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Commentary

Mark Steyn writes on the West’s failure to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions

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From National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

In Iran, the self-declared nuclear regime announced that it was now enriching uranium to 20 percent. When President Obama took office, the Islamic Republic had 400 centrifuges enriching up to 3.5 percent. A year later, it has 8,000 centrifuges enriching to 20 percent. The CIA director, Leon Panetta, now cautiously concedes that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may have a military purpose. Which is odd, because the lavishly funded geniuses behind America’s National Intelligence Estimate told us only two years ago that Tehran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Is that estimate no longer operative? And, if so, could we taxpayers get a refund?

[…]On the other hand, when it comes to “keeping you safe” from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing. There aren’t going to be any sanctions, because China and Russia don’t want them. That means military action, which would have to be done without U.N. backing — which, as Greg Sheridan of the Australian puts it, “would be foreign to every instinct of the Obama administration.” Indeed. Nonetheless, Washington is (all together now) “losing patience” with the mullahs. The New York Daily News reports the latest get-tough move: “Secretary of State Clinton dared Iran on Monday to let her hold a town-hall meeting in Tehran.”

[…]It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. It is far worse than Pakistan going nuclear, which, after all, was just another thing the CIA failed to see coming. In this case, the slow-motion nuclearization conducted in full view and through years of tortuous diplomatic charades and endlessly rescheduled looming deadlines is not just a victory for Iran but a decisive defeat for the United States. It confirms the Islamo-Sino-Russo-everybody-else diagnosis of Washington as a hollow superpower that no longer has the will or sense of purpose to enforce the global order.

The rest of the article talks about what a nuclear-weapon-empowered Iran will mean for Europe and the world.

Videos

MUST-SEE: Michele Bachmann’s passionate and inspiring speech at CPAC 2010

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OH MY. You really, really, really need to watch this speech.

Part 1:

Topics: The “Miss Me Yet” billboard in MN, her son persuades a liberal to be a conservative, grass roots conservative activism in ND, the importance of liberty, Obama’s anti-americanism, bailout mania, federal spending.

Part 2:

Topics: The national debt, nationalization of industry, public/private economy, socialism, inflation, Greece, “fantasy economics”, FDR and the forgotten man, small business, the Constitution, the vision of America, private property.

Part 3:

Topics: The revolutionary war, self-government, American history, the story of America, self-sacrifice, American exceptionalism.

This is great. What I like about Bachmann more than anything else is that she comes across as totally unguarded and genuine. And when you put her in front of a room of conservatives, she just does it even better. This speech is TWICE as good as Marco Rubio’s speech that I posted before. And it’s well-delivered, too.

UPDATE: Muddling Towards Maturity likes the George Will CPAC speech.

Related posts

Commentary

How viking settlements in Greenland disprove man-made global warming

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Consider this article from a professor at SUNY Suffolk, himself a believer in man-made global warming. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

During the years 800-1200, Iceland and Greenland were settled by the Vikings. These people, also known as the Norse, included Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Finns.

The warm climate during the MWP allowed this great migration to flourish. Drift ice posed the greatest hazard to sailors but reports of drift ice in old records do not appear until the thirteenth century (Bryson, 1977.)

[…]The Greenland Vikings lived mostly on dairy produce and meat, primarily from cows. The vegetable diet of Greenlanders included berries, edible grasses, and seaweed, but these were inadequate even during the best harvests. During the MWP, Greenland’s climate was so cold that cattle breeding and dairy farming could only be carried on in the sheltered fiords. The growing season in Greenland even then was very short. Frost typically occurred in August and the fiords froze in October. Before the year 1300, ships regularly sailed from Norway and other European countries to Greenland bringing with them timber, iron, corn, salt, and other needed items. Trade was by barter. Greenlanders offered butter, cheese, wool, and their frieze cloths, which were greatly sough after in Europe, as well as white and blue fox furs, polar bear skins, walrus and narwhal tusks, and walrus skins. In fact, two Greenland items in particular were prized by Europeans: white bears and the white falcon. These items were given as royal gifts. For instance, the King of Norway-Denmark sent a number of Greenland falcons as a gift to the King of Portugal, and received in return the gift of a cargo of wine (Stefansson, 1966.) Because of the shortage of adequate vegetables and cereal grains, and a shortage of timber to make ships, the trade link to Iceland and Europe was vital (Hermann, 1954.)

Here’s where the Vikings settled:

It’s all covered in ice today, though. But it was not covered in ice back then. And that’s because it was warmer in the Medieval Times than it is today.