NRO : The Metamorphosis In which our liberal author awakens one morning from uneasy dreams . . . By David Kahane I have a nightmare. I have a nightmare that sometime before the 2010 elections, the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see us as we really are. I have a nightmare that you will read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and realize that it is not fiction. I have a nightmare that you will read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and get firsthand instruction in how we steal elections.

Moscow, Oct 13 (RIA Novosti) Russia’s federal space agency has started work to design a new carrier rocket for manned flights from a new space centre in the country’s Far East, an official said Tuesday. Russian space agency Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov said priority would be given to the rocket’s reliability and safety, including crew evacuation [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prize, which was to be awarded to the person who has accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.” The mechanism for awarding the peace prize is very different from the other Nobel categories. Academic bodies, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decide who wins the other prizes.

Clinton in talks with Russians about Iran (AP) - ryan444123.com 10/13/2009 admin 13 October 2009Bizzare and Offbeat No CommentAP – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was meeting with Russian leaders on Tuesday to urge their support in pressuring Iran to prove its nuclear program is peaceful. Clinton in talks with Russian about Iran (AP) - welcomeobama.com 10/13/2009 AP - U.S.

Clinton in talks with Russians about Iran (AP) - ryan444123.com 10/13/2009 admin 13 October 2009Bizzare and Offbeat No CommentAP – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was meeting with Russian leaders on Tuesday to urge their support in pressuring Iran to prove its nuclear program is peaceful. Clinton in talks with Russian about Iran (AP) - welcomeobama.com 10/13/2009 AP - U.S.

TODAY : Clinton in town looking for answers on Iran, will meet Lavrov and Medvedev; Rogozin refuses to be outwittered ; United Russia confirmed to have powered through regional elections.  New book ‘Without Putin’ by Mikhail Kasyanov sheds light on Khodorkovsky case; St Petersburg hopes to extend outwards (but not upwards?) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to lean on Russia to support sanctions against Iran should international talks regarding the country’s nuclear program prove unsuccessful.  Encouraging signs are reported in Ria-Novosti, with Foreign Minister Lavrov hoping that talks will be ‘ fruitful’.

TODAY : Clinton in town looking for answers on Iran, will meet Lavrov and Medvedev; Rogozin refuses to be out-twittered ; United Russia confirmed to have powered through regional elections.  New book ‘Without Putin’ by Mikhail Kasyanov sheds light on Khodorkovsky case; St Petersburg hopes to extend outwards (but not upwards?) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to lean on Russia to support sanctions against Iran should international talks regarding the country’s nuclear program prove unsuccessful.  Encouraging signs are reported in Ria-Novosti, with Foreign Minister Lavrov hoping that talks will be ‘ fruitful’.

Eighty per cent of the estimated 12 million immigrants to Russia have flocked to the country from fromer Soviet Union countries in search of work and better opportunities. But some say they have since fallen victim to police harassment and corrupiton, and some have accused the Russian police of arresting, searching and forcing them to pay [...]

Here is the much discussed article, which appeared today by Charles Krauthammer. And of course, much is discussed about America’s decline, which is becoming a tabloid topic in itself. We are literally watching ourselves fizzle out of our former selves with nothing to replace it in sight save for some shards of history left by former empires. Whether by choice, force, or karma, take a deep breath – here it comes… Blame it on the blacks, the gays, the Jews, the media, etc. It doesn’t matter now.

The Weekly Standard : Decline Is a Choice The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy. by Charles Krauthammer The weathervanes of conventional wisdom are registering another round of angst about America in decline. New theories, old slogans: Imperial overstretch. The Asian awakening. The post-American world. Inexorable forces beyond our control bringing the inevitable humbling of the world hegemon.

As usual, Stratfor does a rather superb analysis of this, even if we do not agree with some or all of it. Nobel Geopolitics October 12, 2009 By George Friedman U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prize, which was to be awarded to the person who has accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.” The mechanism for awarding the peace prize is very different from the other Nobel categories.

Speaking of the foreign policy of the New Liberalism, Dr. Charles Krauthammer says, “In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline–to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complementary.” Below you will find the 2009 Wriston Lecture given by Dr. Charles Krauthammer at the Manhattan Institute on October 5, 2009. The text of the lecture is posted courtesy of The Weekly Standard Manhattan Institute Video: Dr.

Although China and the Soviet Union were viewed by many as part of a monolithic wall of communism, their differences ran deep. In fact, Soviet Premier N. S. Khrushchev and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong had such a fierce clash in 1959 that the cold silence between the two states lasted until some time after the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991. Fast foward to 2009.

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for 2009. His nomination had to have been entered by February 1st of this year. At that point, as many incredulous pundits have noted, he had been President for just eleven days. Fast work. Many commentators have ridiculed the choice. “Gobsmacked,” wrote the Washington Post’s serious liberal foreign policy columnist, Jim Hoagland. He employed a British slang term for “slack-jawed in utter amazement.” Liberal writer Ruth Marcus likened the award to Pee-Wee Soccer, where every child gets a trophy just for playing.

From what deep wells of events flow the rivers of our time? By what path did the muse of history arrive here, at our front door? Where are the roots, for example, of monetary inflation? What pushed the U.S. into its modern de-industrialization? Along what road did the world travel to reach the cusp of Peak Oil? There are so many questions. There are so many ways to explain things. And lately I’ve been looking at our modern world by focusing on the remarkable life of a relatively unknown man — unknown to most people of recent vintage, at least.

By James Bamford NYBooks.com On a remote edge of Utah’s dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America’s equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood.

glitter-graphics.com EVEN IF THE CURRENT SECULAR-PROGRESSIVE VERSION OF TURKEY IS UNWILLING TO COME TO TERMS WITH THE EXCESSES OF ITS OTTOMAN PAST –in particular the wholesale slaughter of ethnic Armenians during World War I under the guise of “resettlement”–Ankara and Yerevan may be burying the hatchet of old animosity once and for all by normalising diplomatic relations as were long strained by the Armenian Genocide question.