Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
U.K.--Already prohibited from carrying around firearms, British police officers are pathetic enough. But now there is rising concern over a new program that allows them to carry Tasers (stun guns). After all, getting shot with a Taser kind of hurts.Although panty-waisted British officials have already banned "export" of Tasers (which is a bit silly, since they are made in the United States, not the U.K.), officers in London, Northamptonshire, North Wales, the Thames Valley, and Lincolnshire will carry the devices for a one-year trial period. The officers will be instructed to shout, "Taser, Taser, Taser!" before firing, despite possible concern that shouting may do more harm than the Taser itself by hurting someone's feelings.
It has not yet been proven that building a country full of hypersensitive sheep is an effective defense against terrorist aggression.
Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
A good example of how those who rule by force are necessarily out of touch with reality:
Col Said, 42, commanded 150 soldiers in an engineer unit attached to the Hammurabi division, charged with defending the north-western approaches. Yet even before the fighting began, Col Said said, most Republican Guard soldiers viewed Saddam with hatred and contempt. "We would say, 'Our leader is mad, mad, mad. And he wants to cut all our throats'. "We knew we would never fight. I thought the war would never start because it was madness." Col Said described the cynicism of sycophantic Republican Guard generals who assured Saddam of victory during televised meetings. "They told him we would fight any power in the world. When we heard this, we couldn't believe it. But then the generals told us, 'No, no - don't worry. Just keep quiet. Stay in your positions. It won't happen'." [Daily Telegraph, 4/17/03]
Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From its beginning, America has stood for the ideals of the Enlightenment: reason, individual rights, capitalism, the pursuit of happiness. The dominant trends in America today, however - trends endorsed not only by our leadership, but seemingly by the public at large - represent the opposite of these ideals. On Monday, April 21, 2003, Dr. Leonard Peikoff, will hold a free public lecture in Irvine, California titled "America vs. Americans." In his talk Dr. Leonard Peikoff explores this contradiction, along with our current moral cowardice, giving special emphasis to foreign policy.Dr. Peikoff is the legal and intellectual heir of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, and founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991); The Ominous Parallels (1982); and numerous Ayn Rand anthologies. This event is free to the public. Location: Hyatt Regency Irvine, 17900 Jamboree Road (at Jamboree and the 405 Freeway), Irvine, California. Time and Dates: Monday, April 21, 2003, Doors open at 6:30 PM; Presentation: 7:30 to 8:30 PM, Q&A: 8:30 to 9:30 PM; Reception follows until 10:00 PM. For more information, please call 949-222-6550, or email events@aynrand.org.
Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The New York Times' editorial "North Korea Blinks" makes this preposterous assertion:The breakthrough came when North Korea stopped insisting on one-on-one talks with Washington. The Bush administration wanted a broader regional meeting. The invasion of Iraq may have given North Korea second thoughts, but pressure from China was probably more significant.
What?! I had to write a letter to them:
Dear Editors:
We just witnessed the overwhelming and swift destruction of an "Axis of Evil" regime, then North Korea suddenly is willing to have discussions about its nuclear program--on American terms. Yet you arbitrarily, without any evidence, assert that "pressure from China was probably more significant" in forcing North Korea to reconsider its bellicosity than the North Korean regime's fear that it too might be toppled.
This assertion is incredible. It contradicts the most obvious reason for this change of heart, and it flat-out contradicts what your own reporter, James Brooke, has been writing: that Kim Jong Il's regime is terrified that they are next on America's list. It seems to me that you have chosen to discard the obviously true rather than to admit that Bush's war against Iraq is actually having positive effects elsewhere.
I encourage others to email them at: letters@nytimes.com.
Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Check out this May 1996 CNN piece titled "Abu Abbas: from terrorist to peace advocate":
[T]imes have changed, and now, he offers advice on reaching a lasting peace in the Middle East. He spends his days rushing from meeting to meeting, lunching with officials of the new Palestinian National Authority, networking, listening and making suggestions....He now says the time for armed struggle has ended, but not the struggle itself. "The purpose of armed struggle is not simply to kill ... its purpose is to reach a political goal," Abbas said...."The media didn't tell the world that Abu Abbas saved the lives of six hundred passengers, only that a disabled man was killed," he said. [CNN, 5/10/96]
The triumph of CNN nonobjective nonjudgmentalism.Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"It (arrest of Abu Abbas) indicates that America is sinking its sharp teeth into Iraq and into Palestine," [Hamas founder] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said. "It is a crusader's war against both. But it will be defeated. Our people are stronger than Israel and America," the wheelchair-bound Yassin said as 2,000 Palestinians marched to mark Palestinian Prisoner Day....
"Let them arrest the whole Palestinian people. Resistance will never stop. We will continue Jihad (holy struggle) and resistance," Yassin said. "Whether we go to prison or whether they kill leaders, resistance will never stop before the liberation," he added. [Reuters, 4/17/03]
Get that? Abbas murders one of our citizens but we have no right to arrest him or we're declaring war on the whole Palestinian people. What more open admission could there be that these people claim the right to murder us? Hamas is clearly just a bunch of thugs, its ideology is nothing but a rationalization for aggression and antisemitism, and we should just go ahead and wipe them off the face of the earth, or at least let Israel do it.Apr 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
U.S. forces came upon a recently abandoned terrorist training camp on the outskirts of Baghdad where recruits were apparently taught how to make bombs and what to do if they got captured, the Marines said Wednesday. The extensive camp consisted of about 20 permanent buildings on 25 acres south of the city and was operated by the Iraqi government and the Palestine Liberation Front, said Marine spokesman Cpl. John Hoellwarth. [Associated Press, 4/17/03]
"So what?" say the antiwar protesters. "This was to support the Palestinians. Everybody knew they did that. But what does that have to do with terrorism in America?" Leave aside for a moment this utterly anti-conceptual method of approaching issues, and consider a second story:
Secret dossiers detailing [Ugandan guerilla group Allied Democratic Forces'] discussions with the Iraqi Intelligence Service were found in the spies' Baghdad headquarters, among the detritus of shredding.....In a letter to the head of the Iraqi spy agency, a senior ADF operative outlined his group's efforts to set up an "international mujahideen team". Its mission, he said, "will be to smuggle arms on a global scale to holy warriors fighting against US, British and Israeli influences in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Far East"....Nassir offered to "vet, recruit and send youth to train for the jihad" at a centre in Baghdad, which he described as a "headquarters for international holy warrior network". It was not clear whether the centre was established....In December 2001 the movement was placed on the US list of terrorist organisations. Throughout its campaign the ADF has been provided with weapons and funding by the Islamist government in Sudan, one of more than half a dozen states Washington accuses of sponsoring terrorism. The key figure behind the ADF is widely acknowledged to be a fundamentalist Islamic cleric, Sheikh Jamil Makulu. According to the Ugandan government and western intelligence sources, Sheikh Makulu became friendly with Osama bin Laden in the early to mid-Nineties, when the al-Qa'eda chief was living in Khartoum. [Daily Telegraph, 4/16/03]
Of course, by the anti-conceptual method, this isn't enough either, since so far there's no evidence that the ADF was responsible for 9/11. And don't worry, if evidence is found connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, the anti-conceptual mentality will just say that it doesn't count since we didn't know about it before the war started. And if it turns out our intelligence officials did know about it before the war started, then the fact that they didn't reveal their sources will disqualify their having known about it. And if they did reveal their sources to closed Congressional committees, well, then, it still doesn't count because it wasn't public.
All these objections are beside the point: Iraq was known to have supported terrorist action against the US and was developing weapons of mass destruction that would have made a strike devastating. But the objections do serve a purpose: The refusal to integrate information is a tool of evasion. All the facts in the world cannot force a person to acknowledge reality.Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Do we need more evidence that environmentalism is an anti-human ideology?Consider the environmentalist lawsuits threatening to cut the water supply from New Mexico's urban and rural populations to make it available to the Rio Grande silvery minnow. The environmentalists' attempt to "protect" the silvery minnow at the expense of city dwellers and farmers demonstrates they place less value on human life than on fish life. In fact, the environmentalists' record of "protecting" crocodiles, owls, mice and even insects at the expense of humans shows that they place less value on human life than on *any other* form of life. It even suggests that they place *no value* on human life.
"But wait," you may say, "not all environmentalists are like that. I am an environmentalist and I value human life." To which I reply: If you really value human life, you should reconsider your support of an ideology that, if followed to its logical consequences, will eliminate humans from the face of the earth.
Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
[A] Manhattan resident can, indeed, get the $53.99 rate [to rent a Dodge Stratus]. But a Brooklyn resident who shows up to rent the same car from the same location gets hit with a hefty surcharge of $76 a day, making the rental rate $129.99--more than twice the Manhattan price. Bronx residents are surcharged $66, and Queens residents, $10....The companies say the policies are needed to pay for huge losses caused by multi-million-dollar verdicts handed out by juries in Brooklyn and the Bronx for automobile accidents involving a rental car. Under New York state's vicarious liability law, rental companies are legally responsible for accidents caused by renters. "For many, many years, our liability costs in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx ran orders of magnitude higher than in New York or in the rest of the country," said Richard Broome, a Hertz vice president contacted by The New York Sun. "We got a lot of suits and large jury verdicts out of those three boroughs." ... The state's trial lawyers, who boast one of the state's most powerful and well-funded lobbying operations, count vicarious liability as a sacred cow to be defended at all costs. "If the state were to get rid of the vicarious liability law,which doesn't exist in more than 40 other states, our rating program wouldn't need to exist at all," Mr. Broome said. [New York Sun, 4/14/03]
Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto dug this one up from 1999:
Forget Serbia, forget Iraq. "The government we have the toughest time with is the U.S. government," said Eason Jordan, CNN's president for global newsgathering, at the network's annual World Report Conference May 4. Because of trade embargoes, the U.S. government is involved in where CNN opens its bureaus, Jordan said. CNN has been trying for a year to open a permanent bureau in Baghdad, Iraq, and now has permission from the Iraqis, he said. "I've [recently] been thrown out of the White House pleading this case." [Atlanta Business Chronicle, 5/7/99]
(That's the Clinton White House, by the way.) Principles are our means of knowing reality. You could call CNN militantly pro-blindness--and look where it got them. Meanwhile, they haven't wised up any:
The Bush administration took over Iraqi state television yesterday...U.S. officials said that within days, they hope to open a second television channel in Iraq featuring subtitled versions of the three major networks' evening newscasts, as well as PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and Fox News Channel's hour-long politics show, "Special Report With Brit Hume."...CNN declined to have its newscasts included. "As an independent, global news organization, we did not think it was appropriate to participate in a U.S. government transmission," spokeswoman Christa Robinson said. [Washington Post, 4/11/03]
I.e., they'll propagandize, but only for enemy governments. Isn't anybody thinking over there?Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Apr 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Fact finders from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will go to Iraq to assess the hugely expensive costs of reconstruction as soon as it is safe to do so....
The United States had pushed for teams from the two lending organizations to go to Iraq as a way of showing Iraqis they would benefit quickly from the end of President Saddam Hussein's rule. European countries, including some opposed to the U.S.-led invasion, at first blocked the assessment because it appeared to them the United States intended to dominate the reconstruction effort. To resolve the issue, the United States agreed to a new Security Council resolution that would replace sanctions imposed on economic transactions with Iraq. Finance ministers left the wording of a new resolution to their diplomats....
Iraq's needs are expected to be massive, ranging from $20 billion per year for the first several years to $600 billion over a decade. [Associated Press, 4/14/03]
Since when did America all of a sudden become responsible for Iraq's "needs"? And for this we have decided to go back to the UN Security Council for... another resolution!
And all of this is not to mention the fact that if you let the IMF and the World Bank in the door, you might as well kiss your economy goodbye. See, for example, Robert Tracinski's column a year ago last January about how IMF policies ruined Argentina's economy--or David Holcberg's September 2002 article on the IMF's "loans" to Brazil and many other countries--or Andrew West's August 2000 article on the IMF in Asia and his September 2000 critique of the IMF's "World Economic Outlook"--or his April 1999 article on the World Bank's anticapitalistic policies. If this crowd gets its foot in the door, Iraq will be poor for many years to come, oil or no oil.Apr 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The man who assassinated Pim Fortuyn got 18 years for the Netherlands' first political killing in more than three centuries:Prosecutors had demanded a life sentence for Van der Graaf, saying Fortuyn's murder was an attack on democracy itself. Defense lawyers had said the crime should be treated like a "simple murder" and that life in jail was "unthinkable." [Reuters, 4/15/03]
Apr 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Apr 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Iran's former president expressed support Saturday for holding a referendum on restoring ties with the United States, marking a significant shift as his fellow hard-liners nervously watch U.S.-led forces take control of neighboring Iraq. Hashemi Rafsanjani has openly sided with hard-liners since stepping down as president in 1997 and still heads a powerful body advising Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei....The mere mention of a referendum represents a marked shift by Rafsanjani. [Associated Press, 4/12/03]
Apr 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Last week I sat across a table from President George W. Bush in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He told me and a dozen fellow economists that "the American economy is a theatre in the war on terrorism." With steely conviction he told us that he intends to win the war to liberate Iraq, and he intends to win the war to liberate the American economy....Nonplussed by opposition in Congress--from those who just can't seem to see how all this will work--Bush said, "Sometimes I think some of these guys just don't like capitalism." ... Capitalism means economic liberty, and Bush understands that you can't run a war of political liberation abroad without economic liberation at home....
The president is very sensitive to the question of whether these tax cuts will increase government deficits. But he thinks that some of the opposition in Congress--particularly in his own party--is taking the concern over deficits too far. Speaking like the Harvard MBA that he is, Bush argues that deficit financing is entirely appropriate when it is for the sake of a valuable long-term investment. What could be of greater long-term value than simultaneously making the world safe from terrorism and reinvigorating the growth prospects of the American economy?
And besides, even the too-pessimistic Congressional Budget Office forecasted deficits arising from the Bush's tax cuts at less than 1% of GDP over the coming decade. I share Bush's frustration when he talks of meetings with Republican deficit-hawks and explaining all this, only them to hear then say, "Well, yes . . . but I just don't like deficits." [Don Luskin, Capitalism Magazine, 4/12/03]
Real economic liberty doesn't mean cutting taxes--it means cutting government spending. The wealth the government spends comes from us one way or the other; it cannot be wished into existence.
I am willing to grant that there are more and less destructive ways of the government's confiscating our wealth to fund its projects. But borrowing is merely a claim on future taxation. The tax cutters' position represents a bet--a bet that the economy will grow fast enough that the proportionate burden of future taxes, when they come, will be lighter than not borrowing and paying the taxes now.
Maybe it's a good bet, maybe it's a bad bet. I don't know. What I do know is that it's a nonessential, and merely shows the extent to which Bush is unwilling to confront opposition and deal with the real issue. When the leftists are convulsing with apoplexy in the streets over George Bush's cruel and inhuman budget cuts, then you'll know real economic liberty is in the offing.Apr 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Today I went on an architectural walking tour of Newspaper Row and Manhattan's civic center; the tour was conducted by the New York Sun's Francis Morrone, in honor of the paper's first anniversary. (Morrone writes the Sun's "Abroad in New York" column.) He made a few observations that I thought would be worth posting.
City Hall Park goes back to the 17th century; before City Hall was there, it was known as the Commons. On July 9, 1776 the Declaration of Independence was publicly read there; here's what happened:
On July 9, 1776, upon hearing the Declaration of Independence, an enraged crowd marched down Broadway to Bowling Green where stood a large lead statue of King George III astride a horse.... Ropes were thrown around the Romanized icon and the body was pulled down.
As Morrone said, "The history of the world can be read in its toppled statues." (Or something to that effect.)
Morrone also called attention to St. Paul's Church, where George Washington worshipped and where his memorial was held when he died. He mentioned how the church survived the Great Fire of 1776 when everything around it was destroyed:
Did you know that St. Paul's is the oldest extant building in New York, give or take a few farmhouses? It was finished in 1766, which means it survived the Revolution and British occupation, the Great Fire of 1776, when a third of the town was destroyed, the Great Fire of 1835, when almost 700 downtown buildings were destroyed on a freezing December night, and everything since. This city is a great churning engine of destruction and creation, with the past, until only a generation or so ago, dispatched with a wanton ferocity, yet the dark, ruddy St. Paul's remains. [Matthew Wills, Notes from Brooklyn, 11/9/01]
Recently St. Paul's Church survived once again--the World Trade Center was just across the street but the church remained unharmed. Morrone suggested that instead of some hideous modern sculpture the most fitting memorial to September 11 would be the church itself.Apr 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Writes Allen Forkum:And now for something completely different ... Sports Illustrated recently reported on the protests at the Augusta National Golf Club during the Masters Tournament. Feminist Martha Burk has been making a stink for months about the private club excluding women (as if it's any of her business) and organized a protest. Female golf fans are siding with the club, and at least a few people planned to counter protest. But one group in particular caught our eye, and though they decided not to protest, they get lots of credit for their name: Protesters Against Ridiculous Protests. Sports Illustrated's John Donovan has a humorous review of today's Augusta protests -- Mixed Message: Masters protest drowns in a sea of silliness.
Recommended: If you have enjoyed Cox and Forkum's work displayed at Capitalism Magazine don't forget to get their paperback collection of their cartoons available at the Cox and Forkum website.
