Author :           Roger Handberg and Zhen Li

Publisher:        Routledge

                        270 Madison Avenue,

New York, NY 10016

ISBN:              0-415-36582-1

Authors Roger Handberg and Zhen Li portray a convincing and informative description of the current state of commercial, defense, and national aspects of the space industry in “Chinese Space Policy A Study in Domestic and International Politics.” It is a grim tale of shared profits, cost constraints, political tensions with the bottom line hopes of many for human expansion into space somewhat quashed.

The authors do an excellent job of painting the difficulties involved in fighting through Earth’s gravity to orbit and beyond including the costs of programs, the complexity of the equipment and difficulties in engineering.

What makes “Chinese Space Policy” a unique read is the balanced approach to the subject of national space programs and showcases both the United States and Chinese view of the defense issues related to space policy. The reader is also given information about Soviet, Hindi, Japanese, Brazilian and others interests in going to the moon, Mars and for research on various space bodies, providing satellite launch capabilities and satellite services, and in remote sensing activities used both for scientific data provided to various communities but also for defense as well as for manned space activities. A comparison of the involvements of various parties is shown in a number of graphs about payload launches and revenues, showing a changing trend since the Space Shuttle Challenger accident when United States payloads and revenues diminished.

Covered in Chinese Space Policy is the history of the Chinese Space program from the 1950’s until current times. China’s defense policy is based on the need to protect itself from threatens on all borders. Their watchful analysis of the superpower conflict between the former Soviet Union and the United States is conveyed. This is understandable. As is China’s desire to be party to the International Space Station efforts. The authors show that the inability of the Chinese government to compromise on a variety of issues such as Taiwan, Japan, territorial boundaries belies those gestures that paint them as friendly.

The next few years as China and maybe the United States consider proceeding to the moon with various plans in mind should add additional fuel to the subject of Chinese and United States relationships and the changing demographics of both countries’ economies.

Overall, this is a thoughtful work with plenty of information to digest.

However, the Labor party eventually evolved to the party of Appeasement. It was taken over by people who were willing to put Israel’s security at risk in the false hope of peace. Among them was Amos Oz who believes that an enemy Palestinian state that’s dedicated to Israel’s destruction is better than for Israel to defend itself, as seen from the following claim:

Militarily and morally, it will be easier for Israel to face an enemy state than to continue fighting a cluster of armed gangs.

At the forefront of the appeasement movement in Israel is a group called Peace Now, which even exaggerates the amount of privately-owned Palestinian land that is used for Israeli settlements. For example, here’s what the Haaretz reported on one settlement that is accused by Peace Now of using privately-owned Palestinian land:

The Peace Now report did indicate, however, that contrary to numbers released by the movement in November, little private land was seized from Palestinians to build Ma’aleh Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank.

The new numbers are vastly smaller than numbers Peace Now issued in an earlier report based on leaked information.

The group claimed in November that 86 percent of Ma’aleh Adumim, which has more than 30,000 residents, was built on private Palestinian land.

After successfully petitioning the court to see the database, the group reported Wednesday that data show only 0.5 percent of the settlement is built on private land.

Oslo is the best illustration of how much of an appeasement party that Labor turned into. During the Oslo “peace”process, when Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak were Prime Minister, the Israeli government kept on promoting Yasser Arafat as a partner for peace, despite his constant violations like his support of terrorism and his incitement that calls for Israel’s destruction, and portrayed their opponents including the Likud party as being as bad as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, since like those two groups, Likud supposedly wanted to derail the “peace” process. In 1995, Amos Oz even called the Likud party “the best collaborator that Hamas could hope for”.

Despite Arafat’s constant violations, in 2000, Barak offered Arafat a state on most of what the Palestinians claim they want. Barak’s offer, if implemented, would include serious security risks to Israel from a government that essentially did the exact opposite of what the Oslo accords called for. Since it included giving the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, thusly resulting in giving up most of the eastern half of Israel’s historic capital to a government that violated the Oslo accords. Not only that, but at least many of Arabs in east Jerusalem preferred to live under Israeli rule instead of being in control of the PA. For example, Zohair Hamdan, who Yasser Arafat later made an assassination attempt on, got a signature of 10,000 Arabs in east Jerusalem on a petition stating that they want to live under Israeli rule. Arafat not only rejected the offer and left, but planned the second intifada. After the second intifada started, Barak made the same offer again. Arafat did the same thing. Ariel Sharon later became Prime Minister. In 2005, Sharon carried out the disengagement from Gaza in the hope of achieving peace. He dismantled the Israeli settlements and forced all the Israelis back into Israel. It was painful for at least many of the Jewish settlers and for at least many IDF soldiers who carried it out. The extremists among the Jewish settlers called the IDF soldiers who carried it them “Nazis”. Sharon’s disengagement was opposed by the Likud party. As a result, Sharon formed his own party called “Kadima”. It included those in the Likud who supported the disengagement from Gaza and some from the Labor party. among those who left the Likud party and came out in support of the disengagement plan was Ehud Olmert, who later became Prime Minister of Israel after Sharon had a stroke. As a result of the disengagement form Gaza, Israel did not get more peace. On the contrary, Gaza turned into a base for terrorist groups and rocket attacks on Israel increased. So the Kadima party was founded based on an action that gave Gaza to rejectionist terrorists. Two years later, Hamas took over Gaza. In Gaza, Hamas imposed Sharia law, brutally kills and/or tortures their opponents and continued with the terrorist rocket attacks on Israel. At the same time, unlike from 1995-1996 and the second intifada, suicide bombers did not increase. Suicide bombings were decreasing. It had nothing to do with the disengagement from Gaza. In fact, it had to do with the security fence that Israel is building. It successfully stopped the suicide bombings even more so than the checkpoints, which did prevent some suicide bombings. Palestinian terror groups did not give up suicide bombing. Israel is better at stopping them, especially with the security fence.

Then came the Annapolis “peace” talks, when Ehud Olmert was Prime Minister At the end of 2008, Israel offered 93% of the west Bank and to make 7% of Israel into Gaza in order to compensate for the 7% of the west Bank that Israel was going to retain. It also offered to give up east Jerusalem. And yet, Mahmoud Abbas continued with Arafat’s course of promoting terrorism and a culture of violence.Mahmoud Abbas is still doing that today, even saying that the doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Olmert offered to give a state that would potentially be a security threat to Israel, to Mahmoud Abbas, a man who promoted Holocaust denial with his book “The Other Side”. Abbas rejected that offer.

In Israeli politics, I support the Likud, which I consider to be heroic. The Likud party is a heroic party that is dedicated to the defense of Israel. Israel is a valuable ally to America regardless of whether the Prime Minister is from Labor, Kadima, or Likud. But Israel is especially a great ally when someone from the Likud is Prime Minister.

Apparently, at least much of the Labor and Kadima parties are for appeasement policies that strengthen Palestinian terrorists. The Labor party has been in the forefront of appeasement policies. Guys like Amos Oz are in the forefront for appeasement policies that strengthen Palestinian terrorists. To be fair, it was the Kadima-led government of Ehud Olmert that carried out the heroic Operation Cast Lead bombings against Hamas and other rejectionist terrorist groups. Still, Kadima was founded, as seen from this column, based on an action that resulted in Gaza turning into a terrorist base. 

There are Palestinian people who want peace with Israel and who are willing to accept Israel as a Jewish state. They’re not the ones in control of the political situation. They certainly are not the ones who would take control from Israeli withdrawals. The facts are that Israeli withdrawals result in rejectionist terrorists taking control of the territories and in an increase of terrorist attacks on Israel. After all, not all Germans were Nazis. But the free world had a duty to stop Hitler and his genocidal and anti-freedom global goals.

I think that peace with the Palestinians is a nice idea. But at the same time, I oppose premature Israeli withdrawals. The Likud is more concerned about Israel’s security, wheras Labor and Kadima are more focused on Israeli withdrawals. I strongly support the Likud party. Menachem Begin and Bibi Netanyahu are very big heroes.

Now that I have your attention….

(for those who missed it, that opening was SARCASTIC)

Now, it’s no secret that Rush Limbaugh is a highly biased, right wing extremist who has been on a campaign to bash Obama from day one. He readily admits it. But to insinuate that this attack was somehow Obama’s fault was ludicrous, even by Limbaugh’s standards. And of course, he meant them to be. He is, after all, a media journalist. All this attention certainly doesn’t hurt his ratings. But somehow, due to the ‘miracle’ of widespread media, his words have been taken seriously. Was the attack racially motivated? Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it was. How can people take something one step short of an Onion article seriously?

For the same reason they call Obama a racist because his stimulus package benefited a number of African Americans. If we stop to think about it… ever been to the inner city? Big surprise; Black people! More by far than white people! Could it have something to do with the fact that our socio-economic system has a tendency to push minorities to the bottom of the food chain? Perhaps his stimulus package helps minorities because it is intended to assist the poor and many of the poor are minorities! But no… many simply believe that he’s just trying to help his fellow minorities because, well… because they are minorities.

For the same reason he was labeled as a racist over the Skip Gates arrest and his statement regarding….

You can definitely see the man is supporting Mr. Gates because he is black. No other reason it could be! The fact that the man is who he is… or perhaps (as he opined the statement with) because it is a friend of his… I would share the exact same beliefs he projected here, and I’m just as white as you please.

And it doesn’t just go one way. Joe Wilson is now accused of being a racist for shouting “you lie!” during an Obama address. For as we all know, in some parts of the world, those words are synonymous with racism.

The bottom line here is that since it became apparent that Obama was going to become president, race has reared it’s ugly head in our society once more. If you don’t like Obama or his decisions, you must be a racist. Obama is a racist. The police who arrested Skip Gates were racist. The black kids on the bus were racists who beat the white kid up because he was a racist. Joe Wilson is a racist. Now Kanye West is a racist (instead of just a moron) Did I miss anyone? I did. I am a racist for writing this article. You are a racist for reading it. Do we not see how ridiculous this has become? Are we really stupid enough as a society that we allow people like Rush Limbaugh to take us back 50 years? Can we please grow up?

The man is our president. I voted for him. Is he a good president? Who knows? We may not be able to tell until we look back in a few decades. But let’s stop worrying about what color he is… because that concern is obviously trickling down into everyday society…. and worry about what kind of president he is, and what kind of country we are building.

I was having a quick squint at The Daily Telegraph online this morning while I was waiting for some work to come in (I work as a home typist) and found an amazing article.  It may not sound particularly amazing but, bearing in mind the Royal Family these days are supposed to be politically impartial, it’s extremely unusual for them to join the fray along with the majority of the British public in a debate regarding the inadequate equipment of our troops to ensure their safety.

It’s a well known fact that the Royal Family are very much involved in our armed forces here in the UK – Prince Harry is currently a serving member – but they tend to stay neutral politically and don’t openly display any displeasure with our government, but it seems the Queen has now told PM Gordon Brown ‘enough is enough’ and has, in her usual democratic style, arranged for the PM to be given a few pointers on what our troops need to be able to function properly, by a highly respected military historian.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/6179967/Queen-enlists-Antony-Beevor-to-give-Gordon-Brown-a-history-lesson.html

Once more, this shows that Her Madge hasn’t lost the ‘common touch’.  True, her grandson is serving in the forces, but nonetheless it’s good to know that she seems to be following in the footsteps of her mother and is looking out for us peasants!  Let’s hope Gordon takes heed of Antony Beevor’s advice and stops further unnecessary deaths out in Afghanistan and, for that matter, Iraq.

It hasn’t been an easy task in the past. Visitor logs have been withheld from the public eyes by the White House minions. This policy of secrecy has been in place for both Democrat and Republican Presidents. President Obama said Friday, ” We will achieve our goal making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history, not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans but by shining a light on the business conducted inside.” It means we will know who has power and influence in our countries policies, unless we the people of the nation are too muddle headed to pay attention

Image by cliff1066 via Flickr

Obama’s White House agreed to post visitor logs online on an ongoing basis. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics also requested logs kept by President Bush. It was found that Steven Payne visited the White House 53 times beginning June 18, 2001 and ending June 13, 2007.

Payne was caught on video tape trying to trade his access to top officials for donations to the Bush library foundation. Visitor logs also show that conservative Christian leaders had the attention of President Bush himself. 9 individuals visited with President Bush from January 1, 2001 to Oct 4, 2006.

The monthly visitor releases will include thousands of electronic records. Listed will be the full names of the visitors, who they meet with, when they entered, and when they left. Some names will be kept private, people who attend meetings of a sensitive nature, as in Supreme court nominees, and others who are meeting for national security issues. Neither will the Obama’s or the vice president’s personal visitors be revealed.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have dropped all pending law suits they had carried forward for years seeking access to White House visitors logs. Without their inquisitive eyes this policy would never have come about. We need our watch dogs in Washington and we should send them a thank you letter for keeping an eagle eye out for our rights as citizens of the U.S.A.

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http://newsflavor.com/world/middle-east/soldiers-die-in-Iraque-due-to-contractors-shoddy-work/

http://newsflavor.com/world/usa-canada/honoring-our-soldiers/

http://newsflavor.com/world/usa-canada/assisted-suicide/

A friend of mine encouraged me to prepare this book and put down my thoughts on the development of Namibia and immediately I knew the above words should start off the book. I also knew the following words of Karl Marx, written in a letter to his father, would be fitting:

“There are moments in one’s life which are like frontier posts marking the completion of a period but at the same time clearly indicating a new direction.

At such a moment of transition we feel compelled to view the past and the present with the eagle eye of thought in order to become conscious of our real position. Indeed, world history itself likes to look back in this way and take stock, which often gives it the appearance of retrogression or stagnation, whereas it is merely, as it were, sitting back in an armchair in order to understand itself and mentally grasp its own activity, that of the mind.”[i]

I am Milton Louw, and these are my ideas on making a better future for Namibia.

Brotherhood among us (1987)

Can’t we all come and meet each other

And no matter what colour we may be

Be able to show we love one another

And then together we’ll stand, you and me

The leaders of Tomorrow,

Planning for what is to come

Otherwise there will be lots of needless sorrow

Over killing which are quite dumb.

So come closer now and grab my hand

And we’ll accept each other as brothers

And then together we’ll be able to stand

To show our Father and Mothers

We want to plan for a common future

No matter what our race, colour or culture.

References:

[i] Letter from Karl Marx to his Father In Trier (1837)

Kennedy has left behind a spirited health care debate, if not a debacle, that he helped frame and forward but now can no longer fix. In the coming days and weeks, as we articulate his achievements and lament his loss, eulogizing him in news specials and print magazines, in public ceremonies and private moments, his legacy will remind us that we are very capable of holding on to him forever.

Perhaps Kennedy, the last of the four brothers to pass away, has long been immortalized. The Kennedys have influenced governance through legislation for more than four decades while stirring our national conscience by leaving behind iconographic images of tragedy and grief. As a man who endured Chappaquiddick, who exposed more than his flaws, who nearly died in a plane crash, and who had to observe the passing of his brothers, Joseph, John and Robert; his sisters, Rosemary, Patricia, Kathleen and Eunice; his parents, Joseph and Rose; and his nephews, including Michael, David and John, he made us pause.

It has been written a man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles, and dangers, and pressures, and that is the basis of human morality. Whatever may be the sacrifices he faces, if he follows his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow man — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of the past courage cannot supply courage itself. For this, each man must look into his own soul.
– Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick Speech, July 25, 1969

Kennedy was a lot of things, but he never backed down

He served the public tirelessly, engaging in battles and authoring bills as sweeping and consequential, if not entirely effective, as the No Child Left Behind Act, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and the Medicare Modernization Act.    

Persistently tackling issues he had wished were settled, Kennedy rooted himself in our daily concerns by promoting a bipartisan, liberal agenda to close inequities and gaps wherever they arose. He and his Senate staff passed hundreds of bills to that effect, although the Senator himself would go on to discredit whatever legislation he believed fell short, including the No Child Left Behind Act, a major tenet of his term. For Kennedy, paperwork and signatures had to measure up to real world practice.

His colleagues and associates, fellow senators and cabinet members, Democrats and Republicans, recognized him as an indispensable leader not simply because of his long tenure but because of his abilities to articulate an argument and galvanize the debate.

In part it is the raw force of Kennedy’s personality, along with his tremendous smile and shock of white hair, which will make his transition into the past tense feel so thunderous. He leaves us with both a deep appreciation for his vital breath in our public forums and with some real promise that in spite of the ongoing, polarizing politics, his legacy of civil discourse and needed union will prevail.

Laurene Williams is the writer/director of Phil Cobb’s Dinner for Four.

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Two of his brothers were candidates for President of the United States, and one even became President. The question is why Ted Kennedy, the highly-respected Senior Senator of Massachusetts, considered the ‘Lion of the Senate’, never followed in his brothers’ footsteps.

There were two main reasons. One, of course, is that both his brothers John and Robert had been assassinated, and that if he became President there was an excellent chance that he would be next.

Another main reason is that rumors have always flown around Ted Kennedy, like a wild tornado, that he had let a younger woman die in the incident referred to as “Chappaquiddick”. This occurred during the presidential campaign of his brother Robert Kennedy. Many idealistic young people had volunteered in this campaign, swept up by the Kennedy mystique: that a Kennedy as President could usher in a new, better world for everyone, especially the poor and minorities.

On July 18, 1969, after a party where he had been drinking, Ted Kennedy was driving his car, and one of the campaign workers, Mary Jo Kopechne, an attractive 28 year-old, was his passenger. It was nighttime, and they were on the tiny island of Chappaquiddick, on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Kennedy unfortunately drove his car off a bridge into the water. He was able to save himself by swimming to land, and although he later claimed that he had tried valiantly to save the life of Kopechne, he was unable to.

Immediately, there were questions which remain unanswered to this day, as to what actually had happened. Strangely, Kennedy failed to report the incident to police, even though he had promised several colleagues whom he had contacted immediately after the incident, that he would do so. The police only found out about the accident after two fishermen reported they had seen her body the next morning. In addition, before she had left with Kennedy, other party-goers heard Kopechne ask him to drive her to ‘her hotel’. However, she had left both her purse and hotel key at the party before heading off with Kennedy. Also, after the incident, the Judge merely gave Kennedy a suspended sentence, after he had pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. And this came after the judge had found that Kennedy could be guilty of further crimes, but the prosecutor never pursued this possibility. In addition, almost all of the legal proceedings were held in secret, and Kennedy eventually ‘voluntarily’ gave Kopechne’s parents over $90,000. The parents refused to sue Kennedy, or investigate their daughter’s death any further.

Because of all these unusual circumstances, many strongly suspected that Kennedy, a married, Catholic Senator, was having an affair with Kopechne, a single, attractive campaign worker, and that Kennedy had panicked during the accident. A possible affair, especially in the 1960’s, ruined any real chances he ever had for the presidency.

Although the Chappaquiddick incident is most often cited as the reason he could never run for President, in reality there were others. One is the “Kennedy curse”, the notion that eventually all Kennedys meet with tragedy. In Ted’s case, this could have been especially true, as both of his brothers who had run for President were ultimately killed, and he could have met with the same fate.

In addition, even though they ultimately divorced in 1982, Joan Kennedy, his wife, had repeated bouts with alcoholism and drunk driving. Like his then-wife, Ted himself faced public accusations of drinking and “partying”, which the press widely reported.

Except for his highly-respected legislative record as Senator, Ted Kennedy’s reputation became increasingly negative over time. Whatever the actual facts were, he had to ultimately cede his hopes of ever becoming President of the United States. Sadly, now, with his death, the political legacy of that generation of Kennedys has also been extinguished.

But he is perhaps even better known for his involvement in the Vietnam War, urging the administration to commit about 500,000 troops, believing that the numbers of Vietcong were limited and that the correct amount of U.S. soldiers eventually would outnumber them.

In the Cold War Robert McNamara not only was in charge of moving the U.S. into the nuclear arms race in the name of “mutual assured destructions” but also pushing nation-wide campaigns to justify the unjustifiable Vietnam War, those two being the key involvements which would haunt him for the rest of his life.

When he left the Pentagon and went to work at the World Bank in 1968 this seemed to many as an attempt to make up for the very destructive path he had left behind him.

But only in the Oscar-winning 2004 documentary “The Fog of War” by Errol Morris, his regrets were openly and ambiguously made accessible to the public. In the film, McNamara asked:”"What makes us omniscient?”, referring specifically to Vietnam but also to the world situation in general. “Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better reexamine our reasoning.”

According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post (a close friend of McNamara), it was this documentary and the many talks that McNamara had with students who had watched the movie, that finally led him into the process of finding peace with himself and his destructive past.

In his 2005 article “Apocalypse Soon” McNamara unequivocally spoke out against the immoral and hazardous use of nuclear weapons a a strategy of foreign policy.

Before he died, McNamara left a remarkably optimistic hope for the future in a final message to his wife, wishing for “others continuing to pursue the objectives which I have sought (very imperfectly at times) to move the world toward peace among people and nations and to accelerate economic and social progress for the least advantaged among us.”

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In an attempt to answer this subconscious question of millions, the adult magazine Hustler has already produced two movies about the sex-life of former vice-presidential candidate and governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, featuring “Russians who come knocking on her back-door” or a flash-back scene where “young Paylin’s creationist college professor will explain a ‘big bang’ theory even she can’t deny!” The first movie was called “Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?”, then (as an obvious sequel) there came “Obama is Nailin’ Palin” while the X-rated Hustler network right now is working on “Hollywood’s Nailin’ Palin”, scheduled for summer 2009.

Whether these movies accurately depict the sex-life of either Palin or any politician for that matter, might be highly doubted. What seems to be more interesting, though, is that all of this might say far less about Palin herself than about the general citizen and his or her image about the state representatives. Do different moral standards apply to people, simply because they’re acting as politicians on the public stage? Are they “super-human?” Or are their sexual desires maybe as strong (or even stronger) as their desires to be in power? Do we want politicians with more sex-appeal, showing the same amount of “tits & ass” as Schwarzenegger showe muscle in his movies? Truly, what are our expectations of those leaders? And do we maybe secretely see them all as “just a little bit” morally superior only so that we can feel better about our own imperfection by digging in their dirt instead of our own? – All of these are questions which are heavily weighing down on the collective conscience and will undoubtedly come up at the next chance, again and again – until we will have the courage to deal with ourselves instead of “the man in the mirror”.