From Fox News…

The Chinese capital was shrouded in a thick, gray haze of pollution Sunday, just 12 days before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. One expert warned that drastic measures enacted to cut vehicle and factory emissions in the city were no guarantee skies would be clear during competitions.

The pollution was among the worst seen in Beijing in the past month, despite traffic restrictions enacted a week ago that removed half of the city’s vehicles from roadways.

Visibility was a half mile (less than 1 kilometer) in some places. During the opening ceremony of the Athletes’ Village on Sunday, the housing complex was invisible from the nearby main Olympic Green.

h/t Crunchy Con.

The Chieftain of Seir recently wrote an essay arguing that authority is weak all over the world and that it would only take worldwide economic problems to shatter political stability the world over. One of the things that he linked to in support of his case was this rant by Le Pen.

Now we are no great fans of Le Pen (this reasonably fair overview of the man) but we think it is important to listen to the voices of those who are likely to be empowered by economic problems. For better or for worse, the arguments of Le Pen are the future of France

From The Seattle P-I….

Technically, rain that falls on your roof isn’t yours for the taking. It’s a resource of the state, which regulates the use of public waters through an allocation process that can take years to navigate.

The state has long allowed people to collect a small amount of rain without asking.

An officer complains about how he and other officers were portrayed in the book Generation Kill. Since a number of readers of the Ethereal Voice have read the book, we thought some space should be given to its critics.

Read all about it here.

The Irish tend to be good at ranting as Kevin Myers proves in this piece on Africa. We do not believe that the number of people are in Africa is the problem. Africa could easily support twice the amount of people it has now if it was properly run. But Mr. Myers does highlight the willful blindness of many professional do-gooders.

From World Net Daily….

“Several potential adversaries have the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to obtain that capability,” said Graham. “A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead to high altitude. Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators. Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots.”