Jan 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
The New York Sun has this dispatch from London's Daily Telegraph:
North Korea could have up to eight nuclear weapons in the coming months and might produce a dozen atomic bombs every year by the end of the decade, a London think tank predicted yesterday....The IISS recognizes that it is even harder to obtain reliable information about North Korea.In particular,the institute says there is no firm evidence that the country has developed nuclear weapons, despite its bombastic claims to have a nuclear "deterrent." This view was reinforced by Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos nuclear research laboratory, who visited Korea in an unofficial American delegation earlier this month. He told a Senate committee that North Korea appeared to have enough expertise to extract plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods from its reactor at Yongbyon but he saw no evidence that the plutonium had been turned into workable nuclear weapons.
... and what do we do when one of those bombs gets sold to some Middle Eastern terrorist group who puts it into a shipping container and detonates it in an American harbor?Jan 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Here is a clear example of supporting our enemies and keeping them alive, even a purported member of the "Axis of Evil" such as North Korea:
The State Department on Wednesday announced 60,000 metric tons of American food will be sent to North Korea to help avert hunger and starvation. Spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision was based on reports from the World Food Program's executive director, James Morris, that some 4 million North Koreans were vulnerable and in need of contributions....The donation of 60,000 tons brings the total of U.S. contributions for the year to 100,000. The Bush administration has said it keeps consideration of North Korea's humanitarian needs separate from differences with the reclusive regime on its weapons programs.
We'll never win against any of these countries if we keep them alive with 100,000 metric tons of food. They wanted Communism, let their workers paradise produce their own food.Jan 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Andrew Sullivan notes that the kind of policies now being recommended for the US to lower drug prices--having government bargain through Medicare or allowing reimportation of drugs from Canada--carry a cost. He quotes Dow Jones on a report from Bain & Co.:
"Europe has lost out in four ways: The number of new drug targets launched in Europe has almost halved to 44 between 1998-2002 from 81 between 1993-97, top R&D jobs have flooded to America, European drug companies have moved research centers abroad, and Europeans now have to wait 33% longer to get new treatments than patients in America. For example, Bain claims Germany saved $19 billion by spending less than America on healthcare in 2002, but lost $22 billion in reduced R&D investment and drug innovations, lost wages from high added-value jobs, disappearing R&D centers, and poor health."
Self-interest is the reason drug companies exist in the first place; there would be no drugs at all were it not for their pursuit of their self-interest, and freedom means recognizing the right of producers to what they produce. It's no surprise that trying to sacrifice producers on the altar of need will have such destructive effects.Jan 22, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Classicist William Mullen has a column on how the critics of the Iraq war misuse Thucydides to support their case. He ends with this interesting quote from the ancient Greek historian:
In those dark times, "the blunter wits, for the most part, did the best. Concerned about their own weak points and their enemies' cunning, and that they would be worsted verbally and surprised by their enemies' versatile wits, they framed preemptive measures and boldly put them into action. Their adversaries, on the other hand, contemptuously figured that they could detect everything beforehand and would not need to take action when it was possible to get by on their wits. And so, more often than not, they were caught off guard and undone."
Jan 22, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Reports JNW:
Rayashi further broke the Western mold of what kind of person becomes a "suicide" bomber in that she was part of a very well-to-do family from an upscale neighborhood in Gaza City. Western observers and officials alike have repeatedly insisted that the economic despair the Palestinians live in as a result of Israel's "occupation" is what drives people to blow themselves up in order to murder men, women and children. This, clearly, was not the case for Reem Salah al-Rayashi - mother to two loving children and member of a wealthy family. ["Bomber was wealthy, mother of two"]
Comments an editor for JNW:
Economic despair only became rampant among the Palestinians of Judea, Samaria and Gaza following the introduction of Yasser Arafat's PLO into the area. Prior to 1993, the majority of Palestinian Arabs were enjoying increasingly high standards of living and most could travel freely to jobs in sovereign Israel.
