Nov 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From FoxNews yesterday: Report: Suicide Drivers Were Turks.
Picking through the rubble at one of the synagogues, searchers Monday found the remains of an 85-year-old Jewish woman, whose 8-year-old granddaughter also was killed in the blast. Some analysts believe Saturday's attacks were meant as a warning to Turkey's Islamic-rooted government against continuing close relations with Israel and the West. Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation and NATO member, has close relations with Israel, including joint military exercises. Israeli has also helped modernize Turkey's military equipment.
Also: Report: Al Qaeda Behind Synagogue Bombings
The Sunday e-mail from al-Ablaj warned that attacks will be carried out against Japan, which was to send troops to Iraq but decided not to after the Italian bombing. It promised more attacks on other targets associated with Israel and the United States. "The attacks against Jews and America will follow. Let America and Israel cry for their dead from today and the destruction that they will suffer," his e-mail said. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of either claim of responsibility.
Nov 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Inside the thought processes of Howard Dean:
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his "re-regulation" campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out "re-regulating" the telecommunications industry, too..."In order to make capitalism work for ordinary human beings, you have to have regulation," Dean said.
...Voters are clearly hungry for government efforts to force better corporate behavior, especially with scandals hitting such industries as mutual funds and accounting, pollsters say. At the same time, they are unlikely to accept price spikes Republicans and some Democrats warn could accompany some new regulations.
Unfortunately many of the new regulations punish and regulate innocent businessmen, rather than specifically punishing those who violate the rights of others. For another view see Bush's Regulatory Crackdown on Business Has Harmed the Economy, Paralyzing America's Producers: The Government's Crackdown on American Businessmen Is Devastating Our Economy, and Unlimited Liability.
..."California is proving it does not work," he said. "I think the reason the grid failed is because of utility deregulation." [Washington Post, Nov 18, 2003]
For the real resons why California power did not work see New State Regulations During "Deregulation" are the Cause of California's Energy Crisis.Nov 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:Yemen's government on Sunday freed 92 followers of the al-Qaida terrorist network who have repented, a Yemeni judge responsible for dialogue with suspected terrorists said.
Nov 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus: Answers to Critical Questions About the Spread of Western Civilization, is interviewed at Insight Magazine. Here is a brief excerpt:Q: In our age of multiculturalism and politically correct attitudes, it is considered bad manners and even wrong to claim any superiority for Western civilization and its achievements. Multiculturalism regards all societies and traditions as of equal merit and is very critical of the West, claiming to see in America an explanation for the world's evils. How can you defend the West, as you do in your book, and claim that its traditions and civilization are superior?
A: Our core value is reason. Western civilization is the culture that is most concerned with natural law, the scientific method, religious toleration and the application of reason to the task of living - all of that. This cannot be said enough.
Defending Western civilization is not defending the "superiority" of white men. That other peoples had not developed the application of reason to life does not mean that they are in any way inferior. It means that they had not yet achieved what the Europeans achieved over many centuries. But if we take an objective look at the standards of men's lives, then Western civilization is superior in very visible ways. The Indians might have developed it all on their own, but they did not. There is no such thing as a racial inferiority that says they couldn't have done it. But you don't have to invent everything yourself to benefit from it, and any gift of knowledge is a great gift.
...I always point out that there is no shame in having ancestors called "savages" since everyone living on Earth today has ancestors who were in fact savages...
Q: But what about the ways the Europeans treated the Indians in America? Doesn't that prove that Western civilization was corrupt and brutish?
A: What happened is that there were Europeans who abandoned civilized standards in dealing with the Indians. The problem wasn't that those Europeans had too much civilization. The problem was that they had too little. It is true that many Christian Europeans treated the Indians brutally. But it is also true that the Europeans treated the Indians no differently [than] they treated one another. Think of Europe's endless wars. And it is true that the Europeans treated the Indians in ways the Indian tribes treated one another...
Read the rest at Insight Magazine.
Recommended Reading:
Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
Daniel Pipes writes about George Bush's new commitment to democracy in the Middle East:'Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.' This sentence, spoken last week by President Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by an American president....Understanding the rationale behind the old dictator-coddling policy makes clear the radicalism of this new approach. The old way noticed that the populations are usually more anti-American than are the emirs, kings, and presidents. Washington was rightly apprehensive that democracy would bring in more radicalized governments; this is what happened in Iran in 1979, and it nearly happened in Algeria in 1992. It also worried that once the radicals reached power, they would close down the democratic process (what was dubbed ³one man, one vote, one time²).Mr. Bush¹s confidence in democracy--that despite the ³street¹s² history of extremism and conspiracy-mindedness, it can mature and become a force of moderation and stability--is about to be tested. This process did, in fact, occur in Iran; will it recur elsewhere? The answer will take decades to find out. [NY Sun]
To the contrary, it won't take decades to find out.Individual rights, not democracy, is the fundamental in politics; representative government is merely a means to the protection of individual rights and the consequent limitation of the power of government. An attempt to establish majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights is destined to collapse in a power struggle over the reins of power sooner or later--and in the Middle East, there's no reason to believe it won't be sooner.Recommended Reading: Freedom--Not Democracy--for the Arabs in the Middle East and De-mystifying Democracy.Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The Daily Telegraph's Barbara Amiel breakfasts with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi:The EU was also sorry about Turkey, but that country could not be a member until it put its human rights and democracy in order. Meanwhile, Romania and Bulgaria were ahead in the queue.
His remarks struck me as peculiar. Turkey has been an EU candidate-member since 1997 and first applied to the EEC in 1959 when Romania and Bulgaria were still singing the Internationale. Doubtless Romania has substantially improved since the heyday of Mr and Mrs Ceausescu, but in a country where all libel is a criminal offence and Romanian journalists investigating government activities were told last year by the defence ministry's press office that "life is short and your health has too high a price to be endangered by debating highly emotional subjects", there can't be much to choose between it and Turkey....
In Iraq we are trying to build a new government with some democratic standards. Why won't you help us?" [Roger Ailes] asked. "No, no, no," Prodi said theatrically. "We will not give money when we don't know to whom." Which of course explained the hundreds of millions given to the Palestinian Authority by the EU. They must have known it would end up in Mr Arafat's Swiss bank account. I had fleeting visions of jolly African dictators cashing their Euro-cheques.
