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Headline from The Telegraph (UK).

Taliban targets descendants of Alexander the Great

If you read the article, you learn that the target is a tribe believed to be the descendents of Alexander's army. They are blue-eyed, blond, and pagan.
Article.

More Christians massacred. Slave raids continuing. The Islamic regime in The Sudan has a lot to answer for. Protected as they are by China's Security Council veto, the U.N. cannot stop the violence.

I wonder why the Congressional Black Caucus has done so little of substance.

What can we as a nation do? Probably nothing in a conventional military sense. Though I would not be opposed to the CIA shipping lots of Iraqi surplus AKs and RPGs into the south, and into Darfur.
Yesterday, September 15, was observed as Battle of Britain Day. The Few deserve to be remembered by all free peoples.

More from Brits at their Best.
Imports from China are in the news again with the restrictions on tire imports. Rather than write about the specifics of trade and tires, I want to consider trade and national security.

Liberty, or independence, means the ability to practice self-government. Dependency restricts self-government because external pressures may force decisions to be made that otherwise would not have been chosen. Dependency also includes reliance upon others for the necessities of life.

Nations which wish to govern themselves, in their own best interests, cannot afford to become completely dependent upon other nations for the basic necessities of life.

For example, a nation must try to be self-sufficient in food production, otherwise it can be put under lethel pressure by other nations.

But what of other goods?

Energy certainly. Steel. And probably also others such as plastics, electronics, and machine tools.

And if war comes, as it has again and again in history?

In the industrial age, production capacity usually has won wars. In the Civil War Northern industrial power combined with political will to insure victory. In WW1 the U.S. supplied the Allies with the means to wage war prior to our official entry. During WW2 a key decision was made to outproduce our enemies, and to fight accordingly, for example on a broad front in Europe. The Cold War was brought to an end, in part, when the U.S. began an arms buildup supported by our large economy that the U.S.S.R. did not have the economic base to match.

In a modern war perhaps having a GM to convert production to trucks and tanks is not as critical as in WW2. But what of electronics, the nerves and senses and even brains of today's weapons? Can we afford, at some future date, to have our electronics production all outsourced to Malasia and China?

Trade is a national security issue.
Equality of the masses never really worked out anyway.

Chinese millionaire buys world's most expensive dog.

Which raises the question: what to call China's present economic/political system. I vote for mature fascism, but perhaps Western categories are not the best in this case.