter and his fascist Nazi national socialist progressive party, which attempted to co-opt private industry for the good of 'The People' in order to provide national socialized healthcare, make people eat healthier food, make industries produce goods for the good of the state, and support the workers with strong union rights in a Big Business-Big Union-Big Government partnership.

What is old is new again, and we have been down this path before, so just be careful that you know what you mean when you start throwing around the term 'The People' in the future.

The good thing about having a record is being able to run on it, and I have a track record of posts on my blog that make Obama pretty jealous. In November of 2008 I pointed to an interview that Obama gave where he said that as part of his 'green energy' policies he intended to use the power of the federal government to bankrupt all coal producers in the United States. As I quite accurately wrote:

Obama is telling anyone that uses any energy at all that he intends to drive up the price of it. Combine this with his anti-drilling stances for oil, and get used to an economy that is starved for energy- high inflation, low growth, unemployment, and bad times.

This recession is not 'Bush's fault'- it is the result of government policies that Obama put in place that have led to a rise in prices for energy, and when it becomes more expensive to produce energy, the result is as predicted. As I wrote in Democrats Energy Policies Continue their Assault on Wealth and Jobs:

Our economy is struggling for a reason- Democrats and their policies are crushing human liberty and freedom, attacking wealth and wealth creation, freezing in social and economic structures, limiting mobility and change, and disincentivizing economic growth. Their policies are quite clear- these energy policies are a great example of how Democrats are increasing 'safety' or 'environmental' regulations that will drive US companies under, kill jobs, and drive business to other nations which have lower standards (thereby causing more harm to people or the environment), resulting in a net loss for society and America. Similar policies are found in healthcare, defense, education, etc.

This is not just fun and games people- these are real policies being put in place by real people that are having real job-killing and wealth-destroying effects. Democrats might want to run next election by churning out negative attacks and finding the one bad thing that their opponent did in the past, but that's just a side-show to distract you from the real results of their policies.

And the energy policies of the Democrats in the House, Senate, and Presidency are bad policies. They are not resulting in any sort of 'safer' environment. The man-made caused global warming that was going to destroy the world in the near future has been proven to be an utter myth promoted by corrupt scientists and 'green energy' producers who both live on kick-backs from the government. And it appears that under Obama and the Democrats administration, oil spills and mining disasters are getting more common and having worse effects. This isn't a shock- being safe is more about kicking back money to the right people now and much less about everyone following the law. And there attempts to kill coal production and mining in the United States just means that an unsupervised and unregulated communist China will produce and mine for more coal, doing far more damage to the environment than if it was done in the United States.

And the negatives of the energy policies of the Democrats in the House, Senate, and Presidency are becoming more obvious. The latest example of their bad policies is the latest rules that the EPA has put out on 'pollution' and energy production. These rules are draconian in nature and by design are supposed to be as unfriendly to energy and business as possible- the exact opposite of flexible and smart policies that allow businesses to thrive in a creative and business-friendly environment.

These new EPA rules are designed to choke job creation, especially in rural areas and states that produce coal, but these states don't vote Democrat and don't give the Democrats lots of wealth, so they think it is okay to hammer those states and punish them for their sense of liberty and freedom and equality.

These new EPA policies are also designed to ensure that consumers are stricken with higher utility bills. Oh, your Al Gores and John Kerry's and John Edwards and Barack Obama's will be able to pay those higher utility bills, but the middle class will be hard hit by these policies and driven into poverty and become a serf to the government system.

Coal plants will soon be forced to install new scrubber equipment that provides marginal improvement in air quality at tremendous expense. Producers of this new scrubber equipment will benefit and thousands of unionized bureaucrats who will be hired to ensure that these new standards are met will benefit, but the quality of air will see little improvement and the costs associated with installing and running these new energy-eating scrubbers will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher costs, or the company will absorb the costs by delaying investments in improvements in technology or safety, or the company will be forced to become more efficient by laying off many workers and employing more automation (they'll also save money by laying off workers because they won't have to pay the ever increasing costs of employing people that Obama and the Democrats are piling on). Or the company will go out of business.

The Washington Post reports that electric bills will jump 12 percent nationally by 2016 to comply with these new policies that the Democrats are putting in place, with residents in areas such as Kentucky and Tennessee seeing a 24 percent increase in their utility bills. These policies are project to eliminate 1.4 million jobs, and those people will no longer be paying taxes any more and will now be sucking down government benefits, all thanks to these policies pushed by Democratic bureaucrats employed by a Democratic President supervised by Democrats in the House and the Senate and supported by Democratic unions and a Democratic media. They are responsible for these bad policies- these aren't Republican or conservative or Bush or tea-party policies that are killing jobs and destroying the middle-class- they are Democratic policies.

When a party pushes for policies that achieve little good at the cost of a great number of negatives, it doesn't matter how much spinning they do and it really doesn't matter how good or bad the individual candidates are who they are running against- that party needs to be thrown out of power until they learn just how much damage their policies do to the life, liberty, and property of the great people of the United States of America.

This is Michigan. Our state is considering giving up our historic lighthouses to PETA to turn into Fish Empathy Re-Education Centers. Our state is desperate to bring in murderers and felons from all over the country to fill our jails, which are emptied because we can't afford to keep prisoners in them. And companies that want to bring businesses here face years of legal challenges and regulations before they can even think of providing jobs and income to the residents of our state. This is what happens when Democrats run a state for many years- and I expect this will be what happens after the Democrats run our nation for a couple years.

According to the Detroit News, PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) wants to buy a historic piece of property owned by all Michigan taxpayers and turn it into a politicized propaganda center. For all the talk about the left wanting to preserve areas in their natural state, it the usual leftwing hypocrisy that PETA wants to take a historic landmark and change it. They have applied to buy the lighthouse in Grand Haven and renovate it into a Fish Empathy Center- this group wants to remind all the decent people relaxing on the pier fishing and all those people whose job is to fish that they are evil murderers and should feel awful about their lives. Hopefully, liberal employees working for a liberal government will make the correct choice and not sell this property to a liberal special interest group.

Also in the Detroit News is a story about California rejecting Michigan's attempt to bring it's felons and murders to our state because our state charges too much for this service. Michigan, plagued by years of Democratic control which brings skyrocketing state spending and yet cuts in vital services like prisons and roads, was desperate to make the Great Lakes State into a penal colony to bring in much needed money to the residents of our state. Michigan already brings garbage in from Canada for a couple bucks a load, so the authorities here, desperate to save jobs that they have spent years destroying with high taxes and extensive regulations, thought it would be good for the bankrupt California to send it's prisoners here. Sadly, Michigan charges too much, and so California said no. Michigan is still in the running to house terrorists from Gitmo, as the federal government does not care about cost.

Lastly, a good explanation of how Michigan found itself in such dire straits is found in the Detroit News story about how a mining company has been battling through years of red tape and bureaucratic annoyances and now has just battled past special interest groups corrupting our legal system. Apparently a mining company wants to bring jobs and income to residents of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan by having them mine needed metals and minerals that make our world a better place to live in. This company has complied with all of the many regulations, fees, and red tape that the state of Michigan put in place to stop it from developing our world and progressing our society, but then this company was sued by multiple (unnamed in the article) environmental groups. They were hoping to find a liberal judge who was filled with empathy for their cause, but sadly got a couple of judges who ruled that there arguments had no legal merit. The mines have not been built yet though, so there is still many chances for people to corrupt the system to destroy legitimate business interests in our Democratic-run state.

According to the AP story, Michigan's Upper Peninsula is 'dying.' The reason for its death is not competition from international companies that are driving businesses out of the region; the reason for its demise is not greedy industrialists who are seeking too many profits; the reason that the UP is on the decline in recent decades is not heartless executives who are married to capitalism- rather, the reason for the death of Michigan's Upper Peninsula communities and economy is liberalism.

Buried in the story there are two lines that jump out to me:

Some hope for a revival of the mining industry that created prosperity a century and more ago. A nickel mine is under construction in Marquette County but has drawn protests and lawsuits from environmentalists.

Logging remains a key employer but has suffered from mill closures and soaring business costs.

Democrats and liberals attack choice and freedom and property rights, instead putting 'government' and 'the environment' ahead of them, and when you put faceless empty entities ahead of people, people lose.

Environmentalists are attacking the building of a legitimate business- a nickel mine- and they are given power and authority and leverage by their friends and allies in government, Democrats. In addition, the 'soaring business costs' that is driving the logging business under is also environmentalists, who are filing lawsuits and protesting such that costs are skyrocketing in this industry as well.

Although these environmentalists think they are doing good- they believe they are protecting innocent trees and preserving wild areas and stopping pollution- the reality is that they are doing more harm than that, driving businesses under, depriving the good people of the UP of quality jobs or a quality standard of living, while driving businesses to seek out the lumber and nickel that they need in other nations that utilize far far far more environmentally harmful methods than we use. The result is a damaged society, a damaged economy, and a damaged environment, all thanks to these liberals who empower institutions so to damage individuals.

UPDATE: Readers Early Light hit one out of the ballpark with this comment:

Loggers have a vested interest in protecting and managing forests. Forests are their livelihood. The libs argue that drugs should be legalized, then taxed and regulated, because all we are now doing is driving the industry underground, where it goes unregulated and does more damage. Why don't they apply that logic to firearms, mining, logging?

It is because they don't think for themselves. They take their cue from leaders in their movement who are not about logic, or the environment, or anything other than destroying America. This hatred of Western culture has a history.

The rise of self-financed development.
Corruption and publicly owned telecom companies.
Africa the newest biofuel battleground.-Der Spiegel
"The energy market should be privatised"-IOl
The rise of consumerism-African Path
Mining privitisation in the Congo.-FT
Successful targeted microfinance-African Loft

In the FT:

Africa’s top 40 companies are emerging as competitors on the global stage, propelled by economies whose performance now rivals the Bric nations, according to new research by the Boston Consulting Group.
According to the study, to be published on Tuesday, 500 African companies have been growing at more than 8 per cent a year since 1998. The report selects the top 40 among them, ranging in size from $350m (€285m, £240m) to $80bn, and argues that these companies, already regional players in mining, consumer industries and services, are now well positioned to “spread their wings and look beyond the continent”...[continue reading]

It seems that President Obama has appointed a group called the Ocean Policy Task Force. The original idea was to plan Federal policy related to ocean fishing- innocent enough. But because our rivers and streams are in a 'crisis', Obama ordered that within 90 days this OPTF come up with a comprehensive plan on how to gain control over and manage a whole range of new areas, including recreational fishing and boating.

The idea is that Obama will create a new Federal bureaucracy through decree that would attempt to coordinate and manage all existing state, regional and local planning agencies that deal with fishing, boating, cruise ships, marine wildlife refuges, marine mining, ports and harbors, hunting, and any "Other Recreation- e.g., boating, beach access, swimming, nature and whale watching, and diving" that may be on or near a river, lake, stream, or body of water.

Under the pretense of ‘protecting’ these areas, Obama has ordered that Task Force to develop zoning laws and regulations which will permanently close vast areas of fishing waters nationwide. The Task Force intends for this to be done December 9, 2009, after which the national government will close lakes, streams, rivers, and harbors to fishing, boating, hunting, or swimming, in order to 'protect' those habitats.

The federal government will take control of these areas regardless of the state, local, or regional laws that may affect them- this is intended to be a yet another power grab by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress.

Dave Pfeiffer, President of Shimano American Corporation explained how the Obama Task Force worked:

"In spite of extensive submissions from the recreational fishing community to the Task Force in person and in writing, they failed to include any mention of the over one million jobs or the 6o million anglers which may be affected by the new policies coast to coast. Input from the environmental groups who want to put us off the water was adopted into the report verbatim – the key points we submitted as an industry were ignored.”

This is the Obama government and this is what happens when you elect Democrats- Task Forces are created by Presidential decree to take over areas of our lives and come up with rules and regulations, and business leaders are not invited to participate in these secret and closed processes but environmental wacko's are.

The original White House memo and (not surprisingly) the Task Force report also contains multiple references to the managing these lands in a manner “consistent with international law, including customary international law as reflected in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was never ratified by the United States and even today there is no way that even liberal Democrats in the Senate would sign on to it, but apparently that isn't going to stop Obama from making the United States follow that treaty anyway.

Here comes the Fishing Czar!

For additional information and sources for this story, see the following two stories- Feds to 60 Million American Anglers: We don't need you or Federal takeover of our coastal fishing and marine resources?

Via Lucianne.

Questions about Nigeria's Banks-Economist
African Union a potential superpower?-African Executive
African mining digs deeper-Knowledge at Wharton
Baguettes versus Softbread-the legacy of colonialism.

David Wessel writes in the WSJ:

In his recent book, "Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier," World Bank economist Harry Broadman argues, "China and India have a growing middle class, with increasing purchasing power and with an increasing appetite for imported goods" -- from Africa. The Asian giants offer Africa more than markets, though. He says Chinese and Indian companies are beginning to expand beyond oil and mining in Africa to telecommunications, food processing, textiles and construction...the importance of the explosion of South-South trade and investment goes far beyond this year's outlook. It could be the opening of a new epoch of globalization -- one in which the global economic might of big U.S. and European companies is challenged like never before, one in which the remarkable success of China and other Asian economies in lifting their people out of poverty is spread -- finally -- to other poor continents.

David Wessel discusses this phenomenon:

George Friedman, CEO of Strategic Forecasting, is a noted futurist, someone who predicts future trends in politics and business. According to a recent article of his, one of the biggest threats to the security of the world (and therefore one of the biggest threats to American military, political, and business interests) is Iran. Iran soon will acquire nuclear weapons, and they may just use them against Israel or other US allies in the region, or give them or sell them to terrorist groups out there who may use them to attack the United States. 9/11 was bad, but a suitcase nuke in New York City is an unimaginable tragedy. This is what Friedman wrote about Iran and the United States options, specifically the Obama administration, on how to deal with Iran:

Obama has three choices on how to handle Iran: First, he can impose crippling sanctions against Iran. But that is possible only if the Russians cooperate. Moscow has the rolling stock and reserves to supply all of Iran’s fuel needs if it so chooses, and Beijing can also remedy any Iranian fuel shortages. Both Russia and China have said they don’t want sanctions; without them on board, sanctions are meaningless.

Second, Obama can take military action against Iran, something easier politically and diplomatically for the United States to do itself rather than rely on Israel. By itself, Israel cannot achieve air superiority, suppress air defenses, attack the necessary number of sites and attempt to neutralize Iranian mine-laying and anti-ship capability all along the Persian Gulf. Moreover, if Israel struck on its own and Iran responded by mining the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would be drawn into at least a naval war with Iran — and probably would have to complete the Israeli airstrikes, too.

And third, Obama could choose to do nothing (or engage in sanctions that would be the equivalent of doing nothing). Washington could see future Iranian nuclear weapons as an acceptable risk. But the Israelis don’t, meaning they would likely trigger the second scenario. It is possible that the United States could try to compel Israel not to strike — though it’s not clear whether Israel would comply — something that would leave Obama publicly accepting Iran’s nuclear program.

And this, of course, would jeopardize Obama’s credibility. It is possible for the French or Germans to waffle on this issue; no one is looking to them for leadership. But for Obama simply to acquiesce to Iranian nuclear weapons, especially at this point, would have significant diplomatic and domestic political ramifications. Simply put, Obama would look weak — and that, of course, is why the Iranians announced the second nuclear site. They read Obama as weak, and they want to demonstrate their own resolve. That way, if the Russians were thinking of cooperating with the United States on sanctions, Moscow would be seen as backing the weak player against the strong one. The third option, doing nothing, therefore actually represents a significant action.

Elections have consequences. Obama is in office until 2012, and we have to hope that getting him out of office at that time will not be too late. In the meantime, there are Congressional elections in 2010, and Congress can put some pressure on the President in foreign policy, so make sure you vote correctly in the coming elections.

Last year I wrote the following in a post called "Bombshell" Experiment: Global Climate Change Caused by Cloud Cover:

Times have to be getting rough on those who worship the Green God; science and reasoning are killing their religion in a way that it never could do with Christianity. For years people have been preaching that humans are the cause of global warming, that global warming is bad, and that the only way to reverse this climate change is to repent and tithe. Symbols of the evil of humans abound to these true believers- SUV's, air conditioning, electric power, comfort, happiness, etc- and these modern-day followers of Mandaeanism inevitably preach that humanity is responsible and needs to turn towards communism in order to stop the rise of the seas and the heating of the earth.

But it turns out this entire religion is built on a false premise- humans are largely not responsible for the changing of the climate and thus bear no obligation to give up any sort of symbols of progress to fix a problem that isn't theirs to fix. That doesn't mean that humans can pollute as much they want- there is still the tragedy of the commons, which can be solved by stronger rule of law and more property rights, which is the exact opposite of what environmentalists preach. But it does mean that government policies discouraging certain things and encouraging other things are built on a faulty foundation of unreality that will do more harm to society than good if continued.

Humans are not responsible for any sort of change in climate, and thus we should dash the dreams of Democrats and liberals and environmentalists and wake them out of their paradise world of railroads, bike paths, windmills, and other relics of the 1800's. CAFE standards, denying permits to mining and drilling companies, using the laws of the national government to stop developments everywhere, and cap-and-trade schemes are unreal, in the sense that they do not reflect the reality of the world. The only thing that these policies do in reality are empower elites in society to take and keep control of the means of production in order to put in place a more unjust world where life, liberty, and personal property is attacked- they do not do anything to the temperature of the globe or the environment or the climate.

The reason that these policies do not work is because humans are not responsible for any sort of changes in climate- the sun is. Shout it from the rooftops and yell it with passion at any environmentalist or liberal or Democrat whose party has been captured by these believers in the false Green God-

THE SUN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH!

Today on RealClearPolitics, I read a good article that touches on this subject again. Here is part of the article called The Galileo of Global Warming:

...Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who seems to have discovered the most important factor that actually regulates Earth's climate, and who is quietly in the process of proving it.

I linked last year to Svensmark's latest big breakthrough, but I didn't get a chance to discuss it much, so I want to give a little more detail now, then show one of the recent consequences of Svensmark's achievement.

Let me briefly sum up Svensmark's theory. The temperature of the Earth, he argues, is regulated by the intensity of solar radiation, but not in the obvious way. It is not that the increase is solar radiation heats the Earth directly. (It does, of course, but not to a sufficient degree to explain climate variations.) Rather, an increase in solar radiation extends the Sun's magnetic field, which shields Earth from cosmic rays (highly energetic, fast-moving charged particles that come from deep space). How does this affect the climate? Here is the crux of Svensmark's argument. When cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, he argues, their impact on air molecules creates nucleation sites for the condensation of water vapor, leading to an increase in cloud-formation. Since clouds tend to bounce solar radiation back into space, increased cloud cover cools the Earth, while decreased cloud cover makes the Earth warmer.

So if Svensmark is right, lower solar radiation means more cosmic rays, more clouds, and a cooler Earth, while higher solar radiation means fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer Earth.

Those who have followed the global warming controversy over the years may recall that cloud-formation is one of the major gaps in the computerized climate "models" used by the consensus scientists to predict global warming. They have never had a theory to explain how and why clouds form or to account accurately for their effect on the climate. Svensmark has smashed through this glaring gap in their theory.

Like I said, Svensmark hasn't just put this theory out there. He has been working to prove it. He has done some studies that attempted to track measurements of cosmic ray flux against surface temperature and cloud cover, with some success. But his big breakthrough last year was a long-awaited experiment at Switzerland's CERN particle accelerator that demonstrated the most controversial part of Svensmark's theory.

It is widely accepted that the Sun's magnetic field helps shield Earth from cosmic rays, and it is also widely accepted that increased cloud cover cools the Earth (though expect this to suddenly come into question as Svensmarks' theory gains ground). What Svensmark needed to demonstrate was that cosmic rays form nucleation sites that seed clouds.

Hence the aptly named CLOUD experiment performed at CERN last year, with the results published last August. The experiment was actually more than a decade in the making, but as Lawrence Solomon explains, it was help back for years by the scientific bureaucracy because of its potentially unwelcome results.

The results are indeed unwelcome, at least for the advocates of the global warming consensus. Anthony Watts explained the experiment at his blog, Watts Up With That? The CLOUD experiment used CERN's particle accelerator to send a beam of artificially generated charged particles—simulated cosmic rays—into a gas-filled chamber and then measured the formation of aerosols, the kind of compounds that can serve as cloud nucleation sites. It found a direct and very significant relationship.

This is not a total demonstration of Svensmark's theory. The Nature paper on the CLOUD experiment notes that "the fraction of these freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapors in the nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions experimentally." But last year's result is a clear demonstration of a crucial step in Svensmark's theory...

Full disclosure- I don't worship the Green God and don't hold true to the tenants of True Science, so emailing me to extol the virtues of your religion and way of life won't have any effect.

To loosely quote Mr. Universe, there is no official government news- the kind of puppet theatre that the government jesters push through their various institutions to the sleepwalking masses of morons- there is only the truth of the signal- what we see, what we know, and what is reality. And you can't stop the signal.

Henrik Svensmark is also the author of The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change.

Times have to be getting rough on those who worship the Green God; science and reasoning are killing their religion in a way that it never could do with Christianity. For years people have been preaching that humans are the cause of global warming, that global warming is bad, and that the only way to reverse this climate change is to repent and tithe. Symbols of the evil of humans abound to these true believers- SUV's, air conditioning, electric power, comfort, happiness, etc- and these modern-day followers of Mandaeanism inevitably preach that humanity is responsible and needs to turn towards communism in order to stop the rise of the seas and the heating of the earth.

But it turns out this entire religion is built on a false premise- humans are largely not responsible for the changing of the climate and thus bear no obligation to give up any sort of symbols of progress to fix a problem that isn't theirs to fix. That doesn't mean that humans can pollute as much they want- there is still the tragedy of the commons, which can be solved by stronger rule of law and more property rights, which is the exact opposite of what environmentalists preach. But it does mean that government policies discouraging certain things and encouraging other things are built on a faulty foundation of unreality that will do more harm to society than good if continued.

Humans are not responsible for any sort of change in climate, and thus we should dash the dreams of Democrats and liberals and environmentalists and wake them out of their paradise world of railroads, bike paths, windmills, and other relics of the 1800's. CAFE standards, denying permits to mining and drilling companies, using the laws of the national government to stop developments everywhere, and cap-and-trade schemes are unreal, in the sense that they do not reflect the reality of the world. The only thing that these policies do in reality are empower elites in society to take and keep control of the means of production in order to put in place a more unjust world where life, liberty, and personal property is attacked- they do not do anything to the temperature of the globe or the environment or the climate.

The reason that these policies do not work is because humans are not responsible for any sort of changes in climate- the sun is. Shout it from the rooftops and yell it with passion at any environmentalist or liberal or Democrat whose party has been captured by these believers in the false Green God-

THE SUN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH!

This is a central fact about global warming that I learned several years ago that blew my mind and illuminated a truth that was previously hidden- that it is changes in the sun that cause the temperature of the Earth the change.

Oh, it is not fully understood yet how changes in the sun affect the temperature of the Earth, but it has been quite clear for some time that changes in sunspot activity correspond to changes in the temperature of the Earth. In times of active sunspot activity, the Earth gets warmer, such as in the 1980' and 1990's when there was considerable sunspot activity observed, or during the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300). And in times of passive sunspot activity, the Earth doesn't get warmer, such as the 2000's when sunspot activity slowed and so did the increase in global temperatures (if any of the data can be believed, seeing as so much of it has been purposefully falsified by worshipers of the Green God) or during the Little Ice Age (1400-1900), which only ended when sunspot activity began to increase again and was not related in any way to the start of the second Industrial Revolution.

But it was not clear how or why sunspot activity affected temperatures on Earth, so those who believe in the Green God rejected this science in favor of believing that they held the power to control the whole globe in their own hands and that they are the source of evil in the world and that they can transcend this evil by denying themselves pleasures and modern comforts and making the world in general better by telling other people that they are evil and working to deny them pleasures and comforts as well.

BUT THE SUN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH!

Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, has for many years studied the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation. His research and data forced him to present a new hypothesis: that solar activity is an indirect cause of global warming, and that the how and why sunspot activity was responsible for temperature changes on earth was a link through the interaction of the solar wind and cosmic rays and cloud cover.

The basic theory is that clouds are formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. The more clouds in the atmosphere, the more sunlight that is reflected off our globe, and our globe cools. When the sun is very active, it's magnetism draws cosmic rays to it rather than earth, resulting in less cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere, less clouds, less cooling effect of these clouds, and temperatures go up. When sun is inactive, it has fewer sunspots, fewer magnetic activity, more cosmic rays hit the earth, resulting in more clouds, resulting in more cooling, and the temperature of the Earth goes down.

And when our solar system, Earth included in it, go through one of the denser star areas of the Milky Way, it doesn't matter what our own sun is doing, because the surrounding stars make lots of cosmic rays and overcome the sun's activity, resulting in many cosmic rays hitting our planet, leading to increased cloud cover, leading to a cooling effect, and temperatures go down.

It is a nice theory, and advances us just a little bit closer to understanding climate change. We now know that major perturbations in climate relate to the position and orientation of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. For example, as Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovic pointed out in 1941, as have many others since, initiation of the major ice ages on Earth correlate with a 23,000-year precession cycle, a 41,000-year obliquity cycle, and a 100,000-year eccentricity cycle in the position of the Earth relative to the Sun. Cyclic variations measured in oxygen isotope ratios that correlate with the growth of ice sheets and biogeochemical responses closely reflect the 23,000-year precession cycle. Also, a half-precession cycle appears to be related to the dynamics of the East African Equatorial monsoon. In addition, the 41,000-year obliquity cycle shows strongly in North American marine depositional records (source: The Science and Environmental Policy Project weekly newsletter).

And now we also suspect that suns, both our own and other suns who we may near by, also affect our climate by bombarding us with cosmic rays that escape from suns when they have periods of lower magnetic activity and less sunspot activity and more cosmic rays and more clouds and lower temperatures, or periods of higher magnetic activity and more sunspot activity and less cosmic rays and less clouds and higher temperatures.

To advance our knowledge a little bit more on this, we have to figure out what function high energy particles might have on cloud formation- in other words, what effect does cosmic rays have on cloud formation- do more of them create more clouds? This is exactly the sort of science that can be tested and verified. And that's what CERN recently did.

Via Ace of Spades I read that the CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment, which examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation, has been successful in producing some sort of results, although those results are currently being actively suppressed by CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer because the results of these experiments "would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate," one imagines that if they prove that cosmic rays indeed do cause increased or decreased cloud cover, it would be yet another nail in the already buried coffin to the theory that global warming is caused by man. These findings are called "bombshell" by the Linking Canada Free Press.

For those of you who are interested in fully understanding how cosmic rays may affect cloud formation which many affect the temperature of our planet, there is a documentary film on Svensmark's theory, The Cloud Mystery, that came out in 2008 and is on youtube. It is broken up into 6 parts- check out part 1 by following this link.

Henrik Svensmark is also the author of The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change.

Tutu Agyare states in The Banker:

“We advise a number of different corporations from different sectors from telecoms to mining companies. Africa is being rediscovered, if you like. Capital is flowing back into Africa; infrastructure is being built in Africa.” He puts this welcome trend down to a number of factors, singling out two for special mention. “Corporate governance in Africa, regardless of what you read in the newspapers, is growing significantly. Security of property rights is also improving rapidly, I believe, becoming more transparent and being better enforced on the continent. And there’s a lesson from history here, Agyare believes. “If you look back to Britain’s Industrial Revolution, what you observe is the abundance of cheap minerals from Africa, an excellent security of property rights and a legal system that worked. Those factors enabled private investors and institutions to grow and to prosper. And I see that happening now in Africa. Like many Africa observers, Agyare is fascinated by the new China-Africa alliance that has developed over the last year or two. “The Chinese are building new infrastructure at cost, something that has not been done in Africa for years, and although there are risks attached to the relationship in termsof neo-colonialism, the absence of skills transfers and cheap Chinese goods flooding the continent, that new infrastructure will undoubtedly allow African companies to flourish.”

via Africaincorp

The news that there are massive deposits in mineral wealth in Afghanistan and that it could be turned into one of the world's richest mining centers does not surprise me at all. One of my favorite video games to play is the Europa Barbarorum mod of Rome: Total War, and my favorite faction to play is Baktria.

The key to playing Baktria, which is the name of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom that sprawled over the easternmost part of the Hellenistic world covering the regions Bactria and Sogdiana in Central Asia from 250 to 125 BCE, is to build a gold mine. The major cities of Backtria all have the potential to build rich gold mines, and in the description section of these buildings you can see the research that people put into the game as a whole. You see, in Bactria and Sogdiana, which is today Afghanistan, there are considerable gold deposits, that were mined even in antiquity.

In ancient times, there were productive gold mines in Bactria, that produced much of the wealth that created an empire that was able to battle the Seleucids, Persians, and invaders from the East, and eventually crossed the Hindu Kush and conquered parts of India. It must have taken extensive wealth to build an empire in this area, and what made ancient empires rich was usually mineral wealth, so I always suspected at the size and extent and wealth that was generated by the gold mines in this region.

Herodotus wrote about the occurrence of gold near the Bactria and how it was mined by ants. The Persian Emperor Darius wrote about how 'gold was brought from Bactria.' Pliny may have mentioned it as well. The biggest problem is that archeology just hasn't been done in this area of the world, so although there are scattered references to the past mineral riches in Afghanistan, there is nothing solid. It was because of that vagueness that I've been bumming around on the internet recently, trying to track down more information on the gold that I suspected lay hidden in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan.

And now, it turns out, I was right! Just wanted to point that out to anyone who cared.