American Gothic
From Cox and Forkum:
Road Map to Appease Terrorism
Writes David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute:How did Palestinian terrorists react to the recent release of the "road map" to peace? With dozens of terrorist attacks against Israel, including five suicide bombings.
The terrorists' reaction demonstrates once again that they--and their supporters--have no desire for peace with Israel. Their attacks also demonstrate the futility of trying to end terrorism through negotiations. Terrorists--and the regimes that nurture them--can't be dealt with through reason and appeals to their self-interest. They have no self-interest. Their purpose is not to gain any values but to destroy the lives and values of others.
The Israelis, as the victims of terrorism, have the moral responsibility to hunt down the terrorists wherever they may be, and do whatever it takes to capture or kill them. This is exactly the principle the United States must follow in its own war against Islamic terrorism. The alternative is another September 11.
Tax Relief for Non-Taxpayers?
CNN quotes Tom Delay:"It's a little difficult to give tax relief to people who don't pay any taxes..."
[Hat Tip: T. Potts]
Microsoft Legally Mugged by AOL and the Government
From BBCNews:Software giant Microsoft has agreed to pay $750m (£454m) to settle a lawsuit claiming it used its dominance to crush competition....The case involved Netscape Communications which now belongs to the AOL group. As part of the agreement, Microsoft will give a new royalty-free, seven-year licence of its browsing technology to AOL...AOL alleged in the lawsuit that Microsoft used anti-competitive business practices to ensure the dominance of its Internet Explorer browsing software over Netscape's software. AOL also argued that Microsoft made deals with computer manufacturers and other companies to shut out Netscape and stifle competition. [May 29, 2003]
Making voluntary deals with computer manufacturers is entirely competitive, as no guns are used--free-competition only forbids the initiation of force. For the government to forbid such exclusive deals is socialism. Fact is Internet Explorer was just a better product, and Microsoft offered Internet Explorer for free, when Netscape wanted to charge consumers for their browser.
See Capitalism Magazine's Microsoft Antitrust Coverage.
ImClone Vindicated?
From CBS Marketwatch:Shares of ImClone Systems jumped 15 percent in early dealings Friday after a published report said soon-to-be-released clinical results show that the Erbitux anti-cancer drug is effective. ImClone shares surged $3.46 to $26.92. The Wall Street Journal reported that a clinical trial in colon-cancer patients confirmed earlier studies that showed ImClone's Erbitux is a promising cancer therapy. ImClone's European pharmaceutical partner, Merck KGaA, is scheduled to present details of the testing Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. German-based Merck has already said that it believes the data support European regulatory approval for Erbitux....
...ImClone and its experimental anti-cancer drug have been at the center of controversy since late 2001. At the end of that year, the Food and Drug Administration refused to accept the application to market Erbitux because of deficiencies in data submitted by ImClone. The FDA rejection triggered a collapse in ImClone's stock and led to a major Wall Street scandal. Sam Waksal, ImClone's founder, has been accused of tipping off relatives about the FDA setback so that they could unload ImClone stock before the news became public.
For the full story behind the government's assault on ImClone see The SEC's "Insider Trading" Witch Hunt Against ImClone's Sam Waksal: Scapegoat for the Sins of the FDA.
The Palestinian Path to Peace
Comments Allen Forkum, of the dynamic cartooning duo of Cox and Forkum:Fox News reports: Sharon-Abbas Summit Postponed. Excerpt: "Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stepped in to assert Tuesday that he -- not his prime minister -- is in charge of the Palestinian side in negotiations with Israel, throwing plans for an Israeli-Palestinian summit into confusion. The dispute underlined the power struggle between Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister he grudgingly appointed under international pressure, as efforts to move forward on a new peace plan intensified. Arafat since then has been fighting a rear-guard action to limit Abbas' powers, objecting to the makeup of his Cabinet and inserting many of his stalwarts, retaining control of most of the Palestinian security forces and keeping for himself the final word over peace moves. This counters the Israeli and U.S. intention to sideline Arafat, charging that he is tainted with terrorism and had led his Palestinian Authority into corruption and inefficiency."
Arafat is "tainted with terrorism" yet the U.S. and Israel are still willing to negotiate with Abbas, a man who defends Arafat's leadership role in the Palestinian Authority. Peace for Israel cannot be achieved through negotiations with the puppet of their enemy, a power-grubbing, Israel-hating terrorist.
Islam vs. Driver’s Licenses
From AP:Of course the ACLU Asks Court to Reinstate Suspended Driver's License.
Sultanna Freeman, 35, says Florida's insistence on photographing her face violates her religious rights. "I don't unveil ... because it would be disobeying my Lord," Freeman testified Tuesday at the start of her non-jury trial. [Muslim Woman Sues to Wear Veil for License, AP, May 23, 2003]
This is silly--what good is a picture ID, if your face is covered? Freedom of religion doesn't give one the right to a driver's license, which is a privilege granted by the owner of the roads--in this case the government. Freeman's options are to uncover her face, or forgo getting a license. She does not have the freedom to force her whims on others.
[Update: Sultaana Freeman, Islam and Florida Driver's Licenses]
Remaking Iraq
From the BBC:The defence secretary also issued a new warning to Iran not to interfere in the reconstruction of Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld said Iran was "being unhelpful today with respect to Iraq". "Iran should be on notice; efforts to try to remake Iraq in Iran's image will be aggressively put down," he said. Mr Rumsfeld's comments about Iraq came amid further accusations from Washington that Tehran has been harbouring fugitive members of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Concessions Encourage Bombings in Saudi Arabia
Here is an excellent analysis of the Bombings in Saudi Arabia from David Holcberg at the Ayn Rand Institute:How did Islamic terrorists react to the U.S. announcement that it would withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia--a central demand of Bin Laden? With bombings that killed at least 7 Americans.
The terrorists interpreted the U.S. withdrawal as a concession to Bin Laden's demands and as proof of U.S. weakness. From their perspective, the U.S. withdrawal shows that terrorism pays, and that the more they terrorize Americans the more they stand to gain.
The lesson to be learned is that concessions--apparent or real--will not change the minds of Islamic terrorists committed to destroying the United States and its influence in Muslim countries. Concessions only embolden them. If the United States wants to end Islamic terrorism it must not appease terrorists--but ruthlessly and methodically destroy them.
Iranian Dictators Against a Bush Re-election
From BBC News:Clearly, there is no prospect of an imminent American attack on Iran at present. But with all these issues brewing, an eventual confrontation is something that obviously cannot be totally ruled out. Iranian officials say the leadership's policy is to avoid offering anything that might be regarded as a provocation. At the same time, there is a conviction here that if the Americans want to attack Iran they will do it anyway. So there is much emphasis here on preparing for any such eventuality, with military and political leaders making almost daily declarations of military preparedness. "If Bush is re-elected, the Americans will certainly put pressure on us, economically and politically, perhaps even striking at military targets," said one senior Iranian official. ["Analysis: Iran-US rift widens", BBC News, May 25, 2003]
Saddam, Not U.S. Embargo, Killed Iraqi Children
From Newsday:Baghdad - Throughout the 13 years of UN sanctions on Iraq that were ended yesterday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children. "It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq." It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information. Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Hussein turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.
...Under the sanctions regime, "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed," said Ibn Al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr. Hussein Shihab. "Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces." ["Blood of Innocents: Doctors say Hussein, not UN sanctions, caused children's deaths", May 23, 2003]
Bad News For Bush–And For Freedom
According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 55 percent of Americans prefer that government spend more on health coverage while only 36 percent favor cutting taxes. To the extent that the poll reflects the population, this shows how huge numbers of Americans lack both an understanding of economics and justice. They don't grasp that money comes from the private sector; that without a flourishing private sector, there would be no money for government to forcibly redistribute into health care coverage. Instead, 55 percent of the population assumes that government can somehow just create the funds out of thin air -- on the backs of an already heavily taxed private sector -- to pay for health care.The worse news is that huge numbers of Americans don't understand justice. They evidently feel it's unjust to have to pay for their own health care, but they feel it is just to tax the population to forcibly pay for everyone else's health care.
This serves as more evidence that while Americans reject socialism and statism in principle, they more than ever before embrace it in practice. This could mean good news for liberal Democrats such as Dick Gephardt, who favors spending on government health care over cutting taxes and plans to run on this plank in 2004.
More Trouble at the NY Times
From MSNBC:On Friday, The New York Times suspended star reporter Rick Bragg for two weeks, news first reported on the Web site run by the Columbia Journalism Review and confirmed by several newsroom sources, who said they first heard about the suspension Friday afternoon. The suspension of Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winner, comes on the heels of the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal, which seems likely to roil the newspaper's newsroom for some time to come. [Newsweek, May 23, 2003]
PETA Equates Jews with Cows
A local Jewish organization yesterday denounced an exhibit by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that compares the slaughter of animals for food to the Holocaust. Adam Solender, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Manchester, said the exhibit displayed in the plaza in front of the State House in Concord yesterday afternoon, "trivialized the memory of millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust." "It's an incredible moral equivalency that I think steps over the line," Solender said. Manchester resident and Holocaust survivor Stephen Lewy said the display was disturbing.
" . . . in World War II, the Nazis compared Jews to animals. PETA is comparing the life of a chicken to that of a human being . . . There is no moral equivalency, never! One cannot compare the suffering and racial genocide of millions of Jews to animals." ["Jewish group raps PETA exhibit", Union Leader News, May 23, 2003]
PETA, like Hitler, just did.
Iraqi Freedom
From Cox and Forkum:
Richard Salsman on the State of the Political-Economy
Comments economist Richard Salsman in the May 2003 edition of the InterMarket Forecaster:...Congressional Republicans are helping to gut the tax-cut proposals made by their party's leader in the White House; they promise to phase in any tax cuts that are enacted, thereby inducing deferrals of economic and investment activity and causing near-term stagnation...Not to be out-done, the D.C. regulators, especially at the SEC, persist in suffocating free speech (and the free flow of information) on Wall Street -- while sabotaging investor confidence.
The only honest heroes out there -- the only ones quietly delivering the higher profits and equity gains so eagerly sought by investors -- are the entrepreneurs and CEOs (and the few people who defend them). They are working against enormous odds, under the boot of a hostile government (and public)...It's not the Washington-types but the business heroes who've delivered the goods and the gains in U.S. equity prices that we've all seen since last Fall. We can add a word of sincere thanks to the Pentagon and the military -- the only honest and capable elements in the entire U.S. government...
Sanctions Lifted in Iraq—Finally
From the BBC:The United Nations has overwhelmingly approved a resolution lifting economic sanctions against Iraq and giving its backing to the US-led administration. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to adopt the resolution with France, Russia and Germany - countries which opposed the war on Iraq - all giving their support. Syria - the sole Arab state represented on the council - boycotted the meeting. Voting took place nine weeks to the day after US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq at the start of a military campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.
...Mr de Villepin said the agreement on the new resolution showed that the UN was again resuming its place in international politics, adding that international unity was the only way to deal with Iraq's problems. ["UN approves US Iraq plans", BBC, May 22, 2003]
Bear in mind that 'international unity'--i.e., appeasement by the US--was not needed for the US and UK to take out Saddam Hussein.
In its key points on the UN resolution to end sanctions in Iraq the BBC lists the reason why the resolution was approved:
- Russian and French companies will be able to complete lucrative contracts
As a cross--the US should have unilaterally lifted the sanctions nine weeks ago, as opposed to having to wait over two months, in order to lend moral sanction to the corrupt UN body.
Iraqi Minister of Disinformation Working for Reuters?
A headline at Reuters reads "U.S. Troops on Shooting Spree After Attack in Iraq":Gunmen fired anti-tank rockets at a U.S. armored vehicle in the tense Iraqi town of Falluja, sending U.S. troops into a shooting spree that killed two Iraqis, residents said on Thursday.
Since when is defending oneself against rockets a "spree" as if the troops were engaging in some wild shopping contest?
At least 15 Iraqis died in the clashes between demonstrators and U.S. troops last month. On May 1, a grenade attack wounded seven U.S. soldiers in the town.
Since when is a grendade attack associated with "demonstrations"? Reuters obtained no comments from American officials.