Conservative Wanderer

“A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.” — Ronald Wilson Reagan

Category Archives: World Issues

Common Sense On The Fukushima-Daiichi Reactor Incident

From Forbes:

What is known is that this is a situation very different than Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.  There was no operator error involved at Fukushima-Daiichi, and each reactor was successfully shut down within moments of detecting the quake.  The situation has evolved slowly but in a manner that was not anticipated by designers who had not assumed that electrical power to run emergency pumps would be unavailable for days after the shutdown.  They built an impressive array of redundant pumps and power generating equipment to preclude against this problem.  Unfortunately, the tsunami destroyed it.

Read the whole thing for the details.

As Charlie Martin said on the PJ Tatler today:

The frustrating part about writing on this stuff is that people don’t seem to have any middle setting between “everything is fine” and “run in circles scream and shout”. So saying “no, it’s not Chernobyl” is interpreted as “it’s nothing.”

So, I’ll take my own shot at it: it’s serious, and needs attention, but Chernobyl it ain’t.

Your Feel-Good Japan Story: 4-Month-Old Reunited With Father

A little gleam of light amidst the gloom of the disaster:

Amid the mangled towers of wreckage and flooded debris, a country in despair is grateful for any cheerful news.

And today, the discovery of a baby girl who had survived for three days after the tsunami that devastated Japan provided just that.

Accounts as to how the four-month-old had survived were lost in translation – but it is believed she was plucked helpless from the rubble in Ishinomaki, in the state of Miyagi.

Against the odds, she was rescued apparently safe and unharmed after being spotted by a member of Japan’s Self-Defence Force.

The 4-month old baby girl is held by the Japanese Defense Force member that rescued her.

The baby and her father flee another tsunami warning.

Kinda warms your heart a little, doesn’t it?

If you have any to spare, please, give a little to help out. Myself, I prefer giving through Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse organization, but there are many other choices.

German Official: Yes, Frankfurt Shooter Was A Radical Muslim

And, somewhat more surprising, CNN is even reporting it!

Arid Uka told interrogators that his aim was to kill American troops, said Boris Rhein, interior minister of the German state of Hesse, where the shooting took place. Two U.S. airmen were killed and two others were wounded in the attack Wednesday on a U.S. military bus at Frankfurt Airport, authorities say.

The 21-year-old man said he was motivated to carry out the attack after seeing a video on the internet the day before, which he claimed showed American soldiers raping Muslim women, according to a German intelligence official who viewed a record of the suspect’s interrogation.

The suspect confessed to the shooting, and said that he acted alone with no helpers, the German intelligence official told CNN on Thursday.

The indications at this time are that the suspect was part of an extremist pro-al Qaeda network in Germany, but that he planned the attack alone without its knowledge, the official said.

He was friends on Facebook with several pro-al Qaeda extremists from a group based in Bonn, Germany, that is known to German intelligence officials, according to the official. That included links to an Islamic preacher named Pierre Vogel and someone named Nessery, who was arrested about two months ago in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Current indications are that the suspect radicalized quickly, the German official said.

Muslims shooting random US service members… but I thought Barack Hussein Obama was supposed to make the Muslims love us again!

Moral Of The Week: News Cannot Be Contained

That’s what authorities in Egypt are finding out, as they shut down ISPs and mobile network providers.

Egyptians with dial-up modems get no Internet connection when they call into their local ISP, but calling an international number to reach a modem in another country gives them a connection to the outside world.

We Rebuild is looking to expand those dial-up options. It has set up a dial-up phone number in Sweden and is compiling a list of other numbers Egyptians can call. It is distributing information about its activities on a Wiki page.

[...]

The international dial-up numbers only work for people with access to a telephone modem and an international calling service, however. So although mobile networks have been suspended in some areas, people have posted instructions about how others can use their mobile phones as dial-up modems.

Egyptians also seem worried about Mubarak’s government snooping on their web use:

The few Egyptians able to access the Internet through Noor, the one functioning ISP, are taking steps to ensure their online activities are not being logged. Shortly before Internet access was cut off, the Tor Project said it saw a big spike in Egyptian visitors looking to download its Web browsing software, which is designed to let people surf the Web anonymously.

“We thought we were under denial-of-service attack,” said Andrew Lewman, the project’s executive director. The site was getting up to 3,000 requests per second, the vast majority of them from Egypt, he said. “Since then we’ve seen a quadrupling of Tor clients connecting from Noor over the past 24 hours,” he said.

No computer at all? No problem!

Even with no Internet, people have found ways to get messages out on Twitter. On Friday someone had set up a Twitter account where they posted messages that they had received via telephone calls from Egypt. A typicalmessage reads: “Live Phonecall: streets mostly quiet in Dokki, no police in sight. Lots of police trucks seen at Sheraton.”

Others are using fax machines to get information into Egypt about possible ways to communicate. They are distributing fax machine numbers for universities and embassies and asking people to send faxes to those numbers with instructions about how to use a mobile phone as a dial-up modem.

Moral of the story? You can’t keep bad news bottled up. Inventive people will find a way, especially with all the choices available these days.

Tunisia And Egypt

CNN actually comes up with a fairly good analysis this time (bold in original):

What similarities are there between the situation in Egypt and that in Tunisia?

Both nations have seen dramatic rises in the cost of living in recent years as well as accusations of corruption among the ruling elite.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has now been in power since 1981 — six years before ex-Tunisian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was forced from office earlier this month, assumed the presidency of his country.

The protest movements in both nations have also been characterized by strong middle class elements. No surprise then that the dissent in Tunisia has inspired some demonstrators in Egypt.

As PJM’s Vodkapundit, Stephen Green points out:

Just because the middle class joins a revolt, doesn’t mean it will become a successful revolution. But I’m hard-pressed to think of a winning revolution where the middle class wasn’t participating.

A very good point, I think.

Pro-Democracy Protests In Egypt

In a move largely credited as sparked by the recent revolt in Tunisia, pro-democracy demonstrators have taken to the streets in Cairo and other large Egyptian cities. Here’s a quick list of reports that I’ve dug up:

Seems like watching this story develop might be a lot more interesting than watching His Obamaness pontificate tonight.

Update: According to the Daily Mail (UK), the protests have spread to Lebanon.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, a prime minster backed by pro-Iranian Hezbollah was appointed sparking angry street protests and fears the move would plunge the country into a new crisis.

Billionaire businessman and former premier Najib Mikati, Hezbollah’s chosen candidate, moved immediately to try and reassure the country declaring : ‘My hand is extended to all Lebanese, Muslims and Christians, in order to build and not to destroy.’

But thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of major cities on what they also called a ‘day of rage’, accusing Hebzbollah of engineering the collapse of the previous unity government of outgoing Premier Saad Hariri.

Things definitely seem to be getting interesting in the Middle East.

Iran Deploys “Cyber Police”

One more avenue for the Iranian thugocracy to oppress the Iranian people:

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran’s state TV says the country has launched its first cyber police unit in the latest attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.

The Internet has been a key outlet for Iran’s political opposition since the disputed presidential election in 2009. Iran also has been trying to boost its web defenses after the Stuxnet computer worm made its way into computers involved with its nuclear program.

Any bets on whether or not the only thing allowed on the Iranian internet will be state-approved propaganda?

Cheney: Obama Learned Bush Was Right

The Hill:

President Obama has “learned from experience” that some of the Bush administration’s decisions on terrorism issues were necessary, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

[...]

“I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he’s learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election.”

Cheney also asserted that Obama has learned that the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply cannot be closed, despite the promises he made while campaigning for the White House.

“I think he’s learned that he’s not going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “That it’s — if you didn’t have it, you’d have to create one like that. You’ve got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.”

[...]

The former vice president cited the Obama administration’s expanded use of drones in Pakistan as more evidence of continuity from the policies of the Bush White House.

“As I say, I think he’s found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did,” Cheney said. “They’ve gotten active, for example, with the drone program, using Predator and the Reaper to launch strikes against identified terrorist targets in the various places in the world.”

As in so many things in the past, Mr. Cheney is absolutely right. President Obama has indeed followed many of the Bush policies that Senator Obama and Candidate Obama denounced.

Things look a lot different once you start getting the presidential briefings, don’t they, Mr. Obama?

Giving credit where credit is due, Obama is perfectly correct to continue these Bush-era policies, because while they may not be perfect, they’re the best we’re going to get in the imperfect world we live in. Two cheers to Obama for realizing this and not messing things up.

Of course, the conservative in me also relishes the fact that following these Bush-era policies might just drive a wedge between Obama and the lefties, especially if Obama continues to move to the right in an attempt to follow the Clinton-Morris “triangulation” strategy. That wedge, if it happens–and there have been some hints, tho nothing really solid yet–would make it much easier for the GOP to unseat Obama in 2012.