Dec 24, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The headline to Emily Kaiser's Reuter's wire story is "Retailers Face Worst Holiday in Decades," and it reports that US stores are "reeling from a lackluster holiday season that is forecast to be the weakest in more than 30 years." As usual, analysts are quoted, dire consequences are predicted.The scary impression given is that sales this holiday season will run lower than in the pit of the 1974-1975 recession, when the economy was not only in deep trouble but far smaller than it is today. But in the third paragraph it is finally revealed that exactly what may be the weakest in more than 30 years is not sales, but growth in sales.
In a weekly report, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UBS Warburg forecast holiday sales in November and December would be up an anemic 1.5 percent over last year, the smallest gain since the banks began tracking weekly sales in 1970.
We're not talking even about negative growth -- just smaller growth than some expected. The analysts quoted are forecasting 1.5% growth in holiday sales, which is defined as "the smallest gain since... 1970" [emphasis added].
Dec 23, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The December 23rd issue of Newsweek has an article called "Time to Expose the Mullahs" by Fareed Zakaria with the opener, "What country in the Middle East supports a flourishing terrorist network and is steadily acquiring weapons of mass destruction? If you said Iraq, you're one letter off. It's Iran, which the State Department has long branded "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world." The article makes many other excellent points,...Iran is also a vigorous exporter of Islamic fundamentalism. For two decades now Tehran has funded radical Islamic movements, scholars and centers around the world....Iran's democracy is a sham. The president, Mohammed Khatami, is a figurehead, allowed to give high-minded speeches and do little else...The fundamental mistake people make about today's Iran is to assume that the reformers--who speak in tones that the West can understand--wield power...Iran is a theocracy; the reformers and moderates are window dressing. Real power rests with a tiny clerical establishment.
Most distressing is this paragraph,
The clerics have created a network of supporters and enforcers who keep things tightly under control. There are several shadowy gangs of thugs--the largest of them a Hitler Youth-type group called the Basij--that go around terrorizing people. They operate above and beyond the law, breaking up demonstrations, even those that have been approved by local authorities. Then there is the secret police. One of the ironies of Iran today is that the mullahs came to power riding a wave of fear over the shah's dreaded Savak. But the only institution of the old regime that has been maintained, indeed fortified, has been the Savak, now called the Savama.
Dec 23, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--"All who value human life should applaud legislation just passed by Australia's Senate--legislation that removes some restrictions on scientific research using stem cells from human embryos," said David Holcberg from the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Such legislation," explained Holcberg, "will help free Australian researchers to discover new treatments for an immense variety of medical conditions, from diabetes to cancer to Parkinson's disease.
"American legislators," Holcberg continued, "should go even further than their Australian counterparts. They should rescind all laws that restrict or ban research involving stem cells and embryos. The government should be stripped of its power to regulate scientific research and man's quest for knowledge. The government's only proper function is to protect individual rights. But an embryo--which is, in the time-frame relevant here, a primitive cluster of cells--has no rights. Only independent, living human beings do.
"To sacrifice the lives of countless actual human beings, whose illnesses will go untreated, for the sake of the non-existent rights of a few cells, is an unspeakable crime."Dec 22, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Readers probably already heard about this story from a few days ago that received national coverage. As reported in the Seattle Times:At an appearance before a high school honors class, [Senator Patty] Murray, D-Wash., offered what her spokesman called an intentionally provocative challenge for students to ponder.
"We've got to ask, why is this man (bin Laden) so popular around the world?" Murray asked during an appearance Wednesday at Columbia River High School. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries that are riddled with poverty?"
The answers may be uncomfortable, but are important for Americans to ponder - particularly students, Murray said.
"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that," Murray said.
"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"
Murray is implying that Americans deserved to be punished for not sacrificing our wealth to placate backward populations. This is morally reprehensible: Americans are not slave labor to feed and house the rest of the world. We have no moral obligation to help other countries.
Rather what Americans should do is to understand what makes some countries wealthy and others poor.
Countries are impoverished to the degree that they lack political and economic freedom. (Some countries, like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are wealthy despite their horrible governments because they expropriated oil industries that Western countries developed. Before American, British, and Dutch companies discovered the oil and created a market for it, the indigenous people were impoverished and backward.) Bin Laden's "gifts" to Islamic countries are his means to promote a radical, death-worshipping sect of Islam.
In the same newspaper article an expert on Bin Laden said that "Mostly he did underwrite - and so did many Arab charities - several fundamentalist Muslim schools throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan that teach a very, very, fundamentalist, right-wing version of Islam that preaches hatred for the West."
The fact is that Bin Laden offers impoverished people a philosophy of suffering on this earth, of hatred, and of death. Whereas America offers the world a model for escaping their earthly misery in this lifetime.
America was founded on the principle of individual rights and its corollary politico-economic system of capitalism, where the government's powers are limited to protect people's rights to economic, political, and religious freedom. That is the key to happiness on earth, and the means by which impoverished peoples could rise up from their filthy and miserable existence. Millions of such Muslims have already escaped their oppressed and poor countries and immigrated to America to enjoy a life they would otherwise be deprived, because of the evil ideas of men like Bin Laden.
Senator Murray performed a grave injustice against America, and it is appalling that a woman such as she can hold public office. A Senator, of all people, should know that it is Americans who give the impoverished and backward countries hope; it is America that should be loved. It is not Bin Laden, and if people are swayed by his hatred and death-worship instead of the American dream, they deserve their misery.
Dec 21, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The citizens of still democratic South Korea recently voted into office a candidate who advocates open appeasement of North Korea -- after the truth came out that Communist North Korea is actively developing nuclear weapons.Imagine if Canada was run by a violent dictator who was openly developing nuclear weapons. Would American voters, soon after discovering this information, vote into office a presidential candidate who favors appeasing Canada? Would Americans vote into office a candidate who openly favored appeasing Osama bin Laden?
Clearly something is deeply wrong with most South Koreans. It's sad. However, it's not our problem. When the time comes for us to confront North Korea, as we now seek to disarm Saddam Hussein, we will then (as now) hear cries that war is wrong because it risks the lives of "innocents." How innocent are people who make mistakes such as the one South Koreans just did? Just because they want to commit suicide does not obligate us to go down with them.
Dec 21, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--By waiting for U.N. approval to attack terrorist regimes, President Bush is violating his sworn oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," said David Holcberg, senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"The U.S. Constitution," noted Holcberg, "was created to protect the individual and his rights from power-lusters at home and tyrants abroad. It does the latter by providing 'for the common defense,' which means: the executive branch of the government is charged with defending America from foreign threats. But by surrendering to the United Nations the responsibility to judge whether or not Iraq is a threat that warrants going to war--by placing our self-defense at the mercy of an international body full of appeasers and dictators--President Bush has undermined America's security.
"He, like his father in the Gulf War, is helping to establish the most dangerous of precedents: he is substituting the U.N. Charter for the U.S. Constitution--as the supreme law of our nation.
"While the Iraqis play shell games with the U.N. weapons inspectors, the danger of evil regimes arming terrorists with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons increases. We should, therefore, demand that President Bush uphold his sworn oath to the U.S. Constitution. Our lives depend upon it."