"Parents today are being forced to contend with a new threat -- big food companies targeting junk food at children," Mr. Lieberman said. "We cannot raise strong and healthy children if the best efforts of good parents all across America are being consistently undercut by corporations looking to profit by spreading bad behavior."
"Progressive education" is a term calculated to mislead--who would oppose progress? But it is in fact regressive, designed to thwart cognitive development in favor of a group mentality, creating followers rather than leaders. It instills collectivism rather than individualism, pragmatism rather than standards or principles, range-of-the-moment thinking rather than objective, goal-oriented activity. Man is the only species in nature capable of willfully crippling its young. Progressive education clips the wings of the fledgling mind before it leaves the nest, leaving its victims ill prepared for adulthood. It's not that Johnny can't read; it's that he cannot think effectively. It is no coincidence that multiculturalism, the misplaced notion that all cultures are equal, has gained a widespread following; it follows from progressive education. Only a society that has learned that there are no standards can disregard the differences between Western societies and primitive ones, e.g., the difference between Beethoven and a primitive drum. The same holds for political correctness, environmentalism, et al. Most individuals are too benevolent to conceive of such a perverse program--hence, its success over the past 75 years. [Daily Sun]
Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews.
...According to statistics collected by the UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, 1,192 Serbs have been killed, 1,303 kidnapped and 1,305 wounded in Kosovo this year,...The violence continues despite an 18,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force and an international police force of more than 4,000. ..."The whole process of rebuilding Kosovo-Metohija as a democratic, multi-ethnic society failed due to both the inability of the UN mission and [NATO] forces to protect Serbs and other non-Albanians from large-scale ethnic cleansing, this time primarily against Serbs," said Dusan Batakovic, a Serb diplomat and leading expert on Kosovo. ...Now, more than 5,000 tonnes of heroin pass directly through Kosovo every month. In a recent article in Serbia's Vreme magazine, Kosovo was referred to as the "republic of heroin."...The Albanian mafia also control trafficking in cigarettes, weapons, gasoline and women. Dozens of young women from impoverished towns and villages in the region are forced into prostitution rings centred in Kosovo, security officials say. Many of the women are taken by mobsters to work in Western European countries. ..."It's a terrible situation," said Mr. Bissett. "If the United Nations and other organizations can't handle Kosovo, you wonder how they are going to do with something like Iraq." ["Crime, terror flourish in 'liberated' Kosovo" (December 10, 2003)]How indeed. Recommended Reading: Kosovo: Tribalist Quagmire by Andrew Lewis
"Bipartisanship is when the stupid party and the evil party get together and do something truly stupid and evil." -- M. Stanton Evans [12/7/2003]
Analysts at one financial firm, Aton, summed up the shock in a research note: "Yesterday's election shows what the people actually think: they are stridently nationalist, want wealth redistributed and have little interest in liberal or democratic values." Igor Mintusov, of Nikkolo M, political campaign consultants, said: "It is a sad day for liberalism. The liberals in Russia are finished in the short term." [12/9/2003]Bear in mind that the election was entirely "democratic," the real loser was not majority rule, but individual liberty. "Liberal" in this context means, roughly, "individualist."
A fossil of a small sea creature extracted from a 425-million-year-old British rock formation is the oldest unequivocally male fossil known, researchers say....Details revealed include gills, eyes, limbs designed for swimming and the oldest known male organ in the fossil record. It was this last that led researchers to name the new species, Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which is Greek for "amazing swimmer with large penis."
[D]irty bomb warheads--24 ready to use, 14 dismantled--[are] missing from a storage depot near the Trans-Dniester Tiraspol military airport [in Moldova].... The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other agencies have expressed repeated concern about reports that the Trans-Dniester region is a major weapons smuggling center. Moldova is a former Soviet republic and thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition remain stored in Trans-Dniester.... Nantoi said reports first reached him in 1998 that Alazan rockets... had been fitted with warheads modified to carry radioactive material. Since then, the rockets and warheads appear to have disappeared from their storage area.... [12/08/2003]
...This is vindication for those who promoted the drug at and outside of ImClone, only to see its potential trampled in the media rush to condemn the stock sales of Martha Stewart and Sam Waksal. But any satisfaction is certainly tinged by the knowledge that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration passed up an opportunity to approve Erbitux nearly two years ago, and that tens of thousands of colorectal cancer victims have since died needlessly premature deaths. Erbitux isn't a miracle cure for most patients. But it will improve and extend many lives. Consider this back-of-the-envelope calculation. The American Cancer Society predicts about 57,000 Americans (or 156 per day) will die from colorectal cancer this year. Studies suggest that more than 20% of them would have responded dramatically to Erbitux in combination with chemo (a greater than 50% reduction in tumor size), while for many others the disease would have at least stabilized. "Conceivably, as many as 100 people died today that wouldn't have if they had been able to obtain Erbitux," says Steve Walker of the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs...Not to mention 7 years of the life of Sam Waksal.
...Commissioner Mark McClellan needs to remind his bureaucrats that every day of delay has real human costs.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.--Thomas JeffersonWhat would Thomas Jefferson think of George W. Bush's expanding welfare state?
The atmosphere [at the UN's Third Committee] remained clubby and cordial as the Ambassador of Israel came to the microphone to present a resolution on behalf of Israeli children....He mentioned the deliberate bombing of discos, pizza parlours and school buses, almost exclusively used by children. When he finished, the session chairman did not ask the names of co-sponsors for the Israeli resolution. Because there were none. A discussion followed. The Syrian delegate strenuously opposed assistance of Israeli children and said the resolution was procedurally wrong. The Palestinian Authority's lady complained that the Israelis had "copied" their resolution. The situation of Palestinian children was "unique" she said--which it may well be, since most children of the world are not used as human shields for terrorist camps or encouraged to be suicide bombers so their pictures can be put up in grocery stores as "martyrs." [UK Telegraph, Nov 17, 2003]
Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."James Taranto comments:
Is it any wonder Americans don't trust the press? Here we have an editor of the New York Times insisting that reporters can keep a secret, then in the very next breath, a self-styled rabbi of reportorial "excellence" denounces them for doing just that. Rosenstiel's comments are especially idiotic. The reporters didn't lie; they just waited 2 1/2 hours until Bush had left Baghdad before reporting that he had been there. Journalists often get information that is "embargoed"--i.e., not to be released until a time of the source's choosing--and by and large they comply with such embargoes. Moreover, withholding facts "because it serves a larger truth" is precisely what reporters do when they use anonymous sources. Rosenstiel adds that Bush's trip "was much bigger news on a slow news dayif it was unexpected. What reporters have done by going along with this is to help Bush politically." Well, it's true that the element of surprise helped make this one of the most dramatic political gestures in recent history.... But what Rosenstiel seems to be saying is that reporters had an obligation to diminish the news value of the story in order to hurt Bush politically.
...legislation allows the province to crack down ["crack down"???] on private sector health clinics that may be breaking the Canada Health Act by charging patients for medical procedures...The bill, which was rushed through the legislature this week, has sent shockwaves through B.C.'s medical community, which says medical waiting lists will increase as private clinics offering surgeries or diagnostic MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or CT (computed tomography imaging) scans go out of business. "If the private sector is closed down, people have the option of either waiting in the public system or going south of the border to facilities there," said Dr. John Turner, president of the B.C. Medical Association.Thanks goodness Canadians have America to turn to. But if America adopts Canada's health care system where will American's turn to? The Bahamas?
The legislation, which likely won't be implemented until early in the new year, imposes enhanced powers to audit medical facilities and fines of up to $20,000 for those found providing fee-for-service care contrary to the Canada Health Act. Dr. Brian Day, medical director of the Cambie Surgical Centre, said the legislation will increase waiting lists while forcing private sector care providers into bankruptcy. [December 04, 2003, "Patients face surgery delays as B.C. cracks down on clinics", Vancouver Sun][Hat Tip: S. Liesenberg]
MATTHEWS: Would you break up Fox?...Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has "The Weekly Standard." It has got a lot of other interests. It has got "The New York Post." Would you break it up?
DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but...
What about the right to free speech and association?
MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?
DEAN: I don't want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously [...]
Because, you would not get elected, Mr. Dean?
MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You're going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?
DEAN: What I'm going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
"Democracy" does not mean freedom, a freedom that Dean is seeking to "regulate", i.e., extinguish. Democracy means majority rule--where Dean is the "voice" of that majority, and is so empowered to violate the rights of the minority, the minority in this case being the owners of the "big" conglomerates. In principle, there are only two fundamental political viewpoints. That is, two contradictory ends of the "political spectrum." Those two principles are freedom and slavery. So the issue is not: what number of stations are in a given local, or what portions of the political spectrum have radio stations. The fact is you could have five hundred Dictator Dean approved local radio stations and still be in a worse position then if you had only one radio station. What is essential is that if anyone desires to start a radio station--whether they are a large conglomerate or a local mom and pop operation--that they are not physically prevented by law from doing so. Freedom only requires one thing: freedom from the initiation of physical force--freedom from Howard Dean's totalitarian fist. It is only the enemies of freedom that require Howard Dean's particular kind of "rules and regulations."
...Thank you for joining the Iraqi resistance forces...Our leaders include generals of President Saddam Hussein's secular government as well as fundamentalist Islamists....we must kill as many Americans as possible... As the Afghan resistance to the Soviets and the Americans' own revolution against our former colonial masters the British have proven, it will only be a matter of time before the U.S. occupation forces become demoralized.The American revolutionaries were fighting for individual rights, Saddam's remaining thugs are fighting for...
Indeed, the soldiers are themselves oppressed members of America's vast underclass. Many don't want to be here; joining America's mercenary army is the only way they can afford to attend university.Because everyone knows the only way you can pay for college in America is by joining the army?
...Others, because they are poor and uneducated, do not understand that they are being used as pawns in Dick Cheney's cynical oil war.So why doesn't the Left foil Cheney and open up ANWR?
...In this vein we must also take action against our own Iraqi citizens who choose to collaborate with the enemy. ... If someone you know is considering taking a job with the Americans, tell him that he is engaging in treason and encourage him to seek honest work instead. If he refuses, you must kill him...And if that doesn't work you can always join the anti-globalization "peace" protests and throw rocks at policeman, sing Hosannas to Marx, and steal property that "rightfully" belongs to the proletariat. And after that you can complain to sympathetic CBS, NBC, and ABC reporters about how those nasty police officers hit you back with rubber bullets.
Take to heart this warning of Cuban revolutionary Ché Guevara..."The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area.... " If the Americans are right about us, and we enjoy no popular support, we deserve to be annihilated.Prepare for your destruction.
Recommended Reading:
"[Israeli actions] have undermined efforts to curb violence and fuelled hatred and anger towards Israel. They have pushed back the day when Israel will live without fear within secure and recognised borders," [UN Secretary General Kofi Annan] said in a statement. I wish to join with those from around the world who today express the deepest solidarity with the Palestinian people in their continued suffering. They remain stateless and oppressed."Of course he made the perfunctory qualifications about Palestinian terrorism, saying there was "no justification" for it. But this in no way mitigates that he placed primary blame on Israel, the victim. Completely evading the fact that Palestinian leadership is neck-deep in terrorism, he goes on to say:
"Let us resolve not to rest until the Palestinian people finally obtain what is rightfully theirs," Annan said, "the exercise of their inalienable rights in a sovereign and independent state of Palestine."No one has the "inalienable right" to establish a terrorist dictatorship, which is exactly what Arafat has so far established. But Annan was merely joining the chorus of anti-Israel sentiment, which was lead by Jimmy Carter: Carter slams Israel, Bush in Geneva speech.
"No matter what leaders Palestinians might choose, no matter how fervent American interests might be or how great the hatred and bloodshed might become, there is one basic choice for the Israelis: Do you want peace with their neighbors or do you want to retain settlements throughout the occupied territories?" [...] Carter said the main flaw of the US-brokered road map is its step-by-step approach, which he said has allowed Israel to stop its advance by building "an enormous barrier wall" and with "the colonization of Gaza."Carter, too, had the standard, lame qualifications about Palestinian "violence," but it's clear who he thinks is to blame for it. Like Annan, Carter must evade the full context, which is that Israel occupies those territories as a matter of national self-defense against neighboring Arab nations who have repeatedly launched wars of aggression. The article quotes a senior Israeli government official government official who puts the situation in its proper perspective:
"[Carter] should take a visit to our cemeteries and see what Arafat brought upon us after being offered everything [former prime minister Ehud] Barak offered him at Camp David and Taba."Recommend Reading:
[T]he response of the Madrid government to the Basque and Catalonian independence movements is curious. Self-determination for the nationalities of the earth? Of course, claro, bien sur! Just not for our nationalities. Nor, in fact, for most others. The Palestinians, it seems, deserve a state of their own; so, perhaps, do the Kosovan Albanians; so, too, did the inhabitants of East Timor. But what about the Chechens? The Tibetans? The Kurds of Turkey? The Christians of southern Sudan? What about the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Papuans of Indonesian New Guinea, the Uighurs of China, the Karens of Burma? Each of these peoples has its own culture and language... each has taken up arms in its own cause....Sheer cant, too, is the commonly spouted mantra that Israel's struggle with the Palestinians is a futile exercise in failure, since wars of "national liberation" are inherently just and can never be defeated. Wars of national liberation have often been defeated, the Tibetans' doomed uprising against the Chinese and the Kurds' hopeless battle against the Turks being cases in point. Such wars triumph when political, military, and demographic circumstances are in their favor; they lose when they are not. [Daily Sun, Nov 25, 2003]