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.
Dec 22, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Readers probably already heard about this story from a few days ago that received national coverage. As reported in the Seattle Times:At an appearance before a high school honors class, [Senator Patty] Murray, D-Wash., offered what her spokesman called an intentionally provocative challenge for students to ponder.
"We've got to ask, why is this man (bin Laden) so popular around the world?" Murray asked during an appearance Wednesday at Columbia River High School. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries that are riddled with poverty?"
The answers may be uncomfortable, but are important for Americans to ponder - particularly students, Murray said.
"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that," Murray said.
"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"
Murray is implying that Americans deserved to be punished for not sacrificing our wealth to placate backward populations. This is morally reprehensible: Americans are not slave labor to feed and house the rest of the world. We have no moral obligation to help other countries.
Rather what Americans should do is to understand what makes some countries wealthy and others poor.
Countries are impoverished to the degree that they lack political and economic freedom. (Some countries, like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are wealthy despite their horrible governments because they expropriated oil industries that Western countries developed. Before American, British, and Dutch companies discovered the oil and created a market for it, the indigenous people were impoverished and backward.) Bin Laden's "gifts" to Islamic countries are his means to promote a radical, death-worshipping sect of Islam.
In the same newspaper article an expert on Bin Laden said that "Mostly he did underwrite - and so did many Arab charities - several fundamentalist Muslim schools throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan that teach a very, very, fundamentalist, right-wing version of Islam that preaches hatred for the West."
The fact is that Bin Laden offers impoverished people a philosophy of suffering on this earth, of hatred, and of death. Whereas America offers the world a model for escaping their earthly misery in this lifetime.
America was founded on the principle of individual rights and its corollary politico-economic system of capitalism, where the government's powers are limited to protect people's rights to economic, political, and religious freedom. That is the key to happiness on earth, and the means by which impoverished peoples could rise up from their filthy and miserable existence. Millions of such Muslims have already escaped their oppressed and poor countries and immigrated to America to enjoy a life they would otherwise be deprived, because of the evil ideas of men like Bin Laden.
Senator Murray performed a grave injustice against America, and it is appalling that a woman such as she can hold public office. A Senator, of all people, should know that it is Americans who give the impoverished and backward countries hope; it is America that should be loved. It is not Bin Laden, and if people are swayed by his hatred and death-worship instead of the American dream, they deserve their misery.
Dec 21, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--By waiting for U.N. approval to attack terrorist regimes, President Bush is violating his sworn oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," said David Holcberg, senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"The U.S. Constitution," noted Holcberg, "was created to protect the individual and his rights from power-lusters at home and tyrants abroad. It does the latter by providing 'for the common defense,' which means: the executive branch of the government is charged with defending America from foreign threats. But by surrendering to the United Nations the responsibility to judge whether or not Iraq is a threat that warrants going to war--by placing our self-defense at the mercy of an international body full of appeasers and dictators--President Bush has undermined America's security.
"He, like his father in the Gulf War, is helping to establish the most dangerous of precedents: he is substituting the U.N. Charter for the U.S. Constitution--as the supreme law of our nation.
"While the Iraqis play shell games with the U.N. weapons inspectors, the danger of evil regimes arming terrorists with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons increases. We should, therefore, demand that President Bush uphold his sworn oath to the U.S. Constitution. Our lives depend upon it."Dec 21, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
The citizens of still democratic South Korea recently voted into office a candidate who advocates open appeasement of North Korea -- after the truth came out that Communist North Korea is actively developing nuclear weapons.Imagine if Canada was run by a violent dictator who was openly developing nuclear weapons. Would American voters, soon after discovering this information, vote into office a presidential candidate who favors appeasing Canada? Would Americans vote into office a candidate who openly favored appeasing Osama bin Laden?
Clearly something is deeply wrong with most South Koreans. It's sad. However, it's not our problem. When the time comes for us to confront North Korea, as we now seek to disarm Saddam Hussein, we will then (as now) hear cries that war is wrong because it risks the lives of "innocents." How innocent are people who make mistakes such as the one South Koreans just did? Just because they want to commit suicide does not obligate us to go down with them.
Dec 20, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Apparently the Iraq Daily misquoted Sean Penn:
Penn's flack howled in protest, claiming her boss was the victim of terrorist misquotes. "Oh, please! I don't know where those statements are being fabricated from," said spokeswoman Mara Buxbaum. "This is specifically propaganda. It's a twisted interpretation of what he said. They are twisting his words." According to Buxbaum, Penn never even spoke with the Iraq Daily. [New York Post, 12/18/02]
Dec 19, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Some places to view the new proposals for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center:Also, detailed plans are available at a few of the architects' sites:
What a relief that seven of the nine proposals call for towers taller than the original WTC! Just the fact that they were proposed makes me feel like we're not living in a nation of cowards and compromisers without vision or ambition.
James Gardner comments on the World Trade Center proposals, in today's New York Sun:
What is so striking about most of these projects is that, beyond their individual infelicities of style, incommodities of structure, and illogicalities of thesis, they partake in almost equal measure of the two besetting sins of architecture in our time: indifference to beauty and an excessive attachment to meaning....The newest generation, however, creates a single form, or at best a sequence of forms, that has been twisted, facetted, knotted and distressed in slavish obedience to the Deconstructivist style that, for the moment at least, dominates "quality" architectural discourse....[C]ould it be that architecture that departs radically from symmetry and a circumscribed number of basic forms--most atrociously the hulking clusters of towers put forward yesterday by SOM and United Architects--is simply and irredeemably obnoxious to the human eye...?
One is reminded of adolescents trying to express their individuality, whether through Afros, Quiana shirts, or piercings, in such a way that, absurdly, they all end up looking the same....The team led by Richard Meier claimed that its five joined towers were supposed to suggest clasped hands, which would be goofy enough. What they really resembled were five Gumbys in a chorus line. Buildings should not look like Gumby.
Just about the only firm that managed not to follow fashion slavishly was Peterson/Littenberg. And while there was something almost consoling about the rectilinearity of their plan, the two lofty towers at its center seem poorly conceived....Probably the best project is the first of three submitted by Think, led by Raphael Viñoly. It appears to be the most coherent and the least irritating, even though it feels completely contemporary.
Dec 18, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Colin Powell continues to erode administration policy on Iraq with his completely unprincipled approach to foreign affairs:Secretary of State Colin Powell is assuring the Arab world the Bush administration's demand for regime change in Iraq aims at disarmament, not ousting President Saddam Hussein. "If he cooperates, then the basis of changed-regime policy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its policy to one of cooperation," Powell said...
Powell said the policy of regime change in Baghdad was inherited from the Clinton administration by the Bush administration. [Associated Press, 12/16/02]
In other words: We're not trying to change the regime, and if we are, it's not our fault--it's the Clinton Administration's. And then there's the fantasy that Hussein suddenly becomes legitimate because he knuckles under when threatened by force! The lead editorial in today's New York Sun notes that Powell's interview effectively drops three of the conditions President Bush had set out for Iraq.
Dec 17, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Today's Drudge Report links readers to a December 16th article titled, "Sean Penn condemns US threats against Iraq" in the Iraq Daily newspaper, Baghdad's official paper:The American movie star, Sean Penn has condemned the US-British threats to wage war against Iraq. He told press conference that there is no legitimate justification for the brutal campaign against an authentic state like Iraq. He confirmed that Iraq is completely clear of weapons of mass destruction and the United Nations must adopt a positive stance towards Iraq. He also condemned the US misleading claims arguing that it is the US and not Iraq who is practicing such illegal behavior.
Mr. Penn went on saying that he would convey to the public opinion in US the real situation that the Americans should force the US administration to stop such aggressive campaign. Finally, Mr. Penn passed a written communiqué in which he declared that his visit to Iraq is to evaluate the humanitarian situation of Iraqis and to reject the crippling sanctions on Iraq since 1991.
