U.S. should demand separation of state and Islam in Iraq

Mar 5, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

The United States should demand that the new Iraqi constitution include an explicit separation of state and Islam. The threat posed by a new regime in which Islamic fundamentalism has political power is unacceptable. It makes no sense to have gone to war to overthrow a secular tyranny only to replace it with a religious one that is potentially far more dangerous to America. But to make such a demand would require the current administration to identify Islamic fundamentalism as our ideological enemy and to recognize that the separation of state and religion is a crucial requirement of freedom not only in Iraq, but here in America as well.

Antitrust Law is Inherently Unjust

Mar 2, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

"You continue to complain about specific, case-by-case injustices inflicted by trustbusters without recognizing that antitrust law is inherently unjust ('Who Defines a Market?' Review & Outlook, Feb. 23). The law is arbitrary and vague but has one clear effect: It penalizes the most successful firms for the (alleged) benefit of laggards and losers.

Nearly every firm trust-busted in the past century has boosted output, improved quality and lowered prices-- the opposite of 'monopolistic' behavior. For these achievements great firms and executives have been litigated, fined, jailed and vivisected. We need to recognize that producers have a right to their property--of which their 'market share' consists--and that they owe not a single, unpaid duty or scintilla of property to consumers or rivals.

Antitrust law does not 'preserve competition'; it shackles, sabotages and expropriates the winners of competitions. It is anti- competitive. Instead of chronicling case-by-case injustices, for once you might consider examining the case for abolishing antitrust entirely."

Training Thugs to Rape in Africa

Mar 1, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

"You are moulding somebody to listen to you, so if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instructions from you, then it's OK," he said. He was so horrified that he left his job with the ministry in disgust. [Daily Telegraph]

It’s Only Inappropriate When They Say It

Feb 26, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

A spokeswoman for presidential contender John Kerry called Paige's remarks "inappropriate, particularly at a time when our nation has experienced the devastation caused by terrorism." Kerry's chief competitor, John Edwards, called Paige's words "grossly offensive." [USA Today]

... commenting on the federal government shutdown, called the House Republicans "legislative terrorists" ... Asked about his terrorist comment, Kerry said, "Terrorists hold hostages, and the Republicans are holding the government hostage." [Free Republic]

"What has been most damaging, I think, to all of us about many of the actions in this administration has been the cynicism with which they have perpetrated their positions and with which they have used us to trap us and to, in a sense, terrorize us because they paralyze us," Mrs.Kerry said. [NYSun]

Hardliner Cafe: Iranian Election Sham

Feb 25, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

Even for a regime that excels in deception, the announcement by the Iranian government that nearly half the eligible voters cast their ballots in Friday's election is an extraordinary bit of effrontery. And even those Western "news" outlets that decided to pronounce the turnout "low" (the BBC, of course, echoed the party line by talking about a large turnout), did so by comparing the official numbers with those of the last parliamentary election, when more than 60 percent voted for the toothless "reformers." The real numbers are a tiny fragment of the official ones. [...] Oddly, the wild distortion of the real results does show something that the mullahs do not want us to know. They fear the Iranian people, knowing how deeply the people hate them, and they believe they must continue to tell a big lie about popular support for the regime. But the people know better. [...]

For those interested in exposing hypocrisy, it is hard to find a better example than all those noble souls who denounced Operation Iraqi Freedom as a callous operation to gain control over Iraqi oil, but who remain silent as country after country, from Europe to Japan, appeases the Iranian tyrants precisely in order to win oil concessions.

Now is precisely the time for Mr. Bush to show solidarity with the majority of Iranians who want greater freedom, just as Ronald Reagan spoke up for the people of Poland in the early 1980s. The only way to stop Iran's despotic regime from getting nuclear weapons is to help Iranians change the regime. [...] By the way, does Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage still think Iran is operating a "democracy," as he noted not long ago? Just checking.

You will have to excuse us Iranians for our lack of sympathy for these so-called reformers: Just ask yourself, as we ask ourselves, where they were while Iranian youths were being beaten, tortured, abducted, maimed, and deprived of their legitimate rights to continue their university studies. But despite our disappointment with the Khatamists, Iranians were nevertheless given an occasion for joy and pride on February 20, the date of our most recent elections, and of the momentous boycott of them. It will be remembered in the history of my nation, because on that day, Iranians showed again that we have the resolve to clear "Islamic mullahism" from our homeland once and for all. We have decided that our children must not be tormented as we have been. Throughout the day on February 20, I went to different parts of Tehran to observe for myself what was going on at the polling stations. To my great pleasure, there were only few people at any of them. Although the regime had done its best to urge everyone to participate in the elections, brave Iranians were far more determined to tell the world and the regime, again, that they are tired, and are on the verge of achieving their much longed-for change. Iranians abstained from the elections not because of the prohibition against Khatamist candidates, but because we -- almost all of us this time -- have finally realized that our goal can only be achieved "over" the Islamic republic, not "through" it. The vision of tomorrow's secular Iran will prevail, and soon. With or without the rest of the world's help, we are determined to paralyze and eventually oust the militants of the Islamic regime. This weekend showed that our efforts have nearly, after all this time, borne the fruit we have striven for all these years: freedom.

The Lessons of the 1930s

Feb 25, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

During his four years in office, Hoover followed the very policies being advocated most ardently these days by the Democrats--tax increases, trade barriers and higher spending on social programs....Also note that the critics carefully limit their Hoover comparison to the number of jobs lost. True, under Bush, jobs have declined 2.2 million, about the same as under the four years of the Hoover administration from 1929 to 1933. But in 1929, when the population was 121 million, a job loss of two million was a national catastrophe. It sent unemployment rocketing from 3.2 percent in 1929 to 23.6 percent in 1932. In 2004, when the population is more than 280 million, a loss of two million jobs means a national unemployment rate of 5.6 percent....

FDR scrapped his own balanced budget pledge as soon as he took office in 1932 and opened the spending spigots. By 1936, the deficit had risen to 5.5 percent of national output--even higher than the Bush deficit is expected to be. And while the number of jobs did expand, it was still 3.2 million jobs short of the 1929 high water mark. By 1936, unemployment still stood at 16.9 percent, nearly triple today's national unemployment rate. Even after another four years of New Deal economics, including a hefty tax hike that did little to narrow the deficit, unemployment was still 14.6 percent. But we don't hear Democrats talking about an FDR disaster. [Detroit News]

Ralph Nader: Refuted By His Own Press Coverage

Feb 24, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses

He revisited NBC to appear yesterday morning to appear on "The Today Show." Went on Disney-ABC's "Good Morning America." Appeared on AOL-Time Warner's CNN for "Inside Politics," hit Microsoft-GE outlet MSNBC for "Hardball," and returned to CNN at day's end for an interview on "Paula Zahn Now" ....

Doesn't Mr. Nader read his own Web site? "The mass media in the United States is extremely concentrated, and the messages that they send are too broadly uniform. Six global corporations control more than half of all mass media in our country: newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television.Our democracy is being swamped by the confluence of money, politics and concentrated media."

But the uniform concentration of "mass media" doesn't seem to have prevented Mr. Nader from getting a platform to get his message out. Indeed, anyone with a television at the end of the day yesterday would have to wonder what Mr. Nader could possibly be complaining about.

One of many reasons Mr. Nader's message will never resonate with more than a tiny sliver of the American population is that ordinary people understand that corporations create jobs, wealth, and innovation.... And Mr. Nader surely has enough experience with the press to understand--even if he won't acknowledge it publicly--that despite the specter of mindless minions marching in lockstep to the orders of the almighty dollar, stations and newspapers and Web sites are run by individuals--by journalists, editors, and producers with their own brains, ambitions, standards, strengths, and weaknesses.

Ralph Nader: Public Shakedown Artist
Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader.
 
 A Green Dictatorship: Ralph Nader's Vision for America
 Green Party presidential candidate and "consumer advocate" Ralph Nader wants to "reform" America -- whether you like it or not.
 
 Ralph Nader's Glittering Record
 Nader does indeed have a glittering record. But all that glitters is not gold.
 
 Unlike Gore, Ralph Nader is the Real Thing
 Nader is as wrong as can be, ideologically. But in terms of political consistency, he's right on the money.
 
 What To Do with Ralph Nader?
 In April of 1999, Nader wrote an article titled, "What to do with Microsoft?" The thought that Microsoft's owners should be able to decide what to do with their own property did not seem to have occurred to Nader.

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.