Dec 8, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Yesterday The Washington Times reported:More than 40 expensive houses under construction in Charles County were burned early yesterday in a development that has drawn criticism from environmentalists because it is next to a nature preserve.
Arson is suspected in at least four of the 41 blazes, a state fire official said. The houses, 12 of which were destroyed, were priced at $400,000 to $500,000.
Ecoterrorism is one of the motives that would be investigated, said Joe Parris, a spokesman for the FBI, which joined the investigation last night. ...
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and a citizens group opposed the Hunters Brooke development and another subdivision because of their proximity to the Araby Bog, a 50-acre magnolia bog. ... The Sierra Club said yesterday it condemned "all acts of violence in the name of the environment." ... The Sierra Club called the Charles County development "quintessential sprawl" in its fall 2000 sprawl report, noting that it is far from existing infrastructure and "threatens a fragile wetland and important historical sites near the Chesapeake Bay." ...
In recent years, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a loosely structured group that opposes commercialism and industry in the name of preserving the environment, has taken responsibility for many similar incidents nationwide.
The Times today confirms: Arson cited as cause of fires.
Dec 7, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA-- Understandably, the call for Kofi Annan's head grows louder as details emerge in the Iraqi "oil for food" scandal.
But this particular scandal is only the tip of the iceberg of the United Nations' evil, said Dr. Andrew Bernstein, senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. "The fundamental evil of the United Nations is that it draws no moral distinction between free nations and dictatorships. For example, Sudan's regime enslaves tens of thousands of its black citizens, and Iran is the source of Islamist anti-Western terrorism--but both are UN members in good standing. When President Bush seeks the UN's permission to defend America, he seeks that permission in part from the very regimes which threaten the lives of American citizens."
"It's obvious," said Dr. Bernstein, "what evil regimes gain from UN membership: the cloak of civility and the spoils of unearned money, both awarded to them through the participation of free nations. What does the United States gain from UN membership? Nothing. It only loses."
Dr. Bernstein recalled a slogan from the 1960s "that offers the only solution to the problem of the UN: ‘U.S. out of the UN, UN out of the U.S.' If one wonders what to do with the vacated UN headquarters in New York, it could be used to house an organization of free nations; in doing so, the U.S. would be declaring to the world that it no longer tolerates the evasion of the life-and-death moral difference between freedom and dictatorship."Dec 6, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum: 
Reuters reports: Iranian Students Vent Frustration at Khatami. (Via Little Green Footballs)Students, once the backbone of Iran's reformist movement, heckled and harangued President Mohammad Khatami Monday, accusing him of lacking the courage to deliver promised democratic reforms in the Islamic state.
"Khatami, what happened to your promised freedoms?," "Khatami, shame on you," "Students are wise, they detest Khatami," groups shouted as the moderate cleric attempted to address some 1,500 students at Tehran University.
The speech, held to mark Iran's annual Students Day, marked a nadir for Khatami's relations with students who were a major force in his stunning electoral victories of 1997 and 2001. ...
He said he still believed the path of reform would succeed.
"I really believe in this system and the (1979 Islamic) revolution and that this system can be developed from within."
But for most present, Khatami's words merely underlined the impotence of a man whom they now view as part of a system unwilling to accept real change. ...
Student leaders, many of whom have been jailed for taking part in pro-democracy protests in recent years, said Khatami had failed to stand by them.
"There is no difference between him and the authoritarians," prominent student leader Abdollah Momeni said. "Students are very disappointed because they paid a heavy price for supporting Khatami, but in return they got nothing."
Dec 6, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Jack Wakeland at TIA Daily on how the Left opposes both war and criminal prosecution against the enemies of Western Civilization:
The left complains when we invade countries allied with the anti-American terrorist cause, we do not treat captured terrorists and the criminal militamen who fight alongside them as if they are lawfully uniformed combatants of a hostile nation at war with the United States. Likewise, when police and intelligence operatives capture terrorists in Islamabad or Kabul or Baghdad, the left insists that the men be put on trial, proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and sentenced in accordance with the law, like any other criminal—or released immediately for lack of evidence. The left has attempted to apply the rule of law out of context, as a fig leaf to cover their general rejection of national defense. [...]
[...] "As the January 9 date for Palestinian elections draws near, the left will complain more and more urgently that no "meaningful dialog" can be conducted and no "lasting peace" can be achieved if the man who the Palestinian people see as their legitimate leader is being kept behind bars. Soon they will join a chorus of anti-Western voices demanding his release. This is why Marwan Barghouti refused to participate in his trial and why he waved away all of the prosecutors' charges in the strutting manner of Al Capone, saying, "I'll be out soon enough." "
"The left's policy towards Islamist terrorism remains: no war, no justice." [No War, No Justice]
Dec 3, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Australia's The Age:
...The whisper in Washington is that there were two losers on November 2. The first was John Kerry, who lost the election to President Bush. The second was [Kofi Annan, who] did all he could to help Senator Kerry, even telling the BBC in the week before the election that, in his opinion, the war in Iraq was illegal. The comment was designed to hurt Mr Bush, but it failed...
...According to investigators, Saddam Hussein ripped $US20 billion ($A26 billion) from the UN's oil-for-food program under Mr Annan's watch and used the money to strengthen his control of Iraq, just as sanctions were supposed to weaken his regime. It is further alleged that some UN staff - including the head of the oil-for-food program - were taking bribes from Saddam....it is alleged that a senior UN staffer regularly sexually harasses his staff and that Mr Annan dismissed complaints about it and that UN peacekeepers in the Congo have been demanding bribes in exchange for food, and raping and beating local women (and taking photographs of it). If that were not enough, Mr Annan's own son is accused of making money from the oil-for-food program, by taking payments from a Swiss company that had a UN contract.
...Throughout the 1990s he was head of the UN's peacekeeping office....Its most shocking failures were in Bosnia, where 20,000 men and boys were slaughtered after being abandoned by peacekeepers in so-called UN "safe" areas, and in Rwanda, where more than 800,000 people were hacked to death with no intervention. Mr Annan knew that a massacre in Rwanda was imminent. The head of the UN's peacekeeping mission, Major-General Romeo Dallaire, sent him an urgent memo, practically begging him to intervene before the killings began.
...Given these facts, many were surprised when Mr Annan and the UN received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. Then again, it was not for making peace, but for "revitalising" the UN.
...He is sometimes call the "rock star" diplomat because he hangs out with people like Bono; he eats in New York's best restaurants and lives with his second wife in a mansion formerly owned by the banker, J.P. Morgan's family.
...On October 31, Mr Annan wrote to the US and Britain, urging them not to launch an assault on insurgents. Iraq's interim Defence Minister, Hazem Sa'alan, scoffed. "Where was Kofi Annan when Saddam was slaughtering the Iraqis like sheep?"
Having Kofi Annan resign will not solve things, as the way the U.N. is designed will naturally attract and promote the worst kind of political scum like Annan. Fire Kofi Annan, and another corrupt bureaucrat will take his place. The U.N. organization by its very nature breeds corruption. The problem with the U.N. is its core principle that equates free capitalist countries as morally equal with slave-state socialist dictatorships. Given this principle, why should it come as a surprise that one finds the U.N. as internally as corrupt as the slave-states it appeases?
The U.S. should withdraw from the U.N. and establish a United Nations for Freedom where only nations that hold the rights of their individual citizens as sovereign are welcomed, and those that do not are unequivocally condemned.Dec 2, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From The Wall Street Journal: Red Double-Crossed Again.In this latest case, the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] is alleging that the psychological conditions faced by Guantanamo detainees are "tantamount to torture." Why? Because -- we kid you not -- prisoners are being held for indefinite periods, and the uncertainty is stressful. And because some prisoners are subjected to psychological pressure techniques during interrogations aimed at thwarting further terrorist attacks. ...
The ICRC ... objects to interrogation pressure that is typically no more abusive than the good cop-bad cop routines common in American police stations. And where the interrogation techniques go further, they include nothing worse than loud music, temperature extremes, and uncomfortable positions. To call such discomforts "a form of torture" is to rob the word of all meaning and implicitly elevate the behavior of truly odious regimes.
Finally, from the damned-if-you-do file, we have the ICRC complaining that U.S. doctors took the care to examine the detainees' health to determine if particular stress techniques might be too much for a given individual. This is alleged somehow to be a violation of "medical ethics" rather than the example of American humanity that it actually is.
