Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Cox and Forkum on Arab Arms Deals

Cox and Forkum put the recent arms deals with Saudi Arabia, et. al., in perspective.

Digg Report

Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 4354 Diggs, is a sort of public service announcement regarding a certain site and Google's search engine.

Quite a few Diggs for not a lot.

More on Ahmadinejad

A nice piece on Iranian President Imajihadi (or whatever his name is). The guy's on a tear: executions, interference with neighboring countries, exporting terrorism, forging relationships with every dictator he can. I only wish I had the same sort of energy.

It's a quick read, and worth it.

Russian's Claim on the North Pole to Cause Serious Problems

I'm linking to this post only because of the bizarre headline: "Future War: Russia vs Canada vs Denmark." It's comical, put that way.

Of course, the dispute over energy resources in the North Pole won't be so comical in the future, I'm afraid. Obviously, Canada and Denmark would never go against the Russians on their own. Should things come to a shooting war, the US would be hip deep in it.

Russia and China: BFF

It's amazing how quickly relationships between nations can change. Consider that just a few short decades ago, China and Russia were not the best of friends, sharing such a large border and in spite of their both being Communist nations. Now, they're working together on huge, mainly energy-related projects, and they're even holding joint military exercises.

Geopolitics is a fascinating subject.

Yahoo! Knew More When it Handed Over the Info?

One could take the attitude "When in Rome..." regarding the Yahoo! controversy over information provided to the Chinese government that resulted in a Chinese dissident being put in jail. In fact, that would have to be the Left's multiculturalist view--who are we Americans to define how another country should run itself?

Or, one could take the attitude that it's an evil thing, but it's justified by Yahoo!'s presence in China, which will inevitably help that nation turn to freedom via access to better information. This position's a little weak, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm sure Yahoo! censors its search results and other information based on the direction of the Chinese government. So, it's probably not doing much good even in this regard.

Finally, there's the mere fact that Yahoo! really has little choice in what it does, as long as it's doing business there. Would Yahoo! have been able to refuse to hand over the information? I doubt it. I have a feeling the Chinese government would have gotten their hands on the information one way or another.

That leaves pretty much the only option that Yahoo! should refrain from doing business in China. So far, thought, it's owners (that is, is shareholders) haven't decided to do so. Maybe enough of these sorts of events will change their minds.

Jewish-Muslim Relationship Complex - (Today's "Duh" Post)

I don't really know that much about the history of Jewish-Muslim relations prior to the 20th Century. I probably should.

This essay seems reasonable, but of course it's only one essay and I don't know enough to say whether or not it's valid. I'll have to find some others.

Democrats to Tax the Heck Out of Us

The interesting thing about this post at Pundit Review is that it points out how utterly ignorant the Democrats really are about economics. Each one of the tax increases listed would have a direct negative effect on precisely what's been keeping the economy afloat these past years: investment and production.

Also, read the part about how taxes have risen in proportion to GDP while the deficit has fallen. I'm not a fan of taxes, but understanding basic economic principles would be a nice thing for our leaders to possess.