It’s Only Inappropriate When They Say It

Feb 26, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

A spokeswoman for presidential contender John Kerry called Paige's remarks "inappropriate, particularly at a time when our nation has experienced the devastation caused by terrorism." Kerry's chief competitor, John Edwards, called Paige's words "grossly offensive." [USA Today]

... commenting on the federal government shutdown, called the House Republicans "legislative terrorists" ... Asked about his terrorist comment, Kerry said, "Terrorists hold hostages, and the Republicans are holding the government hostage." [Free Republic]

"What has been most damaging, I think, to all of us about many of the actions in this administration has been the cynicism with which they have perpetrated their positions and with which they have used us to trap us and to, in a sense, terrorize us because they paralyze us," Mrs.Kerry said. [NYSun]

Hardliner Cafe: Iranian Election Sham

Feb 25, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Even for a regime that excels in deception, the announcement by the Iranian government that nearly half the eligible voters cast their ballots in Friday's election is an extraordinary bit of effrontery. And even those Western "news" outlets that decided to pronounce the turnout "low" (the BBC, of course, echoed the party line by talking about a large turnout), did so by comparing the official numbers with those of the last parliamentary election, when more than 60 percent voted for the toothless "reformers." The real numbers are a tiny fragment of the official ones. [...] Oddly, the wild distortion of the real results does show something that the mullahs do not want us to know. They fear the Iranian people, knowing how deeply the people hate them, and they believe they must continue to tell a big lie about popular support for the regime. But the people know better. [...]

For those interested in exposing hypocrisy, it is hard to find a better example than all those noble souls who denounced Operation Iraqi Freedom as a callous operation to gain control over Iraqi oil, but who remain silent as country after country, from Europe to Japan, appeases the Iranian tyrants precisely in order to win oil concessions.

Now is precisely the time for Mr. Bush to show solidarity with the majority of Iranians who want greater freedom, just as Ronald Reagan spoke up for the people of Poland in the early 1980s. The only way to stop Iran's despotic regime from getting nuclear weapons is to help Iranians change the regime. [...] By the way, does Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage still think Iran is operating a "democracy," as he noted not long ago? Just checking.

You will have to excuse us Iranians for our lack of sympathy for these so-called reformers: Just ask yourself, as we ask ourselves, where they were while Iranian youths were being beaten, tortured, abducted, maimed, and deprived of their legitimate rights to continue their university studies. But despite our disappointment with the Khatamists, Iranians were nevertheless given an occasion for joy and pride on February 20, the date of our most recent elections, and of the momentous boycott of them. It will be remembered in the history of my nation, because on that day, Iranians showed again that we have the resolve to clear "Islamic mullahism" from our homeland once and for all. We have decided that our children must not be tormented as we have been. Throughout the day on February 20, I went to different parts of Tehran to observe for myself what was going on at the polling stations. To my great pleasure, there were only few people at any of them. Although the regime had done its best to urge everyone to participate in the elections, brave Iranians were far more determined to tell the world and the regime, again, that they are tired, and are on the verge of achieving their much longed-for change. Iranians abstained from the elections not because of the prohibition against Khatamist candidates, but because we -- almost all of us this time -- have finally realized that our goal can only be achieved "over" the Islamic republic, not "through" it. The vision of tomorrow's secular Iran will prevail, and soon. With or without the rest of the world's help, we are determined to paralyze and eventually oust the militants of the Islamic regime. This weekend showed that our efforts have nearly, after all this time, borne the fruit we have striven for all these years: freedom.

The Lessons of the 1930s

Feb 25, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

During his four years in office, Hoover followed the very policies being advocated most ardently these days by the Democrats--tax increases, trade barriers and higher spending on social programs....Also note that the critics carefully limit their Hoover comparison to the number of jobs lost. True, under Bush, jobs have declined 2.2 million, about the same as under the four years of the Hoover administration from 1929 to 1933. But in 1929, when the population was 121 million, a job loss of two million was a national catastrophe. It sent unemployment rocketing from 3.2 percent in 1929 to 23.6 percent in 1932. In 2004, when the population is more than 280 million, a loss of two million jobs means a national unemployment rate of 5.6 percent....

FDR scrapped his own balanced budget pledge as soon as he took office in 1932 and opened the spending spigots. By 1936, the deficit had risen to 5.5 percent of national output--even higher than the Bush deficit is expected to be. And while the number of jobs did expand, it was still 3.2 million jobs short of the 1929 high water mark. By 1936, unemployment still stood at 16.9 percent, nearly triple today's national unemployment rate. Even after another four years of New Deal economics, including a hefty tax hike that did little to narrow the deficit, unemployment was still 14.6 percent. But we don't hear Democrats talking about an FDR disaster. [Detroit News]

How Serious Is the Case Against Martha?

Feb 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

[T]he counts that really got our attention in the Stewart indictment are numbers three and four, in which Ms. Stewart is charged with violating Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001. That is the federal law that provides for a fine or up to five years in prison for anyone who "knowingly and willfully" makes any materially false statement or representation "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States."

The law has been on the books since 1863, but it was amended and expanded by Congress in 1934 as the New Deal required more federal disclosures. Today, Section 1001 is well known as dangerous territory by legal experts on all sides of the American political spectrum....

[A] liberal Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg..., in a concurring opinion in the 1996 Supreme Court case Brogan v. United States, warned of "the sweeping generality" of Section 1001's language.

Justice Ginsburg wrote: "The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator--aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case--will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.... The Department of Justice has long noted its reluctance to approve §1001 indictments for simple false denials made to investigators." [NYSun]

Ralph Nader: Refuted By His Own Press Coverage

Feb 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

He revisited NBC to appear yesterday morning to appear on "The Today Show." Went on Disney-ABC's "Good Morning America." Appeared on AOL-Time Warner's CNN for "Inside Politics," hit Microsoft-GE outlet MSNBC for "Hardball," and returned to CNN at day's end for an interview on "Paula Zahn Now" ....

Doesn't Mr. Nader read his own Web site? "The mass media in the United States is extremely concentrated, and the messages that they send are too broadly uniform. Six global corporations control more than half of all mass media in our country: newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television.Our democracy is being swamped by the confluence of money, politics and concentrated media."

But the uniform concentration of "mass media" doesn't seem to have prevented Mr. Nader from getting a platform to get his message out. Indeed, anyone with a television at the end of the day yesterday would have to wonder what Mr. Nader could possibly be complaining about.

One of many reasons Mr. Nader's message will never resonate with more than a tiny sliver of the American population is that ordinary people understand that corporations create jobs, wealth, and innovation.... And Mr. Nader surely has enough experience with the press to understand--even if he won't acknowledge it publicly--that despite the specter of mindless minions marching in lockstep to the orders of the almighty dollar, stations and newspapers and Web sites are run by individuals--by journalists, editors, and producers with their own brains, ambitions, standards, strengths, and weaknesses.

Ralph Nader: Public Shakedown Artist
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 Ralph Nader's Glittering Record
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 What To Do with Ralph Nader?
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Iran’s Ballot Initiative

Feb 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Many city walls that were plastered with election posters in previous elections are almost bare this time. Text messages circulated anonymously on mobile phones are urging people to shun the vote. "The ballot boxes are coffins for freedom," said one message. "Let's not participate in the funeral of freedom on Friday."

The other great lesson is that many Iranians, when pushed to the wall by the tyrants, do indeed have the courage to fight back. In an unprecedented step, more than 100 reformers issued a letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei, in which they used language more traditionally reserved for greater and lesser satans in Washington and Jerusalem. They surely know that punishment will be severe, but they did it anyway. One fine day such shows of courage will inspire the Iranian people to defend them en masse, fill the public spaces of the major cities with demonstrators, and demand an end to the regime. And one fine day such actions will compel the Bush administration to support the Iranian people. And on that day the regime will fall, and with it the keystone to the international terror network with which we are at war.

Reports from most Iranian cities are stating about the massive popular boycott of the Islamic regime's sham elections. Millions of Iranians have stayed home and afar from official ballot boxes in order to show the rejection of the Islamic republic in its totality. Reports from Shiraz, Mashad, Kerman, Malayer, Abadan, Bookan, Esfahan, Tabriz, Marivan, Amol, Sannandaj, Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) and Gonabad are all stating about dead cities in another show of massive Civil Disobedience.

Reports from some remotes villages of Mazandaran province are stating about an organized "collection" of "votes" by the Islamic regime's militiamen. Villagers have been forced to vote as armed militiamen are presenting them ambulent ballot boxes and explaining them the "advantages" of their "participation". The regime is using such process in order to compensate its fiasco in the cities which are under the watch of many foreign observers.

More than one source describe how empty Tehran streets are compared to normal, on this day the regime has advertised as the day the nation will come out to vote for their appointed parliament.

In response to the thuggish tactics of the hard-liners, reformists have called for a boycott of the elections. Their logic might make sense to them, caught as they are between rivals who change the rules of the game at will and a public that has voted at least four times for change only to be cheated out of meaningful change. But the idea of a boycott has led the reformists into an impasse of paradoxes. They say a ballot cast today is a vote for undemocratic elections. Conversely, a refusal to participate becomes a vote in favor of democracy. Iran's eligible voters -- there are 46 million of them -- may be excused for suffering a bout of vertigo from trying to follow this reasoning. They are being asked to believe that democracy requires one not to vote or that the act of voting identifies the voter as someone who actively rejects democracy.

Early indications of urban voting patterns suggested that people had stayed away from polling stations amid widespread disillusionment with the electoral process.[...] Most voters who turned out appeared to be diehard conservatives or religious people who had been told it was their duty to vote. Others said they wanted the official mark on their identity card showing they had voted. There have been rumours recently that proof of electoral participation would ease government job or university applications. "My only reason to vote is not to get into trouble taking exams. I've been picking names from the list at random," said Fereshteh, a 20-year-old woman outside a north Tehran polling station.

With the disappearance of the last vestiges of hope for democratic transformation within the existing political system, the Iranian opposition to clerical dictatorship is closing ranks and converging on items of a common agenda for the future of the country. [...] Hashim Aghageri, a leading Iranian dissident reacting to the massive disqualification of reformist candidates by the Guardian Council has declared that Iran's reform movement is finished. In an open letter published by the Iranian news agency ISNA, this history professor who is a reformist himself said that hopes for mending the system from within are over and he advises Iranians to oppose the regime through passive resistance. Passive resistance or civil disobedience is one of the items on the wish-list, which is uniting Iranian activists from all over the political spectrum.

Yesterday's general election in Iran was as cynical and undemocratic as anything an Orwellian state could devise, with a self appointed clerical elite forcing a cowed press and subservient religious establishment to hail the "democratic" outcome of an election shorn of all but the trappings of democracy. [...] [T]he derisory turnout is a blow to the Guardian Council and its allies. Many in the hardline camp do not care: their preoccupation has been to protect their own personal wealth, often corruptly amassed through state approved quasi-religious monopolies, and to stop any judicial investigation of their own abuses of power. But the election leaves Iran's neighbours and those countries such as Britain insisting on "critical engagement" with a problem. How much should they continue with business as normal?

Jack Straw may have believed it essential to keep lines open to Tehran, especially during the Iraq war and the tense aftermath. But the Foreign Secretary's frequent visits to Iran have done naught to bolster reform. Dialogue with a country as strategic as Iran is important; but endorsing a hardline regime is the worst kind of appeasement.