Fiji Water, Fiji Coup?

Australia has been warning that it looked a lot like a coup attempt was going to be made in Fiji.

THE risk of a military coup in Fiji had become too close for comfort, the nation's police chief said today.

Small groups of armed soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital Suva today while others dressed in camouflage uniforms guarded the president's residence.

Fiji Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes, an Australian at the centre of a stand-off with the nation's defiant military chief, warned that the likelihood of a fourth coup in 20 years has become "too close for comfort".

"This week, I think, is going to be a critical turning point in the whole thing," Mr Hughes told New Zealand radio. "We just have virtually every date on the calendar in December circled …. it's very fluid."

The warning comes as police continue investigations into whether military commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama should be charged with sedition over his repeated threats to remove Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.

Commodore Bainimarama, who is in New Zealand on a private visit, has also called Mr Hughes to resign or be removed over the sedition investigation.

A spokesman for the Pacific Islands Forum said a meeting of the regional grouping's foreign ministers had been called at Mr Qarase's request in a bid to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

I just got a weird search query on my logs. Someone asked how far it was from the Fiji Water bottling plant to the docks. Has it started?

Everything Old Is New Again - Yet Again

Although the candidate had many characteristics that drew strong support, there was one tiny problem. It seems that while his heart was in the right place, as many people saw it, he was handicapped by one little problem.

His religion.

Many people felt he would be guided and influenced by that religion and that he might subjugate the US to that religion. Must be Mitt Romney, right?

Nope. John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

But the same tactics are being used once again. The same and yet yet even worse. Because some people now think bringing underwear into the debate is the way to go. Others just go with the old tried and true generalized smears. But only Mitt Romney is subjected to this treatment. Not Harry Reid. He gets a pass.

Rangel Continues To Insult The Troops

This time it is that people join the Army only if they can't get a "decent career".

I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

In a situation like this, a really smart journalist would ask a couple of questions. Charlie likes to tout the fact that he served in the Korean war. So, why not ask if he was drafted? If he was, does he harbor a resentment against those who were able to get student deferments? Those questions are very pertinent given Charlie's stance. That Charlie also has a severe case of rectal-cranial inversion about the troops and who and what they are doesn't really require any questioning.

To continue to malign the troops in this way shows a complete contempt for the very people who you must count on when this country needs protection. Charlie simply does not care about that. Or about the men and women he holds in such contempt. Shame on you, Charlie.

UPDATE: Others: Sister Toldjah, Stop The ACLU, BLACKFIVE, A Blog For All, BizzyBlog, The Jawa Report Y.A.C.R.W.B, Macsmind, Riehl World View, Hegemonic, Say Anything, Hedgehog Blog, Media Lies, Slublog, 

UPDATE: Many thanks to Pat Santy for linking this post in the Carnival of Insanities. Please take a look around.

Worried All The Time

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I'm worried now but I won't be worried long

Got myself a Cadillac thirty dollars down
Got myself a brand new house five miles out of town
Got myself a gal named Sue treats me really fine
Yes, she's my baby and I love her all the time
(The Kingston Trio (Guard/Glazer), A Worried Man)

"What, Me Worry?", Alfred E. Newman

Time Magazine asks why we worry so much. (One hopes this is the media trying to be funny in an understated fashion.) But they ask some serious questions about why we tend to worry to the point of the absurd over things that might, possibly, maybe, could-be remotely possible while totally ignoring things that we should by now know full well will kill us with a high degree of likelihood.

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. Six Muslims traveling from a religious conference were thrown off a plane last week in Minneapolis, Minn., even as unscreened cargo continues to stream into ports on both coasts. Shoppers still look askance at a bag of spinach for fear of E. coli bacteria while filling their carts with fat-sodden French fries and salt-crusted nachos. We put filters on faucets, install air ionizers in our homes and lather ourselves with antibacterial soap. "We used to measure contaminants down to the parts per million," says Dan McGinn, a former Capitol Hill staff member and now a private risk consultant. "Now it's parts per billion."

At the same time, 20% of all adults still smoke; nearly 20% of drivers and more than 30% of backseat passengers don't use seat belts; two-thirds of us are overweight or obese. We dash across the street against the light and build our homes in hurricane-prone areas–and when they're demolished by a storm, we rebuild in the same spot. Sensible calculation of real-world risks is a multidimensional math problem that sometimes seems entirely beyond us. And while it may be true that it's something we'll never do exceptionally well, it's almost certainly something we can learn to do better.

It is quite long, but there actually are some interesting insights into the way humans assess risk and reward. It also discusses how we could do a lot better at communicating real risk assessment. What this all ignores, of course, is the media's own complicity in the skewing of reasonable discourse about real versus potential risk. While the media will render a "thoughtful" article on the surge of bullying in toddler daycare (said surge consisting of two three-year olds squabbling over the last of the Lego's) with a descriptive title like, "We're all going to die!!!" it is a bit hard to get perspective. Or when they report on "Mad Cow" disease (which nobody in the US has died from) with a headline like, "We're all going to die - NEXT TUESDAY," it becomes a bit hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

But, what, me worry?

Horrible Story

This is a disturbing story, click through at your own risk.

Via Ann Althouse and the BBC article she linked.

Something Is Weird About This Story

I don't really know what to make of a story like this one from the Telegraph. The story is that there have been a rash of rustling incidents in Britain and that the stolen horses are being flown to the US because there is supposed to be a high demand for certain horses. The extent of the problem according to the Telegraph: 60 horses this year.

Gangs are targeting piebald and skewbald horses and the growth in thefts has led to predictions of the worst year on record for rustling.

Once considered deeply unfashionable, piebald (black and white) and skewbald (any other colour and white) horses have enjoyed an amazing surge in popularity both in Europe and America.

A traditional coloured cob – a well-built, weight-carrying mount – can now command up to £60,000 in America, offering huge profits on the £3,500 cost of transport.

According to the International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH), a charity with officers in Britain and America, thieves are using loopholes to secure "passports" for stolen animals, transporting them to Europe or Ireland with legally obtained horses, and then flying them to the US.

Paul Teasdale, the league's chief investigator, said: "There are huge amounts of money involved and people are stealing them for America because that is where the money is."

Allison Williment, an ILPH officer investigating the trade, said: "Dealers are drawing together about 100 horses and then sending them across the Atlantic. Many of these may be legally obtained but we know that some have been found to have horses that are not theirs."

So far this year, 60 horses have been reported stolen in the UK, a large proportion of which are "coloureds". The figure includes 18 taken during the past five weeks.

In the Thames Valley area, 23 horses have been stolen since January, twice the number taken in 2004 and 2005 combined. Of those stolen this year, just 14 per cent have been recovered, compared with 43 per cent last year.

£60,000 for just a horse? With no papers - one presumes one would need to produce papers to command a price like that. According to this site, there are plenty of horses for sale all across the country for considerably less money. They don't list "piebald" but do list "paint" and the prices are a lot lower than the story quotes. In fact there are a lot priced lower than the supposed costs of the flight. Maybe I'm missing something or maybe they left something out that would explain this. But it just looks weird. (My wife kept horses for a while and her thoroughbred, with papers, didn't cost anything like that kind of money. That was years ago - she owned the horse before we were married.)

Hog Heaven

From of all places, the Telegraph, comes this story of hogs running amok all over the countryside of Texas. Now, sure, they cause a lot of crop damage, but Texans, being Texans have figured out how to handle the situation:

Eat more wild boar.

Sport hunters have been taking to the fields and forests since wildlife managers declared the Lone Star State the "feral hog capital of the United States" after the wild boar population rose to more than two million this year.

At least 20 other states have also reported problems because of the creatures' big appetites and bad manners. Across the country, damage to agriculture is estimated to be as high as $800 million (£414 million) a year. "It's got pretty bad out there," said Phil Seymore, 63, a farmer from Merkel, Texas, who has had to give up planting grain after losing thousands of dollars worth of crops to pigs who treated his fields "like a self-service buffet". The omnivorous animals had also been reported as eating small livestock.

Scientists say that the blame lies partly with a 16th-century Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, who landed in Florida in 1539 with 600 troops and a herd of swine. The animals, which were bred as food, have spread across the south-eastern states.

Tyler Campbell, a biologist at the National Wildlife Research Centre in Kingsville, Texas, said: "One of the main factors at work is that they have no natural predators. Also, they have an exceptional reproductive capability."

In Texas, most land is privately owned, so there are no state eradication programmes and farmers are free to take matters into their own hands. This allows them, by running hunts and selling the meat, to make back some of the profits the animals have cost them.

The Animal Uprising™: on the ropes in Texas. Note that Texan pigs are 'way meaner than British pigs, too. They eat small animals. The British pigs can't even catch one policeman! And British pigs beat up nurses, too. Hah!

Massive Demonstration Of Support

For the challenger to Hugo Chavez for the presidency of Venezuela, Manuel Rosales . This is reportedly the largest demonstration ever seen in that country. Venezuela News and Views has video that gives you an idea of just how large this was. Estimates are about 1.4 million people took part. That is a a lot of people.

I am just back from an event that even in my wildest dreams I could not believe it would ever happen. The march or Rosales today and his rally was something that was never seen, something that nobody could have expected. Let's just say that there were so many people that at first I could not even see the main stand. That is, when I joined the crowds on the highway I was so far away that I was behind a curb of the and the crowds did not allow me to go further. Only later, climbing over a building under refaction, could I get a full panorama. Thus the video next, my first YouTube experience as poster!

As usual, Gateway Pundit is the go-to guy for some amazing pictures and an extensive roundup of links. He reports that Chavez had blocked the roads leading into Caracas but was not able to stop this tidal wave against him. Maybe Hugo will actually lose this election. One can but hope.

Dissenting Voice

Ralph Peters has a decidedly different idea of the issue of large, unassimilated populations of Muslims in Europe. Many people have been warning of the impending demographic disaster in Europe as aging welfare state populations fail to reproduce at similar rates to the Muslim groups. Peters says the opposite fear should be on everyone's minds.

November 26, 2006 — A RASH of pop prophets tell us that Muslims in Europe are reproducing so fast and European societies are so weak and listless that, before you know it, the continent will become "Eurabia," with all those topless gals on the Riviera wearing veils.

Well, maybe not.

The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to ghettos take over their societies and extend the caliphate from the Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong.

The endangered species isn't the "peace loving" European lolling in his or her welfare state, but the continent's Muslims immigrants - and their multi-generation descendents - who were foolish enough to imagine that Europeans would share their toys.

In fact, Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds.

Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.

THE historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.

And Europeans won't even need to re-write "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" with an Islamist theme - real Muslims zealots provide Europe's bigots with all the propaganda they need. Al Qaeda and its wannabe fans are the worst thing that could have happened to Europe's Muslims. Europe hasn't broken free of its historical addictions - we're going to see Europe's history reprised on meth.

The year 1492 wasn't just big for Columbus. It's also when Spain expelled its culturally magnificent Jewish community en masse - to be followed shortly by the Moors, Muslims who had been on the Iberian Peninsula for more than 800 years.

Jews got the boot elsewhere in Europe, too - if they weren't just killed on the spot. When Shakespeare wrote "The Merchant of Venice," it's a safe bet he'd never met a Jew. The Chosen People were long-gone from Jolly Olde England.

From the French expulsion of the Huguenots right down to the last century's massive ethnic cleansings, Europeans have never been shy about showing "foreigners and subversives" the door.

How's that for a troubling view of the outcome? It remains to be seen if Peters is correct and folks like Mark Steyn have it wrong. But Peters has a point. There is a very long history of that sort of response in Europe. And Peters also points out that one third of French voters have supported Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front party. That the National Front party is extreme in its anti-immigrant stance is to put it very mildly indeed.

How's that for a troubling view of the outcome? It remains to be seen if Peters is correct and folks like Mark Steyn have it wrong. But Peters has a point. There is a very long history of that sort of response in Europe. And Peters also points out that one third of French voters have supported Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front party. That the National Front party is extreme in its anti-immigrant stance is to put it very mildly indeed.

Balkan Britain

It seems a majority of people polled in Britain now want the country broken up into its constituent parts.

The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border.

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.

There is also further evidence of rising English nationalism with support for the establishment of an English parliament hitting an historic high of 68 per cent amongst English voters. Almost half – 48 per cent – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well. Scottish voters also back an English breakaway with 58 per cent supporting an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish one.

The poll comes only months before the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland and will worry all three main political parties. None of them favours Scottish independence, but all have begun internal debates on the future of the constitution.

To what real purpose, I have no idea. This is similar to the situation in Canada with Quebec, of course. The problem with this is that the constituent parts don't understand that the unified nation is much greater than the sum of its parts. Back when there was a Yugoslavia, they were beginning to export automobiles to the US. (The Yugo was a horrible little car, but so were the early Japanese offerings). What exactly do the former parts of Yugoslavia export these days?

Cognitive Dissonance At The WaPo

After all the cheerleading, after all the gleeful pronouncements of American disaster in Iraq, after all the willful spinning to help shape public perception during the election campaigns the Washington Post has an epiphany.

There are other players involved in the world. Everything is not always America's fault and credible threats of the use of force have a place in the world.

The killers of Mr. Gemayel have not been identified and may never be. But the attack fits snugly into a pattern of provocations across the region by Iran and Syria, which appear to believe that American reversals in Iraq have given them the opportunity to create what Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad calls "a new Middle East" — one in which their influence and radical ideology will predominate. They would make their client Hezbollah the power broker in Lebanon, restoring Syrian suzerainty. They would use Hamas to block any progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian settlement and perpetuate a continuing, if low-grade, war on Israel. And they would continue to bleed the United States by supplying insurgents in Iraq with arms and sanctuary. Iran meanwhile presses ahead with its barely disguised nuclear weapons program: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently promised to increase the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from the current 328 to 60,000.

….

Those most focused on rescuing the Iraq mission — such as the Baker-Hamilton study group — are most interested in the engagement option. We, too, have supported including Iran and Syria in a regional diplomatic initiative to promote an Iraqi political accord. But it's vital to keep in mind that such an effort has a low probability of ending the bloodshed in the near future, even if all parties cooperate.

What's more, no attempt to reason with Mr. Assad and the Iranian mullahs will succeed unless they perceive that the United States and its allies wield sticks as well as carrots. As long as the Bush administration is unable to win U.N. Security Council approval for sanctions against Iran — or impose them through an ad hoc coalition — Tehran will have no incentive to make concessions. Mr. Assad will demand that the West concede him Lebanon and call off the murder investigations that would likely implicate him — unless he worries that his failure to cooperate will result in fresh international sanctions against Syria.

It has to be hard to look in a mirror over there right about now. They have been merciless in attacking the administration and now seem to have come to the realization that the effects of their assaults are not just on George Bush but on America itself. Even the WaPo recognizes what the "realists" do not seem to care about - that you cannot just walk away and give the mullahs and their acolytes an unearned victory. Iran has been the driving force behind the bad that is happening over in the Middle East for some time now.

Welcome to reality.

Packing Heat

Steve Chapman has a good piece up over at Real Clear Politics about concealed carry permits, the facts versus the scaremongering. The fact is that the horrific, lurid predictions that the gun control zealots keep spouting have not come true. And there is a good reason for that.

It may not be true, as some experts believe, that America has gotten safer because more people are legally packing heat. But it's impossible to claim that the change has made us less safe.

At the outset of this experiment, gun opponents forecast that hot-tempered pistoleros would spray bullets at the slightest provocation, requiring the rest of us to wade through rivers of blood just to cross the street. In fact, one of the most conspicous facts about handgun licensees is their mild temper. It's rare for them to commit crimes, and even rarer for them to use their firearms to commit crimes.

A report by the Texas Department of Public Safety found that in a state with more than 200,000 people licensed to carry guns, only 180 were convicted of crimes in 2001, and most of those crimes didn't involve firearms. Only one licensee was convicted of murder. Florida, which has nearly 400,000 permit holders, revoked only 330 licenses last year — about one out of every 1,200.

This record should not be surprising. As a rule, concealed-carry licenses are off-limits to anyone with a history of crime, substance abuse, drunk driving or serious mental illness, and most states require safety training. In any case, people who are inclined to commit mayhem generally don't seek state licenses to carry guns, any more than they ask permission to break into houses or beat up girlfriends. It's the law-abiding folks who apply for licenses.

Why would these peaceable souls want to take their guns when hiking or camping in a national park? Same reason they might take them other places: a desire to protect themselves. Though federal lands are mostly safe, they sometimes play host to crime. In fact, park rangers are far more likely to be assaulted or killed than FBI agents.

Of course the rivers of blood meme still comes up whenever a state enacts a CCW law. Of course the grim predictions simply never happen. And Chapman is precisely correct, when you give law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed weapons, they remain law-abiding. It has always been the criminal types who don't get licenses for anything that have been the problem.

Fun With Insanity

Dr. Sanity has the Carnival of the Insanities for this week up. We're proud to have contributed to the madness.

Fake Money, Real Problem

The Washington Post has a story  about a massive counterfeiting operation originating out of South Ossetia, a separatist enclave in Georgia. The enclave is under Russian protection. (Notice the amount of very negative press that Russia is getting all of a sudden? I have.)

TBILISI, Georgia — The U.S. Secret Service and Georgian police are investigating an international counterfeiting operation that stretches from a separatist enclave in this former Soviet republic to Maryland, where fake $100 bills have been seized, according to senior officials and investigators here. The allegations are supported by American diplomats, U.S. court documents and a recent report to Congress.

From a printing press in South Ossetia, a sliver of land with no formally recognized government, more than $20 million in the fake bills has been transported to Israel and the United States, according to investigators. The counterfeit $100 notes have also surfaced in Georgia and Russia, officials said.

The fake notes have been passed at numerous businesses throughout the Baltimore area and have also surfaced in New York, Newark and Buffalo, according to court papers and the joint report to Congress by the Secret Service, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. The report, issued in September, also said the number of counterfeit notes produced in this region and passed in the United States has "increased dramatically" in recent years.

The presence in South Ossetia of an international counterfeiting ring capable of producing thousands of bills, according to investigators, is a stark example of how organized crime has flourished, sometimes through the neglect or alleged involvement of officials, in areas of the former Soviet Union whose territorial status remains unresolved 15 years after the fall of communism.

….

Georgian investigators said the fake bills from South Ossetia are made with special ink and paper and have watermarks, different serial numbers and other features that allow them to be easily passed off as real. "They are of very high quality," Konstantin Kemularia, secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, said in an interview.

The counterfeiting operation in the region has become another irritant in U.S. relations with Russia, which acts, in effect, as a protector for South Ossetia; Russian peacekeeping troops patrol the breakaway enclave, and most of its residents have been issued Russian passports.

There is a lot of criminal activity in Russia which is, unfortunately, being felt right here at home. Here's the US Secret Service's website. There are sections for knowing your money and a handy dandy primer for playing Spot The Phony™.

The Difference Between Opposing And Governing

The Washington Post is reporting that the Democrats have suddenly discovered that one of their nebulous campaign promises, so easily stated, is not at all easy to actually implement. Their promise to allow Medicare to "negotiate" lower drug prices (which translates to "price controls" on drug manufacturers) turns out to not be all that great an idea in light of the actual success of the prescription drug benefit plan in driving costs lower already. In other words, there are very strong indications that this program isn't broken.

Polls indicate that more than 80 percent of enrollees are satisfied, even though nearly half chose plans with no coverage in the doughnut hole, a gap that opens when a senior's drug costs reach $2,250 and closes when out-of-pocket expenses reach $3,600. By the latest estimates, 3 million to 4 million seniors will hit the doughnut hole this year and pay full price for drugs while also paying drug-plan premiums.

The cost of the program has been lower than expected, about $26 billion in 2006, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cost was projected to rise to $45 billion next year, but Medicare has received new bids indicating that its average per-person subsidy could drop by 15 percent in 2007, to $79.90 a month.

Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called that a remarkable record for a new federal program.

Initially, he said, people were worried no private plans would participate. "Then too many plans came forward," Reischauer said. "Then people said it's going to cost a fortune. And the price came in lower than anybody thought. Then people like me said they're low-balling the prices the first year and they'll jack up the rates down the line. And, lo and behold, the prices fell again. And the reaction was, 'We've got to have the government negotiate lower prices.' At some point you have to ask: What are we looking for here?"

Whether or not you were in favor of this program, the fact is that it is in place now and therefore very difficult to undo. As with all Federal programs they are easier to put in place than to get rid of later. But tampering with the program so soon when there are indications it is working much better than originally thought and at a much lower cost, is a bad idea. The Democrats are running the risk of hurting rather than helping seniors.

And they vote.