Hlibok’s French Revolution Example for DPN Event?

Yesterday, I watched the guest vlog statement of Greg Hlibok via the KISS-FIST ASL blog. While watching it, Mr. Hlibok used two examples to describe the Deaf President Now of 1988 for comparative, idealistic purposes: the French Revolution and the 1960s Civil Rights movement. The overall vlog was a very nice presentation by one of the four student-leaders of the DPN of ‘88, as he explained that the whole protest and struggle was not about Gallaudet University but for the whole deaf community and deaf culture in the country and worldwide, seeking and striving for better opportunities and improved qualities of life for the deaf. Though, I don’t have a problem with Hlibok’s guest vlog in general, for history’s and awareness’ sake.

I, however, have a problem with his choice of the French Revolution as an one of the comparative examples about progress in the modern society, especially he used the French Revolution to highlight the struggle and progress of the deaf through the history, up to the 1960s era of the Civil Rights movement, culminating with a hallmark event: the Deaf President Now of 1988. Mr. Hlibok, as a witness and participant in that time, became one of the key leaders in invigorating and inspiring not only the student body at Gallaudet but the deaf community across the nation. In the guest vlog, he explained that the French revolution was about eradicating poverty. I disagree. Historians who know and studied the causes and effects of that revolution for years have never come to a firm consensus on the issue of poverty being one of the main causes of the French Revolution. Too many coincidental and consequential factors came into the play, as they said.

The outcomes of the French Revolution didn’t result in eradicating poverty and among other things anyway (yes, Greg did mentioned this in the guest vlog). In this regard, I’m a student of history and the French Revolution is one of many pursuing interests of mine, looking for the real causes and effects instead of accepting the official version, which is generally overstated and simplistic. The actual outcomes of the French Revolution produced two historic events: the tragically mad Reign of Terror and the rise of tyranny in the person of Napoleon Bonaparté, compelled by the very people who sought to free France from the confines of old imperialistic regime. A lot of beheadings, more riots and wars to hunt down the enemies of the revolution and a complete loss of public confidence toward the revolutionary leaders.

I’d posted a comment in the KISS-FIST ASL blog which I think Mr. Hlibok should have use the American Revolution as a better example (after all, the French Revolution was motivated and inspired by it!):

Nice vlog about 20th anniv. of DPN but curious…why he picked the French Revolution as an example? It resulted in madness and ended in tragic consequences, allowing tyranny to take form gradually.

The American Revolution, on the other hand, was all about ending oppression by a faraway king and allowing people of the colonies to be free to make their own choices and futures. The DPN was all about ending oppression from the confines of institutional thinking and decisions made by the hearing authorities and let deaf people determines its own courses and futures, for the Deaf/HOH and for the deaf community everywhere. I would identify the DPN struggle and its outcomes to be more akin to the American revolution than the French revolution.

Don’t get me wrong. I got to know Greg Hlibok few times when I was at Gallaudet. A pleasant, intelligent and charismatic fella, I say. He graduated from Gallaudet just at the time I graduated from W. T. Woodson High in Fairfax, Virginia. We have crossed paths few times over the years. Fantastic guy, even as a progressive liberal.

But I disagreed with his choice of the French Revolution as a comparative (inspiring?) example for the DPN of 1988. Wrong example. The American Revolution. Better example. After all, the DPN was all about freeing ourselves from the confines of an old order and forge ahead a future of our own making that would get people everywhere to notice and respect the deaf.

No beheading or terror involved. No tyrant emerged afterward. That progress and awareness? Right, Greg?

Robriefs 2.28.2008

Robrief no. 1: Ohio-born Deaf carpetbagger to run for U.S. Senate for Kentucky
David Wylie, who was born in Marion, Ohio and graduated from Ohio School for the Deaf in 1988, then moved to Kentucky afterward, announced that he is running to become a Democratic U.S. Senator for Kentucky. This is his official campaign website, WylieforSenate.com and his short biography can be seen there. However, he is facing up against a crowded field of Democratic challengers, as seen here (scroll down below to “U.S. Senator” under Mitch McConnell – D, no relation to a certain Kokonut Pundit. ). Good luck to David Wylie! It would be great to have a deaf Senator someday.

Robrief no. 2: WFB, RIP.
I know it’s a day late but just wanted to acknowledge and salute the legendary conservative icon who died yesterday, William F. Buckley. He made that being conservative is nothing to be ashamed of and to be cool, unapologetic and bold. I picked out few of his best-known quotes for deaf conservatives out there:

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

“Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”

“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people’s freedom and security.”

“Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq. If he’d invented the Bill of Rights, it wouldn’t get him out of his jam.”

Heh. R.I.P., Bill.

Robrief no. 3: Prince Harry in Afghanistan for 3 months (already)
Wow. Talk about best-kept secret: Prince Henry of Wales have been in Afghanistan for the past 3 months, serving with the British troops as part of NATO coalition operations. He even acknowledged thanking God for Drudge for the report. Could his brother, William of Wales, be joining up with him soon? Nothing is known or reported yet.

Robriefs 2.26.2008

Robrief no. 1: Oscar Show Ratings TANKED!
About dang time a Variety news report confirmed my expectation: Oscar show ratings fell to an all-time low. GOOD. For the last several years, the Oscar show have been nothing but a BS-spewing platform for anti-Americanism for the Hollywood star elite and Americans, by the majority, are wising up to the bullshits Hollywood have promoted. There was a time when Hollywood was really pro-America and that was around the time of World War II. This is how low, sad and far Hollywood has gone since. I hope the next year Oscar’s falling ratings will kill the show for good the next time Hollywood keep producing and showing more anti-American pile of garbages and intelligence-insulting, juvenile comedic junks. At least the only good thing the Academy members ever did was to award Peter Jackson’s epic 3-film trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings” for best picture and other awards.

Robrief no. 2: Noah’s Ark Vault for crop seeds open in Norway
Surrounded by armed polar bears, installed permanent giant freezers from Maytag (no repairman needed), and thousands of Freezer ZipLock bags, the world’s crop seeds are about to be stored in the “Noah’s Ark” doomsday vault way up in Norway, an environment where hell actually freeze over. Look like the world as we know it is about to come to an end soon. Hurry, get out your modified pumpkin seeds you’ve been saving for the “my-pumpkin-is-bigger-than-yours” competition and send it to the vault!

Disclaimer: no armed polar bears exist. No Maytag freezes installed. No Freezer ZipLock bags included. At least the vault is opened for a time.

Robrief no. 3: Obama in Muslim garb?
Hmm….confirmed my suspicion: photo of Obama in Muslim garb? (from Sweetness and Light blog).

Robrief no. 4: D’oh! As if! Teens doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
You can thank the vaunted American educational system for not teaching the teens the importance of knowing historic and cultural references of the past. If today’s and tomorrow’s kids do not seriouly learn and understand historic references and events, history’s mistakes will be repeated in the future, this I would guarantee.

Robrief no. 5: 15 Years Ago, terrorists bombed the WTC Tower One
On February 26th, 1993, Islamic terrorists bombed the basement of WTC Tower One, intending to cause the building to tip over and crash into Tower Two, creating mass casualties on an unbelievably horrifying scale. Thankfully, it did not really happened, only 6 were killed and over 1000 injured. But 18 years later, the same terrorist group tried again and succeeded on 9/11/2001 with airlines.

Robriefs 2.25.2008

Robrief no. 1: Muslims Demand Gallaudet U to Accommodate Them!
Imagine… one day in the future, deaf Muslim students attending Gallaudet University would demand university administrators to accommodate them by arranging separate classrooms and dorms for young deaf male and female students and to establish class schedules centering around Muslims’ 5-time-a-day prayer sessions. That would be too bad for tenured professors with their preferred class schedules and non-Muslim students would be forced to miss extracurricular or sport activities due to Muslim-arranged timely class schedules. Well, maybe not.

But that is exactly what the Muslim students at the Australian universities are demanding for:

Muslim university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses.

International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax.

But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs.

La Trobe University International chief officer John Molony said several students had approached the Bundoora institution about rearranging class times to fit in with daily prayers.

If some of the Australian universities would give into these demands, it could unfortunately set a precedence for Western, secular, progressive-minded universities to give in likewise, perhaps in the name of progressive diversity and cultural harmony, however sadly deluded. When I was at Gallaudet in the early 1990s, I have never seen or know any deaf student of a certain religious background, let alone a religious group he or she belongs to, ever made any demands to the Gallaudet administrators to arrange class or dorm segregation on account of religious beliefs. Perhaps, few did made private requests without actually affecting or changing anything for the rest of the student body. Regardlessly, Gallaudet have a diverse body of students from different backgrounds, however, it should not restrict the university, in some fashions, in order to accommodate someone’s specific religious or cultural beliefs (beside Deaf culture, that is. )

For years, Gallaudet have international deaf/HOH students from all over the world, with different cultural and religious beliefs and that makes Gallaudet very unique in every respect. I’d befriended or gotten to know several IDS who came from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia and India, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu. Quite an experience to know where they’re coming from.

The only reasons I “imagined” about deaf Muslim students attending Gallaudet in the future is one: based on a presumed demographic and population shift in the next several years for an increasingly globalized environment of higher learning in the United States, which meaning more foreign students from other countries coming to the United States for the universities than American students. That’s one of the few hidden reasons, as I’d deducted in the beginning of the 2006 Gallaudet protest, why I. King Jordan wanted Jane K. Fernandez to be the next president of Gallaudet: she was more willing to recruit and attract a greater number of deaf/HOH students from other countries and to make Gallaudet a more globalized center of higher learning under her leadership. More international deaf students to attend and study at Gallaudet and attracting foreign investments translate that into more revenues for Gallaudet in the long term. That being said, I can only assume that the current President Davila and the Gallaudet BoT are of that same philosophy as the former tag-teamers, the Jordan-Fernandez.

The second reason: there may be a growing number of young deaf or HOH Muslims from economic successful Islamic countries or wealthy Muslim families who can well afford to send their deaf children to Gallaudet University in the future. As this point, I have no real statistic data on the actual numbers of deaf population worldwide, especially from Islamic countries. There is one but much of its data is outdated.

I still believe that Gallaudet University should be an unique place of higher learning and enriching opportunities for all deaf/Deaf and HOH students from different upbringings all over and not expected to accommodate certain people of a certain religion so to make Gallaudet more favorably to them and dismiss the concerns of the rest.

Give them an inch, they take a mile to run roughshod over for the good of a religious cause.

Robrief no 2: The real good reasons why the uproar over Kosovo independence.
I will be blogging about the real good reasons why there are so much tensions over the independence declaration of Kosovo, the angry Serbian-Russian opposition to it and the American-European steadfastness for Kosovo. As soon as I complete my investigation, you will see it here soon, perhaps this week and Ridor, I’m smiling from ear to ear about it.

Robrief no 3: Saving the best for the last – Ohio and Texas, the decisive states for Obama & Clinton
Hillary Clinton is claiming that Texas will be her “Alamo” against the Obamation machine but it will be Ohio that would decide her fate as a Democratic candidate for President against Obama. Next week, March 4th for both major decisive states, overwhelming Democratic. Watch for it.

Robrief no. 4: Porn spammers resort to new nefarious trick: phished names of your friends or relatives!
Lately, I’ve been getting very few porn spam emails with the names of my friends in the “from” address header, like if my friends have sent porn spams to me. I was like WTF? I checked the raw source option to see where it is coming from, since I already know my friends’ actual email addresses. Guess what? There’s none. Just as I had suspected: porn spammers may have somehow phished my Yahoo! emails from me for my friends’ real names and used their names to create spam mails as if it is coming from them! Nefarious! Does anyone have this new evil kind of spam problem lately?

John the Blind King of Bohemia

Long ago, in the 14th century A.D., there was once a Christian king of Bohemia and Poland named John, the comte (count) of Luxembourg and a son of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII. He became the king of Bohemia after the death of his wife’s brother, King Wenesclaus III. He was known to be an ambitious and dashing knight who love to travel all over Europe on some campaigns. While on a crusading mission to Lithuania with the Teutonic Order around 1340, John lost his eyesight as result of ophthalmia and became blind, his eyesight gradually deteriorating until his death in 1346. This did not stop him from his duties being the king of Bohemia (where a large part of the Czech Republic is now located) and the titular king of Poland nor being one of the most valiant and chivalrous knights of the Middle Ages.

In the early summer of 1346, the English forces of King Edward III landed at Normandy, France and sacked Caen, on a crusade to permanently end the repeated French invasions and coastal attacks of England. The old French king, Philip VI, called upon his allies from the Low Countries, Navarre, Genoa, Brittany and Bohemia to aid him against the English invaders. When some knights came back from a reconnaissance mission and gave the bad news, Philip counted on the counsel of King John the Blind, of which he conferred to the King of France how the order of battle should be established to the French advantage over the English, hopefully counting on the superior manpower and weaponry of France against England and the timing of that order of battle. They were expecting the English force to arrive near the town of Crecy, where it would become the most significant battle in the human history of warfare.

And John’s advice was eagerly accepted by King Philip but the advice fell on deaf ears among the French nobles and allies. Confusion and miscommunication ensued, as the forces of the French’s allies were vexed by the misalignment of supplies’ transportations to the French front line, squeezed by bad geographic and river locations outside Crecy, with the 6000-strong Genoese mercenaries carrying their heavy crossbows but without the heavy shields they needed for protection. The French forced the Genoese mercenaries to the front line with only their crossbows and no shields, with no regard to their lives being at the mercy of the famed English longbowmen.

John the Blind’s Bohemian-Luxembourgian forces were positioned behind the left flank of the Genoese mercenaries, facing the young Black Prince of Wales, Edward of Woodstock, the son of King Edward III. John have a son, Charles of Luxembourg, by his side at the Battle of Crecy but he was actually behind the Genoese mercenaries, commanding Bohemian foot-soldiers. By 4:00 pm, the battle began and the arrows of the English longbowmen were wiping out much of the Genoese mercenaries and men-at-arms within few hours, according to John Froissart the chronicler, the English arrows filled up the sky and came down like snow. Charles of Luxembourg was wounded in the middle of it but escaped alive.

As the battle progressed, King John the Blind, being unable to see the gory battle and the retreat of the mercenaries clearly, was already suited up in his knightly armor, his sword drawn and mounted on his horse, was ready to do battle as soon as he hears the order being given by the French king to the other knights and men-at-arms to charge down the field, trample over the retreating Genoeses and head for the English front line. However, since John was blind, he needed the eyesights of his knights mounted on their horses to guide John in a charge and fight the English. How could they pull it off with him being blind and not able to see fighting the enemy?

What they did was to strap the bridles from their horses to John’s horse so that the blind King of Bohemia would have each mounted knight on his sides to ride him into the battle and fight! Yep, he and his knights at his sides just did that.

Talk about trying to duck the swinging of your blind king’s sword while leading him and his horse into the battle. Couldn’t pick any other worst duty of your life, eh?

Once again, according to the Froissart’s Chronicles:

The valiant king of Bohemia called Charles of Luxembourg, son to the noble emperor Henry of Luxembourg, for all that he was nigh blind, when he understood the order of the battle, he said to them about him: “Where is the lord Charles my son?” His men said: “Sir, we cannot tell; we think he be fighting.”

Then he said: “Sirs, ye are my men, my companions and friends in this journey: I require you bring me so far forward, that I may strike one stroke with my sword.” They said they would do his commandment, and to the intent that they should not lose him in the press, they tied all their reins of their bridles each to other and set the king before to accomplish his desire, and so they went on their enemies. The lord Charles of Bohemia his son, who wrote himself king of Almaine and bare the arms, he came in good order to the battle; but when he saw that the matter went awry on their party, he departed, I cannot tell you which way. The king his father was so far forward that he strake a stroke with his sword, yea and more than four, and fought valiantly and so did his company; and they adventured themselves so forward, that they were there all slain, and the next day they were found in the place about the king, and all their horses tied each to other.

Sadly, King John the Blind and the knights he was strapped to were killed toward the end of the battle, presumably by the arrows of the English longbowmen or against the force of young Prince Edward. At the end of the battle of Crecy, the French lost and retreated. The English force gave no mercy to the survivors of the battle laying about the field, knight, noble and commoner, since the French originally called upon their forces and allies to give no mercy to the English and take no prisoner. On the French side, only 30,000 were killed, including a large score of kings, chivalrous nobles and finest knights of Europe as well as few archbishops. On the English side, less than 300.

King Philip escaped the carnage at midnight and the victorious King Edward III, with his son the Black Prince of Wales at his side, stood with grim displeasure of the aftermath, the result of an unfortunate tactile decision made by the French king. He had hope for a truce should the French realized that they were losing as the battle coming to a close. His employment of longbowmen and the first usage of cannon artillery, which only fire a barrage of arrows in one shot, provided the turning point of history in the Battle of Crecy and modern warfare was changed ever since, ending the age of chivalry.

On Edward’s truce order after the battle, King John the Blind’s body, like all other dead lords and knights, was taken to Montreuil for holy burial. Charles, his son, became the king of Bohemia and eventually the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles IV.

For some, John the Blind’s decision to fight in that battle while being blind was either dumb or just really courageous. I would say courageous but foolhardy but he had shown to himself that not even being blinded would stop him from doing what he really excelled at on his own terms.

For an expanded history of the battle of Crecy, go here.

Call out to deaf Jews and deaf Arabs in Israel

I had just read a National Post article written by the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, describing the “poisonous myth of Israeli apartheid”. I know for a fact that Israel is one of the two major liberal democratic states in the Middle East (the other is Turkey, although with a mixture of secular and Islamic aspects) and yet this Ambassador to Canada from Saudi Arabia decided to respond with a scathing letter denouncing Baker’s article about Israel. The suggestion that Israel is an “apartheid” state came from ex-president Jimmy Carter’s much-criticized book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid”, which had aroused furors and disappointments from the American Jews, Democrats, and even Bill Clinton himself disagreeing with Carter’s hyperbolic, unsubstantiated premise about Israel as an apartheid state. Carter used the issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the peace process to highlight the problems the Palestinians had with Israel but he did not bother to check out what life is really like in Israel daily so far, like what Alan Baker had pointed out.

That is why I am calling out an open invitation to deaf Jews and deaf Palestinians and Arabs living in Israel, asking them to really educate us deaf Americans (and deaf Canadians, too! ) about what life is really like for the deaf Jews, Arabs and Palestinians, as well as other deaf Christians and Druzes, in Israel. We would like to understand the nature and circumstances from the Israel-Palestinian conflict that have such impacts on the deaf life and culture in Israel.

Does any of Alan Baker’s article confirm that there is no such thing as “apartheid” in Israel in any way or is there any credibility to what the Saudi Ambassador was saying about Israel as an apartheid state?

I’m not taking any side. I am all for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, just as long as neither side have to concede or expend themselves to the very bitter end and destruction. There’s no point perpetuating the conflict but there’s no point in perpetuating myths, wild theories and propaganda as well. Each side have legitimate grievances and concerns that needed to be addressed frankly and peacefully on the tables or in the moderated public forum, not with guns, checkpoints, bombs and martyrs, with all the emotions running high. I would not wanted to see Israel “wiped out” from the world’s map in my lifetime.

Granted, I may expect some kind of biased, prejudiced or hostile opinions from anyone who have follow the conflict for as long as they remember or have pay attention to the issues behind it, although with a degree of uninformed or propaganda standard. I should remind you all such hostile attitudes or sentiments about the Jews and the Palestinians (and to the originator of this blog) are not welcome here, so that I ask you to refrain from it and try to look at the other side’s perspective and see how that make you feel, like if the shoe is in the other foot, so to speak.

If you think that I have no reason to blog about this invitation to deaf Jews, deaf Palestinians or Arabs living in Israel, asking them to offer their own personal insights of life in Israel and in the disputed territories of Palestine so I hope to be educated truly as it is, please feel free to tell me like it is at robsund9 “at” yahoo.com, I welcome your feedback or thought!

Addendum: for those who agreed with the Saudi Ambassador about what happened to Rachel Corrie, the story about her “protecting a Palestinian house” have been thoroughly debunked here and here. Rachel Corrie was a member of the far-left radical organization, the International Solidarity Movement, and died trying to protect an Islamic weapon-smuggling operation under the house’s ground.

2.20.2008: Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight

Go here for the map of the total lunar eclipse tonight.

Watch the cool animation!

That straight out of Revelation 6:12:

“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood“

Breaking Robrief 2.18.2008!

NEW UPDATE 2.20.2008: SUCCESS! Satellite hit by missile at 10:26 pm, just right after the Moon turned red in the total lunar eclipse phase period.

CNN reports that the Navy may be going ahead to shoot down the satellite, USA 193, this Thursday, Feb. 21st before it would begin to re-enter Earth’s upper atmosphere. Only when after the space shuttle Atlantis lands safely Wednesday.

China and Russia are voicing strong objections to the US on the shoot-down, implying the whole affair is an American test launch to demonstrate its improved capability to shoot down enemy satellites and incoming ballistic missiles. SDI revisits?

UPDATE: USS Lake Erie (CG-70) will be the lead ship to launch a modified anti-ballistic missile to shoot down the satellite, along with USS Decatur (DDG 73), and USS Russell (DDG 59).

Yet another update: this blogger have new alarming information, raising concern of the fact that the satellite contained about 24 pounds of plutonium 238/239 inside before it would be intercepted and destroyed by 3 missiles or so. Plutonium 239 is a key fissile component for nuclear weapons whereas plutonium 238 is a thermal energy producer (useful for electric power generation without long-term human maintenance, such as pacemakers).

UPDATE 2.20.2008: Weather conditions may delay the shoot-down of the satellite to another day, if not tonight or into early Thursday morning. Just at the time there is going to be a total lunar eclipse tonight by the time (4:30 pm) I posted this update.

Robrief 2.17.2008: HUGE OIL IN USA!

Robrief no. 1: Massive Oil Deposits in U.S. Already?
Few months ago, as in last year, I’d learned about a huge decades-long research and development process by Royal Dutch Shell in northern Colorado to actually convert rocky oil shale into a much desperately needed usable energy source: oil. According to CNN’s Money special report, the Green River Formation may contain possibly the largest unconventional oil deposit in the world:

Spanning some 17,000 square miles across parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, this underground lakebed holds at least 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s triple the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Harold Vinegar, an oil scientist for the Royal Dutch Shell, claimed to make a real breakthrough by finding new ways to convert rocky oil shale into liquidized oil that can be used to power the vehicles, support the businesses, and heat American homes and without any further damage to the environment of where the oil shale comes from. Environmentalists aren’t so sure but they aren’t opposed to the extraction and conversion of oil shale into oil in the area, because of much needed economic boosts in the states and the Native American reservations (in other word: jobs). Critics stated that it’s all fool’s gold but Vinegar and Royal Dutch Shell doesn’t think so and they would prove it soon, IF the U.S. Department of Energy is willing to give RDS’s newest techniques a chance to work and impress the hell out of the investors and government wonks.

Then another surprising news come up: the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, as the U.S. Geological Survey will give a new assessment report soon, will give the United States a really unprecedented advantage of oil geopolitics over the world for the next 40-50 years: a super-massive oil deposit holding a possible 200 billion barrels of recoverable oil! Wow, this is an AMAZING news!

Few years ago, after Bush was re-elected to another term, he was pressured by Congress to release 1-2 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to address lack of oil production out of Saudi Arabia due to the war in Iraq. Bush said no, leave the nearly 700 millions barrels of oil in the SPR as it is. I suspected his reasoning was based on receiving assessment reports that the United States of America would have a bonanza of massive oil deposits that would give the superpower a far greater strategic advantage over the world in the next 3 to 4 decades and increase the SPR capacity to an unheard level that would rival the amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq and all other oil-producing countries altogether: a potential 1 trillion barrels of oil (emphasize on the potential).

The only problems are: the lack of new oil refinery capabilities, the need of expansion sites to hold more oils, and the question of environmental impacts under the cloud of climate change. President Bush told the Congress in his next to last State of the Union speech that he ordered the SPR to expand the current inventory to a new stockpile level of 1.5 billion barrels of oil in the next few years.

A lot of people think that President Bush is dumb in other national and international issues, but his greatest legacy, after he leave the White House, is his shrewdness, in term of his oil business thinking, in giving the United States a much greater leverage in the future in the face of a coming oil crisis out of the Middle East, thus leading much of the world to eventually depend upon the United States as the new kingdom of oil.

We shall see.

For further research, see the global strategic petroleum reserves and the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Robriefs 2.14.2008

Robrief no. 1: Broken Satellite to be shot down
A defunct Valentine icon, Cupid, is to be shot down with a naval cruise arrow…wait, I’m picking the wrong news… okay… here’s the correct version: a defunct military satellite is to be shot down with a naval ballistic missile in an unprecedented move never attempt before by the U.S. government. Last year, U.S. and other countries raised ire with China for shooting down a defunct Chinese “weather” satellite (other sources said it was a military satellite) but it did not pose a threat since it was a smaller type and could land somewhere in the Pacific. Is the U.S. about to show off its newest capability to shoot down enemy satellites? That one to watch for.

UPDATE – 2.18.2008: CNN reports that the Navy may be going ahead to shoot down the satellite this Thursday, Feb. 21st before it would begin to re-enter Earth’s upper atmosphere. Only when after the space shuttle Atlantis lands safely Wednesday.

Robrief no. 2: Hillary + solutions = results?
Hillary Clinton, in her series of a last ditch effort to derail the winning Obama campaign machine, stated that she is the “Solutions” over Obama’s “Speeches” when it comes to addressing major issues facing the nation, namely the economy, jobs, and national security. To be perfectly frank, Hillary’s “solutions” in the past are best remembered with failure to come up with results (anyone remember “HillaryCare”?). However, Hillary’s Senate voting record are comparably better than Obama’s (too many “not voting”).

Robrief no. 3: Spielberg withdrew in protest, China balked back
After the famous filmmaker Steven Spielberg withdrew his involvement with China for the 2008 Olympics over the issue of Darfur crisis, China balked and suggested he was out of line with China’s position on it, blaming on the human right “activists”.

Still, I take serious issue with China forcing the British Olympic Association to prod British athletes not to criticize China’s human right abuses while they are participating in the Olympics 2008 games. Historically, there have been Olympic athletes speaking out against the host country’s political and right abuses but China’s approach is an unprecedented one: making athletes sign contract not to speak out or face a traveling ban. Critics slammed China’s and BOA’s decisions because such a thing invite silence as consent to abuses, particularly in China’s case.

Good move for Spielberg, bad move for China and BOA. No country or government in the world is above criticism.

Robrief no. 4: Romney to endorse McCain
*sigh* I’m really disappointed in this latest announcement from Romney. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, by the way, sorry to all the Valentine Day lovers and Cupid.