Angry North Korea Vows Nuclear Missile Testing

A scary and angry North Korea is vowing to conduct nuclear missile testing unless the United Nations Security Council apologizes immediately for the denunciation of N. Korea’s April 5 missile test and recalls the sanctions levied against them.

North Korea, now seemingly just referred to as a nuclear power, test fired a ballistic missile in early April. The country faced mostly just rhetoric from the U.S. and U.N., condemning the testing. Some insisted the U.S. needed to shoot down any missiles that North Korea launched but the event came and went without incident.

What makes North Korea having nuclear weapons a difficult pill to swallow it that this country seems to be living in another world. The rulers are unpredictable and quick to anger. It appears the Obama administration has opted to deal with North Korea from a position very much unlike that of his predecessor.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of whacked out leaders cannot be a good thing.

Tom Remington

Egypt Orders The Killing Of All Its Pigs

“Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.”

“When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

With the potential for a world wide pandemic of swine flu, Egypt ordered the killing of all of its pigs in their land, some 300,000-350,000 of them. Egypt has no known cases of swine flu but neighboring Israel does.

The majority of Egypt’s citizenry are Muslim, who are forbidden to eat pork. It is estimated that about 10% of the population are of Christian faith and the pigs raised are for Christian consumption.

It has been determined that swine flu cannot be spread or contracted from eating pork, yet Egypt insists it will kill off all the pigs in an effort to thwart the disease and keep it on the other side of her borders.

This is not the first time something similar to this has been undertaken in Egypt. Last year President Mubarak ordered that all pig and chicken farms be moved away from populated areas to stop the spread of disease. Even though the order was given, it was never carried out.

In nearby Jordan, officials closed down the only five pig farms in that country due to what is being described as a violation of public health regulations.

Tom Remington

Abbas Refuses To Recognize Israel As A State

The ongoing struggle for peace in the Middle East continues to hit solid road blocks. Newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognizes that until the Palestinians and other regional Arab countries are willing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, there is not much hope for negotiating for two separate states as the new Obama administration is asking for.

The New York Times reports that Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, flat out rejected any acknowledgment of Israel as a state.

“I do not accept it,” Mr. Abbas said in a speech in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic — it is none of my business,” he added, according to Reuters.

Netanyahu claims that he and his cabinet have yet to finalize their foreign policy. In the meantime, the Palestinians and other supporters are demanding that Israel recognize a sovereign state of Palestine but yet they are not willing to do the same in return.

Peace, peace and there is no peace.

Tom Remington

Russia Will Test Fire 5 New Ballistic Missiles

Russia announced that it will test fire at least 5 new ballistic missiles this years. A new intercontinental ballistic missile system has some issues with reliability. If this initial test firings prove productive, Russia will subsequently seek to do more testing.

The submarine-launched Bulava missile has a reported maximum range of about 6,200 miles and capacity for up to six individually targeted nuclear warheads. It has been hailed as a key future component of Russia’s nuclear forces, although mixed results in testing have tempered enthusiasm.

Tom Remington

Israel Now Numbers 7,411,000 People And Growing

When the State of Israel was established in 1948, there were approximately 806,000 people who lived there, with barely one lone city with a population over 100,000. Today there are 14 cities with at least 100,000 people residing in them and of those 14 cities, 5 have populations in excess of 200,000.

With a population still growing, Israel now is the home to 7,411,000 and 75.5% of those people are Jewish. Arabs make up just over 20% of the population and the remainder is a mixture, mostly those not registered as Jews.

Last year’s growth rate was 1.8%, growing an estimated 125,000 citizens.

Israel is about to celebrate its 61 birthday of independence.

Tom Remington

N. Korea A Nuclear Power. Pakistani Taliban Within 60 Miles Of Nukes

The balance of power is shifting in the world causing some of us to wonder about the future. We should also begin to question whether our insistence on living in denial about the intent of radical Islamists’ goal of destroying the Big and Little Satans (United States and Israel) has left us unprepared to deal with the rise of world hatred toward the West.

It seems that no longer are we questioning whether North Korea has nuclear weapons. It is becoming common enough that it is now assumed that North Korea is armed and we aren’t questioning if they will use the weapons but when.

From Fox News today:

Now North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Il, has the potential to kill millions in Japan as well as the South, and to lay waste U.S. bases and airfields in both countries. It will force military strategists to rethink plans for war in Korea and significantly increase the potential costs of any intervention in a future Korean war. The shift from acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear weapons development program to recognizing it as a fully fledged nuclear power is highly controversial. South Korea, in particular, resists the reclassification because it could give the North greater leverage in negotiations.

While eyes seemed to be focused in the United States on matters at home, we seem to have forgotten much of what else is going on in the world. Yesterday Third Lens writer, Steve Remington, snapped us back to attention, if only briefly, that Russia had broken its peace agreement and had moved its military machine back into Georgia on a march to reclaim South Ossetia. This would give Russia power and control over the movement of oil and natural gas into the rest of Europe.

On another front, Taliban forces in Pakistan moved that much closer to the capital bringing radical forces, who many believe have the objective of capturing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, to within about 60 miles of those weapons.

Oddly enough though, after capturing nearby Buner, and setting up command headquarters, Taliban troops began pulling back today, apparently after brokering some kind of agreement with the Pakistan government or perhaps actually fearing the government’s claim that it would forcibly remove them from the area.

According to an AP report on Fox News, few think the Taliban is content to fall back and wait there.

The government agreed in February to impose Islamic law in Swat and surrounding areas of the northwest in return for a cease-fire that halted nearly two years of bloody fighting between militants and Pakistani security forces.

But hard-liners have seized on the concession to demand Islamic law, or Sharia, across the country, and the Swat Taliban have used it to justify a push into Buner, putting them within striking distance of the capital and key roads leading to the main northwestern city of Peshawar.

As the global balance of power shifts, the rest of the world is left wondering what can be done? Are we prepared to take action to stop this movement by radicals to gain power through nuclear weapons?

Tom Remington

Israel Warns China Its Oil Imports From Iran May Be In Danger

Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, met today with China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Peres told Jiechi that China should play a significant role in trying to convince Iran to halt its ambitions to achieve nuclear weapons.

During the visit, Jiechi encouraged Israel to begin negotiating with the Palestinians and that China supported the peace plan of giving up more land to the Palestinians. In addition to negotiating with the Palestinians, Jiechi encouraged Israel to open up talks with Syria and Lebanon.

It appears that Shimon Peres is trying to convince China that there may be more at stake in this nuclear arms debate concerning Iran than China might be willing to admit. According to today’s Jerusalem Post, Israel is prepared to tell China that if Iran doesn’t back off from developing nuclear weapons and a military conflict erupts between Israel and Iran, China’s growing demand of oil, much of what it buys from Iran, may be in jeopardy.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that Israeli officials were planning to tell him that China’s oil and natural gas imports from Iran could be jeopardized in the future if pressure does not increase on the Islamic republic to cease its nuclear program and a military confrontation ensues.

During his stay, Israeli diplomats will argue that a more proactive stance on China’s part to pressure Iran will serve Beijing’s interests, by helping to avert a military conflict, thus safeguarding an important energy source for the growing and energy-hungry Chinese economy.

Jiechi will be urged by officials in Jerusalem to up the ante in the campaign to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear development work.

As China grows and develops it has made no bones about the fact they need oil and will do most anything to continue their supply lines to get it. We have often speculated what role China would play in the unrest in the Middle East. A few years ago it might have been a stretch to believe that China would have such an enormous demand for oil and natural gas. Welcome to the high stakes of using oil for leverage.

It is safe to say that China is now well vested in Middle East affairs.

Tom Remington

Human Cloning Is Right Around The Corner

While a handful of countries have been successful so far in prohibiting efforts to clone human embryos, fertility specialist Panayiotis Zavos says he has cloned 14 embryos and has implanted 11 of them into the wombs of 4 different women……..having no success yet in producing a cloned human being.

It is certainly a sign of our times and some say a definite red flag that we are living in “the last days”. Whether you choose to think we are in the End Times is your decision but it is difficult to argue that we might just be messing with things God never intended. I’m not going to pretend that I know the mind of God and his detailed plans for all of us but the idea of cloning humans certainly raises a lot of questions far beyond simple moralistic values.

Just as troubling is the fact that while some of us struggle with the whole concept, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people interested in human cloning.

Despite a lower profile over the past five years, scores of couples are said to have approached Dr Zavos hoping that he will help them to overcome their infertility by using the same cloning technique that was used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996.

He said: ‘I get enquiries every day. To date we have had over 100 enquiries and every enquiry is serious. The criteria is that they have to consider human reproductive cloning as the only option available to them after they have exhausted everything else.’

It is simple to quickly see the abuses that can come from human cloning, particularly for selfish and financial reasons but when the discussion changes to a spiritual nature, some have questioned whether a cloned human would actually be a human being, a spiritual human being possessing a soul. Would it?

Of course we can find “good” things that cloning can do for us but any good pales in comparison to the evil that will flourish. Hitler attempted to create the perfect society through extermination of certain races. Successful cloning can go much farther than that.

Tom Remington

Ten Years After Columbine, TIME Still Doesn’t Get It

It was ten years ago that two mentally ill boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed themselves and entered their high school killing 13 and injuring scores more. TIME Magazine marks this anniversary with an article about how, after 10 years, it’s no more difficult for lawful citizens to get guns. As a matter of fact, TIME claims it’s easier and they are probably correct.

Like with most similar tragedies in this country, for some strange reason, of which probably shrinks can’t understand, Americans seem to want to avoid the real root of a problem and attack a symptom. Why did our focus, at least a good part of it, become centered on guns, even 10 years later? TIME Magazine wants to know why we haven’t done more to restrict guns since Columbine.

My question is why are TIME and others still focused on guns and why aren’t they asking what has been done to get into the minds of kids like Harris and Klebod or Cho Seung-Hui who mass murdered students at Virginia Tech? What has been done about that? After all, it is mental illness that brings people like this to the point of killing someone.

TIME went to the trouble to interview John Woods, a University of Texas graduate student, about his take on guns and in particular guns on college campuses. Woods opposes a bill that would allow college students in Texas to carry guns to school.

According to TIME, Woods even thinks addressing the “psychotic” aspect of acts like at Columbine and VT would be a better way to go.

Woods concedes that getting help to the psychotic, would-be killers of the world would probably be an even better fix.

But Woods reasons that because he knew some of the students at VT who got killed that for some reason banning guns will help. He uses the same poor reasoning as I’ve heard before attempting to relate gun control to banning peanuts.

I think if this was peanuts or pistachios causing all these deaths, then we’d be all over it. But there is no amendment about peanuts or pistachios in the Bill of Rights. People on both sides just simply won’t compromise.

As I have said many times before in this debate, we recalled peanuts because they were tainted. If a gun was found to be made with a fault in it we would do the same. But the real problem with peanuts that made people sick was salmonella not peanuts. A poorly run place of business allowed for the growth of a bacteria that made people sick. We didn’t ban peanuts because of poor business practices.

And what does compromise do? If there ever existed factual evidence that allowing law abiding citizens to own a gun caused them to murder, then something should be done. This just isn’t the truth. It solves nothing and helps no one. Agreeing to a compromise only seeks to resolve an argument. Once that happens all focus is taken away from the real problem that existed in the first place.

People refuse to accept the fact that the United States of America did not grant you and me the right to defend and protect ourselves. If you read the Constitution, and this was clearly pointed out and explained in the District of Columbia v. Heller case by Justice Scalia, the Second Amendment infers that our right to self defense existed before the U.S. Constitution was written. The Amendment only restated the obvious. It was not granted.

But TIME keeps questioning why we aren’t working harder to ban guns and why is it that people are insisting on easing the restrictions that already exist. The answer is simple. Currently people must be feeling more in need of self defense. It’s also very clear that when you disarm lawful citizens, crime goes up. People are learning over again what made this country great – independence, which comes from liberty, freedom of oppression brought on by those bent on taking away our freedoms. They have discovered that all these laws and restrictions aren’t working. They’ve learned that the police show up after the crime. They’ve been witness to the state, during time of natural disasters, systematically going about confiscating their guns. They’ve had enough.

Anti gun groups have been allowed to go unchecked and unrestrained for too long. Now people are speaking out against those who insist on stealing our God-given rights from us. Surely if TIME was interested in getting to the bottom of that they could.

Again I ask. Why isn’t TIME asking what’s being done about dealing with the mental illness that causes people to kill others? Mentally ill people who want to kill can creatively find numerous ways and select readily available weapons to get the job done. It does nobody any good to select from all those weapons guns and blame senseless killings on them while infringing on our right to keep and bear arms.

Isn’t it time to move on? Isn’t it time to do the right thing and put our efforts into the real root of the problem instead of thinking that if we can attack a symptom, somehow the rest will magically disappear?

If we made it harder to buy peanuts, would salmonella go away?

Tom Remington

Obama Making Enemies With Israel

It appears that President Barack Obama’s campaign pledge for hope and change now involves making friends with past enemies and enemies of past friends. Coming from a man who regularly told the American people that our foreign policy needed to change because we were angering the world with the way we did business, has shown us his willingness to bow down to Arab leaders and turn a cold shoulder to our longtime friends in Israel causing anger among our friends.

Obama is tossing his weight around and putting demands on Israel never before seen. While Israel remains deeply troubled by Iran’s bent on nuclear weapons, Obama has decided to use this as leverage against the Israelis, telling them that if they want help with Iran, they need to start giving up land and handing it over to the Palestinians.

Coming up is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington, a time when, under past administrations, the head of Israel would be invited to pay a visit to the White House and meet with the president. Not Obama. He chose to inform Israel he would not be “in town” and that the past open door policy would no longer be in effect for Israeli prime ministers.

In return, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his trip to Washington and made an announcement that an upcoming purchase of 75 US-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets would be put on hold while Israel takes a closer look at the deal pending.

According to “TheAge.com”, the Israelis are talking about their relationship with President Obama and the end of warm relations.

According to prominent Israeli political commentator Maya Bengal, who writes for the country’s second-largest selling newspaper Maariv, the holiday is over.

“As Passover comes to an end, so comes to an end, it seems, the days of grace granted to the Netanyahu Government by the American Administration,” says the commentator.

Tel Aviv barman Meir Avraham, 30, says he can feel on the street the tensions being played out between the US and Israel.

“This is one of the the main things that the people are talking about at the moment,” says Mr Avraham, who recently returned to Israel after several months in Townsville.

Where does this leave Israel? Netanyahu has made it clear that they cannot tolerate Iran obtaining nuclear weapons – Iran being a country that promised to use them on the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan”. If the new policies of the U.S are toward strengthening relations with the Arab countries at the expense of Israel, then Israel will be left all alone.

Tom Remington

« Previous Page — Next Page »