Jan 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
In a column in the England's The Independent newspaper, it is reported that leftist American movie director and author Michael Moore ("Roger and Me," "Stupid White Men," "Bowling for Columbine") alleged that black men--being more violent--would have better fought the 9/11 terrorists than the white people on the planes.[Moore] went into a rant about how the passengers on the planes on 11 September were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody. God save us from such stupid white men, especially now, when in the US and the UK, black people's lives are being ripped to shreds by drugs, lawlessness, fear and frightful violence plus the endless circle of racism, exclusion and incarceration. This is not awesome, Mr Moore; it is a calamity, for descendants of slaves unimaginably more so.
Mr. Moore is a disgrace for many reasons. Here is yet another. This is up there with Senator Trent Lott's infamous recent comments.
Jan 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Quoting from a Miami Herald article, "The joke's on President Chávez",Two Miami radio-show hosts known for playing outrageous pranks on the air got Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on a private line this morning by pretending that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was calling him from Havana. ''We still can't believe it,'' said Enrique Santos, co-host of El Vacilón de la Mañana, (The Morning Joker), on WXDJ-FM El Zol 95.7, a Spanish-language salsa station. ``He fell for it.'' [...] The joke was part of a segment called Fidel Te Llama or ''Fidel's Calling You,'' in which Santos and his co-host, Joe Ferrero, call various people and play snippets of a controversial conversation between Castro and Mexican President Vicente Fox that Castro made public in 2001.
Probably the only ones who were not laughing was Castro and his fan club known as CNN-NBC. Here was how the "conversation" went...
''Hello Fidel!'' booms Chávez.
''Did you receive my letter?'' asks Castro.
''Of course I received it,'' replies Chavez. "I spoke with Germán."
''I'm all set to collaborate with you,'' Castro says.
As the nonsequiturs start, El Vacilón fakes trouble on the line to disguise the rejoinders that don't make sense.
''Yes, brother, how's it going?'' Chávez asks.
''I'll do what you're asking me to,'' Castro replies.
''I don't understand,'' a bewildered Chávez says.
''But I'm going to be harmed, I confess to you,'' Castro says.
Silence from Chávez. Castro goes on: ``Everything's set for Tuesday.''
''Everything's set for Tuesday,'' Chávez repeats, obviously befuddled. ``I don't understand.''
Santos then breaks in and announces they were calling from Miami. Complete silence from Chávez. Santos launches into a tirade: ''Terrorist! Animal! Murderer!'' plus a few choice four-letter nouns. ``You're finishing off the Venezuelan people!''
Absolutely hilarious.
Jan 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Kudos to Paul Farhi at the Washington Post for his exposé of the financial media's abusive grandiosity in interpreting retail industry holiday sales figures as bellwethers of the overall economy. Among other gems in this article, Farhi writes, "Consider this fact: Total retail sales in the United States have increased every month, with one exception, for the past 11 years, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's seasonally adjusted data. That's 130 months of rising sales (compared to the same month a year earlier) vs. one month of declining sales (October). I'll give 130-1 odds that December was yet another 'up' month.
"But surely, you say, holiday sales give us some idea of how the overall economy is doing, right? Wrong. It's true that the economy has been relatively robust for some time, but the arrow hasn't been pointing straight up for all those 11 years. Indeed, during the period when retail sales have been climbing, the quarterly gross domestic product has declined four times.
"..The retail-in-December story is, I think, irresistible to the media... First, tradition. The media are creatures of habit, reflexively recycling the same seasonal chestnuts. The holiday-shopping story is a comforting staple of the season.
"Second, retailers -- who are among the biggest advertisers on radio and TV and in newspapers during December -- are more than happy to encourage such stories. Media coverage of shopping is yet another reminder to the masses that it's their patriotic duty to get out there and spend."
Farhi is free to truth-tell like this because he's a recovering business reporter who now writes for the Post's "Style" section. And, perhaps, because his conscience is clean. Heading off the legion of blogging fact-checkers like me, a post-script to the article states, "He was a Business section reporter for 11 years, during which he managed to avoid writing about the holiday shopping season."
Jan 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
In an disgusting op-ed in the NY Times, "Bring Back the Draft", Democrat Charlie Rangle states that the guiding principle behind a draft is that of "shared sacrifice", and that a draft will undermine the American government's ability to engage in a war against Iraq because,"...those calling for war knew that their children were likely to be required to serve -- and to be placed in harm's way -- there would be more caution and a greater willingness to work with the international community in dealing with Iraq. A renewed draft will help bring a greater appreciation of the consequences of decisions to go to war."
In regards to the draft Ayn Rand writes in her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,
"Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right--the right to life--and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom--then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What is there left to protect?"
Of course, the protection of individual rights is not Mr. Rangles concern--the enslaving of American adults through "national service" is. After all, are not our children forced to "serve" through mandatory "volunteerism"? Now that we have conscripted American children, are not America's young adults the next logical step?
Jan 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An editorial in yesterday's New York Sun recommends the English-language site of South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo; the paper has an entire section on North Korea. Among the articles is this account of the North Korean concentration camps:
North Korea is known to operate five concentration camps now, accommodating a total of over 200,000. Once condemned as political criminals in the North, not only [convicts] themselves, but also their families are incarcerated in concentration camps without trial....
[I]nmates get up at between 5:00am and 6:00am and work until 8:00pm, engaged in farming, coal mining and digging other minerals. After a day of hard work, they have to undergo ideological study sessions and roll calls before going to bed at around 10:00pm.... The basic daily ration ... has been slashed to 200-300g since the food crisis hit the country several years ago. As a consequence, the inmates, it is said, always suffer from hunger, catch and eat snakes, frogs and rabbits whenever possible, let alone tree barks and plant roots. Many inmates perish eventually after suffering from such diseases as pellagra, tuberculosis and hepatitis. [Digital Chosunilbo, 12/5/02]
Among other articles, the paper also provides this account of a 1987 massacre of 5,000 camp prisoners, this aerial photo of a camp, and this description of the Hoeryong camp, which holds 50,000.Jan 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to a January 3rd, 2003 article in the Daily Telegraph, " 'Gang rape' victim faces jail on adultery charges,"Touria Tiouli, 39, from Limoges, in France, has had her passport confiscated and cannot leave Dubai after being charged under the emirate's Sharia law. This declares any sexual relationship outside marriage to be illegal. Mme Tiouli was on a business trip last October when, she alleges, she was raped by three men who offered her a lift home from a nightclub. She reported the attack immediately to the Dubai police, who after investigating her claim arrested her rather than those she accused. One of the men admitted to having "consensual sex" with Mme Tiouli, which made her, in the eyes of Dubai's judiciary, guilty of both adultery and making a false rape accusation. She could face up to 18 months in prison. None of the men has been charged....Sharia law is applied with varying severity in many Muslim countries. In Nigeria, adultery is punishable by stoning to death, while in Dubai a prison sentence is usual.
To the multiculturalist who says "Who are we to judge another culture, and their laws?" I suggest they get gang raped in Dubai.
Jan 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--The recent well-publicized PBS special "Muhammad" was a total whitewash of Islam, according to Edwin A. Locke, senior writer at the Ayn Rand Institute.
"The documentary," focusing on the life of Muhammad, noted Locke "presented him as a wise, self-effacing, illiterate mystic who preached nothing but tolerance, benevolence and peace toward non-Muslims. But the simple fact is the Koran, dictated by Muhammad to his followers, is filled with exhortations to violence against non-believers, such as, 'I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore cut off their heads and cut off every fingertip of them.' Here are others, 'Fight and kill the Pagans wherever you find them;' 'Those who reject our signs, we shall soon cast into the fire;' 'But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads;' 'As to the deviators, they are fuel of hell.'"
"Following Muhammad's death," Locke noted, "his followers launched attacks on nonbelievers in many countries, slaughtering untold numbers. And throughout the centuries the Koran's rhetoric has incited many of the prophet's followers to violence against "infidels." Although not all Muslims are violent, the terrorists among them are acting consistently with exhortations from the Koran. And like all mystical cults based on blind faith, the Muslim religion does not recognize reason as a means of gaining knowledge or of persuading others of one's viewpoint. Thus, they believe, the men of reason must be subdued by force or destroyed entirely.
"Until the Muslim world is secularized, as was the Christian world, it is a danger to all who do not agree with its ideas."Jan 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The day after Christmas the New York Times ran a reprehensible whitewash of Zimbabwe's "land reform," treating it as if it sprang from an idealistic concern for justice, albeit with some unfortunate practical problems. Tuesday we learned of one such "reformer" who explicitly calls for eliminating half his country's population:Eight years after Rwanda, the world may be witnessing another genocide on the African continent.... The government has only permitted half a million tons of maize into Zimbabwe, all of it distributed through the state-operated Grain Marketing Board, one of whose managers told The Times of London, "We only sell to Shona-speakers." Reports of desperate hunger have been trickling out of Matabeleland for months. And Didymus Mutasa, ZANU-PF's administrative secretary and senior bureaucrat, recently admitted that whittling down Zimbabwe's population from its current twelve million is his government's explicit plan. "We would be better off," he said, "with only six million people ... who support the liberation struggle. ... We don't want all these extra people." [New Republic Online, 12/30/02]
Where land in Zimbabwe had been stolen by whites, a legitimate legal process would identify the specific parcels of stolen land, identify the specific victims, and determine the specific value they deserved in compensation. What is happening in that country now--what the Times identifies as "land reform"--is just theft by thugs who have seized government power.
Yet, altruism is behind it; the Times is right about that. Altruism says that people's lives are not their own but belong to the community; in Zimbabwe the community has claimed those lives. Altruism demands human sacrifices--and human sacrifice is its inexorable result.
Jan 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to a December 31, 2002 editorial on Catholic Schools published in the New York Sun,
In 1962, New York educated a student population of about one million with about 40,000 teachers. Today, the city educates about 100,000 more students, but the number of teachers has doubled to about 80,000. Has the quality of education improved by a factor of two...?
The cost to educate the students in New York's Catholic schools averages $3,200 a pupil for Kindergarten through eighth grade and $5,800 a pupil for high schoolers.... The public schools spend nearly double that, about $10,000 each in elementary and middle schools and more than $9,000 for each high-school student.
Jan 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Everyone seems to believe the U.S. is (and has been) suffering from 'deflation.' At least that is what Alan Greenspan and his cohorts keep saying, and everyone seems to believe him. Not Richard M. Salsman, CFA. According to Mr. Salsman, "The gold price has risen by 25% this year -- and that's inflation. It's bearish. Until and unless it stops, no U.S. bull market can take hold." Quoting him in the December 31, 2002 edition of the The InterMarkerForecaster,No market price is more important -- as a summary measure of what global investors think of a country's prospects (or its political leadership) and as a forecaster of financial asset returns -- than the local-currency gold price. A rising gold price-- which means a currency is worth less-and-less--implies a vote of 'no (or lesser) confidence' and is bearish for financial asset returns. In contrast, a declining gold price -- which means a currency is worth more-and-more -- implies a vote of confidence and is bullish for financial asset returns.
Continues, Mr. Salsman,
"The fast-rising dollar-gold price means that global investors are casting a vote of diminishing confidence in the Bush Administration. It's not because the U.S. is acting in a war-like manner -- but because it isn't. Notice that U.S. markets had begun to improve in early October, when Congress (finally) approved a war powers resolution; that made war more likely, not less. But President Bush and Secretary Powell have continued to appease terror regimes and gangs -- and appease more cravenly the more brazen the foreign dictators and terrorists become. U.S. appeasement has intensified the war-mongering of those savages who run North Korea."
Jan 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Yaron Brook, Ph.D., President and Executive Director of The Ayn Rand Institute, wrote the following letter distributed to the press by his organization, in response to the comments made in an interview by Israel Government Press Office Director Danny Seaman:Are Media Networks Aiding and Abetting Terrorism?
Danny Seaman, Israel's Government Press Office Director, accused Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, BBC, ABC and CBS of working with directors and producers appointed by the Palestinian Authority who spin--and even fabricate--reports in favor of Palestinians and against Israel.
"Three senior producers" working for foreign networks, Seaman claimed, "were coordinated with [master terrorist] Marwan Barghouti. He used to call them and inform them about what was about to happen. They always received early warning about gunfire on Gilo. Then they shot for TV only the Israeli response fire on Beit Jala. Those producers advised Barghouti how to get the Palestinian message across better."
This alleged conspiracy between journalists and terrorists to promote the Palestinian cause should be thoroughly investigated. If these charges are true, what we have here is not only an egregious example of non-objective journalism, but a far more condemnable behavior on the part of mainstream networks: an active role in aiding and abetting terrorism.
Seaman's charges should come as no surprise if we recall what BBC's correspondent in Gaza reportedly said at a Hamas rally: "Journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people."
It is bad enough to have the media biased against Israel--the innocent victim of terrorism--but it is even worse to have the media, on which we depend for the news, actively collaborating with terrorists.
If we find out that this is indeed the case, we must make sure that all those in the media who are involved with the terrorists be fired, at a minimum. This won't solve the problem of media bias against Israel, but at least it will increase the possibility of an objective reporting on the Middle East situation.
Jan 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to an article in the December 31, 2002 edition of the Daily Telegraph,South Korea sharply diverged from the Bush administration's policy on North Korea yesterday, saying Washington's policy of economic pressure and isolation would fail. President Kim Dae-jung, whose "sunshine policy" of engagement with Pyongyang has been derided by some White House officials, said direct engagement with the Stalinist state was the only way to relieve tension.
"We cannot go to war with North Korea and we can't go back to the Cold War system and extreme confrontation," he told his cabinet.... In a carefully phrased swipe at America, Mr Kim said: "Pressure and isolation have never been successful with Communist countries--Cuba is one example...."
White House officials have spoken of exerting such pressure on Pyongyang that Kim Jong-il's regime would collapse, an intention that has alarmed China and South Korea, which fear a destabilisation of the region.
If any policy is demonstrably less successful than "pressure and isolation," it is the "dialogue and engagement" that Kim Dae-jung proposes. But, as is now clear, bringing down North Korea is not his goal.Dec 31, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Last week the U.S. ratified a U.N. protocol banning child combatants:
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report to the Security Council this month lists 23 parties--including governments and rebel groups--in Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, Liberia and Somalia that recruit and use child soldiers. [Associated Press, 12/24/02]
Did Annan's report include the Palestinians? Apparently not, as they are not listed in the article, or the Dec. 16 AP article on Annan's report. With regard to this issue, Fiamma Nirenstein, a correspondent for La Stampa, reports on a November 16 article in Al Quds, the Hezbollah weekly:
After speaking to children in Jenin, the reporter explained that children had been trained from a very young age not only to throw stones, but also to use small explosive devices and grenades--a strategic decision recently supplemented by using children to prepare bombs. The children are divided into three groups: The first helps the grown-ups manufacture explosives, the second plants the devices, and the third--probably the best trained--is charged with carrying out ambushes where they bring along a bag full of explosives, not just stones. [...] A 16-year-old told the reporter how he had thrown at least 50 grenades at soldiers. During the first night of Operation Defensive Shield, as the Israelis called it, hundreds of children walked through the streets chanting, "Fight to the death...!"
[...] And Mr. Arafat? Talking about children in August, he lauded Farid Houra, a 14-year-old shahid, saying, "The shahid constitutes the fundamental and victorious force of our people." And in January, when he was asked what message he'd like to send Palestinian children, he said: "The child who throws a stone, who confronts a tank, doesn't it send a better message to the world when that hero becomes a shahid?" [New York Sun, 12/23/02]
Dec 30, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Communist North Korea has removed U.N. monitoring seals and cameras at the country's main nuclear complex, a clear signal that they fully intend to step up their efforts to build (and eventually use) nuclear weapons against people they don't like.The U.N. is outraged and is blasting the North Korean government -- and well they should. However, it's interesting that the U.N. becomes outraged when their power is threatened, while the same understanding is not granted to the United States for its perfectly legitimate efforts to protect itself from chemical attacks from Iraq or, for that matter, nuclear attacks from North Korea.
It seems like the guiding premise of the U.N. is: threaten our power, and you're toast; threaten the United States, while being nice to us, and we're definitely open to discussion.
Hypocrisy seems like too kind a word here. Why do we still belong to such an organization? Exactly how does it benefit our safety? It's time to start asking these questions -- and answering them.
Dec 26, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
A Reuters report from Jammu, India indicates just what the Islamists want for women:
Suspected militants killed three young women in their homes just days after posters appeared in India's Jammu and Kashmir state ordering women to wear a veil.
Two of the women, both aged 21, were shot dead in their house in Rajouri district in the south of the revolt-torn Muslim-majority state Thursday night. The third woman, 22, was taken away and beheaded, an official said....
The Lashkar Jabbar sprayed acid on two women in Kashir's main city Srinagar last year for defying its Islamic dress code.
The group then had threatened to shoot Muslim women if they failed to wear veils. [Washington Post, 12/20/02]
"Suspected militants"? Res ipsa loquitur.Dec 24, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The headline to Emily Kaiser's Reuter's wire story is "Retailers Face Worst Holiday in Decades," and it reports that US stores are "reeling from a lackluster holiday season that is forecast to be the weakest in more than 30 years." As usual, analysts are quoted, dire consequences are predicted.The scary impression given is that sales this holiday season will run lower than in the pit of the 1974-1975 recession, when the economy was not only in deep trouble but far smaller than it is today. But in the third paragraph it is finally revealed that exactly what may be the weakest in more than 30 years is not sales, but growth in sales.
In a weekly report, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UBS Warburg forecast holiday sales in November and December would be up an anemic 1.5 percent over last year, the smallest gain since the banks began tracking weekly sales in 1970.
We're not talking even about negative growth -- just smaller growth than some expected. The analysts quoted are forecasting 1.5% growth in holiday sales, which is defined as "the smallest gain since... 1970" [emphasis added].
Dec 23, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--"All who value human life should applaud legislation just passed by Australia's Senate--legislation that removes some restrictions on scientific research using stem cells from human embryos," said David Holcberg from the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Such legislation," explained Holcberg, "will help free Australian researchers to discover new treatments for an immense variety of medical conditions, from diabetes to cancer to Parkinson's disease.
"American legislators," Holcberg continued, "should go even further than their Australian counterparts. They should rescind all laws that restrict or ban research involving stem cells and embryos. The government should be stripped of its power to regulate scientific research and man's quest for knowledge. The government's only proper function is to protect individual rights. But an embryo--which is, in the time-frame relevant here, a primitive cluster of cells--has no rights. Only independent, living human beings do.
"To sacrifice the lives of countless actual human beings, whose illnesses will go untreated, for the sake of the non-existent rights of a few cells, is an unspeakable crime."Dec 23, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The December 23rd issue of Newsweek has an article called "Time to Expose the Mullahs" by Fareed Zakaria with the opener, "What country in the Middle East supports a flourishing terrorist network and is steadily acquiring weapons of mass destruction? If you said Iraq, you're one letter off. It's Iran, which the State Department has long branded "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world." The article makes many other excellent points,...Iran is also a vigorous exporter of Islamic fundamentalism. For two decades now Tehran has funded radical Islamic movements, scholars and centers around the world....Iran's democracy is a sham. The president, Mohammed Khatami, is a figurehead, allowed to give high-minded speeches and do little else...The fundamental mistake people make about today's Iran is to assume that the reformers--who speak in tones that the West can understand--wield power...Iran is a theocracy; the reformers and moderates are window dressing. Real power rests with a tiny clerical establishment.
Most distressing is this paragraph,
The clerics have created a network of supporters and enforcers who keep things tightly under control. There are several shadowy gangs of thugs--the largest of them a Hitler Youth-type group called the Basij--that go around terrorizing people. They operate above and beyond the law, breaking up demonstrations, even those that have been approved by local authorities. Then there is the secret police. One of the ironies of Iran today is that the mullahs came to power riding a wave of fear over the shah's dreaded Savak. But the only institution of the old regime that has been maintained, indeed fortified, has been the Savak, now called the Savama.
