Mar 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Open acts of defiance by opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime have intensified in the past week, with saboteurs carrying out attacks against Iraq's railway system and protesters openly calling for the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator.
The most blatant act of sabotage took place 20 miles south of the north Iraqi city of Mosul when members of the Iraqi opposition blew up a stretch of track on the Mosul-Baghdad railway, causing the derailment of a train....
Demonstrations were also reported to have taken place in Kirkuk, where an estimated crowd of 20,000 marched on the Ba'ath party's main administrative headquarters demanding Saddam's overthrow. Three posters of the Iraqi leader were torn down and a grenade was thrown at the government building. One senior Ba'ath official was reported killed in the attack.
There were also unconfirmed reports that another demonstration by Iraqi Shi'ites in the holy city of Kerbala last weekend was violently suppressed after the intervention of militiamen loyal to Saddam.
The escalation in attacks by Iraqi opposition groups has also been accompanied by widespread acts of anti-Saddam vandalism. Posters of the Iraqi president, which adorn every public building, are being openly defaced and vandalized throughout the country.
Until recently anyone caught carrying out such acts would have received the death sentence. [Daily Telegraph, 3/16/03]
The report also includes a graphic description how Saddam's thugs killed a civil servant who was accused of preparing to leave the country; I'll spare you. I'll also spare you the graphic descriptions of other Iraqi tortures reported by Ann Clwyd, a British Labour MP. If you have the stomach, read them. As a friend wrote, "OK, now I'm convinced."
Mar 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Unlike the New York Sun, I oppose tuition vouchers, which amount to public funding of private schools--a move that would destroy what little independence they have left as they came under the regulation that inevitably accompanies government money. However, I do support tuition tax credits as a way of letting people keep their own money to pay for education. Here's what's happening in New York:The only bit of movement--and it is slight--comes in a modest education tax-credit bill that has been introduced in the state Assembly and Senate. The bill has 18 sponsors in the Senate and 11 in the Assembly, and would provide a modest tax credit for 50% of the value of donations to public schools (including charter schools), school districts, and scholarship funds that pay for private schools. Under the bill, individuals could get up to $250 for a $500 donation, and corporations could get up to $25,000 for a $50,000 donation.
The bill does not allow donations directly to private schools, however, because, as one of the architects of the bill, the president of United New Yorkers for Choice in Education, Timothy Mulhearn, told us, "That would be the kiss of death…You have to be public-school friendly in Albany."[New York Sun, 3/18/03]
Mar 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Olympia, Washington--home to self-liquidating terrorist sympathizer Rachel Corrie--is a hotbead of anti-war stupidity:A man spent hours chained to the wrong building Tuesday in an ill-planned effort to protest war with Iraq, police said. Jody Mason padlocked himself to an entrance of the Washington State Grange building at 924 Capitol Way S., thinking it was a sub-office of the U.S. Department of Energy...
...Grange employees explained that he was at the wrong building. The Grange is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advocates for residents in rural areas.
.. Police officers used heavy-duty bolt cutters to free Mason. "He asked for help because he didn't have the key," Olympia police Cmdr. Steve Nelson said. [Olympian]
Oh this is so classic. Thanks to CM reader Brian Harburg-Thomson for this sighting.
Mar 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
[W]itnesses said Mohammed a-Sa'afin, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, took to the roof of his home after Israeli special forces surrounded it. "Give up, think of your children," an Israeli officer shouted at him. Sa'afin replied with pipe bombs and a volley of bullets from his Kalashnikov rifle. He was shot dead.
Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said six other Palestinians were killed in the fighting, including a 13-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl, whose age medical officials initially put at two. At least 12 people were wounded. [Reuters, 3/18/03]
Mar 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, is facing recriminations for the "major blunder" of pushing for a second UN resolution, according to White House sources.
After announcing Monday that "the time for diplomacy has passed", Powell launched a passionate defense of his performance, reeling off numbers of telephone calls made, meetings held and rejecting accusations that he had traveled too little....One administration source said: "Powell led us up the primrose path and it turned into a debacle. In the White House, Powell's stock has never been lower than it is now. It was a major blunder. There are plenty of people saying, 'I told you so' and pointing out the diplomatic mess we are in."
... Powell has long referred to Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, as "the others". He is said to be seething about Rumsfeld's utterances, particularly his characterization of "Old Europe" and the claim that the U.S. could go to war without Britain. [Daily Telegraph, 3/17/03]
Mar 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Iraq also handed over videotapes of mobile biological weapons laboratories to inspectors. Iraq says the videos show the laboratories do not violate U.N. resolutions. [Associated Press, 3/17/03]
This was buried at the bottom of an AP article. This means the Iraqis are admitting they have biological weapons laboratories--even mobile ones--and are now claiming they don't violate UN resolutions? The chutzpah! Why even make biological labs mobile unless you are developing weapons you are trying to hide from inspectors? ("There there," says Mother Sarandon, "I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason...")Mar 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Saddam Hussein should have been deposed in 1991 but he wasn't. He should have been deposed when he violated the terms of the truce but he wasn't. He should have been deposed last Fall (or whenever the military could have done it) but he wasn't.
The Bush Administration shouldn't have cared about the UN last Fall, but they did. They shouldn't have gone after a second resolution, but they did.
Given all of these mistakes and where we are now, Bush's message and tone in last night's speech was appropriate, and I suspect he'll be a good commander-in-chief for the invasion.
Might I add that among the UK, Spain, and Portugal, Americans can get as much as tourists as they could if they visited France. You can get exposure to Old World history and culture, museums and theater, wine country, a riviera, excellent food--everything that France had to offer. Please remember that in the future when you're planning European vacations.Mar 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Listen to this caller, an Iraqi national in the USA, tear apart an anti-war protestor on a radio show in Seattle.Mar 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Boston.com:After watching President Bush's address, [Janet] Reno said, ''We will not solve the world's problems by might....''
Yet she settled the Elian Gonzalez issue wiith guns in the faces of his unarmed family members.
Reno also criticized the White House's policy toward enemy combatants.
''Two citizens today are being held incommunicado in military brigs in this country, without being charged, without access to counsel, by the simple fact that the president has declared them what is called 'enemy combatants,''' Reno said, referring to ''dirty bomb'' suspect Jose Padilla and the Louisiana-born Yasser Esam Hamdi.
She sent Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba to live in a similar situation--and he wasn't a terrorist but a boy.
''What has happened to the Bill of Rights? What has happened to due process? What has happened to the Geneva Convention? If they're not prisoners of war, what are they? And what rights do they have?'' she asked.
Funny you ask, Ms. Reno. I had similar concerns about Elian.
Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
More about the 23-year-old American defender of terrorists who was killed when she put herself in front of an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza:
Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Wash., a member of the 'International Solidarity Movement,' burns a mock U.S. flag during a rally in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah in this Feb. 15, 2003 file photo. [Associated Press, 3/16/03]
Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The deadlines for ARI's essay contests on Ayn Rand's novels are fast approaching! The last day to submit your 9th and 10th grade Anthem essay is March 18, and the last day to submit your 11th and 12th grade Fountainhead essay is April 15.Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
One of the Left's big stupid lies about the upcoming Iraqi war is that it is a war for oil, or as they so cleverly and orginally put it, "No blood for oil." That the US has never gained a value from a war--except to stop an aggressor--and that the US could have clearly taken over the Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and even Saudi fields in 1991, is of course something that the Left refuses to acknowledge, and hopes the rest of retards won't, either. (That is, of course how the Left views average Americans: we've retards to them.)
So how about this. . . Obstructing a just war for oil? I don't think that's the motive in play, but it is far more conceivable than accusing the US of going to war for oil.WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq "will not be honored," Barhim Salih, a leading Iraqi Kurdish official, said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
"A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator," added Salih, who is prime minister in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan government that controls Iraq's eastern Kurdish area.
Russian and French oil corporations have each signed draft contracts with Iraq, to come into force only when the United Nations sanctions are lifted, for exploration, development and exploitation of the country's energy resources -- which geologists believe may be the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia. The value of the draft contracts, if fully taken up, is estimated to have a potential of more than $20 billion.
Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Thank goodness Don Rumsfeld appears to know something about the principle of the sanction of the victim. After withdrawing our sanction, look what happened:
The anti-American demonstrations here have suddenly gone poof. U.S. soldiers are walking the streets of Seoul again without looking over their shoulders. The official line from the South Korean government is: Yankees stay here.
Opposition to U.S. troops in South Korea that seemed to be boiling over has quieted dramatically in recent weeks, because of new threats from North Korea and a suggestion from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. troops may be cut and repositioned.
Resentment toward the U.S. government, however, has hardly disappeared....But the mainstream South Korean public seemed sobered by Rumsfeld's remarks last week that the Pentagon might reduce its force of 37,000 troops and move some of them away from the front lines at the Demilitarized Zone, the frontier with North Korea.
The Korean critics "went up to the cliff, peered over, and then pulled back," said Scott Snyder, the head in Seoul of the Asia Foundation, a private, nongovernmental, grant-making organization....Whatever the motivation, the prime minister of South Korea's two-week-old government made an unusual public plea to the U.S. ambassador on March 6 not to remove any troops until the current tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program are resolved. [Washington Post, 3/14/03]
Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday said maybe the image of Bush being a traditional American cowboy as painted by his critics abroad was not such a bad one.
"The notion that the president is a cowboy, I don't know, as a Westerner, I think that's not necessarily a bad idea," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "I think the fact of the matter is, he cuts to the chase, he is very direct, and I find that very refreshing." [Reuters, 3/16/03]
Mar 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The United Nations has revealed itself to be worse than the League of Nations it replaced. The league, after all, was a dead letter after it failed to stop Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1936. The UN is not just failing to stop an aggressor, but is actively thwarting the US insistence on doing so.
Every moment that the US continues to indulge the UN and grovel for the vote of such bastions of international legitimacy as Guinea and Cameroon serves only to further legitimize a corrupt system and give Saddam more time to plan ways to kill American troops....
Luckily, speaking of cards, the French seem to have overplayed their hand.... In the aftermath of this debacle, the US should simply rely upon "coalitions of the willing," leaving the UN isolated and not the United States. [Jerusalem Post, 3/14/03]
Or here's George Will:
The United Nations is not a good idea badly implemented, it is a bad idea....
[The] phrase ... "the international community" ... is oxymoronic because "community" denotes unity based on shared political interests and cultural values....
The United Nations is premodern because it is unaccountable and irresponsible: It claims power not legitimized by the recurring consent of periodically consulted constituencies of the governed. Inebriated by self-approval, the United Nations ... a collection of regimes of less than uniform legitimacy, has anointed itself the sole arbiter of what are legitimate military actions. And it has claimed a duty to leash the only nation that has the power to enforce U.N. resolutions. How long will that nation's public be willing to pay one-quarter of the United Nations' bills? [Washington Post, 3/13/03]
If only Will recognized that it's not fundamentally the consent of the governed, but the protection of individual rights, that confers legitimacy on a government.
Even Max Kampelman, chairman emeritus of Freedom House and former chairman of the American United Nations Association, is bashing the UN:
To mention Cambodia, Congo, Somalia, China, North Korea, Kosovo, and Chechnya is to list only a portion of the human tragedies in our midst. That list defines the inadequacies and failures of the United Nations.
In 1995, we persuaded the United Nations, after great effort, to concern itself with the Balkans. European stability was being challenged. What we remember from that effort is that the United Nations assured the Bosnian Muslims that they could assemble in Srebrenica, a so-called "safe area." Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were massacred there while U.N. forces ignored the tragedy a few miles away.
North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il, has inflicted a holocause on his people. Defectors and observers have estimated that more than 1 million people have starved to death in brutal Gulag-type camps. This catastrophe has created a flood of refugees into China, where an estimated 360,000 refugees may now be hiding in an effort to escape the brutalities at home. A U.N. Refugee Commission exists which is fully aware of this human catastrophe. China, however, says that these tragic human beings are "economic migrants" and "not refugees." China is clearly in violation of U.N. conventions and protocols. Where is the United Nations? It is certainly not challenging China, a major U.N. power.... [New York Sun, 3/14/03]
Kampelman's criticisms are valid only insofar as they illustrate the U.N.'s fecklessness; implicit in them, however, is the concession that the U.N.'s mission is a noble one. Later, he writes, "A strong case may be made for the existence of an international body to which all of the world's states, democratic and authoritarian, belong. Discussion and constructive exchange may flow from it."
To the contrary: This is precisely the root of the U.N.s impracticality and of its moral bankruptcy. It is not possible to allow "all of the world's states" to belong to an organization without conceding the legitimacy of those states. Such an organization thereby confers legitimacy on the very dictatorships it needs be pledged to exterminate, if it were to address the "human catastrophes" Kampelman mentions. Dictatorship is the root cause of these crises; evading the cause means perpetuating the effect.Mar 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's the clearest, best statement in a long time about why it's wrong to send "humanitarian assistance" to dictatorships:
Interestingly, the [aid] "strategies" being considered appear to bypass the government in finding ways to "provide humanitarian and development support" to Haiti. But Dr. Robert Rodney, a politically active physician in New York, asserts that "the Haitian problem is essentially political and any plan that would attempt to deal with the people's suffering while leaving Aristide in power is doomed to failure." He says that Mr. Aristide will invent ways to siphon off any aid to the people by his "chimeras" or thugs and by blocking what his organizations can't control. [Raymond Joseph, New York Sun, 3/14/03]
What Dr. Rodney doesn't say, but implies, is that the sending of "humanitarian assistance" is essentially an evasion. It allows Western bleeding hearts to feel like they're "doing something" and so assuage their altruistic guilt, without actually identifying and doing something about the cause of the problem. Identifying causes requires abstract thinking, moral judgment, and a repudiation of the idea that good things come by wishing them into existence. Following that path leads to abandoning the politics of collectivism and its underlying code of altruism. But our humanitarians are hardly willing to do that.Mar 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
New Square, N.Y.--Religion always smells a little fishy to those of us who've become accustomed to life here in reality, and a Jewish sect in New York has finally figured out why: God is just a fish. A carp, actually. Or at least He was, until Luis Nivelo chopped Him up and sold Him at a market in New York. I wonder how much He went for?
Oh, well. I guess Nietzsche was right: God is dead. And covered in tartar sauce. Mmmm...tartar sauce.
Mar 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Santiago, Chile--A spokeswoman for the all-powerful nation of Chile warned today that her over-sized beach on the west coast of South America would not support the latest U.S. resolution against Iraq."If we had to vote on the proposal for a resolution that was presented last Friday, Chile would not be accompanying that stance," said Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear. "That means that we are not going to support it," she then translated.
It is rumored that almost 14 top al-Qaeda operatives are vaguely aware of Chile.
