USA And The Future Of The World -II

[Guest]

A cartoon originally published in the Chicago Tribune on April 21, 1934 [url="http://americasright.com/ "]link[/url]

[Guest]

[url="http://marionsword.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1B80DAF0A76159D5!1535.entry?sa=382841458"]Breaking News - Obama Signs Martial Law Executive Order[/url]

Monday, January 11, 2010

It looks as though President Obama today has taken his first step towards martial law in America. I just pulled this piece off the wires which indicates the issuance of his new executive order. This order sets up the framework for the use of federal troops and the combination of state and federal agencies under the Defence Department. This is startling news for many reasons. Why now? Why now?

[Arun_S]

[url="http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Outside_View_Obama_and_India_999.html"]Outside View: Obama and India[/url]

by M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India (UPI) Jan 26, 2009

Once in office, U.S. President Barack Obama apparently decided to abandon his own policy preferences in favor of those of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Given the reluctance of the former president and the current secretary of state to agree to an equal partnership with India, it is no surprise that the past year has seen the killing-off of the tiny shoots of U.S.-India high-tech cooperation promised by former President George W. Bush.



This is despite the eagerness of NASA for joint projects with India. The U.S. space agency is aware that it will continue to be commercially outclassed by the European Union unless it ties up with India's Space Research Organization.



The Indians can undertake space launches that are 40 percent cheaper than the EU. Were NASA to outsource some of its hardware and software needs to India, the agency would outclass the Europeans in almost every segment of space research and exploration. This is why successive NASA administrators have -- on record -- pushed for closer cooperation with India.



However, the death-grip between Washington and Islamabad has sabotaged all such efforts, even though NASA and ISRO have numerous complementarities, such as in hardware and software.



On several occasions, pressure from the White House and the State Department aborted efforts by Taiwan, Malaysia and a Middle Eastern country to put payloads into orbit through ISRO rockets. Taiwan withdrew its request to use Indian launch capabilities more than a decade ago but it has been scarcely five years since Malaysia called off its launch less than an hour before liftoff.



[color="#800080"]The Malaysians were up front in privately telling the Indians that pressure to abort came directly from the White House and hence could not be refused.[/color]



During the 1950s, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson and his successor J. Foster Dulles muddied U.S. relations with several Asian countries by tagging alongside European countries unwilling to put an end to their colonial empires in Asia. This included the French, for example, who sought to hold on to Indochina long after the British had left India.



These days, despite his promise of change, Obama appears to have returned to Clinton-style paternalism toward countries in Asia and Africa, focusing obsessively on the EU as the only U.S. partner of choice.



In the mind war that is being lost by the coalition in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the addition of a few non-EU partners would have done much to remove the fear among the local populations that European-style colonialism was returning via the Pentagon. Media commentators in the West quote high "approval" ratings for occupation forces, unaware that the people polled are simply telling them what they believe the West wants to hear -- the way these same people professed love for former Saddam Hussein and fealty toward the Taliban.



Asian visitors to Iraq and Afghanistan say the local populations are eager to see the back of the hundreds of thousands of coalition troops in their countries.



Indeed, the security situation in Iraq has improved considerably now that U.S. forces have taken a recessed role. In Afghanistan as well, only a withdrawal of coalition forces from the towns and cities will generate public support and participation for the government of President Hamid Karzai as it seeks to fend off the threat from the Taliban -- newly revived by cash from coalition sources buying off opposition and logistical backing from within Pakistan.



Sadly, such advice sounds as outlandish now to coalition ears as did similar advice by this columnist to friends in the Pentagon in 2004, who refused to believe that the high visibility of U.S. troops was in fact the primary engine fuelling recruitment to the growing tide of militancy.



Although George W. Bush understood the imperative of close cooperation between the United States and India, the many Europeanists within his administration -- including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, though not Donald Rumsfeld -- prevented him from building on the momentum created by his 2005 decision with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India to forge a nuclear partnership.



However, baby steps toward high-tech cooperation were initiated on his watch, including a small easing of visa restrictions on Indian scientists.



Today, thanks to Hillary Clinton, these irritants are back. Indian scientists, including people such as Goverdhan Mehta who is a member of the U.S. Academy of Sciences, are once again being denied visas to enter the United States. Those working in aerospace, physics and chemistry find it next to impossible to visit the United States even to attend a conference.



This has created anger among India's scientists, who are now dismissive of Singh's claim that there has been a qualitative improvement in U.S.-India high-tech cooperation. Of course, a few cosmetic measures have been permitted by Clinton and Obama, such as the sending of a small NASA payload aboard India's recent mission to the moon.



Clinton and Obama have been working overtime to pressure India into giving concessions to U.S. entities that have no place in a market economy. An example is the attempt to fix a cap of $400 million as liability for a nuclear accident involving a U.S. reactor, a figure that would apply even if such a disaster were to claim as many lives as Union Carbide's 1984 Bhopal gas leak did -- around 30,000 over its course.



Of course, a benevolent Indian Supreme Court demanded less than $400 million from the company for the accident. Soon afterward Chief Justice R.S. Pathak was appointed to the International Court -- clearly by coincidence.



Indian civil society is aghast at the way the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.S. president is permitting his administration to arm-twist the Singh government into placing such a low cap on financial liability for a nuclear accident.



A senior atomic scientist in India's nuclear establishment warned that such a cap "would encourage U.S. companies to make Indians into experimental mice for reactor designs," pointing out that it has been close to four decades since the United States designed a reactor. He warns that the use of technologies with such artificial caps would be hazardous to public safety.



Under President Nicolas Sarkozy, France has become the new poodle of Washington, displacing Britain. As a consequence, Paris is seeking tough conditions for nuclear trade with India -- in the process handing over the advantage to Moscow, which is much more open to equal collaboration.



No wonder Russia has secured 70 percent of the new Indian orders for nuclear reactors, with France taking the rest. Because of its insistence on conditions that are antithetical to a free market, the United States has not secured a single order.



However, this shortfall in cash from India could be made up if the United States emerged as the major weapons supplier to India, displacing Russia. But here as well, a toughening of conditions under the Obama administration -- as well as a repeat of the Dick Cheney policy of thrusting the obsolete F-16 down the throat of the Indian air force -- may mean that defense orders bypass the United States.



By any rational measure, India is at least as important as Britain and France, nuclear weapons states with permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council. Unless Clinton paternalism is discarded in favor of realism, and India is seen as deserving of the same status, the promise of an India-U.S. technology alliance may remain no more than that during the Obama years -- a promise.



(M.D. Nalapat is vice-chairman of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.)



(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

[Capt M Kumar]

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':o' /> One of the largest gaps between political parties showed up in a question of who leads the U.S. Senate. About half of Republicans could identify Nevada Senator Harry Reid as the current majority leader, while only a third of Democrats could do the same, even though Reid is their own party's Senate leader.



Republicans trounced Democrats on a question about the percent of U.S. imports of oil that we consume. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans knew the answer to be two-thirds, while just over half of Democrats got that one correct.

http://www.livescience.com/culture/publi...00129.html

[dhu]

[url="http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/144903/a_foreign_tourist_tipped_me_a_buck_for_being_american_..._what_does_that_say_about_our_empire/?obref=obinsite"]A Foreign Tourist Tipped Me a Buck for Being American ... What Does that Say About Our Empire?[/url]

So here we are, an stretched-out empire whose credit card is just about maxed out, populated by a people happy to spend a fortune spreading "democracy" to other countries while becoming ever more impoverished themselves. And here comes a former subject of our neocolonial reign slipping a greasy buck into my palm. It's just kind of telling.



And perhaps I should take heart about all this. After all, we don't really make anything, and selling each other houses, suing one another and trading our debt back and forth doesn't seem quite as attractive an economic model as it did just a few short years ago. But, you know, this is America, and I'm pretty sure we still make the best damn puppies in the world.



\Who knows? Maybe this photo-op-for-a-buck deal will become The Next Big Thing.

[dhu]

[url="http://www.amazon.com/Creation-America-Through-Revolution-Empire/dp/0521664810"]The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire[/url]

Francis Jennings

From Publishers Weekly



A longstanding historian of colonial America, Jennings (Benjamin Franklin, Politician, etc.), the former director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, is tired of the traditional celebratory story of the American Revolution. "My book," he writes, "is an effort to tell the Revolution for adults." Jennings examines nearly every aspectAregion by region; battle by battle; and through the eyes of Indians, the British and the colonists. Along the way, he nimbly demonstrates that the colonists, though they claimed to be fighting for liberty, were fighting for the sort of liberty that didn't extend to Native Americans or black slaves. Hardly disinterested servants of the public good, he further argues, the founding fathers were politicians looking out for their own interests. Indeed, they weren't fighting for abstract principles; the colonists didn't, in truth, favor a democratic republic over an empire. To the contrary, according to Jennings, they were very devoted to the idea of empire; they simply wanted to run it themselves rather than "acting as agents for Great Britain." Throughout, Jennings looks especially at they ways in which ideas about race helped the colonists justify certain kinds of conquest. And although he does not say much that has not been argued dozens of times before, his synthesis is provocative, useful and clearly stated.





From Booklist



From the conventional view of the American Revolution as a struggle of oppressed colonists throwing off the yoke of royal tyranny, Jennings begs to differ. He asks readers to adopt the perspective of the many enslaved African Americans and marginalized American Indians. From their viewpoint, colonists' talk of liberty and equality rang hollow. Those high-sounding sentiments were little more than war propaganda, for their lands and their persons were either confiscated or enslaved by these very "freedom fighters." Starting with the founding of the colonies, Jennings documents the European settlers' determination to create empires. It took a few decades until they came to see their empire as distinct from Britain's. Early North American maps with their undefined boundaries reveal the western pretensions and breadth of the colonists' claims. Jennings presents his provocative views in a readable style that expands the substance of his argument.

[Arun_S]

[url="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5596095.cms"]Obama cites India again to ask Americans to buck up[/url]

21 Feb 2010, 0100 hrs IST, IANS

WASHINGTON: For the third time in a month, President Barack Obama has cited the success of India and China to exhort Americans to be prepared to meet increasing competition from other countries.



"I said this during the State of the Union. I repeated it today in Henderson in my town hall. Other countries are not playing for second (spot), they're playing for first," Obama told the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce at Las Vegas Friday.



"One of the things I know is of great interest to Nevada is tourism and what are we doing for tourism promotion," he said, taking his economic recovery agenda on the road with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is facing an extremely tough re-election battle this year.



"I can tell you, Harry is going to be championing a tourism promotion bill because, as he points out, why is it that every other country is promoting their tourist industry and America is not doing enough for ours?" he said amid applause.



"He's going to have strong support for that effort, but that's just one example of the competition that we're facing on everything.



"If China is producing 40 high-speed rail lines and we're producing one, we're not going to have the infrastructure of the future. If India or South Korea are producing more scientists and engineers than we are, we will not succeed," Obama said.



"So I hope that all of us - Democrats, Republicans, public servants, and leaders in the business community - can keep alive a sense of seriousness, a sense of common purpose.



"That's how we can rise to this moment and transcend the failures of the past, tackle the challenges before us, and leave behind a nation that is more prosperous than ever before," he said.



At his State of the Union and a fundraiser for Senator Michael Bennet in Denver, Obama had cited the example of India, China and Germany to push for a clean energy revolution and education reforms.



"We know that whoever leads the clean energy revolution is going to lead the 21st century economy, Obama said. "And we can't wait. We can't wait. Because China is not waiting. India is not waiting. Germany is not waiting. We can't afford to wait."

Obaba's new ministry to wipe clean the psyche of black slavery and oppression, by creating a brown nation enemy in the afar..

[Arun_S]

[url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-giving-us-stiff-competition-Obama/articleshow/5597862.cms"]

India giving us stiff competition: Obama[/url]

PTI, Feb 21, 2010, 01.10am IST;



WASHINGTON: For the second time in two days, President Barack Obama has said the US is facing stiff competition from India and cannot succeed if the country continues to produce more scientists and engineers than America.



“I said this during the State of the Union (address), I repeated it today in Henderson in my town hall: Other countries are not playing for second. They’re playing for first,” he told the Las Vegas-Area Chambers of Commerce and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Friday. “Why is it that every other country was promoting its tourist industry and America was not doing enough for its own?” Obama asked. “That’s just one example of the competition that we’re facing on everything,” he said. “If China’s producing 40 high-speed rail lines and we’re producing one, we’re not going to have the infrastructure of the future,” Obama said. “If India or South Korea are producing more scientists and engineers than we are, we will not succeed,” said the US President in his Las Vegas speech.



This was for the second time in two days Obama told people to gear up as countries like India, China and Germany were marching ahead in various fields, including clean energy technologies. “So I hope that all of us — Democrats, Republicans, public servants and leaders in the business community — can keep alive a sense of seriousness, a sense of common purpose,” Obama said.



The President said there was a need to bring people together and build consensus around reforms. “Because we know that the country that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow. And we don’t want that future for our young people. We're not going to sentence them to a lifetime of lower wages and unfulfilled dreams.”

Since when South Korea has started producing even 1/4 th of US scientists and engineers ?

[Guest]

[quote name='Arun_S' date='21 February 2010 - 06:57 AM' timestamp='1266715180' post='104415']

[url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-giving-us-stiff-competition-Obama/articleshow/5597862.cms"]

India giving us stiff competition: Obama[/url]





Since when South Korea has started producing even 1/4 th of US scientists and engineers ?

[/quote]





Let the wiki talk....

There are more than 100,000 Korean students in the U.S. The increase of 10 percent every year helped Korea remain the top student-sending country in the U.S. for a second year, ahead of India and China. Korean students at Harvard University are the third most after Canadian and Chinese.

The number of students in higher education had risen from 100,000 in 1960 to 1.3 million in 1987, and the proportion of college-age students in higher-education institutions was second only to the United States.

In 2001, only 5% of American 24 year olds with a bachelors degree were engineers, compared to 39% in China and 19% or more in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

Source: “K-12 Establishment is Putting America’s Industrial Leadership at Risk”, USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education)

By far, the largest purchaser of United States intellectual property was Japan, followed by South Korea; together they accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. receipts in 1999.

Fact: Half of Ph.D.’s in engineering in the U.S. are foreign students. U.S. production of domestic engineers is far behind China, India, European Union. One of the most productive (per population) is South Korea. China produces 4 times more engineers. South Korea produces as many engineers as the U.S., although it has 1/6th the population and 1/20th the GDP.

Source: http://momox.org/timeline.html

[dhu]

[url="http://www.dailypioneer.com/243159/The-decline-of-America.html"]The decline of America[/url]



Vikram Sood



America’s rich and ubiquitous CIA, through its National Intelligence Council, periodically collects some of the best brains in the US and after considerable debate they publish a detailed treatise predicting the future and the last one — Global Trends 2025 — came out in November 2008. The report’s most important assessment is that in 15 years there will be a gradual decline in the US’s pre-eminence along with the rise of new powerhouses China and India. The report says “although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor”, the country’s “relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and US leverage will become more constrained”.



In actual fact the decline has been far more rapid and has gone unnoticed because this was obscured by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. American predominance in the information technology sector of the global economy also covered the country’s decline as a manufacturing hub. Several other moves and events in recent years point to the direction of America’s decline.



At the Pittsburg global economic summit, the mantle of looking after the functioning of the economy passed on from G-8 to G-20, which includes China, India, Brazil, Turkey and other developing countries. It is not yet certain that this group can exercise any really effective control, but the move is significant in that it took place. The true significance, as Geoffrey Sachs put it, was not that the baton had passed to G-20 but that it had actually passed on from G-1 — the US which had really called al the economic shots in the past 30-odd years of the G-7 forum.



There are increasing reports that major countries who are America’s economic rivals have been discussing among themselves, sometimes in secret, to explore a diminished role for the US dollar in international trade where it is losing value. Saddam Hussein in 2002 tried to move away from the dollar to the Euro but that was more political than economic; the Iranians, too, have tried to establish oil bourses in Euros for the same reason.



But this one is different. Major trading countries China, Japan, Russia, Brazil and the Persian Gulf states are considering the Euro or a basket of currencies as an alternative to the US dollar. Obviously, if this is accepted it will adversely impact on American dominance in international economic matters. Link this to BRIC and we have a new international economic paradigm.



The international order has always been about control and dominance. The old Palmerston dictum about permanent interests and not permanent allies has changed. In the new international order there are permanent interests but no permanent enemies. Diplomatically and strategically, the US has had problems. American actions in West Asia, for instance, have given room for others to walk into the space provided by the US’s misadventure. The invasion of Iraq was as brainy as a World Wrestling Federation bout.



Russia and China have refused in recent months to accept the US’s proposal that Iran be placed under sanctions, even though President Barack Obama tried to assuage Moscow by cancelling plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in eastern Europe. The US can no longer press for sanctions on Iran while condoning similar action by Pakistan.



In fact, Iran, China and Russia seem to have worked out an energy-sharing /distribution map that largely excludes the US from it. These three countries have been the biggest gainers from America’s Quixotic adventure in Iraq which has ended making Iran the strongest power in the region.



The US will lose ground in the economic sphere as well. American GDP in 2005 at US $ 12.4 trillion exceeded that of Latin America and Asia. By 2020, the combined GDP of Asia and Latin America will 40 per cent greater than that of the US and growing. By then, the US will be deeply indebted to the more solvent nations. It will be dependent on them for funds needed to pay for budgetary deficits which have been there since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, meeting the annual Pentagon budget, and so on. Nevertheless, the US will remain the world’s pre-eminent economic and technology power, but it will be a military power that will be unable to undertake significant military missions abroad of the Iraq and Afghanistan variety on its own.



The stalemate in Afghanistan is really a strategic defeat for a superpower. A superpower cannot be seen to have tried to find ways of getting out of a quagmire without a resounding victory. Support for the war is grudging both at home and abroad among allies. The US is in the unhappy situation where one of its prominent allies in the region — Pakistan — has been duplicitous, while another — Saudi Arabia — stands for creeds that are the very antithesis of all that America stands for, and the third — China — is simply waiting for the US to get sufficiently unpopular before it will move into the vacuum that will unavoidably occur once American troops leave.



The US could have had three friends and allies — Russia, Iran and India — who do not want Afghanistan to become a Talibanised Wahaabi state. But the Americans chose otherwise. What the Americans were slow to understand was that whatever be the merits of the case, and in Afghanistan defeat of terrorism was one, Washington can no longer say, “I am in Afghanistan to make America safe” and it does not matter if some Afghans die in the process.



Perhaps the last setback may be symbolic but it was powerful. The US could not win the race for the Summer Olympics for 2016; worse, it got eliminated in round one.



That said, the US is still the most powerful state in the world and will remain so for the foreseeable future with the strongest military force, the largest economy and the most highly developed technological capabilities. However, those days when it was possible to take unilateral action are over; there are limitations to power — military and economic — as well as influence, as other powerful players begin to assert themselves. The US predicament in Afghanistan is the most recent example of these new disabilities.



-- The writer, who specialises in strategic affairs, is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing.

[acharya]

Moved over from C-17 thread

Many of the Indians need to wake up and realize that you are a global power. The constant paranoia of seeing a conspiracy in every single action is the behaviour of tiny/weak nation. Maybe it was appropriate in the past, but India has grown greatly since then. Have more confidence in your own country!



India isn't going to let the US dictate its foreign policy no matter what deals are made.

The US is spreading its influence and imposing itself across the whole Globe. But it uses different methods according to which country it is dealing with. When they deal with a leader who is is not afraid to openly stand up to them they "demonize" the leader and the country and use brute force and blockade and sanctions: Afghanistan (Taliban era), Cuba, Grenada, Iraq (Hussein era), Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan (Musharraf era) Panama (Noriega era), Syria, Venezuela etc. They do this while totally overlooking other demons who walk the line : Afghanistan (today), Azerbaijan, Colombia, Egypt, Kuwait, Israel, Panama (while Noriaga helped them against Nicaragua), Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan etc.



In one word: work with us, and you can oppress your people all you want, work against us and you are in for it.



They use economic ploys to keep others in line, China being the most notable. The China owes a fortune to the US but cant afford pulling the plug since the US is such a big customer and will stop buying of they do.

For others who have money, like Saudis, the Omanis, the Kuwaitis, etc, they manufacture a large nearby threat (Iraq first and then Iran) and impose whatever they want on them in exchange for "protection" against this threat. That "protection" of course involves billions in military purchases from the US (India may fall under that scenario) South Korea does, Japan does, Taipei does, Colombia in a way...... The thinking behind it is who will buy arms unless there is a credible threat? And who is the biggest arms exporter in the World?

Against their real friend, they'll use veil threats, economic mostly. Canada, France, Japan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom. Canada was clearly made to understand that the great relationship we have enjoyed over the years would suffer if we did not send troops to attack Iraq. They didn't in fact want our troops. They wanted the credibility our troops would give to their so-called "coalition of the willing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing) France was not "willing" to be "willing" so they mauled France. Good friend Canada cowered and sent frigates to the Gulf and troops to Afghanistan. Quickly. Not because we wanted to. No. Because we feared the economic retaliation of our "good friend" next door. Our people were against. So the government of Canada told us the Canadian frigates patrolling the Gulf alongside the US ships were on "anti-terrorism" patrol. The Canadian press remained silent.



"Willing". Please pause and give the word "Willing" some thought to contemplate how cynical the US is. How many nations were actually "willing" in this Iraq affair? Each and every one was coerced into embarking in something that was clearly wrong. To obtain this, the US had high level emissaries, like the one who delivered the warning to Japan the other day, criss crossing the Globe with a stick and a carrot in their briefcases. They were the "coalition of the willing" builders. And they mostly used the threat of the stick. And instead of calling it the "US-backed coalition" or something realistic and neutral, they called it exactly what it was not: a coalition of the "willing". And the US press went along with the term, without even a hypocrite smile on the side of their faces, since they know full well that its all a big scam.



No, I don't think that India is naive. And I don't think the US can invade India or overthrow its government. But the same was that the US was able to make certain democracies take actions in Iraq while it was clearly against the wishes of its people (UK, Australia, Spain, Italy, to name but a few), they can do it with India if they find the proper leverage. Its going to be a combination of several things and much of it will be related to China, Pakistan and energy. The C-17 is just one pawn in that chess game.



Just wait and see.

[Guest]

[url="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aqrfpQBpjcA8"]Births Drop 2% in U.S. After Peaking in 2007, CDC Report Says[/url]

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- The number of births in the U.S. declined 2 percent in the U.S. in 2008 from a peak the previous year, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



There were 4.25 million births in 2008, down from 4.32 million births a year earlier, according to the Atlanta-based agency’s annual report on births. The fertility rate also declined about 2 percent, to a level that’s not considered high enough to replace the previous generation, the CDC said.

Abortions and recession is working.

[acharya]

Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong Breaks Silence: NASA on a “Long Downhill Slide to Mediocrity”

APRIL 19TH, 2010 BY JIM GARRETTSON

According to an open letter from last Tuesday signed by Neil Armstrong, Commander of Apollo 11; James Lovell, Commander of Apollo 13 and Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo 17, President Obama’s proposed overhaul of NASA is “devastating” to U.S. space exploration efforts. The letter echoed sentiments voiced last year by the Augustine Commission on Space Exploration, led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine.



The letter says that while some of the President’s proposals have merit, “the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating,” contrasting Obama’s vision for the space program with the “bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon” who closed the gap in the space race with the Soviet Union making America the “world leader in space exploration.”



“It appears that we will have wasted our current $10-plus billion investment in Constellation” the letter continues, “and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.”



Last Thursday at Cape Canaveral, President Obama responded to his critics saying, “The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am. But we’ve got to do it in a smart way.”



To critics like Armstrong, who maintain that landing on the moon is a practical first step to exploring the rest of the solar system, he said “I just have to say pretty bluntly — we’ve been there before…There’s a lot more space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do.”



However, the long and vague timetable of Obama’s deep-space plan, which calls for landing on an asteroid by 2025 and a Mars landing sometime in the mid-2030s (as Obama put it, “I expect to be around to see it”) contrasts with the sharp, immediate increase in funding for NASA’s Earth Sciences division.



Under Obama’s plan, NASA’s Earth Sciences programs will receive an additional $2.4 billion funding over the next five years, an increase of over 60%. Edward Weiler, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told NPR “This administration has a clear priority for science in general and Earth science in specific. We’ve got to measure how fast the ice is being depleted, how fast carbon dioxide is being added to the atmosphere as opposed to being taken out of it.”



While Obama’s plan offers few practical, immediate steps for returning Americans to space, apart from salvaging part of the Constellation program to build a shuttle for the International Space Station, it does represent a major priority shift for the agency: from exploring outer space to studying the Earth from orbit.



His critics remain unconvinced of his plan’s efficacy. As Neil Armstrong’s letter closes, “Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.”

[acharya]

[acharya]

[Guest]

[url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/22/AR2010052201586.html"]At West Point, Obama talks of a new 'international order'[/url]

WEST POINT -- President Obama on Saturday pledged to shape a new "international order" as part of a national security strategy that emphasizes the president's belief in global institutions and America's role in promoting Democratic values around the world.



Speaking to the graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point -- the ninth wartime commencement in a row, he said -- the commander-in-chief who is leading two foreign wars expressed his faith in cooperation and partnerships to confront the economic, military and environmental challenges of the future.



"The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times,'" he said in prepared remarks. "Countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing its wounds."



The administration is set to officially release the president's first national security strategy next week, and Obama's preview on Saturday suggests it will be far different than the first one offered by his predecessor in 2002. In that prior document, President Bush formally called for a policy of preemptive war and a "distinctly American internationalism."



Obama has spoken frequently about shaping new alliances with the world, and of attempts to repair the U.S. image abroad after nearly a decade in which Bush's approach was viewed with suspicion in many quarters. In his commencement speech to the graduates, the president emphasized his beliefs in those alliances.



"Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation," he said. "We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice -- so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don't."







Obama said the U.S. will pursue a strategy of "national renewal and global leadership."

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....

[ramana]

It might be helpful for folks to go thru this site and understand the US



Uty of Virgina:



US Diplomatic History since 1914



and



Course Readings

[acharya]

http://video.ft.com/v/88437679001/May-27...est-sister



May 24: Newt Gingrich on defence spending

May 22 2010 Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, talks to Edward Luce, Washington Bureau Chief. He discusses the need for maintaining defence spending and the threat to the American way of life from Obama's agenda. (14m 55sec)

[Guest]

[url="http://www.collinsreport.net/"] link[/url]

Bilderberg and other secretive groups intend to plunge American into one world Socialism

June 6, 2010, 6:26 am

By Suzanne Eovaldi, staff writer



Our borders will never be secure as long as the Marxists Democrats in Congress and Barack Obama follow the “One World” model promoted by the Bilderberg Group and several other secret global societies whose aim is to plunge American into chaos.



Having a secure southern border that really keeps our citizens safe from the ravages of illegal immigration and the crime and drug violence that comes along with it is antithetical to the Bilderbergers’ desire for an American Union composed of Mexico, U.S. Canada and the Caribbean Islands including Cuba.



The Bilderbergers are meeting this weekend in Spain. They are secreted behind a heavily fortified resort about 20 miles from Barcelona, but their attempt at remaining secluded has failed given the work of David Icke’s video on their “hidden hand.” Icke reveals the group’s plans for a one world government, one world central bank, one world army and a microchip population” all under the imprimatur of the UN.



The Tri-Lateral Commission started it



The Tri-Lateral Commission was co-founded in l973 by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. Along with the Council on Foreign Relations, these secret societies seek to keep America ruled by eastern seaboard wealthy liberal elites who seek to rule by bloodlines, not ballots, according to Icke.



At this weekend’s confab in Spain, one the European Union’s threatened PIGS economies (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain), the Bilderberg’s 2010 agenda centers around grooming political candidates, the future collapse of the Euro and a potential military strike against Iran says as reported by journalist Paul Joseph Watson. Their aim of a World Bank is already is in the works with Deutsche Bank acting as brokers for the US government’s bailout money.



Obama’s faux meeting with AZ Governor Jan Brewer in Washington give us a fairly clear picture of why both political parties have let us, US citizens suffer from 30 years of un-enforced illegal immigration hell. NAFTA’s passage under Clinton presaged our march to an American Union even though the EU is collapsing around the globalists. French President Nicolas Sarkozy told audiences at Columbia College, “We should invent a new global monetary order.”



Senator Jim DeMint told Congress we don’t even have our own fiscal house in order and “this is the worst time to ask taxpayers to borrow more from China to bail out foreign nations.” WAKE UP AMERICA.



Stop and consider what America would be if the Marxists in Congress are not stopped. Consider the dreary lives people live in Socialist countries. That misery is real.



The dangers too our American freedoms are real. Do something. Decide if you want to make history or be history.



Do you deserve to live in America?



Plan or fighting or plan on being a slave.



What did you do to support and defend American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and tomorrow?



Use this site to contact your Congressional Representative:



https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml



For more on these stories please go to these Collins Report sources:



www.eutimes.net/2010/04/bilderberg-2010-meeting-to-be-held-in-spain



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37976.html



http://www.prisonplanet.com/bilderberg-t...iracy.html



www.trilateral.org

www.globalinformationnetwork.com





This day in history June 6



1944: The D day invasion starts. This invasion of France by American and Allied forces started the push to Berlin the eventually brought Germany to her knees and ended World War II in Europe.

[HareKrishna]

i have a topic just for that;bilderbergers ,masons and stuff