Posted on 05/04/2007 12:17:57 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Not too long ago, the United States was held in awe by the rest of the planet. We were the "hyperpower," the "hegemon." There was nothing we could not do, or so the world thought.
Events have not turned out well for us and debacles like the bungling of postwar Iraq have rather reduced our standing, and it's safe to say that in many quarters we are viewed as the Three Stooges of nations. Except for one country: Russia.
Almost alone, the Russians continue to believe deeply in American technological competence, diplomatic guile, economic might and the ability to craft far-ranging plots of labyrinthine complexity. Apparently they missed the fact that the Gulf Coast is still a mess.
When the Bush administration announced plans to put a barebones missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect against Iranian missiles, Russian President Vladimir Putin went nuts and threatened to tear up a major treaty governing the stationing of large military formations in Europe.
Surely Putin knows that the missile-defense system didn't work too terribly well in practice; that nobody knows how it will do in the crunch; and that it's incapable of defending against Russian missiles. But he is also sure that the infinitely crafty Americans are up to something.
The Kremlin is also deeply wary of and opposed to NATO expansion, although it's not clear to many planners the point of our taking into the alliance nations that can't defend themselves. The Russians aren't fooled. They know this is somehow aimed at them and that the United States is only cloaking its darker aims in all that babble about a free and prosperous Europe.
Most recently, the Russian space agency accused a puzzled NASA of shutting it out of planning to build a moon base. In December, NASA announced that we would have a permanent manned moon base by 2024. We're always announcing plans to return to the moon or go to Mars and have been since 1972, and you can see how far we've gotten.
Ah, but the Russians believe that the moon harbors a miracle fuel, the helium-3 isotope, that will provide limitless energy and that the devious minds at NASA plan to get there first and monopolize it.
According to The Daily Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, "The plot, says Erik Galimov, an academic with the Russian Academy of Sciences, would 'enable the U.S. to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out.' "
Stay with that thought, Erik. Our national ego needs the boost.
Fuel on the moon
A little science, a little moonshine
IF you thought looking for a fuel that would provide limitless energy and be pollution-free was asking for the moon, you are right. Many scientists believe that the Helium-3 isotope, found in the lunar crust, could be converted to energy through thermonuclear fusion. A couple of years ago, when George Bush outlined America’s plans for space, he talked about a permanent moon base; with “the first extended human expedition…no later than 2020.” Energy hawks were over the moon. Go for a Helium-3 monopoly, they cried.
Estimates of Helium 3 vary, going up to 500 million tonnes. Even one million tonnes can power the earth for thousands of years. One space shuttle load of 30 tonnes can run the US for one year. The Russians didn’t take long to sound the alarm. The US moon plan was decried as an aim to control the energy source of the future. So the Russian space corporation announcement the other day, for plans for a base and large scale delivery of Helium-3 by 2020, is no surprise. The Cold War has seen its share of space, nuclear, and missile races, so as the earth lurches towards an energy crunch, the next big race could indeed be for a magic fuel. And no one is discounting China, which surprised everyone with a successful manned space flight.
Whether it can be done, and in that time frame, is doubtful. But then, there are budgets to be made and funds to be fought for. And there is another little problem. Even if someone could deliver a load of Helium 3 to earth today, nobody would know what to do with it. The technology for thermonuclear fusion, with or without using Helium-3, does not exist yet. The ambitious International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which India is joining, itself has a long time frame. The first “plasma operation” is not expected before 2016. ISRO has a modest moon mission, Chandrayan-1, in the wings. An upgrade may be in order, as evidently, there is some science somewhere in all that moonshine!
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060202/edit.htm#3
The Russians are over-awed by we Americans in somewhat the same manner that Muslim Arabs, Hitler’s National Socialists, and the European serfs, peasants, and royalists were or are over-awed by the Jews.
If you lose a big match, you want to get beat by the best.
Getting beat by Mike Tyson at his peak is nothing to be ashamed of. I hope it is not the case, but in 200 yeras America under Reagan may be perceived as its Zenith
Losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament to the eventual champion hurts a lot less than getting beat by a second round loser. Perhaps the British viewpoint?
On the other hand, the US will regain some of its shine with some better and more consistent leadership. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone who was slightly more adept at the English language. An awful lot of people understand English, but fail to grasp what our current President is actually saying.
W. is almost impossible to understand. He doesn’t even explain things that make perfect sense very well and always needs to be interpreted - sometimes even into English.
At least he’s not as incoherent as his father was.
NO one is perfect and fault does not hold to idiological ground here; but IMHO; we can thank a Liberal for most of the problems our Country faces; including those elaborated here. Their 'altruism' is in truth; more a 'treason'. . .and they have determinedly failed the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans; pre. . .and post, Katrina. . ..
Think we should have a collective -so to speak - and simple resolution for solution. We should ban any Liberal from participating in our Military . . .and we should demand the withdrawal of every Liberal from those cities in America. . .where daily crime numbers surpasses those counted in Bagdhad.
Think if we did that; and eliminated all teacher's unions. . .
Wait till the historians (who aren't born yet) write about America under Bush. Most will not see it today but the 2000s under Bush are America's glory days. America has never been as mighty, as forceful and as frightening to its enemies as it has under Bush. And economically America is at an age of prosperity today never before seen in its history. I know its hard to put things in perspective when the media is trying its best to present an alternate reality, but just wait a hundred years when we have a new set of minds looking back at things.
Ok, I'll wait.
You’re right, and our best days are ahead of us. Rumors of our demise are premature.
I suppose it didn't take guts to go into Afghanistan and Iraq? And China called us a paper tiger in the sixties even as we were fighting in Vietnam. Who puts stock in what they think? Your response was incoherent and patently false.
Apparently, my response was coherent enough for you to respond to.
What unit was Bush attached to when he went into Afghanistan and Iraq? It was easier to make the decision to send US troops into harm’s way then to challenge his political enemies on their ceaseless lying... which is one of the reasons that our enemies abroad have become so emboldened. When the US appears leaderless, weak and in disarray, the terrorists fight harder. When the US appears united behind iron leadership, the enemy’s morale WILL suffer, and the war will be shortened. I used the word “gutlessness” to describe Bush’s political moves, such as his pandering to the illegal immigration lobby and his utter inability to respond to those in the democrat party that hate our country.
As for China, you had damn well better begin to care how they perceive American strength. Their military grows stronger every year, and that military is paid for with money generated by lucrative trade with the US. With the technology they have stolen or developed (and with our currently low level of procurement and development of new weapons systems), they are on their way to parity with our military in a relatively short amount of time. An eventual war with the United States is not something China thinks might be a possibility; it is something they plan on as a definite future event.
BTW, Bush has said that China is our friend.
I voted for the man. Twice. He, and the idiot RINOs in the House and Senate, have done much to damage our country.And that, my friend, is patently true.
I see that you are not from the American South. If you were, you wouldn't say that. It seems you must be reading our biased media too much. Nothing George does is good enough for those damn elites. Mmmm, are you among them?
I am from the South and I understand him perfectly, thank you very much.
CF/LENR produces tritium in great abundance, which in turn transmutates by beta decay into He3 with a 12.5 year half life. Did you know that?
No I didn’t... thanks!
BTW, could you please explain your tagline?
In a shooting competition in Beijing organized by the PRC Oct last year and competitors including ASEAN member nations and Japan and South Korea, Chinese snipers are beaten by -— Malaysia in winning the number of gold medals.
http://blog.roodo.com/gamy543/archives/2970043.html
(Read this if you understand Chinese)
“I am from the South and I understand him perfectly, thank you very much.”
Why would being from the South help one to understand him? Bush is a dammyankee from Connecticut.
“I hope it is not the case, but in 200 yeras America under Reagan may be perceived as its Zenith”
You know, in the 1980s when I was a schoolboy I have heard about a phrase of “America’s zenith of power was reached around 1965.”
And in a 1977 Chinese-language publication book called “The Social Currents of the Stars-and-stripes bannered nation” by someone who had lived in the States for 40 years, the book’s dustcover, written by then then-America-friendly Sing Tao publication, stated that “The USA is a forefront Western power, and many people regard it as a nation in decline...”
So don’t write them off too early just yet. You may be proven correct, but more likely than not you may well be seeing yet another false dawn.
He’s German, so I doubt he can even distinguish between US South and General American speech.
Or even where New York is. ;-)
I know that Bush was born in Connecticut but he has acquired a Texas twang in his speech.
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