Lemonade

This is amusing. The 41 Democrats who signed a letter demanding that Rush Limbaugh's boss chastise the radio host for his "phony soldier" remark now have the honor of being on eBay. The original signed letter is being auctioned - as a fundraiser - for a charity that Limbaugh has supported for years. The letter is attracting a lot of real attention - and some pretty serious bid money.

A letter sent to Rush Limbaugh's boss demanding he be chastised for comments he made on the air about "phony soldiers" is now on the auction block, and the latest bid is a cool $41,400. (Ed Note: it is up to $44,100 with 108 bidders as of this writing. Link here if interested in tracking it. Or bidding on it - it is for a good cause. )

One hundred percent of the money raised from the eBay auction will go to educate the children of Marines and law enforcement officers who died while on duty, the auction says.

Bids will continue until Friday for the letter signed by 41 Democratic senators and sent on Oct. 2 to Mark P. Mays, president of Clear Channel, the parent company of the conservative talk show host's radio broadcast. The winning bidder will get the letter, the "Halliburton briefcase in which this letter is secured 24 hours a day;" a letter of thanks from Limbaugh and a picture of the talkmeister announcing the auction at a speech in Philadelphia delivered last Thursday.

"This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers," reads the eBay announcement.

I have mentioned before that I do not listen to Limbaugh. But I have to admit, this is a classic "pivot and attack" move - as a large liberal blog put it (no link on purpose) a short while ago when attacking a fellow Democrat. And Limbaugh ups the ante:

"Over the last 20 years, I've been called a chicken hawk. I have been accused of being blindly supportive of the military. Now, all of a sudden, I hate the military. All of a sudden, I'm critical of soldiers who are critical of the war — which I have never been," Limbaugh said in his Friday broadcast.

"I would like to issue this challenge to Senator Reid and the 41 senators who signed his letter. You say you support the military. You say you're big, and you think it's patriotic, and that I was unpatriotic. Well, I would like for each of you, Senator Reid, and the 40 senators who signed, to match whatever the winning bid is. Show us your support for the U.S. military by all 41 of you pro-military people, Democrats in the Senate, match whatever the winning bid is and send that amount to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation," Limbaugh said. Limbaugh sits on the board of the foundation that has dispersed $29 million for scholarships.

$29 million. Pivot and attack, indeed. Limbaugh says he is making lemonade out of lemons. That figure says he already has. How much has the left contributed?

When Zombies Speak To Lucifer

Apparently, the up and coming dictator of Venezuela, (T)Hugo hosted a voice-only appearance of the (hopefully) future former dictator of Cuba, Fidel Castro. The joking included references to the devil.

Castro took part in an earlier broadcast of Chavez's weekly program by telephone in February, but that show aired live only in Venezuela.

This time, however, he went to great lengths to persuade fellow Cubans and other viewers his appearance was genuine.

"I can see you are moving your left hand, and I know you are left-handed. And now I can see you laughing," Castro said to Chavez, in an obvious attempt to persuade skeptics that the broadcast was indeed live.

Apparently to the same end, the two discussed the most recent oil prices and joked, at one point targeting US President George W. Bush.

"This gentleman crosses to the other side of the street when he sees me," Castro said of Bush. "He is too powerful to speak with the devil, with an axis of evil. And you, Hugo, and I represent an axis of evil."

"Don't even think of mentioning to anybody, not even as a joke, that I speak to Lucifer," the Cuban leader concluded.

But switching to a more serious tone, he argued with satisfaction that "the tyrannical power," a metaphor usually reserved to the United States, "is now facing new multiple Vietnams."

The Venezuelan president, for his part, underscored ever closer ties between his country and Cuba, insisting they were heading toward "a confederation of Bolivarian republics."

"Deep down, we are one government," Chavez pointed out.

The "multiple Vietnams" quote should be something that might bear looking at seriously, as is the "one government". line. The Western left is almost completely silent on the dictatorial ambitions of the red-shirted thug from Venezuela. Why is that? They profess to be the champions of democracy, but they have no interest in a budding totalitarian - and virulently anti-democratic - state? Well, not no interest exactly. They flock over for money and attention, don't they? Regardless of where the money comes from.

Winding Down

The Guinea Pig Club has held its last formal get together and dinner. A remarkable group of men with a remarkable history and ties to a truly remarkable surgeon has dwindled now to only 97 living members left from the original 649. The youngest of them is 82. They are fading away now.

The Guinea Pig Club held its 66th and last annual dinner on Saturday in the presence of Prince Philip, its president.

Its members were RAF pilots or bomber crew disfigured by blazes who had their faces rebuilt and confidence boosted by the surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe.

But with the youngest aged 82 and the oldest 102, the club has decided to end the yearly social weekend which sees members fly in from across the world.

Sir Archibald McIndoe pioneered many plastic surgery techniques for the treatment of severe burns. But the genesis of the Guinea Pig Club is part of his real treatment of the badly wounded men he helped. Because he treated more than their burns - he treated their very souls.

Also in the early days of plastic surgery for burns, there was little emphasis on reintegration of patients back into normal life after treatment. The Guinea Pig Club was the result of McIndoe's efforts to make life in the hospital easy for his patients and to begin to rebuild them psychologically in preparation for life outside the hospital. He expected many to stay in the hospital for several years and undergo many reconstructive operations, so he set out to make their stay in hospital relaxed and socially productive.

Unlike many military hospitals at the time or since, patients were encouraged to lead as normal a life as possible. They could wear their usual clothes or service uniforms instead of "convalescent blues" and were able to leave the hospital at will. There were even barrels of beer in wards to encourage an informal and happy atmosphere. McIndoe also convinced some of the local families in East Grinstead to accept his patients as guests and other residents to treat them as normally as possible. East Grinstead became "the town that did not stare".

How much better did he make those wounded men's lives?

British “Animal Rights” Campaigners In Frothing Rage

Well, the British media has given plenty of play to the frothing rage of the British chapter of PETA - because Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, had the unmitigated gall to shoot a - wait for it - metal target. I kid you not. She shot a silhouette target and PETA is foaming at the mouth.

Kate Middleton last night found herself at the centre of a public row over her decision to go deerstalking with the Royal Family.

Prince William's girlfriend - now hotly tipped again as a future royal bride - chose to join a shooting party in Scotland at the weekend, much to the anger of anti-blood sports campaigners.

"It is shocking and abhorrent that she is engaging in blood sports.

"Kate is obviously trying to endear herself to the Royal Family and her decision will do her no favours whatsoever," said a spokesman for campaign group People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

It is not clear whether the 25-year-old - dressed in camouflage gear but, bizarrely, still wearing her favourite dangly pearl earrings - bagged her first 'kill'.

But she was photographed practising with a formidable bolt-action hunting rifle watched by Prince Charles and two ghillies before heading off into Highlands…….

……As she lay prone in the heather with her rifle, which had been fitted with telescopic sights and a silencer to allow her to shoot a stag a mile off, she appeared completely at ease as Charles's ghillies talked her through the firing procedure.

After making sure of her target - in this case a metal practice one in the shape of a deer - she pulled the trigger confidently, birds scattering in fright.

As she fired, one of the prince's ghillies scanned the target with his binoculars to see where the bullet had hit.

He then adjusted the sight of her rifle again slightly before she headed off in pursuit of William, who had already left with a small party of friends at first light.

PETA continues to make a mockery of itself at every opportunity. The last I checked, metal doesn't bleed. Maybe they confused rust sports with blood sports.

Play Darts, Pay Tax

A treasured British tradition may become the next victim of overzealous taxation in that nation. There are plans to levy additional taxes on pubs that have dartboards, host "quiz nights" or field soccer teams. Pubs deemed "popular" will be singled out for higher taxes under the scheme. They are literally proposing taxing fun.

Gordon Brown became embroiled in a new tax row last night as secret plans to introduce a levy on pub quizzes were revealed.

Confidential orders to council tax snoopers, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, say 'friendly' pubs with quiz nights, football teams or dartboards will be forced to pay higher business rates, which will pay for Labour's public-spending programme.

The plan, which could lead to big tax rises for bars deemed 'popular', was last night condemned by the Tories, who claimed it could lead to landlords cancelling quizzes and other social events.

'In his usual stealthy way, Gordon Brown is planning a raid right into the heart of Middle England to tax the pub quiz,' said Shadow Local Government Minister Eric Pickles.

'Labour fails to understand that if pubs are charged extra taxes for supporting social facilities, landlords may just scrap them.'

The pub-quiz tax is disclosed in guidance notes drawn up by the Government-run Valuation Office Agency, which is carrying out a review of every business in the land using a 60-page instruction booklet entitled the Non-Domestic Rating Referencing Manual.

The agency is carrying out a similar survey of all UK homes using a £13million computer database run by secretive American contractors.

So, will they levy higher taxes on homes that have dartboards? I would not be at all surprised if that was the next development. Because pubs that host social events will be forced to charge higher rates to cover the taxes, making them lose to lower-priced, non-entertaining pubs. So the first flush of revenue the government will cease almost at once as pubs drop the activities that bring the tax man down on them. That will leave the government with a new revenue shortfall - so they'll tax something else. The Beatles saw this coming, didn't they?

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
(Lennon/McCartney, Taxman)

The Threat Within

Simon Jenkins notes the letter that was issued by 138 noted Islamic clerics and leaders regarding Muslim-Christian relations. He is not noticeably impressed.

Coming at the end of Ramadan, the letter is impressive. The signatories embrace a global range of grand muftis, imams, sheikhs and scholars from all denominations of Islam, with a wide span of theological influence. The appeal to religious tolerance at a time of tension between Islam and the West is welcome. But what the letter means needs deconstruction.

Religious leaders like to claim headlines by subjecting politics to a downpour of platitude. The letter makes no mention of (monotheistic) Jews, let alone Hindus and Buddhists. It merely invites the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to acknowledge what the archbishop calls “their common scriptural foundations . . . as a basis for justice and peace in the world”. Two religions that embrace “half of humanity” should stand together or, by implication, there will be war.

Such an implication is grandiose, dangerous and wrong. It implies that the Muslim world has a politico-military power that is in some sense equal and opposite to that of Christianity. This elevates the so-called jihadist tendency within Islam to a status that it does not have and should never think it has. It suggests Islam has sufficient power to confront and possibly undermine the West. It implies a balance of power parallel with a balance of theological interpretation.

Such an implication feeds a no less dangerous paranoia in the West. By stating that the “survival of the world” might turn on a struggle between Islam and Christianity, the letter reinforces the militarist fantasies of neoconservatives who see the world as just such a struggle. It is a paranoia which, since 9/11, has driven the “war on terror” and fomented the tension and antagonism to the West to which the scholars’ letter is so vacuous a response.

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation. Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it. The authors of this letter would be better employed vetting their own blood-curdling mullahs and madrasahs than in writing platitudes to the Pope.

What Jenkins is really worried about is the West regarding the war on terror as a war rather than a police matter. Jenkins does not believe that there is a real Islamist threat to the West, apparently. Rather, he states that the real danger is the American right.

When Thomas Paine told America that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again”, he meant by example, not military conquest. His utopianism was a brave, confident and open-hearted one. That of his successors is sinking into the opposite, a fearful, besieged, security-obsessed wimpishness, in which Muslims rightly feel threatened by the arbitrary violence of the American right.

I am more than a little disturbed at a sudden trend in opinion columns that is rather evident today. I think I'll try to work up a post on that.

Anthony at The Irish Spy also has some questions about the letter. His come from a completely different point of view. 

Indoctrination + Suppression = Social Work

George Will has a column out today that really ought to send chills down your spine if you are genuinely concerned with freedom - regardless of your political orientation. The column focuses on the indoctrination of social workers and the suppression of opposing views in American universities. It is an ugly picture.

In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice "from local to global levels." A widely used textbook — "Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skill" — declares that promoting "social and economic justice" is especially imperative as a response to "the conservative trends of the past three decades." Clearly, in the social work profession's catechism, whatever social and economic justice are, they are the opposite of conservatism.

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the national accreditor of social work education programs, encourages — not that encouragement is required — the ideological permeation of the curricula, including mandatory student advocacy. The CSWE says students must demonstrate an ability to "understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination."

At Arizona State University, social work students must "demonstrate compliance with the NASW Code of Ethics." Berkeley requires compliance as proof of "suitability for the profession." Students at the University of Central Florida "must comply" with the NASW code. At the University of Houston, students must sign a pledge of adherence. At the University of Michigan, failure to comply with the code may be deemed "academic misconduct."

Will points to actual attempts at outright suppression:

In 2005, Emily Brooker, a social-work student at Missouri State University, was enrolled in a class taught by a professor who advertised himself as a liberal and insisted that social work is a liberal profession. At first, a mandatory assignment for his class was to advocate homosexual foster homes and adoption, with all students required to sign an advocacy letter, on university stationery, to the state legislature.

When Brooker objected on religious grounds, the project was made optional. But shortly before the final exam she was charged with a "Level 3," the most serious, violation of professional standards. In a 2 1/2 -hour hearing — which she was forbidden to record and which her parents were barred from attending — the primary subject was her refusal to sign the letter. She was ordered to write a paper ("Written Response about My Awareness") explaining how she could "lessen the gap" between her ethics and those of the social-work profession. When she sued the university, it dropped the charges and made financial and other restitution.

There is more - I would urge you to go read it. Will points out that the indoctrination directly counters the 1915 Declaration of Principles made by the The American Association of University Professors which states:

The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the students' immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters of question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness in judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

This is a particularly ugly and blatant violation of that principle. It is systematic and it is a real problem.

No Question About The Timing

Ralph Peters is positively livid over the Pelosi-backed Armenian genocide bill pending in the US House of Representatives. He strongly supports the Armenian position, roundly dislikes the Turks, but is also not blind to the cynical and perfidious intentions of Nancy Pelosi here. Because this bill is not at all about the Armenians - it is about kneecapping American troops. He doesn't question the timing - or the motive.

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.

It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.

For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy. For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This resolution isn't a stand in favor of historical justice. It's an end-run that ducks behind the bench. It's one of the most cynical betrayals in our legislative history - of our troops, of Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish military and of the people of Iraq.

Others have pointed this out as well. Some right here in the comments section. This bill is badly timed for America's interests. Which certainly appears to be what is driving it.

The Ones They Missed

The Opinion Journal todays point out the people that the Nobel Peace Prize committee scrambled over in their zeal to present Al Gore with the prize.

In Oslo Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Àlvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

There are quite a lot more. Unfortunately for those on the list, the Nobel committee in Oslo is more interested in delivering kicks in the leg than in honoring deserving people. This year's award is no different.

WaPo Editorial On Iraq

The Washington Post editorial on casualties in Iraq will, inevitably, be met with frothing rage by the left. Because the WaPo says that there is undeniably progress in Iraq with sharply reduced casualties, both civilian and military.

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

There conclusion is a direct slap at both war opponents like MoveOn and members of Congress, including Clinton.

Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.

That will get 'em foaming. The WaPo also notes that the Iraqis must reach some political solutions. But isn't political progress more likely if the violence ends? I would submit that it is.

The Long And The Short Of Ideology

Mark Steyn's weekly column in the Orange County Register is both a history lesson and a commentary on where the west - and particularly the United States - is failing to grasp that lesson from history. Steyn recalls the famous "Long Telegram" sent by George Kennan, a US diplomat in Moscow, to the State Department. The telegram laid out the coming Cold War struggle with almost eerie accuracy. It also gave, in broad terms, what was necessary to defeat Soviet intentions - a healthy vigorous society with a clear ideology. That, explains Steyn, is what we have lost.

Peter Robinson, a Reagan speechwriter in the last years of the Cold War, posed an interesting question the other day. He noted that on Feb. 22, 1946, a mere six months after the end of World War II, George Kennan, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow, sent his famous 5,000-word telegram that laid out the stakes of the Cold War and the nature of the enemy, and that that "Long Telegram" in essence shaped the way America thought about the conflict all the way up to the fall of the Berlin Wall four decades later. And what Mr. Robinson wondered was this:

"Here we are today, more than six years after 9/11. Does anyone believe a new 'Long Telegram' has yet been written? And accepted throughout the senior levels of the government?"

Answer: No.

Because, if it had, you'd hear it echoed in public – just as the Long Telegram provided the underpinning of the Truman Doctrine a year later. Kennan himself had differences with Truman and successive presidents over what he regarded as their misinterpretation, but, granted all that, most of what turned up over the next 40 years – the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam war, Soviet subversion in Africa and Europe, Grenada and Afghanistan – is consistent with the conflict as laid out by one relatively minor State Department functionary decades earlier.

Why can't we do that today?

Well, one reason is we're not really comfortable with ideology, either ours or anybody else's. Insofar as we have an ideology it's a belief in the virtues of "multiculturalism," "tolerance," "celebrate diversity" – a bumper-sticker ideology that is, in effect, an anti-ideology which explicitly rejects the very idea of drawing distinctions between your beliefs and anybody else's.

It is a fairly bleak column. But you really should read this one, it is an important one, I think. Because he hits on what ideology is being successfully employed right now. It isn't Starbucks:

As I wrote in my book, the most successful example of globalization is not Starbucks or McDonald's but Wahhabism, an obscure backwater variant of Islam practiced by a few Bedouin deadbeats that Saudi oil wealth has now exported to every corner of the Earth – to Waziristan, Indonesia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Toronto, Portland, Dearborn and Falls Church. You can live on the other side of the planet and, when Starbucks opens up in town, you might acquire a taste for a decaf latte, but that's it. Otherwise, life goes on. By contrast, when the Saudi-funded preachers hung out their shingles on every Main Street in the West, they radicalized a significant chunk of young European Muslims. They transformed not just their beverage habits, but the way they look at the societies in which they live.

That is a frightening observation. At the moment, the west and the US is quite short on ideas and ideology. The resultant vacuum is being filled.

Side note: I can't remember if I ever read the entire Long Telegram before or only excerpts. I almost think the latter because in reading it today, two things jumped out at me that I think I would have remembered:

(f) It must be borne in mind that capitalist world is not all bad. In addition to hopelessly reactionary and bourgeois elements, it includes (1) certain wholly enlightened and positive elements united in acceptable communistic parties and (2) certain other elements (now described for tactical reasons as progressive or democratic) whose reactions, aspirations and activities happen to be "objectively" favorable to interests of USSR. These last must be encouraged and utilized for Soviet purposes.

(g) Among negative elements of bourgeois-capitalist society, most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to serve interests of reactionary capital.

Interesting, isn't it?

The Jumbo Gang

About 100 wild Indian elephants have invaded an island in northeastern India. They swam across the river to the island and have been rampaging around, destroying crops and homes and forcing up to 50 families so far into a local school turned refugee camp.

GAUHATI, India - About 100 wild elephants have converged on a river island in northeast India, demolishing homes, feasting on sugarcane and panicking residents, officials said Saturday.

Thousands of villagers were using firecrackers and bonfires to scare away the rampaging animals.

"Dozens of houses have been destroyed in the past three days by adult elephants entering human settlements to look for their wandering calves," said the local magistrate, L.S. Changsan.

Up to 50 families have moved to a local school being used as a refugee camp, Changsan said.

About 150,000 people live on the 338-square mile island of Majuli in the Brahmaputra River, nearly 220 miles east of Assam state's capital, Gauhati.

Officials say the elephants swam to the island from a nearby hill region, beginning their rampage nearly a week ago.

"Forestry workers and officials are on the island, trying to assist the villagers in pushing the elephants away from the settlements," Changsan said. "The job is proving difficult."

The Jumbo Gang strikes again. No, not the elephants. You see, the report also points out that the large number of wild elephants in India are running up against the enormous efforts to clear more land. The land is being cleared in part for the production of crops to be turned into biofuel. Another warning about that was just issued by the International Water Management Institute.

"But to grow biofuel crops you need to use more water and land," Charlotte de Fraiture, a scientist at the institute and lead author of the biofuels study, told AFP.

India and China, which both have over one billion people, "suffer from water shortages which will only get worse as their food demand keeps pace with a growing population, their rising income and their diversifying diets."

The Indian National Remote Sensing Agency reports that about 280,000 hectares of Assam's forests have been cleared between the years 1996 and 2000. So, as the habitat shrinks for the elephants and the  water resources become more and more depleted, who will be left on the short end? I rather suspect it will be the elephants, don't you? It has never been easier to rape the earth. Do it in the name of Kyoto and you can do whatever you want. The Jumbo Gang will protect you.