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.
Mar 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
This report from Whittier, California has been going around the Net:Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.
However, although officers witnessed the vandalism Saturday afternoon, police did not arrest three people seen damaging the display because they were "exercising the same freedom of speech that the people who put up the flags were,' La Habra Police Capt. John Rees said Monday. "For this to be vandalism, there had to be an ill-will intent,' he said. Rees said in order for police to take any action, the owner of the fence would have to file a complaint.
Jeff Collison, owner of The RV Center in La Habra, who has allowed residents to add patriotic symbols to the fence on his property, said he just might do that. "Their free speech stops at destruction of private property. If they are allowed to come on my property and burn flags, does that mean I can go to City Hall or the police station and light their flags on fire because that is freedom of speech? To me, this is vandalism."
... Tracey Chandler, a Whittier mother of four who has maintained the spontaneous memorial since it was created by other area residents soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said... "They trashed 87 flags, ripped 11 memorial tiles made by myself and my children out of the ground and glued the Bob Dylan song to a sign that said, 'America, land of the brave, home of the free.'" [Whittier Daily News, 3/11/03]
Mar 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Washington, D.C.-- Recently, the House of Representatives proposed the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act," which would, "prohibit civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages resulting from the misuse of their products by others." Although it should not take an act of Congress to prohibit the punishment of innocents, the only alternative is to have U.S. judges actually read the Constitution--an extremist approach that few in Washington could stomach.
The move comes in the wake of several scapegoat-style lawsuits designed to institutionalize the shirking of personal responsibility, while crushing successful businesses in the process. Just last week, a California judge dismissed a "negligent marketing" lawsuit against several gun manufacturers and distributors, which blamed them for "dumping" guns into areas where criminals and children could buy them. The suit was filed by San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Oakland, West Hollywood, and several other California counties. These counties also just happen to have the strictest anti-gun laws in the state. Hmmm.
In what must be completely unrelated news, a Los Angeles police officer was charged today with stealing unlawful "assault" weapons and selling them on the black market...
Mar 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Senate Republicans say they have moved to within a single vote of guaranteeing President Bush one of his top domestic priorities--opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. [Associated Press, 3/11/03]
Mar 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Hundreds of Zimbabwe's notorious youth militia, nicknamed the "green bombers", are fleeing to South Africa because they say they too are being beaten and starved, and are tired of "killing for nothing"....One youth said he fled Zimbabwe after being forced to take part in the murder of his uncle, a supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)....Yet another said he fled to South Africa after being instructed to murder his father, an MDC supporter....They come from the hundreds of youth militia training camps which have sprung up in Zimbabwe, many at secondary schools where pupils are forced to take part in activities or risk death. [Sunday Independent (South Africa), 3/8/03]
Mar 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here is an exchange between ABC's Diane Sawyer and Dan Harris on Saddam Hussein (as transcribed by the Media Research Center) on March 7:Sawyer: "Well Dan, it's very hard to look at those and think of his meetings as a laugh riot exactly over in Baghdad, but I read this morning that he's also said the love that the Iraqis have for him is so much greater than anything Americans feel for their President because he's been loved for 35 years, he says, the whole 35 years."
Harris: "He is one to point out quite frequently that he is part of a historical trend in this country of restoring Iraq to its greatness, its historical greatness. He points out frequently that he was elected with a hundred percent margin recently."
Like Fidel Castro? Observe how Sawyer and Harris chose to quote those particular statements of the dictator Hussein, yet choose not to present other relevant facts (the Iraqi elections were a farce--there was one candidate, who murders his relatives who oposse him, etc.) in the same context.
On Good Morning America Sawyer spoke with Alice Hoglan, a mother of one of the passengers on Flight 93, the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania:
Sawyer: "And as you hear about the prospect of war with Iraq, do you worry that it will distract from a concerted, concentrated approach to the war on terror with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda?"
Hoglan: "I think that President Bush's focus on Iraq is consistent with his focus on the war on terror....His actions are consistent. Iraq harbors criminals, harbors terrorists and represents a threat in its own right. I support President Bush and the others, Senator McCain and the others who have spoken out in favor of removing this despot from power."
Busted.
Mar 9, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Shortly after three o'clock on a hot afternoon 37-year-old Nazif Mamik Tofik, an Iraqi Kurd, approached the border post carrying two five-gallon canisters of fuel. She hoped to cross to the Kurdish-controlled side and sell them for a pound or two, which would help feed her eight hungry children.
As she stepped up to the Iraqi checkpoint, a military policeman suddenly pulled a knife, slashed open the flimsy plastic containers and splashed petrol all over her. Then the head of the Iraqi border guard casually walked up to her, pulled a lighter from his pocket and set her ablaze. Soaked in fuel, she began to burn like a torch. That was on Monday afternoon. Yesterday Nazif lay in Sulaimania emergency hospital, on the Iraqi side, whimpering with pain. She had third degree burns and doctors said she was lucky to be alive....
In a faltering voice, she said: "They said absolutely nothing, just looked at me with hatred. Then they set me alight. My whole body was in flames. I can't describe the pain."
Comments the doctor treating her,
"It will be a month before her skin begins to heal. Only then can we begin the slow, painful process of grafting." [Daily Telegraph, 3/7/03]
So the next time you see an antiwar-monger crying about the "innocents" who might be killed by Saddam when the U.S. overthrows Iraq, think of Nazif Mamik Tofik. [Thanks to Paul Blair for the news sighting.]
Mar 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
A French company has been selling spare parts to Iraq for its fighter jets and military helicopters during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The unidentified company sold the parts to a trading company in the United Arab Emirates, which then shipped the parts through a third country into Iraq by truck....
The importation of military goods by Iraq is banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions passed since the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Nathalie Loiseau, press counselor at the French Embassy, said her government has no information about the spare-parts smuggling and has not been approached by the U.S. government about the matter....
France has been Iraq's best friend in the West. French arms sales to Baghdad were boosted in the 1970s under Premier Jacques Chirac, the current president. Mr. Chirac once called Saddam Hussein a "personal friend." During the 1980s, when Paris backed Iraq in its war against Iran, France sold Mirage fighter bombers and Super Entendard aircraft to Baghdad, along with Exocet anti-ship missiles....
France now has an estimated $4 billion in debts owed to it by Iraq as a result of arms sales and infrastructure construction projects. The debt is another reason U.S. officials believe France is opposing military force to oust Saddam. [Emphasis added, Washington Times, 3/7/03]
Mar 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
In a highly publicized editorial categorized as a "news" profile, BBC NEWS reports on Saddam supporter, actor Martin Sheen:Martin Sheen's President Bartlet is far removed from George W Bush. Bartlet is liberal, idealistic, intellectual and charismatic.
Translation: George W. Bush is a Republican, unprincipled, idiot, who no one really likes probably because he beats up on his mother.
Mar 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Inside the Baghdad stock exchange's two-story concrete building, investors are upbeat. The benchmark BSI index, which closed at 2,212 on Monday, has gained 31 percent this year, according to data provided by the exchange's research department. The big movers: Baghdad hotels such as the Palestine, the Ishtar and the Sadir. Investors are betting that a quick war, followed by the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, will lead to a surge of visitors and tourists. [Bloomberg News, 3/7/03]
I wonder how the press will spin this? Probably similar to the recent U.S. market upsurge after Bush's recent press address, where the BBC claims "New York shares are up on rumours that soldiers may be close to Osama bin Laden, but war jitters continue to hammer markets elsewhere." The truth, as Richard Salsman has reiterated for the past few years is that the so-called "war-jitters" are bullish. [Thanks to Paul Blair for the news sighting.]
Mar 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to the National Post, at York University in Canada a recent college "protest"--against the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein from Iraq by the U.S.--turned violent as students with an American flag were assaulted by a large group of students and two Jewish students were harassed by anti-war demonstrators. Clearly the motivation of this group of peace-niks is not real peace, but pacifism towards cruel dictators, with violence reserved for the real object of their hatred--free people who dare to disagree with them.Mar 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Richard Salsman, CFA in the February 28th, 2003 edition of the InterMarket Forecaster:Until war is waged, bonds in the U.S. especially corporate bonds will be the best financial asset worth owning. What would be bullish for stocks? We saw a spectacular, but brief (two-month) rally in U.S. stocks starting in early October the same week the U.S. Congress passed a resolution granting President Bush full authority to wage war against Iraq. But Bush has failed (so far) to exercise that authority. He may do so next month. If not or if he acts against Iraq but not against Iran and North Korea investors in U.S. stocks could see a sad repeat of the long, bearish spring-summer of 2002.
[...]
Here's a simple guide for investors in the coming weeks: If the headlines are filled with reports of actual U.S. bombings, battles won and Don Rumsfeld, that'll be bullish for U.S. equities and bearish for commodities; but if the headlines are filled (as they have been for so long) with reports of still-more U.N. resolutions, 'inspectors' reports' and Colin Powell, that'll be bearish for U.S. stocks and bullish for commodities.
