How Serious Is the Case Against Martha?

Feb 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

[T]he counts that really got our attention in the Stewart indictment are numbers three and four, in which Ms. Stewart is charged with violating Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001. That is the federal law that provides for a fine or up to five years in prison for anyone who "knowingly and willfully" makes any materially false statement or representation "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States."

The law has been on the books since 1863, but it was amended and expanded by Congress in 1934 as the New Deal required more federal disclosures. Today, Section 1001 is well known as dangerous territory by legal experts on all sides of the American political spectrum....

[A] liberal Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg..., in a concurring opinion in the 1996 Supreme Court case Brogan v. United States, warned of "the sweeping generality" of Section 1001's language.

Justice Ginsburg wrote: "The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator--aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case--will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.... The Department of Justice has long noted its reluctance to approve §1001 indictments for simple false denials made to investigators." [NYSun]

How America’s Bureaucrats Hang Our Friends Out to Dry

Feb 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Whenever these rare leaders happen upon the scene America bends over backward to throw sticks in their wheels.... Most amazing about [Palestinian banker Issam] Abu Issa's plight is how eerily it parallels that of another well-known Arab democracy advocate: Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi was also a successful banker. He was also an outspoken opponent of an Arab dictator, Saddam Hussein. And his bank was also seized....America's approach is to hang them out to dry. Mr. Abu Issa can't even enter the country, and Mr. Chalabi is right now fending for himself in Baghdad amidst a sea of Islamist- and Gulf-state supported politicians posturing for power in post-war Iraq. America is refusing to take sides in post-war Iraqi politics.... Two conclusions can be drawn from these cases. First, if you're an Arab who believes in democracy, you had better think twice about a career in banking. Second, and certainly more sadly, America won't be there standing by your side in times of need.

Iran’s Ballot Initiative

Feb 23, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Many city walls that were plastered with election posters in previous elections are almost bare this time. Text messages circulated anonymously on mobile phones are urging people to shun the vote. "The ballot boxes are coffins for freedom," said one message. "Let's not participate in the funeral of freedom on Friday."

The other great lesson is that many Iranians, when pushed to the wall by the tyrants, do indeed have the courage to fight back. In an unprecedented step, more than 100 reformers issued a letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei, in which they used language more traditionally reserved for greater and lesser satans in Washington and Jerusalem. They surely know that punishment will be severe, but they did it anyway. One fine day such shows of courage will inspire the Iranian people to defend them en masse, fill the public spaces of the major cities with demonstrators, and demand an end to the regime. And one fine day such actions will compel the Bush administration to support the Iranian people. And on that day the regime will fall, and with it the keystone to the international terror network with which we are at war.

Reports from most Iranian cities are stating about the massive popular boycott of the Islamic regime's sham elections. Millions of Iranians have stayed home and afar from official ballot boxes in order to show the rejection of the Islamic republic in its totality. Reports from Shiraz, Mashad, Kerman, Malayer, Abadan, Bookan, Esfahan, Tabriz, Marivan, Amol, Sannandaj, Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) and Gonabad are all stating about dead cities in another show of massive Civil Disobedience.

Reports from some remotes villages of Mazandaran province are stating about an organized "collection" of "votes" by the Islamic regime's militiamen. Villagers have been forced to vote as armed militiamen are presenting them ambulent ballot boxes and explaining them the "advantages" of their "participation". The regime is using such process in order to compensate its fiasco in the cities which are under the watch of many foreign observers.

More than one source describe how empty Tehran streets are compared to normal, on this day the regime has advertised as the day the nation will come out to vote for their appointed parliament.

In response to the thuggish tactics of the hard-liners, reformists have called for a boycott of the elections. Their logic might make sense to them, caught as they are between rivals who change the rules of the game at will and a public that has voted at least four times for change only to be cheated out of meaningful change. But the idea of a boycott has led the reformists into an impasse of paradoxes. They say a ballot cast today is a vote for undemocratic elections. Conversely, a refusal to participate becomes a vote in favor of democracy. Iran's eligible voters -- there are 46 million of them -- may be excused for suffering a bout of vertigo from trying to follow this reasoning. They are being asked to believe that democracy requires one not to vote or that the act of voting identifies the voter as someone who actively rejects democracy.

Early indications of urban voting patterns suggested that people had stayed away from polling stations amid widespread disillusionment with the electoral process.[...] Most voters who turned out appeared to be diehard conservatives or religious people who had been told it was their duty to vote. Others said they wanted the official mark on their identity card showing they had voted. There have been rumours recently that proof of electoral participation would ease government job or university applications. "My only reason to vote is not to get into trouble taking exams. I've been picking names from the list at random," said Fereshteh, a 20-year-old woman outside a north Tehran polling station.

With the disappearance of the last vestiges of hope for democratic transformation within the existing political system, the Iranian opposition to clerical dictatorship is closing ranks and converging on items of a common agenda for the future of the country. [...] Hashim Aghageri, a leading Iranian dissident reacting to the massive disqualification of reformist candidates by the Guardian Council has declared that Iran's reform movement is finished. In an open letter published by the Iranian news agency ISNA, this history professor who is a reformist himself said that hopes for mending the system from within are over and he advises Iranians to oppose the regime through passive resistance. Passive resistance or civil disobedience is one of the items on the wish-list, which is uniting Iranian activists from all over the political spectrum.

Yesterday's general election in Iran was as cynical and undemocratic as anything an Orwellian state could devise, with a self appointed clerical elite forcing a cowed press and subservient religious establishment to hail the "democratic" outcome of an election shorn of all but the trappings of democracy. [...] [T]he derisory turnout is a blow to the Guardian Council and its allies. Many in the hardline camp do not care: their preoccupation has been to protect their own personal wealth, often corruptly amassed through state approved quasi-religious monopolies, and to stop any judicial investigation of their own abuses of power. But the election leaves Iran's neighbours and those countries such as Britain insisting on "critical engagement" with a problem. How much should they continue with business as normal?

Jack Straw may have believed it essential to keep lines open to Tehran, especially during the Iraq war and the tense aftermath. But the Foreign Secretary's frequent visits to Iran have done naught to bolster reform. Dialogue with a country as strategic as Iran is important; but endorsing a hardline regime is the worst kind of appeasement.

Who’s Open Minded?

Feb 20, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Say what you like about us right-wing war mongers, but after Sept. 11 we abandoned our long-cherished theories of realpolitik--find your local strongman and shovel millions of dollars at him--as inadequate, and indeed part of the problem. Sentimental liberal internationalism--everything has to be done through the U.N., no matter how stinkingly corrupt and ineffectual it is--is just as inadequate to the challenges of the age. Yet Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean and the rest of the left cling to it like a security blanket. Ask them anything about foreign policy, and they sing like the Von Trapp children, "We need to get the U.N. in there." As Sam Goldwyn said, "I'm sick of the old cliches. Bring me some new cliches." [Sun Times]

Offshoring Is Good

Feb 19, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

[T]he prize for the pithiest nonsense went to Hastert: "An economy suffers when jobs disappear."

So the economy suffered when automobiles caused the disappearance of the jobs of most blacksmiths, buggy makers, operators of livery stables, etc.? The economy did not seem to be suffering in 1999, when 33 million jobs were wiped out--by an economic dynamism that created 35.7 million jobs. How many of the 4,500 U.S jobs that IBM is planning to create this year will be made possible by sending 3,000 jobs overseas?

Hastert's ideal economy, where jobs do not disappear, existed almost everywhere for almost everyone through almost all of human history. In, say, 12th-century France, the ox behind which a man plowed a field changed, but otherwise the plowman was doing what generations of his ancestors had done and what generations of his descendants would do....

The disappearance of whole categories of jobs can be desirable for reasons other than economic rationality.... John L. Lewis, the firebreathing leader of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960, once said that he hoped to see the day when no man would make his living by going underground.

Big Business vs. Freedom

Feb 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

[T]he recently enacted Medicare drug benefit, which the Bush administration rammed through Congress with unprecedented pressure... will cost trillions of dollars. A key reason for the high cost is that it applies to all the elderly, including those who already have drug coverage from their employers or private insurance. It would have cost a fraction as much to aid only those without drug coverage.

The incredibly more expensive option was chosen exclusively to benefit big businesses. The universal option justified the inclusion of large business subsidies in the legislation in order to keep companies from simply dropping their retiree drug coverage and dumping it all on the taxpayer....

A February 3 report in the Wall Street Journal noted that an automotive parts manufacturer, Delphi, expects to reduce its future retiree health-care costs by $500 million as a result of the drug legislation. And it has only 14,000 retirees and dependents to cover. Much bigger companies such as General Motors and Lucent Technologies will save vastly more. The former has 440,000 retirees and dependents to cover, and the latter has 240,000.

I predict that when the federal government starts mailing checks for tens of millions of dollars to big corporations to subsidize them for keeping health coverage they have already promised their retirees, the excrement will hit the fan. [NY Sun]

Wal-Mart Is Good

Feb 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Some Democrats, like Mr. Miller, want to focus on what Wal-Mart costs America. Mr. Miller seems to imagine that if the company didn't exist, its workers would all be earning salaries comfortable enough to live without government subsidies. But it's also possible that the workers would be out of work entirely.

Mr. Kerry himself, while campaigning in New Hampshire on October 10, 2003, said, "I think Wal-Mart's health care practices are unconscionable, and the way they treat employees is not fair." But the same Associated Press dispatch that reported that comment also quoted a Wal-Mart spokeswoman as saying that more than 90% of the company's 1.4 million employees have health insurance, 50% through the company and the rest through spouses and other sources. The spokeswoman told the AP that of those participating in the Wal-Mart health plan,40% had no medical insurance when they were hired: "These are people who would've fallen through the cracks." [NY Sun]

Thank God, It Was Just a Burglar

Feb 17, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Just after midnight on Saturday morning, the Department of Public Safety received a report that a student was wandering around Watson Residence Hall with his face painted a dark color, according to a Public Safety report....The student told officers that the face paint was camouflage -- not blackface -- and that he was actually on his way to rob a house, Hall said. "As far as we know, this was all a misunderstanding," Sheaffer said. [Daily Orange]

Saddam Was a Humiliation

Feb 16, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

What we, as Arabs, should truly feel humiliated about are the prevailing political and social conditions in the Arab world - especially in Iraq--which allowed someone such as Saddam Hussein to become vice president in 1968--and then, through an unparalleled bloody and conspiratorial path, to assume the presidency in 1979.

We should feel humiliated that Saddam was able to remain in power until 2003, and to single-handedly initiate a number of catastrophic policies that transformed Iraq, relatively rich in natural, human, and financial resources, into the poorest, most debt-ridden country in the Arab world, not to mention the hundreds of thousands killed and displaced.

We should feel humiliated that some of our intellectuals, supposedly the representatives of our nations' consciences and the defenders of their liberty and dignity, not only dealt with Saddam, but also supported him. Finally, we should feel humiliated that Saddam Hussein's fall came at the hands of the U.S. and Britain, to protect their own interests. The Arabs should have been the ones to bring down Saddam, in defense of their own dignity and their own true interests.

Deterring Suicide Bombers

Feb 14, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

"JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A prominent Israeli rabbi has proposed hanging bags of pig fat in buses to deter Muslim suicide bombers who may want to avoid contact with an 'unclean' animal, an Israeli official said on Thursday."

Mark Steyn on Janet Jackson’s Breasts

Feb 13, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

When I was asked what I thought of the huge boob exposed in prime time, I thought it was a reference to Al Sharpton not knowing what the Federal Reserve was in that candidates' debate....

...I enjoy [breasts] when they turn up on BBC costume dramas and when you're driving through France enjoying the topography and they pop up on billboards so you can enjoy the topoffgraphy. There's something to be said for the relaxed Continental approach to nudity. There's nothing to be said for the hollow joyless mechanical pop culture trash of the Super Bowl show: It was sleazy and worthless when it was fully clothed.

Nonetheless, I don't see why we need a government investigation. Unlike Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the existence of Janet Jackson's breast is not in doubt. We know where it is, there have been verified sightings; we're not relying on faulty intelligence and grainy satellite imagery....

[W]hat will be accomplished by a government investigation? Eventually, the FCC will issue a ruling and, if we're lucky, it won't be quite as ridiculous as their pronouncement on Bono's recent use of the f-word, which the FCC deemed permissible because he was using it adjectivally. If the point of these FCC investigations is to maintain standards of decency, then clearly they've been a colossal flop.

Iranian Terror Caucus: Kerry Akbar!

Feb 12, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

It is in the urgent interests of the people of the United States to restore our country's credibility in the eyes of the world. America needs the kind of leadership that will repair alliances with countries on every continent that have been so damaged in the past few years, as well as build new friendships and overcome tensions with others. We are convinced that John Kerry is the candidate best qualified to meet this challenge. Senator Kerry has the diplomatic skill and temperament as well as a lifetime of accomplishments in field of international affairs. He believes that collaboration with other countries is crucial to efforts to win the war on terror and make America safer.

[T]he Bush Administration stubbornly refuses to conduct a realistic, non-confrontational policy with Iran even where that may be possible.  As President, I will be prepared early-on to explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam a decade ago.

Just as the U.S. State Department approves wider contact with Iran and as members of Congress begin planning the first official trips in 25 years, Tehran is sponsoring a 10-day conference of major terrorist organization beginning [this] week. The purpose of the conference is to discuss anti-U.S. strategy. Among the groups headed to Iran to participate are: Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida allies Ansar Al Islam.

Khomeinism, a form of fascism, was, and remains, a consistent political doctrine. [...] [Today's ruling] Khomeinists sincerely believe that a woman is half as valuable as a man and that she should cover her hair because it emanates rays that drive men wild with lust. They genuinely believe that men who shave their beards will go to hell. They regard the West as a civilization in decline, and its values, including human rights and democracy, as decadent. Their strategic goal is to destroy Western-dominated civilization and replace it with a better, Islamic, one. They dream of wiping Israel off the map and, one day, hoisting their flag of faith atop the White House.

North Korea Has Gas Chambers

Feb 12, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter." The speaker is Kwon Hyuk, a former North Korean intelligence agent and a one-time administrator at Camp 22, the country's largest concentration camp.
His testimony was heard on a television documentary that aired last week on the BBC. "The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing."

Like other communist officials, Kwon was not bothered by what he saw.
"I felt that they throroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault. . . . Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."

Soon Ok-lee, who spent seven years in another North Korean camp, described the use of prisoners as guinea pigs for biochemical weapons.

"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners," she testified. "One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it, but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream. . . . They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were dead."

Why Should We Believe Them About the Patriot Act?

Feb 11, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Obfuscating or outright lying about what the Patriot Act actually contains is no accident: It's part of the active, willing ignorance on the part of the opponents of the Bush administration to raise up a bogeyman figure. What's so silly about the council's contribution to this vacuous monologue is how seriously they take themselves while being decidedly unserious about honestly characterizing the Patriot Act.

Now the Al Gores Can Steal the Election

Feb 11, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Electronic voting shows great promise.... But there are also grave concerns: Security breaches exposed as late as this weekend reveal that the results could be manipulated by hackers....Those blind spots have been exposed three times by independent researchers, first from Johns Hopkins University, then Rice University, and finally by a security firm hired by the state of Maryland to hack into the machines last weekend. In their report, the Maryland hackers picked the electronic locks on the voting machine cases "in under 10 seconds" and created fake access cards that gave them the ability to alter results and even end the election.

How “Mainstream” is Kerry?

Feb 11, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

"In the face of the Bush administration's failures, we know what kind of campaign the Bush attack machine will run," Kerry said. "They did it to my friend John McCain in South Carolina in 2000. They did it to my friend Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002. Well, it's not going to work in 2004, for a very simple reason: They're extreme. We're mainstream, and we're going to stand up and fight back."

According to the Globe, Kerry became involved in the anti-war movement upon his return, and asked for and received an early discharge from the Navy so he could continue those efforts. How could Kerry so easily abandon his comrades in Vietnam, and then, 30 years on, call on those same men and women to back his presidential ambition? Kerry now holds himself up as a war hero and asks for my vote. Yet, 30 years ago he stood with Jane Fonda and gave aid and comfort to an enemy still killing our brother veterans by the hundreds. Bush's honorable service in the National Guard bothers me less than Kerry's abandonment of his brothers, his switching sides and his active contribution to an enemy's efforts to kill Americans.

The only relevant lesson from Vietnam is this: then, as now, it was not possible for the enemy to achieve military victory over the US; their only hope was that America would, in effect, defeat itself. And few men can claim as large a role in the loss of national will that led to that defeat as John Kerry. A brave man in Vietnam, he returned home to appear before Congress and not merely denounce the war but damn his "band of brothers" as a gang of rapists, torturers and murderers led by officers happy to license them to commit war crimes with impunity. He spent the Seventies playing Jane Fonda and he now wants to run as John Wayne.

Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest. The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue [...] It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.

Antiglobalism and Antisemitism

Feb 10, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

An Israeli backpacker added: "I am a good Israeli. I accept the Palestinian right to violent resistance." He was crushed by the response of Faisal from Tullkarm: "I know better Israelis; they are dead."

Atkins Suffered Heart Attack According to Medical Examiner

Feb 10, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

...Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat and cheese over carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a history of heart disease, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy street. Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the city medical examiner.

...Last month, the diet guru's widow, Veronica Atkins, demanded an apology from Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Bloomberg called her late husband "fat." She told the Journal she was outraged that the report had been made public. "I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet," she said.

...Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, told the Journal that Atkins' heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a condition that was thought to result from a viral infection.

Borakove said that, because of family objections to an autopsy, the medical examiner had conducted only "an external exam" and a review of Atkins' hospital records.

...One of the handwritten comments in the medical examiner's report referred to "MI" (myocardial infarction, the technical term for heart attack), the newspaper said. Trager said Atkins had no record of having had a heart attack, saying medical histories on examiner's reports are often written by less-experienced doctors who may not know a patient's detailed history.

...The mechanisms causing weight loss from the low-carbohydrate diets used in these studies should discourage doctors from recommending this approach to their patients. Followers of this diet complain of reduced appetite, nausea, and fatigue - all symptoms of illness. If followed strictly enough to enter ketosis - the goal of the Atkins diet - then there may be actual appetite suppression. Eating less, causes people to take in fewer calories and lose weight. Another result of eating less is they consume less saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and animal protein. Signs of improved health seem to appear because risk factors, like serum cholesterol, triglycerides, uric acid, and glucose, and blood pressure, decrease - and the patient is declared healthier. Not necessarily so. Similar benefits, for similar reasons, are seen when patients are placed on cancer chemotherapy - and doctors don't brag about these results.

If people want to know the truth about good nutrition, they simply need to look at the world picture. Populations following high-[unrefined] carbohydrate, low-fat, lower-protein diets, like those from traditional Asian and African countries are trim for a lifetime and avoid all the diseases common to people who follow the Western diet. The Atkins diet is simply an exaggeration of the unhealthy Western diet to a level that makes people sufficiently ill to lose their appetite.