OPEC thugs

What an interesting combination of news items today, both related to international relations and the contrast between the Western tradition and that of other parts of the globe that, well, don’t seem to get it. 

First, in reaction to the horrible devastation of the cyclone in Burma, many western nations (including the USA) have donated aid.  The oppressive regime’s reaction?  Stalling.  This group of military thugs is delaying help to their own people, and as we learn from reports, confiscating the aid.  “All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said. “For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time.” 

At the same time, Fox News reports that the OPEC nations bent on getting as much for oil as they possibly can and thus contributing to the world food crisis donates almost nothing to the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s food-giving arm, which is charged with alleviating the food crisis.  Who leads the world in donations?  The “evil” USA! 

The overwhelming bulk of the burden in feeding the world’s starving poor remains with the United States and a small group of other predominately Western nations, a situation that the WFP has done little so far to change, even as it has asked for another $775 million in donations to ease the crisis.

the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the international oil cartel, tossed in a grand total of $1.5 million in addition to the $50,000 it had previously donated.

The OPEC total amounts to roughly one minute and 10 seconds worth of the organization’s estimated $674 billion in annual oil revenues in 2007 — revenues that will be vastly exceeded in 2008 with the continuing spiral in world oil prices.

The only other major oil exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates, which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion.

By contrast, the poverty-stricken African republic of Burkina Faso is listed as donating more than $600,000, and Bangladesh, perennial home of many of the world’s hungriest people, is listed as donating nearly $5.8 million.

Why are we allies with the Arabs? 

Political correctness ruining society

Popular author slams PC in the UK.

“Increasingly there is a risk that we live in ghettos with our own kind, with a strong commitment to our local community but little contact with those outside it.”

“If in speaking to minorities we have to weigh every word in advance in case inadvertently we give offence, how can we be at ease with each other, how celebrate our common humanity, our shared anxieties and aspirations, both for ourselves and for those whom we love?” It would be “unfortunate” if the police became “enamoured” of political correctness, which she described as “a pernicious if risible authoritarian attempt at linguistic and social control”.

Battle of Chancellorsville Anniversary Tours

145th Anniversary of the Battle of Chancellorsville National Park Service Walking Tours and Programs

May 2
“Chaos in the Night: The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson” at the Chancellorsville Visitor Center (CVC) at 8:00, 8:30, and 9:00 p.m. One hour.

May 3
“Opening Shots - Changing Tide of Battle” at the Day One Battlefield Site, north side of Route 3, 3 miles east of the CVC at 10:00 a.m. One hour.

“You Can Go Forward, Then: Jackson’s Flank Attack” at Tour Stop No. 8, north side of Route 3, 2 miles west of the CVC at 10:00 a.m. One hour. Living history soldiers performing maneuvers and firing demonstrations will supplement the tour.

“Infantry and Iron in the Wilderness: Catharine Furnace to the Unfinished Railroad” at Tour Stop No. 6, 2 miles south of the CVC at 2:00 p.m. 90 minutes.

“Courage Beyond Measure: the Fight from Hazel Grove to Fairview” at Tour Stop No. 9, 1 mile south of the CVC at 4:00 p.m. 90 minutes.

“The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson” at the CVC at 11:25, 1:25, 2:25, and 3:25. 35 minutes.

May 4
“Decoying the Yanks” at Tour Stop No. 4, McLaws Drive, 2 miles east of the CVC at 1:00 p.m. 90 minutes.

“A Soldier’s Story: The Fighting for Fairview” at Fairview, Tour Stop No.10, south of the CVC at 3:00 p.m. 90 minutes.

“The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson” at the CVC at 11:25, 1:25, 2:25, and 3:25. 35 minutes.

May 9
“Stonewall Jackson’s Final Evening” candlelight tour at 8 p.m. at the Jackson Shrine on Route 606, about 15 miles south of Fredericksburg. Take I-95 Exit 118 east.

May 10
“The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson” at the CVC at 11:25, 1:25, 2:25, and 3:25. 35 minutes.

“Stonewall Jackson’s Last Breath” program at 3:30 p.m. at the Jackson Shrine on Route 606, about 15 miles south of Fredericksburg. Take I-95 Exit 118 east.

Please call (540) 373-6122 or (540) 786-2880 for additional information.

Back to Waterloo!

Almost two hundred years after the Allied armies secured the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, French soldiers have returned to the scene of the Battle of Waterloo to learn from the mistakes of their 19th-century predecessors.

A total of 38 senior officers were ordered to spend a day analysing the errors which put a final end to Napoleon’s rule as Emperor and drew to a close 23 years of war.

Brigadier-General Vincent Desportes ordered strategists from France’s Armed Forces Employment Doctrine Centre to visit the battleground because “you learn more from your failures than from your successes”.

New Va. Historical Markers Dedictated

Eleven new highway markers that point out
events, people and places significant to Virginia’s history will
soon join more than 2,000 roadside narratives already in place.
The markers recognize:
- Amaza Lee Meredith, a Lynchburg native who was one of the
nation’s few black female architects. Meredith, who died in 1984,
founded the fine arts department at Virginia State University and
designed many houses.
- Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1371, which was staffed
with black workers. They built more than 20 miles of trails and did
other work at First Landing State Park, under the New Deal’s CCC
program. The marker will be erected in the Virginia Beach park.
- Studley Beacon, which dates to the days when flashing airway
beacons guided pilots on airmail routes. The Studley Beacon,
erected in 1927 in the crossroads community of Studley in Hanover
County, was one of 50 in Virginia on the Atlanta-New York Civil
Airways Corridor. The beacon was dismantled in the mid-20th
century.
- Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a Dinwiddie County native who was
enslaved in Virginia and North Carolina before she bought her
freedom in 1855 and relocated to Washington. There she became the
seamstress, personal maid, and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln,
President Abraham Lincoln’s wife.
- The Hampton Indian Program, which began at Hampton Institute
in 1878, with U.S. government-recruited American Indian students,
who were admitted to the program in an attempt to “civilize”
them. About 1,388 students participated in the program, which ended
in 1923, according to the state Department of Historic Resources.
- Peace Meeting Poisoning, which recalls the 1623 meeting
between English soldiers from Jamestown and Indian leaders, who
were returning English prisoners taken during fighting in 1622.
“At the meeting, the English called for a toast to seal the
agreement, gave the Indians poisoned wine, and then fired upon
them, felling as many as 150, including the chief of the
Kiskiack,” according to a Department of Historic Resources
description.
- Zenda and Long’s Chapel, a black community in Rockingham
County and a chapel built in 1870 by formerly enslaved people.
Zenda grew to 17 households of 80 people by 1900, providing a place
where “blacks freely exercised new rights to worship, marriage,
education, property, and burial in a marked gravesite.”
- NASA Wallops Flight Facility, one of the oldest launch sites
in the world, built to conduct aeronautical research using
rocket-propelled vehicles. The first rocket, the Tiamat, was
launched there on July 4, 1945. The center is located in Accomack
County.
- St. Joseph Catholic Church, the first known congregation
organized for black Roman Catholics in Virginia. The Richmond
church and a school, were closed in 1969.
- Sappony Baptist Church, an 18th-century church where half of
congregants were enslaved people. The church was also the site of a
Civil War battle in 1864 and served as a hospital during the
skirmish, which left cannonball holes in the front of the church.
It is located in Stony Creek in Sussex County.
- Sir William Berkeley, who was Virginia’s governor when it
changed from a colonial outpost to a center of agriculture and
commerce. Berkeley established the bicameral General Assembly. The
marker will be erected near the location of Berkeley’s Green Spring
estate in James City County.
The Historic Resources Board of the Department of Historic
Resources approved the 11 markers during its quarterly board
meeting in late March.
The Virginia Department of Transportation installs and maintains
most of the 2,000-plus official state markers.

Civil War Sites in VA

From the WaPo:

Virginia’s governor is proposing to spend $5 million to preserve several sites where armies of the North and South clashed nearly 150 years ago, including such renowned battlefields as Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposal would provide funding over the next two years for the endangered Civil War sites.

The Pope and Simplicity

The Pope’s message to stress simplicity.  “Benedict feels that Western, secular societies don’t take profound, supernatural religious faith seriously, a condition that he believes leads to rampant consumerism and nonchalance about such things as poverty.”

That’s good.

Vulgar Corporate Pay

In the category of “give credit where credit is due,” I give credit to Barrak Obama (who for many reasons I regard as comically unprepared and unqualified to lead this country) for his thoughts on the vulgarity that is part of America today:

From Yahoo!:

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced huge pay packages for U.S. corporate chiefs on Friday in a drive to convert middle-class anger about the U.S. economy into votes.  “Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year,” Obama said. 

“We’ve seen what happens when CEOs are paid for doing a job no matter how bad a job they’re doing,” Obama said. “We can’t afford to postpone reform any longer.”

The first-term Illinois senator has introduced “say-on-pay” legislation that would give investors more of a voice in setting executive compensation packages.

 

3 Lessons from Disney World

From Slate, an engaging and humorous piece on Mauschwitz:

Disney World teaches kids three things:

1) a meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism

2) a grasping, whining consumerism

3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of culture and architecture instead of for the real thing.

In support of historic preservation

From historian D.C. Watt:

“To destroy the relics of the past is, even in small things, a kind of amputation, a self-mutilation not so much of limbs as of the memory and imagination.”

(Quoted in Alan Kramer’s Dynamic of Destruction, Oxford, 2007, p. 2)

Distinctive Destinations

Twelve towns - from a French colonial village in Missouri to a town on the Florida Panhandle - have been honored this year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for their commitment to historic preservation and community revitalization.

The list of a “Dozen Distinctive Destinations” has been issued annually since 2000 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

This year’s honorees are Ste. Genevieve, Mo.; Aiken, S.C.; Apalachicola, Fla.; Columbus, Miss.; Crested Butte, Colo.; Fort Davis, Texas; Friday Harbor, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Red Wing, Minn.; San Juan Bautista, Minn.; and Wilmington, N.C.

See more here and here.

Where are the parents?

From the UK: 

“A generation of children is being ‘raised online’ because of the amount of time they spend on the internet, new research claims.  Youngsters spend more than 20 hours a week online, says a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research.”

20 hours per week!  Where are the parents?  Also:

Many young people are now “constantly connected” to the internet, the report says, staying up until the early hours of the morning on computers in their bedrooms.  Many leave their mobile telephone on overnight in case they receive a new text message.