May 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Last week the New York Sun ran a five-part (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), front-page series on how Omar el-Bashir's Islamist government of Sudan is systematically exterminating or driving out the black population of the province of Darfur:
Mr. el-Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989. His National Islamic Front regime is so tyrannical and brutal it has earned the moniker the "Taliban of Africa." It practices Sharia law to its most extreme. It supports a penal code known as hudud that includes cross-amputation [the severing of the right hand and left foot.] The government sanctions stoning young women to death for committing adultery.
Mr. el-Bashir has been trying to expand Sharia law to all of Sudan. His latest attempt to expand the reach of Sharia came during negotiations aimed at ending another conflict in the country--a 21-year civil war between the black Christian Sudan People's Liberation Army in southern Sudan and the Arab Muslim government in the north.The application of Sharia has been one of the unresolved issues.
May 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
This from the Saudi government-appointed head of the Grand Mosque in Mecca:
[R]ead history... to know that yesterday's Jews were bad predecessors and today's Jews are worse successors. They are killers of prophets and the scum of the earth. Allah hurled his curses and indignation on them and made them monkeys and pigs and worshippers of tyrants. These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, evil, and corruption....
The article shows there's plenty more where that came from.May 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
FoxNews reports: Iran Rejects Chalabi Spying Accusations.Iran acknowledged Sunday it had a strong dialogue with embattled Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, but rejected accusations that he passed classified intelligence to Iran. Chalabi's long-standing contacts with Iran have left some in the U.S. government suspicious about his intentions.
Chalabi has denied allegations from American intelligence sources that he handed over sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation, but he admits: "I met with Iranian officials about a month and a half ago. ... And we meet people from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad regularly, as do all members of the Governing Council."
Columnist Michael Ledeen has his own suspicions about the spying allegations: Lying into the Mirror. (Via LGF) Ledeen seems to me to be cutting Chalabi too much slack for dealing with the Iranians at all, by blaming a lack of American support for Chalabi. But Ledeen makes a good point regarding America's appeasement of the Iranian regime:Finally, it's hilarious to see this crowd of diplomats and intelligence officers attacking an Iraqi for talking too much to Iranians, when Powell's State Department and Tenet's CIA has been meeting with Iranians for years.
And Ledeen's overall conclusion is worth noting:All of this is the inevitable result of the fundamental misunderstanding of the war against the terror masters. It is a regional war, not a war limited to a single country. Since we refuse to admit this, we are unable to design an effective strategy to win. Deceiving ourselves, we lie to the mirror, saying that defeats are really victories [re: Fallujah], that Baathists are our friends and independent minded Shiites are our enemies [re: Chalabi], and that appeasement of the mullahs will end their long war against the United States. ... Has anyone told the president?
If it turns out that Chalabi or someone working for him really did pass vital military information to the Iranians, then the culpable parties should be arrested. But at the same time, the American government should stop treating the Iranian regime with diplomatic kid gloves and start treating it as the enemy it is.May 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From David Holcberg writing for the Ayn Rand Institute:
The Bush administration's decision to expedite FDA approval for AIDS-related drugs--from years to weeks--shows two things. One, the FDA's approval process is dictated largely by politics, not science. Two, the administration knows that the FDA unnecessarily delays the marketing of drugs to people who need them.
The best way to make sure drugs are safe and readily available is not to make the FDA more efficient, but to make the FDA irrelevant. Let doctors and patients--not government officials--decide what's the best treatment. That's the American way.
May 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
An interesting aside by Detroit News columnist Thomas Bray:
[T]he average U.S. corporation pays 40 percent of its profit in federal and state tax, compared with 33 percent in officially Communist China and 24 percent in Russia, according to the accounting firm of KPMG...
May 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Nicholas Thompson writes in the New York Sun of the frightening powers granted the New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer by the Martin Act:
The purpose of the 1921 Martin Act is to arm the New York attorney general to combat financial fraud. It empowers him to subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state; to keep an investigation totally secret or to make it totally public; and to choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants. People called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act's powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state. Now for the scary part: To win a case, the AG doesn't have to prove that the defendant intended to defraud anyone, that a transaction took place, or that anyone actually was defrauded. Plus, when the prosecution is over, trial lawyers can gain access to the hordes of documents that the act has churned up and use them as the basis for civil suits.
