At a foreign policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations Hillary Clinton opened her speech by saying “Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."
If this one data point is insufficient to sway you, perhaps a second data point will assist. U.S. National Security Adviser Jones gave these remarks at the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on February 8, 2009. "Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through Generaal Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.
Here's a little background on our friend Dr. Kissinger.
A chilling report circulating in the Kremlin today states that President Medvedev and Chinese President Hu have issued an “urgent warning” to the United States that says if the Americans allow an Israeli nuclear attack upon Iran, “World War will be our response”.
Fueling Russian and Chinese fears are intelligence reports stating that Israel has moved over three-quarters of its Naval Forces through the Suez Canal and has assembled over 30 of its US-built fighter jets in Kurdistan for a planned attack using American made “bunker busting” bombs and nuclear armed cruise missiles.
Russian Military Analysts state in these reports that Israel first plans to use its US-built fighter jets to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, and upon a combined Iranian and Lebanonese Hezbollah “response”, that is said will “rain missiles down upon Israel”, Israeli submarines and surface vessels with unleash nuclear armed cruise missiles against Iran’s military, religious and political infrastructure.
We have quarentine laws on the books and we could have used them back in May to prevent a global pandemic, now its too late. The WHO says(1) "At this point, further spread of the pandemic, within affected countries and to new countries, is considered inevitable." and "The 2009 influenza pandemic has spread internationally with unprecedented speed. In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus has spread in less than six weeks. The increasing number of cases in many countries with sustained community transmission is making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for countries to try and confirm them through laboratory testing."
We can compress this down to a simple statement "It's so widespread at the moment, we don't need to count anymore."
What a triumph for our public health agencies. A simple statement like "If you were in Mexico and are sick, place yourself under self quarentine." would have been so beneficial. Preventing people with visible symptoms from getting on board aircraft during an outbreak is really counter productive! Yes people have the right to travel, just stop blowing infectious mucus all over before you sit next to me in an airplane for a few hours.
Our public agencies fail very rarely. They are quite professional. When they do fail it's most often caused by my misunderstanding their objectives. These organizations have a habit of achieving their objectives. So does the WHO work to prevent world wide pandemics? I really don't think so.
The conservatives are going to "get tougher" on drugs, when all the research shows that prohibition does not work. Prohibition leads to greater corruption. Prohibition leads to greater criminality. Prohibition has been tried and tested and we know it is a failure.
I guess once the conservatives have found a failing policy; staying the course is how they like to do things. More people in jail, more crime to justify their law and order agenda. Little to no thought that their own failed policies cause the problems they say they want to stop.
One fascinating bit of information to come out of this interview is that David Tilson Member of Parliament for the ruling Conservative Party of Canada thinks we are at war in Afghanistan because of Afghanistans drug industry. What is so incredibly fascinating about that is; 1) Canada's military is not taking any concrete action to eliminate the drug production in Afghanistan. 2) the Taliban has just about eliminated poppy production before our invasion. So that means Canada's military is in Afghanistan to ensure the world opium supply is stable?
