Jul 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From today's New York Sun:When a group of Saudi women appeared on a TV discussion program to voice their grievances recently they got a mixed reception from viewers. Many applauded their boldness. Others complained that the participants in Saudi Women Speak Out had not gone far enough....
The application of an ultra-strict interpretation of Islam, historically alien to much of the country, technically prevents women from driving, traveling without being accompanied by a guardian, working alongside men or showing their faces in public. These rules are now starting to crumble as more women go out to work....
The religious police who not so long ago would have relished breaking up the fun are a demoralized bunch. Recently they turned up to remonstrate with some youths holding a party on the beach. As they trudged away after delivering their lecture the sound was turned back up....
The stifling conservatism of women's lives is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Women were the first to suffer the consequences of the failed uprising of Juhaiman al-Utaibi, a Muslim zealot and enemy of the al-Saud monarchy who with his followers took over the Holy Mosque in Mecca in November 1979. The rebels were crushed, and the 63 survivors publicly beheaded. The ruling family, though, was rattled and the religious police given free rein in an attempt to restore the government's Islamic credentials. "This sowed the seeds of a new religion," said Mrs.Fitaihi. "It had nothing to do with Islam. It was to do with power, using religion to control." ["An Opening for Saudi Women: Activists Seek Informal Loosening of Rules", The Daily Telegraph]
Jul 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
How's this for nerve?While [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William] Donaldson said he supports the increased regulation and stepped-up enforcement that came from the Sarbanes-Oxley law, he said he was concerned that fear of the law was making companies less will to take risks and weighing down the U.S. economy. "Insofar as corporate managers are hesitant or reluctant to move ahead with business decisions because of a fear of conforming with Sarbanes-Oxley, I hope they will conform but I hope they will move on,'' Donaldson said in an interview in New York....
A year after the law's passage, it's time for companies to recognize its requirements are here to stay, Donaldson said. The law, signed by President George W. Bush last July, is not intended to "tie up American business in a regulatory regime that is counterproductive and expensive,'' Donaldson said.
"This isn't to say that to conform to Sarbanes isn't going to cost more money -- it is,'' Donaldson said. "There are going to have to be procedures put in to conform but that's a cost of doing business, a cost of what has happened, but I think people have to move on now.'' [Bloomberg]
Jul 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute:How did the "warmongers" at the White House react to North Korea's declaration that it had reprocessed enough nuclear fuel to make about six nuclear bombs? By insisting on a diplomatic solution through negotiations!
But it is precisely this wrongheaded approach that failed to prevent the current crisis-- and will ensure that North Korea becomes a nuclear power in the coming months.
Negotiations are moral--and practical--only between individuals who are open to reason, who respect each other's rights, and whose purpose is to exchange values for mutual benefit, without coercion. But the North Korean leadership is wildly irrational, has no respect for individual rights, and seeks, by threatening a nuclear attack, to blackmail the United States into surrendering its wealth.
The proper approach to eliminate this threat against the United States is not to negotiate with North Korea's thugs--but to kill them.
This classic cartoon from Cox and Forkum: summarizes the case against "Duplomacy":
Recommended Reading: Baby Kim Jong's Secret Weapon Against America
So why is it Baby Kim who is making the threats, and Uncle Sam who is doing the conceding? What does the baby have up his sleeve?
Jul 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Further reading:
Bush's Compassionate Conservatism Will Undermine the Republicans and Capitalism
What once distinguished Republicans was their commitment to limited government. The politics of "compassion," however, is the politics of liberalism and statism. If Republicans want to secure both their future and the future of freedom in America, they must learn to stop being afraid to take a firm stand for capitalism and individual rights.
A Leap Toward Socialized Medicine -- By One Vote
The President's latest compromise makes Bush the nation's foremost advocate of state-run health care -- which, for every American, means less choice, higher costs and one huge step toward socialized medicine.
Bush Abdicates Leadership on Prescription Drugs
Bush isn't just hurting his campaign -- he's hurting all of us by failing to take a stand against a growing government takeover of our health care.
Penny-Wise/Pound-Foolish: Bush Sanctions Democrat Spending Principles
What is the point, Republicans ask, of having control of the White House and Congress if it is just to enact Democrat big spending programs?
Jul 21, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From MSNBC:Thousands of angry Liberians stood outside the embassy asking when U.S. troops would come to protect them. Refugees hurled rocks at an NBC News crew that approached the scene, demanding to know whether reporter Michael Davie was American. Davie, who is in Monrovia on assignment for MSNBC's "National Geographic Explorer," is Australian.
"People are dying!" a refugee yelled. "They can't come in to rescue us?" Relief workers made similar pleas. "We need international peacekeepers here now, not in one or two months' time," said Sam Nagbe of Oxfam. "People here are really suffering but as long as the fighting continues we are unable to help them. The U.S. must commit troops now and end this waiting game that is costing lives."
Why doesn't the U.N. do it? Or even better how about having the thousand or so peaceniks form a wall in Liberia. After all, those peacemongers were more than willing to attack U.S. policemen who are much better armed than a bunch of Liberian bandits.
[...] One man held up a hastily scrawled sign: "Today G. Bush kill Liberia people."
Liberians are killing the Liberia people--and the reason is failure to adopt the hallmark of American culture-- individualism--in favor of tribalism, a species of collectivism.
Bush has said any deployment of U.S. troops is conditional on the departure of Taylor, a former warlord indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone, where he supported a brutal rebel movement. Taylor launched Liberia's last civil war in 1989, emerging in 1996 as the strongest warlord. He was elected president the following year, and now faces rebels who include former rivals from the earlier war. Taylor's enemies hold about two-thirds of Liberia. The fighting has its roots in tribal hatreds inflamed by a civil war in the 1990s in which at least 200,000 people died.
Suggested Reading:
Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
A foreign policy based solely on America's self-interest is not simply practical, but *moral*--which is why any "humanitarian" mission, such as the proposed campaign in Liberia, is a moral crime.
Jul 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An actor whose work I enjoy, Mel Gibson, a devout Catholic, has produced a movie on the biblical Jesus' last 12 hours--The Passion. Reports the Miami Herald:The film, which Gibson directs, stars James Caviezel as Christ during the last 12 hours of his life and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene. The $25 million production was shot in the Aramaic language of the time, but there were subtitles for Thursday's showing.
...Gibson said the film "was a strange mixture of the most difficult thing I've ever done, along with this incredible ease. Everyone who worked on this movie was changed. There were agnostics and Muslims on set converting to Christianity." ["Faith Guided Mel Gibson Through 'Passion'", Jun. 29, 2003]
The Muslims won't like that--and neither does it appear do crusading, anti-Passion groups:
This quest for fidelity has made some people nervous. Even without seeing the film, some Jewish and Catholic leaders have accused Gibson's film of fomenting "religious animosity" and even anti-Semitism. They worried that the film might blame "the Jews" for the death of Jesus. And they requested that a panel of scholars be allowed to review the script before the film's release.
Gibson's defenders include Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. He wrote that he found it "puzzling and disturbing that anyone would feel licensed to attack a film of sincere faith before it has even been released." He reminded Gibson's liberal critics that when The Last Temptation of Christ--an attack on the historic Jesus--came out, "movie critics piously lectured Catholics to be open-minded and tolerant. Surely that advice should apply equally for everyone."
Writes editorialist David Reagan:
...Gibson doesn't want this to be like other "sterilized religious epic(s). I'm trying to access the story on a very personal level and trying to be very real about it." So committed to realistically portraying what many would consider the most important half-day in the history of the universe, Gibson even shot the film in the Aramaic language of the period. In response to objections that viewers will not be able to understand that language, Gibson said, "Hopefully, I'll be able to transcend the language barriers with my visual storytelling; if I fail, I fail, but at least it'll be a monumental failure."
I for one think the movie will be monumental success, in part for its graphic depiction of the death of Christ. It should also be a timeless demonstration of the most disgusting thing about Christianity: the idea of that the best of all men--according to Christian lore the "Son of God" Jesus--dying painfully on the cross for the sins of the evil. Or, to quote philosopher Ayn Rand (from a Playboy interview):
Now you want me to speak about the cross. What is correct is that I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn't that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.
For a concrete demonstration of how the good should be treated see Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Jul 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Related website: Death to Theocracy
Suggestion: Bush should take out the theocrats of Iran after he wins the next election. At least the Iranian students will be on his side--as for the ones at Harvard and Berekely...
Jul 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum:
Some conservatives used the "states' rights" argument to condemn the recent Supreme Court sodomy ruling. Objectivist scholar Dr. Harry Binswanger concisely explained why that argument is mistaken in this letter to the editor of The New York Sun:
"Scalia in his dissent on the sodomy decision writes: 'It is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste.'"Sounds like he's trying to keep meddlesome government out of people's lives doesn't it? But look at the switch he has pulled: the 'judgments' he wishes to protect are the laws passed by the Texas legislature -- laws arresting individuals for behavior that, whatever one thinks of it, is clearly within their rights. The meddlesome 'governing caste' is the Texas legislature, which the Supreme Court properly told: stop arresting individuals for private, peaceful, consensual activity.
"Yes, I'm sure the Texas law does reflect the will of the majority of Texans. So what? Slavery represented the will of the majority in the ante-bellum South. Hitler's Reich reflected the will of the majority of Germans in the Nazi era.
"Unlimited majority rule is a form of statism, not Americanism. Our system, contrary to Scalia's notion, holds individual rights above the power of any majority to infringe, 'and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.' A right is the individual's protection against the will of any collective, whether that collective is called 'the State,' 'the people,' or 'Das Volk.'"
Jul 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the BBC:" Iran has acknowledged that a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist was beaten to death after her arrest outside a prison in Tehran. Vice President Ali Abtahi said Zahra Kazemi died "of a brain haemorrhage resulting from beatings". Ms Kazemi, 54, was detained on 23 June for taking pictures of Tehran's Evin prison. She was later pronounced dead after falling into a coma. But officials in Tehran are still refusing to allow Canada to conduct its own investigation into the photographer's death. "We are knowledgeable enough to examine the body and find out the cause of her death, so we will not allow foreign teams to investigate," Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian told the AFP news agency."
I don't think it is Iran's "knowledge" that people are questioning; but, Tehran's truthfulness. Reporters Without Borders reports that Five More Journalistes Arrested:
"We are very worried", Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said, "not only because fourteen journalists have been arrested by Iranian authorities within the last month -- a sad record in the history of this country -- but also because the five new arrests bring to twenty-two the number of journalists presently imprisoned in Iran." [Hat Tip: Allen Forkum]
Lastly for gruesome photos of what happened to Tehran students advocating freedom click here.
Jul 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Comments Allen Forkum: "Fox News reports Dems Switch Gears, Attack President Rather Than Each Other. But apparently NAACP President Kweisi Mfume didn't get the memo. In the same article, he attacked the Democratic presidential candidates that didn't show up for his meeting. "In essence, you now have become persona non grata. Your political capital is the equivalent of Confederate dollars," he said. "
Jul 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Telegraph:President Robert Mugabe's regime pulled off an extraordinary diplomatic coup yesterday when it was given a senior position within the African Union, the grouping set up to promote good governance in Africa.
Then again the U.N. bastards made Kaddafi head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. (Hat Tip: Paul Blair)
Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:[A] groundbreaking poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, showed only 10 percent of respondents questioned in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon would wish to rebuild their homes under Israeli rule....
"The refugees who didn't choose to return to 1948 lands ... know that life in Israel means Israeli citizenship, Israeli laws, and an Israeli social environment," the center's head, Khalil Shikaki, told The Associated Press.
When Shikaki called a news conference to present his findings, about 200 Palestinian refugee activists stormed his Ramallah office Sunday, smashing furniture, throwing eggs and assaulting Shikaki and some other center staff.
"We are here to announce that our right of return is a sacred right," said a leaflet distributed by the protesters. "We will resist any attempt to sabotage our right of return." [July 14, 2003]
Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Excerpts from a letter by Robert S. McAdam, Wal-Mart Vice President, State and Local Government Relations, published in the SF Chronicle: ...The Contra Costa [County] Board of Supervisors recently passed a law prohibiting Wal- Mart Supercenters. Union leaders, the mainstay of campaign funding for elected officials, were at the forefront of this effort....
...The real reason union leaders want to stop Wal-Mart is because we represent a threat to their political and economic power. If Wal-Mart continues to provide good jobs while lowering the cost of products for the average family, the role of union leaders would be severely diminished.
The issue is choice. It is a value that we believe most citizens embrace. Union leaders don't want people to have shopping choices, don't want voters to decide and don't want to let people pay less for groceries.
Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From a letter in the San Francisco Chronicle:Editor -- The constant loss of U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- after the war is "won" -- is a tragedy. However, if this is what it takes to retire the Bush administration at the next election, the sacrifice is justified.
ARIE L. BLEICHER
Mill Valley
Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here is a crib sheet for all those media broadcasters who are complaining that Bush "lied" when he made his case for going into Iraq.
Q. Why did the U.S. Invade Iraq?
A. Sept 11th.
See even Gumble and Couric can remember that! (For further elaboration click here.)
Of course, if the anti-Bushites are saying the U.S. should not have gone into Iraq, because they think the U.S. should have gone into Iran first, then we agree with them.Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the folks at the Media Research Center:Democratic presidential candidates may be attacking President Bush's credibility over the single sentence in his State of the Union address, but they are aided by the media which are becoming obsessed as a summer scandal with how Bush "misled" the public and "deliberately exaggerated the case for war." Multiple stories on the "controversy" have led the evening newscasts since the middle of last week with the morning shows devoting a top of the show interview segment to it.
On Saturday night, ABC anchor Claire Shipman declared: "The firestorm over false intelligence that President Bush used to help justify war in Iraq is intensifying." Over on CBS on Sunday night, anchor John Roberts referred to the "swirl of controversy over whether" the Bush administration "knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address." In a self-fulfilling statement, Roberts argued that "the issue refuses to go away."
But as ABC News Political Director Mark Helperin suggested on World News Tonight/Sunday, the media are enabling the Democratic presidential candidates: "Why are the Democrats now directly going after Mr. Bush in the very area where he has been so strong?" Over a shot of the cover of Time magazine with "Untruth & Consequences" over photo of Bush delivering State of the Union address, Halperin answered: "For one thing, there's the daily drumbeat of media questions." Halperin had noted how "the Democrats hope to break the presidential monopoly on national security and credibility, to return the Bush image to one some Americans held of candidate Bush after this famous campaign pop quiz:"
Reporter in 2000: "The Prime Minister of India?"
Bush: "The new Prime Minister of India is ah, ah, no."
Halperin: "And after a shaky start on September 11th."
A hesitant Bush: "We will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans."
[Hey my parents are from India, and I don't know who their Prime Minister is either.--Editor]
For a flavor of the media's hyperbolic focus, some intros to the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts on Friday and Sunday:
-- ABC's World News Tonight on Friday. Peter Jennings teased: "On World News Tonight, an ABC News poll that will not please the President: Half the public thinks he deliberately exaggerated the case for war. The Democrats are demanding a public investigation." Jennings then opened the program: "Good evening everyone. It has happened to other Presidents. They go off on a trip to some part of the world and as much as they would like the news to be about them and where they are, sometimes they cannot avoid the news at home or from somewhere else. President Bush's trip to Africa -- and it's an important trip -- had been overshadowed for several days by the war in Iraq. An ABC News/Washington Post poll which has just been finished, finds that 52 percent of Americans, a majority for the first time, find the level of U.S. casualties in Iraq unacceptable. And 50 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration in arguing for the war intentionally exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
-- NBC Nightly News on Friday. Brian Williams began: "It was just one sentence in a long State of the Union speech that the President delivered in January. But it was a major accusation, one part of the President's case for possible war with Iraq. The facts have turned out differently. The accusation was wrong. And now, with 148,000 Americans on the ground there, with over 200 dead and over a thousand wounded, the questions for this White House are heating up. We begin tonight with NBC's David Gregory traveling with the President in Nigeria."
-- ABC's World News Tonight/Sunday. Anchor Dean Reynolds: "On World News Tonight this Sunday, new details on just who approved that controversial passage in the President's State of the Union address as the White House continues to deflect questions. Did the President mislead the nation on the road to war with Iraq? Democratic rivals sense an opportunity."
-- CBS Evening News on Sunday. Anchor John Roberts announced: "The White House tried to lay to rest today the swirl of controversy over whether it knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address. Top administration officials said again today that the claim Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa should not have been in the speech, but they denied any attempt to deceive the American people or hype the evidence against Iraq. But as Joie Chen reports, the issue refuses to go away."
The media certainly won't let it.
Jul 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From BBC News:Iraq has taken its first step towards self-government since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the inaugural meeting of a governing council composed of Iraqi nationals. ...
...Its first decision was to declare a national holiday on 9 April - the day US-led forces overthrew the old regime - and to scrap holidays and festivals linked to the formerly ruling Baath Party...
...Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative in Iraq, described the day as "historic" and said it was an important step in returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people. "Freedom, dignity and security must from now on be taken for granted by all Iraqis," he said, adding that the UN would be "here for you in any way you wish and for as long as you need". ["Iraq moves towards self-rule" July 13, 2003]
Wait a minute--wasn't it the U.N. who voted to keep Saddam in power? Who needs them?
Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Related articles:
Reducto Ad Totalitarianism by Robert W. Tracinski
Imagine a society in which an unelected, few people, qualified for power only by their mastery of esoteric terminology and incantations, are able to dictate our everyday lives in the most minute detail--growing rich in the process by siphoning off unearned billions from the nation's economy. Does this sound like life in some dictatorship, like the reign of the theocratic mullahs in Iran? In fact, it is the system that a cabal of trial lawyers is trying to impose here in America.
