Our Friends the Kuwaitis
Kuwaiti voters ousted most of Parliament's Westernized liberals in favor of fundamentalist Muslims and supporters of the royal-led Cabinet, results showed Sunday. [Yahoo News, July 6, 2003]
Inverted Priorities on Reporting on Iran
From Cox and Forkum:
Comments Allen Forkum:
It's bad enough when a crucial story goes virtually unreported by the major media ...but the BBC takes the cake in this story: Tehran jammed by protesters. They provide a list of actions taken by the tyrannical regime to suppress the protests, such as jamming outside radio and TV signals, disabling mobile phone systems, and arresting student leaders. The problem is that the BBC lists them under the subhead "Safety measures," which I'm sure is exactly the way mullahs categorize of them. (The BBC gets credit for even reporting the evening protests, which I could find no mention of in the U.S. media.) [July 10, 2003]
U.N. Sanctions Dictatorships
Three leading Iranian student activists were arrested minutes after holding a press conference to blast the Islamic regime for banning events marking the fourth anniversary of bloody student clashes with security forces.
The arrests were made after activists from the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) -- a pro-reform student umbrella group -- said President Mohammad Khatami had failed in his drive for reforms and alleged the hardline-controlled judiciary was trying to prevent freedom of thought. [Yahoo News, "Iranian student leaders arrested on riots anniversary after blasting regime", July 9. 2003]
Writes CapMag.com reader J. Clarke:
The Iranian students deserve the full moral--and possibly financial or military--support of America. Unfortunately, the students are mistaken in thinking that an appeal to the United Nations will help their cause. The UN was founded on the principle that a dictatorship (Soviet Russia and Red China) and a free nation (U.S. and Taiwan) are morally equivalent. Such principles have led to the U.N.'s recognition of damn near every slave-pen as legitimate. The Iranian students should steer completely clear of the U.N.
Altruism: The Central Axiom of Left-liberal Foreign Policy
Shades of Ayn Rand from James Taranto this Thursday:Howard Dean, who emerged as the Democratic presidential front-runner with his uncompromising antiwar stand, now favors military intervention--in Liberia, where he'd like to send 2,000 U.S. troops...
Iraq's history of invading its neighbors, using chemical weapons and pursuing nuclear ones, and backing terrorists actually made it a threat beyond its borders--and thus the U.S. had a strategic interest, not just a moral one, in removing the dictatorship. Some on the left seem to think U.S. intervention is just fine, so long as its moral purity isn't tainted by self-interest.... [OJ]
Death to Theocracy in Iran
From Cox and Forkum:
Required Reading:
Iraq: The Wrong War by Leonard Peikoff
Iran--not Iraq--is the primary threat to American interest in the Middle East and has been since it confiscated our oil fields in the 1950s. Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism throughout the world and is the country most responsible for lethal attacks on American citizens. For these reasons, Iran fully deserves bloody retribution.
End States That Sponsor Terrorism by Leonard Peikoff
Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.
Death to Theocracy: America Must Act Now to Bring Down Iran's Regime by Robert W. Tracinski
The reasons for toppling Iran's theocracy are far stronger--and more certain--than the reasons for invading Iraq.
Iran, Not So Far Away by Scott Holleran
While the world seems locked in an endless debate over whether to strike even one state sponsor of terrorism --- Iraq -- the religious dictatorship chiefly responsible for the wave of Islamic fundamentalism that culminated in the Sept. 11 attack on America is becoming an imminent nuclear threat.
The Real Revolutionaries by Robert W. Tracinski
For months, courageous protesters have braved riot police to oppose the depredations of a warlike and oppressive regime bent on world domination. No, I am not talking about the "anti-war" protesters who menace the cities of Europe and America--the creeps who scale the barricade of a Starbucks storefront for no greater goal than the glee of smashing its windows. These are only brave and idealistic souls in their own warped self-image. I am talking about real courage and real idealism--the kind shown by the young men and women manning the very real and very deadly barricades of freedom in Iran--the students who, armed with nothing but a burning conviction of the rightness of their cause, are facing down a brutal theocratic dictatorship.
"Death to America" by Daniel Pipes
In retrospect, the mistake began when Iranians assaulted the U.S. embassy in Tehran and met with no Amrican resistance.
The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran by Robert W. Tracinski
An end to the threat of Islamic terrorism requires, not just the toppling of one state sponsor of terrorism in Iraq, but the toppling of the regime that is the Middle East's most active promoter of terrorism--and the most virulent center of the ideology behind Islamic terrorism: the theocracy that rules Iran.
Iran is the Root of Islamic Terrorism by Joseph Kellard
Iran is the root of Islamic terrorism, and destroying its theocracy would be a major victory in the war on terrorists. But in this war the Bush administration takes an inverted, appeasing approach. Bush not only fails to declare that the US will us force to topple Iran's regime; he's busy appeasing Palestinian terrorists that are mere heads of the Iranian hydra.
Lawyers Claim Fat People are Dense?
From Edwin A. Locke of the of the Ayn Rand Institute on:The lawyers who claim that we are not responsible for the consequences of anything we do (e.g., smoking) are at it again. In a meeting in Boston two weeks ago, they decided to attack the food and restaurant industry. For what crime? For selling food that contains calories.
These lawyers are initiating lawsuits claiming that overweight people were not aware of the alleged dangers of eating fatty foods. If people are not aware that eating fatty foods in large quantities contributes to making them fat and may cause them health problems--something that has been publicized in the media virtually everyday for decades--then what are they aware of? These "victim" lawyers are not just claiming that people are not responsible for what they eat--they are claiming that people are not responsible for being conscious! If people are not responsible for being aware of reality, then just what are they responsible for?