Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Wash., a member of the 'International Solidarity Movement,' burns a mock U.S. flag during a rally in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah in this Feb. 15, 2003 file photo. [Associated Press, 3/16/03]
Interestingly, the [aid] "strategies" being considered appear to bypass the government in finding ways to "provide humanitarian and development support" to Haiti. But Dr. Robert Rodney, a politically active physician in New York, asserts that "the Haitian problem is essentially political and any plan that would attempt to deal with the people's suffering while leaving Aristide in power is doomed to failure." He says that Mr. Aristide will invent ways to siphon off any aid to the people by his "chimeras" or thugs and by blocking what his organizations can't control. [Raymond Joseph, New York Sun, 3/14/03]What Dr. Rodney doesn't say, but implies, is that the sending of "humanitarian assistance" is essentially an evasion. It allows Western bleeding hearts to feel like they're "doing something" and so assuage their altruistic guilt, without actually identifying and doing something about the cause of the problem. Identifying causes requires abstract thinking, moral judgment, and a repudiation of the idea that good things come by wishing them into existence. Following that path leads to abandoning the politics of collectivism and its underlying code of altruism. But our humanitarians are hardly willing to do that.
Oh, well. I guess Nietzsche was right: God is dead. And covered in tartar sauce. Mmmm...tartar sauce.
"If we had to vote on the proposal for a resolution that was presented last Friday, Chile would not be accompanying that stance," said Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear. "That means that we are not going to support it," she then translated.
It is rumored that almost 14 top al-Qaeda operatives are vaguely aware of Chile.
The move comes in the wake of several scapegoat-style lawsuits designed to institutionalize the shirking of personal responsibility, while crushing successful businesses in the process. Just last week, a California judge dismissed a "negligent marketing" lawsuit against several gun manufacturers and distributors, which blamed them for "dumping" guns into areas where criminals and children could buy them. The suit was filed by San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Oakland, West Hollywood, and several other California counties. These counties also just happen to have the strictest anti-gun laws in the state. Hmmm.
In what must be completely unrelated news, a Los Angeles police officer was charged today with stealing unlawful "assault" weapons and selling them on the black market...
Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.
However, although officers witnessed the vandalism Saturday afternoon, police did not arrest three people seen damaging the display because they were "exercising the same freedom of speech that the people who put up the flags were,' La Habra Police Capt. John Rees said Monday. "For this to be vandalism, there had to be an ill-will intent,' he said. Rees said in order for police to take any action, the owner of the fence would have to file a complaint.
Jeff Collison, owner of The RV Center in La Habra, who has allowed residents to add patriotic symbols to the fence on his property, said he just might do that. "Their free speech stops at destruction of private property. If they are allowed to come on my property and burn flags, does that mean I can go to City Hall or the police station and light their flags on fire because that is freedom of speech? To me, this is vandalism."
... Tracey Chandler, a Whittier mother of four who has maintained the spontaneous memorial since it was created by other area residents soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said... "They trashed 87 flags, ripped 11 memorial tiles made by myself and my children out of the ground and glued the Bob Dylan song to a sign that said, 'America, land of the brave, home of the free.'" [Whittier Daily News, 3/11/03]