Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--The accord Russia signed three weeks ago to accelerate the construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran and supply it with nuclear fuel is a direct threat against the security of the United States, said David Holcberg, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"According to our State Department," Holcberg noted, "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, financing, training and equipping terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad."
"Iran's claim that the reactor will be used for civilian purposes is absurd. Iran has more oil to generate electricity than it could possibly consume in the foreseeable future. Moreover," Holcberg pointed out, "Iran's intentions towards the United States, which it calls the 'Great Satan,' have been made clear by 23 years of chanting 'Death to America' in Iran's state-controlled mosques."
"With this accord with Iran, Putin is effectively arming one of our most dangerous enemies, and thus placing Russia on the side of the Iranian regime and against the United States. President Bush," Holcberg suggested, "must pressure Putin to kill this deal."
"If Putin is persuaded to cancel the accord with Iran, other countries will get the message that in this conflict one must take sides--and one better take the American side. It is time for the Russians and everybody else," Holcberg concluded, "to choose the side they're on. They are either with us or with the terrorists."Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the New York Times today:President Bush signaled a major shift in approach to North Korea today, saying for the first time that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program he would consider offering a "bold initiative" that could bring aid, energy and eventually even diplomatic and security agreements to the politically and economically isolated country. . . .
Mr. Bush's aides insist there are major differences between his approach and Mr. Clinton's. North Korea must not only refreeze its activities at the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, they say, but it must actually dismantle them. "We don't ever want to be in the position again where the North Koreans can just flip this switch on again," said one senior administration official.
Mr. Bush seemed to hint at that today when he said, "What this nation won't do is be blackmailed."
A country threatens another with nuclear weapons and a world war, and the other country offers them lots of aid in exchange. Only in Doublespeak is that not blackmail.
The repercussions of this capitulation are frightening: every country hostile to the U.S. will learn that we will give in to any demands if they are backed up by a nuclear threat. So much for the practicality of pragmatism. What we desperately need is a morally principaled leader. It is a life or death situation.
Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Best-selling author John Le Carre wrote a letter to The London Times titled "The United States Has Gone Mad." Your humble editor comments herein.The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
One word: arbitrary. Proof? Any attempt at proof? No. Thank you.
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
God, I wish this weren't true, but I think he might be right.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.
If there were no reason to attack Iraq, e.g., if it were Canada, I would find this to be relevant. But the fact is the Iraq is a menace for many reasons. It is not Canada.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day -- think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Not true. The U.S. customarily invades countries that are as worthless as latrines, such as Somalia, Serbia, and Afghanistan. To assert that the U.S. would act in its own alleged diabolical interest, such as to increase profits of oil companies--is a fantasy. The U.S. routinely sacrifices itself to every dirtbag county and enemy it has. Our 20th century history is replete with self-sacrifical foreign policy: the U.S. has never profited from any military effort. I defy anyone to challenge me on this.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us -- to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The first sentence is laughable. Yes, Israel and America can wipe out Baghad within minutes. But: a) It would be after the fact of a horrible attack by Iraq, and b) we would never do it because we are moral cowards.
As for the need to wipe out Iraq for "US growth," this is absurd. All military operations cost the U.S. billions and we never get anything in return. Furthermore, we do not need Iraqi oil: we have lived without it for over a decade. We have more oil than we know what to do with--within U.S. borders.
The last thing the U.S. needs to do is to demonstrate its "military power." The U.S. is the unchallengeable superpower and everyone knows it.
As for the reference to a so-called "colonialist adventure," I again challenge anyone to say when, in the 20th century, the U.S. has profited from any military effort. This is Marxist diarrhea and nothing more.
John Le Carre is a fiction writer--even when he writes about reality.
Jan 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An AP article "74-Year-Old Man Kills Would-Be Robber" (January, 10, 2002), documents the acts of a 74-year-old "Pac A Sac" convenience store owner, J.C. Adams, who confronted three would-be robbers in his convience store last Thursday: Cameron Lemont Glover, 17. Glover's 19-year-old brother, Leonard, and Tammy Crystal Jones. He ended up killing Cameron Glover, and injuring his brother Leonard:On a surveillance monitor, he saw two men and a woman hold up an employee at the cash register. That's when Adams pushed his walker to the front of the store and confronted the armed suspects, killing one man and wounding the other. An employee held the woman until police arrived.
"No need to let something like that live," said Adams, who had been wounded in a May 2000 robbery attempt in which he killed another intruder.
Police said Friday that Adams would not be charged in the shooting death Thursday...Adams' defense of the store has made him a legend in the neighborhood. "Everybody knows J.C.," said resident Nancy Pope. "Obviously (robbers) don't know who they are messing with."
Jan 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's some of what the Saudis are spending that $14.6 million PR budget on:
When radio ads critical of Israel ran in 15 U.S. cities last spring, they identified the Alliance for Peace and Justice as sponsor. The alliance was described by its Washington p.r. firm, Qorvis Communications, as a consortium of Middle East -- policy groups based in the U.S. But when Qorvis reported its ad work to the Justice Department last month, it revealed that funding for the $679,000 media buy actually came from another source: the Saudi government. [Time, 1/20/03]
Meanwhile here's what else they're up to:
Fearing the impact of a U.S.-led war on Iraq, Washington's longtime regional ally Saudi Arabia appears to be trying to rally the Arab world against any "illegitimate" foreign attack on its neighbor.
A day after de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said the kingdom was making undisclosed proposals to Arab states, Saudi officials said Monday that the ideas would be put formally to an annual Arab summit to be held in Bahrain in March.
"The proposal calls on Arab states to close ranks and totally reject any illegitimate foreign aggression on any Arab country," one Saudi official told Reuters. [Reuters, 1/13/03]
Of course if it's "legitimate" foreign aggression, then they're all in favor...Jan 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Houston Chronicle:A senior Bush administration official suggested Saturday that the nuclear crisis with North Korea was the predictable result of a flawed 1994 agreement signed by the Clinton administration with Pyongyang that "frontloaded all the benefits and left the difficult things to the end" -- for the next president.
The comments marked a sharp change of direction from the administration's insistence in recent weeks that only North Korea was to blame for the crisis. As recently as last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he gave "great credit" to the Clinton administration for freezing North Korea's plutonium enrichment program with the 1994 Agreed Framework.
We have seen this numerous times before: the Bush Administration policy versus Colin Powell's policy. Powell is a rogue and Bush is to blame for tolerating brazen dissension. The fact is that the Clinton Administration is to blame, and that the Bush Administration is a failure in dealing with the inherited crisis.
