Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Jan 2007

1. Branson. Sir Richard Branson, the entrepreneur who founded and operates the successful low-cost, high customer satisfaction Virgin Atlantic is now getting into the biological business. He announced the launch of a third Virgin-branded company that will work with umbilical stem cells. The company will initially offer parents of newborns the opportunity to put umbilical cord stem cells of their newborns into long-term cold storage. The proposed business neatly steps around the ongoing argument between the pro-death crowd that insists on destroying human embryos for stem cell research and development and the pro-life crowd that firmly opposes embryonic stem cell use. If successful (and I expect he will be), Branson will significantly increase the total amount of stem cells available for sale to researchers in the private sector. As we know from recent research, umbilical cord stem cells are superbly useful in stem cell treatments and research. The more of this stuff that is commercially available, the less need for any commercial exploitation of embryos. Branson helps the marketplace kill off the notion of embryonic stem cells as the vehicle for future cures. Good show and congratulations to all involved. Branson also launched another company last year, Virgin Galactic, that should st art flying suborbital hops in Burt Rutan designed reusable spacecraft. Strata Sphere, Fri.

2. PETA. Michelle Malkin Thursday ran a small piece with connecting links about a PETA animal cruelty trial in North Carolina. Apparently, the same people that think there is no difference between animals and humans are not a bit bashful about slaughtering unadopted dogs, cats and other animals by the thousands in North Carolina. Malkin reproduced a ch art from a blog following the trial at: http://petakillsanimals.com/index.cfm that reports PETA killed over 90% of the 2,100 “companion animals” they received in 2005. Apparently getting these unwanted animals they have saved from destruction by savage humans is too difficult, so they kill them on site, store the bodies in a walk-in freezer at their facility, and them have another company cremate the bodies. Kind of makes you wonder about their rhetoric, for if PETA officially believes there are no differences between animals and humans, and does this sort of thing to animals that become inconvenient to their operation, what do you imagine they will do to humans given the chance? We will hope they get to pay lots and lots of money in lawyer fees after losing in court.

3. Iran. The Bush administration has decided to tighten the screws a little bit more on Amadinenutjob and the Mullahs in Iran. They announced last week that American forces in Iraq would no longer release Iranians captured during action in country. This change in ROE apparently took place last fall, as p art of the administration’s reevaluating their war fighting strategy in Iraq. Apparently the sm art guys thought we would be sending the Iranians a message when we caught them in country and released them. The message the Iranians received was that we were no interested and too weak to confront them and kill them on the battlefield – which is what you would expect them to conclude. Happily, that time is now over. We will hope they enjoy their trip to meet Allah and that Our Guys arrange as many meetings as possible. Additionally, we now have two carrier battle groups sitting in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, either could completely eliminate all Iranian warfighting capability in the Gulf, along with all their oil production and export ability in short order. If you eliminate all Iranian military power along the Persian Gulf and their southern coast, you pull their teeth and eliminate the threat without significant loss of Iranian civilian life. At the same time you also publicly humiliate the Mullahs and the Ahmadinenutjob administration. Heaping on a bit of laughter and public ridicule on these would be a nice touch, but probably would be counterproductive. Better treat these guys the same way you would the weeds pulled out of your lawn – kill it, bury it, and go watch the Super Bowl afterwards. It also appears that Iranians are increasingly bold with their operations outside the borders of Iran. Last week’s raid on an American encampment in Karbala which had at least one blond headed, English speaking combatant, was well planned, reasonably sophisticated in its execution, and resulted in the kidnap and execution of four American soldiers captured by the other side. These guys are thought to be Iranian security forces, and the raid is thought by some as a response to last month’s raid on the Iranian Consulate in Mosul. We still have the captured Iranians from that raid. Perhaps they thought they were going to take hostages and exchange them for their people. Iranians have also been captured in the West Bank, teaching Hamas how to make bigger and better weapons. We also know that they are on the ground in southern Lebanon, training Hezbollah for their next battle with the Israelis. Iran is a growing problem, one that we will eventually have to do something about.

4. Senate. RINOs in the senate are wrestling with series of resolutions intended to cover their sorry carcasses when election time comes in 2008. Conventional wisdom in the Beltway has been that the war was the reason that we lost our congressional majorities. Actually, it was the ascendancy of squish moderates, RINOs that encouraged conservative voters to stay home. Unfortunately, my two senators are making squish noises. Worst is Lisa Murkowski. I sent the following message to both. It was aimed primarily at Murkowski.

1. Correction. Last issue I incorrectly identified Star Kist as a subsidiary of Libby Foods. This was in error. Star Kist is a subsidiary of Del Monte. Thanks to Rich of Rich’s Rants for the timely correction.

2. Halibut. The feds via the International Pacific Halibut Commission decided to cut the daily bag limit for individual anglers in Alaska from two to one fish per day. The recommendation goes to the Secretary of State for approval. The decision marks a couple things: a complete victory for the commercial fishing businesses that have managed to take over control of the commission and its staff; and an acknowledgement that the fishing stocks in southeast and southcentral Alaska are being depleted and something must be done about it. Unfortunately, they did the wrong thing. Craig Medred, the outdoors editor for our local fishwrapper put the decision in perspective in a superb column Sunday. Medred notes that sportfish takes 15% of the total fish caught every year, or about 9 million pounds. On the other hand, the commercial fleet returns just over 12 million pounds of freshly caught halibut back into the sea as bycatch – fish caught that cannot legally be kept or sold. They release just under 2 million additional pounds of live halibut that die on their way down to the bottom. Another 200,000 pounds of halibut are never retrieved from fishing nets and gear each year. Total those numbers up, and the commercial fleet wastes over 14 million pounds of halibut every year on their way to their yearly catch of 66 million pounds. One would think that 80 million pounds of halibut would be enough for the commercial companies so that they would not have to run the sportfish ch arters out of business for the other 9 million pounds. Medred then went on to blast away at the commercial companies, 17 of the 20 largest companies are located outside Alaska. This puts us sm artly back into the same situation that led to the creation of the state of Alaska. That is: decimation of local fisheries by commercial companies owned and operated by out of state corporations, all managed by the feds. It took decades to rebuild the fisheries after statehood in 1957. Note that federal mismanagement of local fisheries has been one of the constants with commercial fisheries nationwide over the last several decades, most of which are dealing with crashing stocks. What has happened is that the commercial fishing companies have managed to gain control of the federal oversight boards over the years, and crafted decisions that have allowed them to overfish the existing stocks while keeping all other competitors (sportfish ch arters for instance) off the seas. Solution? As always, the best solution is to institute some form of ownership and property rights into the discussion. Medred’s article rails against the newly tried Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) for the commercial fleet – a mistake on his p art. IFQs, properly done, will bring a bit of property rights and ownership into the discussion. A next step would be for the feds to shove management of this resource back down to the state of Alaska, which may happen if the feds botch this as badly as they are fixing to do.

3. Fairness. Well it didn’t take the new democrat majority in the House to st art the ball rolling toward the shutdown of talk radio and the blogs. As expected, their vehicle would be the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine, and the lead guy in the House is apparently Dennis (The Menace) Kucinich (D, OH) via his position on the House Government Reform Committee. Remember that the Fairness Doctrine was killed by Ronald Reagan in 1986.; he even vetoed legislation attempting to bring it back; leading to the rise of AM talk radio. The doctrine held the notion that if anyone said anything political on the public airways, they should then provide – for free – equal time for an opposing viewpoint. You would think it would work well. In the real world, the way it works is that radio and TV stations take the easy way out, rather than hunting down those with opposing views, they simply stopped all overt political discourse. The covert stuff, deemed mainstream by the drive-by media, continues on unabated. And any one of you out there that thinks that the Fairness Doctrine ought to apply to PBS or what passes for reporting on the rest of the drive-by media needs to look at the way things were 20 years ago before Reagan reinstituted free political speech on the public airways. Should the democrats win the WH in 2008, expect a real push to shut down talk radio and the online community via this vehicle.

4. Akaka. One of the most racially obscene Bills in recent memory, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007 or the Akaka Bill, was reintroduced on the floor of the senate last week by Hawaiian senator Daniel Akaka. The legislation, which died a quiet death in the senate last year, aims to set up a separate government in Hawaii for those with native Hawaiian blood. This separate government would have exclusive access to a very large pot of money, lands throughout the islands, and voting rights for control of both. Who gets this race-based goodie? Anyone with one drop of native Hawaiian blood. I cannot think of a more sinister, corrosive thing to bring to the body politic in Hawaii than this legislation. Opponents barely managed to lock this thing up last year. Given the new democrat majority in the senate, I don’t think they will be able to block it this time around. Finally, I am thoroughly embarrassed to report that this will likely be supported by the Alaska congressional delegation, p artly because of a long-term friendship between senators Akaka, Inoue and Stevens, and p artly due to some horse-trading for votes – in this case, Akaka Bill for opening ANWR. Last year, Akaka stabbed the Alaskan delegation in the back and opposed opening ANWR. We will see if that position, taken in the midst of his reelection campaign, results in any payback from Stevens. Sadly, I fear it will not.

5. Saudis. We may have found the reason for VP Cheney’s trip to Saudi Arabia a month or two ago, as it appears that the Saudis are keeping their oil production at high levels at a time when per barrel oil prices are falling quickly. One of the tools used by the Reagan administration to destroy the old Soviet Union was undercutting their oil prices via massive production from Saudi Arabia. Over time, the per barrel prices fell to the point where the Soviets had no more money coming into via oil sales, and their already fragile economy imploded. It appears we are reprising the same thing regarding Iran, who relies on an increasingly fragile oil production and export capability for money into the country. Today, the Saudi excess production capacity exceeds that of the best the Iranians are capable of producing, completely rendering their threats to shut down oil exports powerless. As an extra added benefit, this also undercuts the tottering Venezuelan oil production and export capability. Chavez and Ahmadinejad want to export revolution and jihad? Well, they are going to have a difficult time doing so with economies destroyed by their socialism, an economic war with the US, and a little competitive push via low oil prices from Our Friends the Saudis. Maybe this is why we are not going after the Wahhabis as strongly as we should have been. CQ, Thurs.

6. ASAT. The ChiComs splashed a defunct weather satellite in an operational test of an anti-satellite system last week. The interceptor was launched from a fixed site in China and hit a defunct Chinese weather satellite. The resulting debris field will mess up that orbital volume for years to come. The international community reacted strongly to the test, blasting away at the ChiComs for doing it. It may provide a push for the US military to more overtly plan and practice space power operations in the future.

1. StarKist. Question for the day: When is a hike in the minimum wage really a giveaway to your financial supporters? Real answer: always. You’ve really got to hand it to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She managed to turn the financial giveaway to her union supporters via a minimum wage hike at the federal level into a money giveaway to her corporate supporters at Libby Foods, a company headqu artered in her home congressional district. How did she manage to do this? She put in a provision in the House Bill that jacked up the minimum wage exempting American Samoa from the legislation. Interestingly enough, StarKist Tuna, a subsidiary of Del Monte Foods is the biggest employer on the islands, employing by some reports 75% of the people there. The company didn’t want their hourly wages to double, so Pelosi exempted the territory of American Samoa from the Bill. In the past, this story wouldn’t have ever seen the light of day. But thanks to the blogosphere and talk radio, this blatant exercise and abuse of congressional power was brought into light, and gives opponents in the senate yet another tool in their fight against the wage hike.

2. Politics. One thing about the modern political world is that things happen faster, a lot of stuff is not being reported nationally (or even captured in the blogs, for that matter), and the old predictive tools are not working real well any more. After the election, I st arted thinking that the democrat takeover of congress would be more permanent than we thought and hoped, especially if the new majority played their cards correctly. However it appears that the new democrat majority may be on the verge of making the same mistake that the new Republican majority did in 1995 – assuming that the nation had bought into their arguments completely, and that they no longer had to continue the education process about what conservatives were all about. That education process should have been a continual effort every single year they were in the majority. Sadly it wasn’t. The new majority’s power was broken with the government shutdown the end of 1995, an event that the Clinton administration, the federal employees unions, and the media managed to tie sm artly around the necks of Newt and the boys, dealing a blow from which they never recovered. Today, we may have a similar occurrence, with a new congressional majority acting all the world like they believe their own propaganda and are going full throttle liberalism in legislation so far – at least in the House. I don’t know if Bush is sufficiently adept at breaking the new majority like Clinton did in 1995, but I suspect that Bush may be setting up such an event as he clears the decks on Iraq and prepares to take action against Iran. The new majority may last a while, but I am increasingly more hopeful that they will not like their newly found power a lot. And none of this will be the result of anything the minority leadership will be able to bring to the table. It should be an interesting, if frustrating ride over the next couple of years.

3. Iran. Concurrently with President Bush’s speech on Iraq last week was a raid in Irbil, the largest city in Northern Iraq. American forces raided a building flying an Iranian flag that has been described by some as an Iranian consulate. We captured five Iranians, including the guy that heads up all Iranian terrorist activities for the mullahs, assuming the early reports were accurate. We also seized laptops, documents, phone and contact lists. Irbil is in the he art of Kurdish controlled p art of Iraq, and we didn’t ask permission, so the Kurds were highly irritated with the action. This publicly displayed irritation may or may not have been for show. We reportedly turned over the building to the Kurds once we finished with it. The Iranians responded to the raid by shrilly demanding the release of those captured and making loud noises about the sanctity of diplomatic missions. Imagine that, the same group of thugs that seized and held the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 are worried about such niceties as diplomatic immunity. We hope the water boarding is going well as the Iranians are quickly being debriefed. Big Lizards, Sun.

4. Stem Cells. President Bush’s decision to oppose federal funding for embryonic stem cell research has been reviled by the pro-death crowd, mostly on the grounds that as the popularity of abortion continues to fall among the young, the pro-death crowd needs a new and reason to keep on killing babies. And what better reason to kill the young than to keep the old alive? But Bush’s opposition has worked out nicely, giving fast-moving research in the field time to solve the moral dilemma, undercutting the rationale for using embryonic stem cells. Science has moved on, with the most recent announcement of stem cells in amniotic fluid. Researchers were able to extract stem cells without harm to either the mother or unborn and successfully use them in stem cell research. The announcement was timed to coincide with Pelosi’s 100 Hours legislation to force federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Nice timing, that. As an aside, the marketplace as always works very well here, for there is a lot of money chasing stem cell research out there, but little of that chasing research to embryonic stem cell research. Why is that? It is because embryonic stem cells are apparently not well enough differentiated and the incidence of uncontrolled, cancerous growth is high. They don’t work well, and the money is not chasing that research. Big Lizards, Mon.

5. Iraq. Another petty good week in Iraq just ended. The diplomatic workup preceding Bush’s speech on Iraq apparently got Prime Minister Maliki’s attention, as he warned all militias that unless they lay down their arms and disband, they are on their own when the Americans show up. Maliki is in a tough position. He is beholden to the Shiite militias, primarily Al Sadr’s Mahdi Militia, which gets a great deal of support from Iran. We know that. He knows that we know that. And I expect that we have let him know what we think about it in no uncertain terms. The entire country is pacified with the exception of Anbar province and Baghdad. Baghdad is next on the cleanup list. I am ambivalent about the deployment of more troops to Baghdad to assist the cleanup, as it is an operational decision. I support whatever the commanders believe they need. Congress ought to do likewise. Maliki appointed a General to head up the Baghdad effort, and he has decided to use Kurds as his armed forces of choice – which is very bad news for the militias. Preparation for this operation is serious enough that Al Sadr has st arted publicly whining about being under attack, and reports have st arted hitting the net about Al Qaida and Iranian operatives fleeing Baghdad before the operation even begins. If they are out in the open running away, they will be a bit easier to find and kill. This operation may not take all that long and may very be over before congress stops arguing about whether or not to approve the troop surge. Captain’s Qu arters, Thurs.

6. Nifong. Democrat prosecutor in the Duke rape case Mike Nifong threw in the towel and asked the state to replace him as prosecutor on the case. His case had been unraveling over the last several weeks with successive reports that he had never interviewed the victim; that the victim was pregnant; that he and the lab had conspired to hide the DNA results from the defense; that the victim had changed her story time after time after time to match the story Nifong was trying to tell the court; that she had DNA on her from at least five different sexual encounters – none of which were members of the lacrosse team. Shortly after Nifong was replaced, the families hit the airways promising lawsuits against him and his office for the rest of his life. They probably ought to include the faculty lynch mob at Duke in those lawsuits. Twenty years ago, the movie Fatal Attraction was an attention getting cautionary tale for men considering extramarital affairs. The Duke rape case ought to be a similar attention getting event to students wanting to invite strippers to their off-campus drunken brawls. Nothing good can come of it, and should things go wrong, it can change your lives forever. Captain’s Qu arters, Mon.

1. CENTCOM. President Bush has apparently decided to reconstruct his war team with the replacement of two top generals in the Middle East. First, General George Casey, commander of ground forces in Iraq has been replaced by Lt Gen David Patraeus. Patraeus was successful in his command of the 101 st Airborne in Iraq in pacifying the locals, working with the tribal chieftains, and destroying the enemy in place. Bush believes he will be successful in doing the same thing in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Observers also believe this will coincide with a crackdown on armed militias currently running wild in central Iraq – especially if the Iraqi government chooses to support and p articipate in the effort. They should, for it represents a way out of the current stalemate. CENTCOM will also be getting a new CINC, where Admiral Fallon from PACOM has been selected to replace General Abizaid. Ralph Peters believes this selection may be significant as it indicates a shift away from operations in Iraq to future operations in the Persian Gulf and Iran. The USN executed a nasty little war against Iran in the Gulf in the late 1980s when the Iranians attempted to blow up tankers and otherwise disrupt shipping from the Gulf. They were annihilated in place. Given that the majority of money, IEDs, assistance and support for the insurgency have come from Iran, moving the central focus of the war from Iraq to Iran is an excellent move. Additionally, the majority of producing Iranian oil wells are located in the northern Persian Gulf. Those oil platforms can be seized, removed from production, and the southern p art of Iran cleansed of all naval weaponry in short order. This will also defund the Iranians, for they will be unable to sell oil promised to China and other customers. Going to be tough to build your nukes if there is no oil flowing. Appears that Bush is preparing to do what he should have done years ago – and what Rumsfeld recommended he do – go after the Iranians.

2. Somalia. Payback is a bitch. An invasion force composed primarily of Ethiopians with some undetermined Kenyan and American assistance invaded Somalia and cleaned out the jihadis of the Islamic Courts Union (any government that uses the ICU acronym, usually used here in the US to describe hospital intensive care units – is not long for this world). The attack took place over Christmas and the jihadi thugs ran like scalded dogs into the jungles, across the Red Sea to Yemen. A bunch holed up in a coastal city where they were killed in place by Ethiopian and American naval forces offshore.

3. Methane. Residents of the Denali Borough, a sparsely populated rural area near Denali State and National Parks in central Alaska are replaying a foolish argument lost to anti-development greens in the MatSu Valley a couple years ago. The issue once again is coal bed methane, which is produced by drilling a number of small wells into coal seams and producing the natural gas that evolves off the coal. We here in Alaska have a bunch of coal. Unfortunately it is of somewhat lower grade, as it is high in sulfur content, so it is not used widely any more for energy. We have migrated mostly to natural gas which is not so widely available statewide for the majority of our electrical and heating needs. Coal bed methane is a way to both produce more natural gas and make it widely available, as there are coal beds literally everywhere in the state. Coal bed methane fields are a connected series of small wells and pads for pumping the natural gas through the connecting gaslines. A pad can measure ten or fifteen feet on a side. They can be set up in your backyard should you give permission. The fight in the MatSu, won by a coalition of NIMBYs and greens shut down a proposed coal bed methane field planned throughout the Valley over fears of well and groundwater contamination. Here in Alaska, subsurface mineral rights are not owned by property owners who own surface rights. Rather they are retained by the State of Alaska. This means that a producer can force access to private property (they can, but haven’t to the best of my knowledge due to damaging PR) and drill wells to produce whatever is beneath the property. In the case of the MatSu, the company was going to rent space on private property, pay a monthly fee to the owner, for their drilling and production pads by paying rent to the property owners. If a property owner didn’t want a well, they didn’t get one. A lot of property owners thought this would be a very good thing. A lot didn’t. The greens and NIMBYs managed to raise enough of a stink that the company eventually withdrew its proposed field, hosing the individual property owners that wanted them on their land. Today, as the natural gas wells in Cook Inlet and on the upper Kenai draw down, become depleted, natural gas prices are skyrocketing. The MatSu food fight is coming back to bite everyone in the area as we shell out to cover 30% price increases for natural gas this year alone. The Denali Borough is reprising the same argument by restricting the area in the Borough that the exploration companies can drill and produce. They do not have the people in place that will be touched by this proposal, as their population is far lower than the MatSu. They do not have the right to restrict natural resource development within the Borough for they do not own the property rights. The State of Alaska has not yet permitted the proposed coal bed methane exploration effort. We will hope the Palin administration, which is facing an environmentalist onslaught on multiple fronts, does the right thing and approves the exploration permits. Coal bed methane exploration and production is clean, has a small, relatively unobtrusive footprint, and we need the gas sooner than later. ADN, Sun.

4. Mine Tax. The latest ploy by the anti-development crowd to derail the proposed Pebble Mine north of Lake Iliamna is an effort to put a new tax on hard-rock mining on the state ballot. It appears that the most recent version of the idea comes from Bob Gilliam, President of McKinley Capital Management, who also owns a lodge in the Iliamna area and views it as his own private playground. Gilliam has generously funded the anti-mining forces with a boatload of money, played prominently in the Knowles anti-development campaign for governor last year, and is doing everything humanly possible to derail the mine. Now he has apparently turned to a ballot initiative levying a tax on mining as a solution. There are also so-called conservative Republicans that support the tax as a way to shut down new mining efforts, something which modifies their ideology from conservative to RINO up here. Should this argument begin, it may be difficult to win it, as the hard-rock mining industry is taxed quite differently than the oil and natural gas industry. According to a State Representative from Homer who brought this up last year, mining pays around 2% of its production value while the oil industry pays around 22% of its production value. Haven’t a clue why the disparity exists or how it came to be, but I do know that the Bad Guys can make a powerful, powerful case for a crushing tax increase on mining here in the state should they play this one sm artly – which would be most unfortunate, for increased taxation is never the vehicle to wealth, jobs, infrastructure or the sm art functioning of a free market. ADN, Thurs.

5. Conyers. Over New Year’s the House Ethics Committee released a report acknowledging newly appointed House Judiciary Committee Chairman John (Impeach Bush) Conyers (D, MI) of abusing his staff and illegally using them on campaign-related tasks during elections. The Committee refused to recommend any punishment for the unethical and illegal behavior. Unlike the Ethics Committee’s actions when charges are made against Republicans, the double standard is fully at work with Conyers, for he essentially gets a pass on the complaints from his democrat colleagues on the committee. He gets a pass on violating campaign finance laws. And he gets to be Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee as a reward. Amazing. Unfortunately our friends in the Stupid P arty in the very well deserved House Minority went along with this travesty – which is why they may remain a minority for some time to come. Malkin, Weds.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
Debate USA, http://www.debateusa.com/ ;
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. You can find it at: http://www.thevanguard.org/

If you would like to join II's mailing list, have comments or suggestions, please contact me at: agimarc@ak.net