Mr. Penn Goes to Bagdad
The actor and director Sean Penn arrived in Baghdad on Friday morning at the start of a three-day visit to Iraq. He said of his trip:By the invitation of the Institute for Public Accuracy, I have the privileged opportunity to pursue a deeper understanding of this frightening conflict," Penn said in a statement released in Washington and Baghdad on Friday. "I would hope that all Americans will embrace information available to them outside conventional channels. As a father, an actor, a filmmaker, and a patriot, my visit to Iraq is for me a natural extension of my obligation (at least attempt) to find my own voice on matters of conscience.Penn's visit to Iraq has been organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy, "a national U.S. organization of policy analysts with offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C." The founder, Norman Solomon, endorsed--and indeed participated in--the visit of three Democratic Congressmen to Iraq earlier this Fall. In an article he wrote for the Baltimore Sun, Solomon quoted his fellow traveler Congressmen David Bonior: "It seems to me that if we are going to deal with this in a real and honest way, we have got to create dialogue.""Dialogue" is what Neville Chamberlain offered to Hitler. It is a euphemism for appeasement, which is a euphemism for capitulation. There is nothing to gain from dialogue with a totalitarian dictator. Such an act is, to use Ayn Rand's phrase, "the sanction of the victim." It is acts of appeasement like this that make the Saddam Husseins of the world possible. Otherwise, Saddam would be a street thug.Now a note on Sean Penn: what a moron. Regardless of whether he thinks there should be "dialogue," why does he think that he, a movie actor, is the one to do it? He will be nothing more than a stooge for the Iraqi regime, another photoshoot opportunity for Saddam to shove in the faces of the terrorized, and terrified, Iraqi people. Penn will surely smile and shake hands and tell the whole world how nice the country of Iraq is, and how Saddam cares about his people.Having the excellent fortune of living in America, like Mr. Penn, I do not know how demoralizing such a story of his visit would be to victims of Iraqi totalitarianism. Maybe they are cynical enough not to believe anything from their government. Or maybe, on some level, it crushes, even more, their hope for justice in the world--which they have never once seen. Mr. Penn should have thought about that.
Iranians Protest Carter Peace Prize
"Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter warns that war only leads to more war," reports the Associated Press:"For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences," he said.
Carter cited another American Nobel peace laureate, Ralph Bunche, winner of the 1950 prize.
"To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering...."
In his Nobel address, Carter urged respect for the United Nations as an international forum for solving disputes.
Why the respect for statements that are so clearly intellectually deficient? Because Carter rationalizes the desire to avoid the responsibility of passing moral judgment and of standing behind that judgment. Hence the blanket condemnation of preventive war--even in the face of a real, objective threat--the treatment of all parties as morally equal, the call to abdicate judgment in favor of the UN. Meanwhile...
A group of exiled Iranians ... shouted "Shame on the Nobel Committee" and "Shame on Carter" as they demonstrated outside Norway's National Theater. The theater is located near the Oslo City Hall, where Carter was awarded the Peace Prize in a traditional annual ceremony.
The demonstrators claimed that both the US and Jimmy Carter, as a former US president, share responsibility for the revolution in Iran in 1979 that unseated the shah and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to seize power. [Aftenposten]
Every American ought to have joined them in denouncing Carter.
Preemptive Strikes Authorized? Let’s Hope There Is Resolve Behind the Policy
Good news comes from the Washington Post on December 11. "Preemptive Strikes Part of Strategy, Official Say 'All Options' Open for Countering Unconventional Arms":A Bush administration strategy announced yesterday calls for the preemptive use of military and covert force before an enemy unleashes weapons of mass destruction, and underscores the United States's willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons for chemical or biological attacks on U.S. soil or against American troops overseas.The strategy introduces a more aggressive approach to combating weapons of mass destruction, and it comes as the nation prepares for a possible war with Iraq.A version of the strategy that was released by the White House said the United States will "respond with overwhelming force," including "all options," to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies.However, a classified version of the strategy goes even further: It breaks with 50 years of U.S. counterproliferation efforts by authorizing preemptive strikes on states and terrorist groups that are close to acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the long-range missiles capable of delivering them. The policy aims to prevent the transfer of weapons components or to destroy them before they can be assembled.
There Are No Necessary Evils
According to former President Jimmy Carter, on accepting the so-called Nobel Peace Prize: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."First of all, there are no necessary evils. If something is truly evil, there's no way it can be necessary. And if it is truly necessary to the well-being of a rational man's life -- then it's not evil, but good. Secondly, there is such a thing as a good war. A war against Adolph Hitler was good. A war to decimate the likes of Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk is equally necessary and good.
Given the premise that evil exists, and that certain people will act in an evil and violent manner, a rational and just war is synonymous with self-defense. Self-defense is good. Only someone like Jimmy Carter -- whose policies nearly lost the Cold War against the Soviet Union and contributed to the establishment of the number one sponsor of terror in the world today (Iran) -- could utter such a statement. To honor him with this prize shows that the true motives of the award are neither noble nor peaceful.
Jimmy Carter and the Blood Soaked Nobel Peace Prize
Jimmy Carter is the most culpable U.S. official with regard to terrorism. He did nothing when the Ayatollah took power and kidnapped Americans in Tehran. Iran immediately became the premier sponsor of terrorism against the U.S. and set the tone that America is afraid to defend itself. If anyone event caused 9/11 this is it.That being said today President Carter accepted the blood-soaked Nobel Peace Prize and his acceptance speech was typical of him:Citizens of the 10 wealthiest countries are now 75 times richer than those who live in the 10 poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.The existence of such a disparity causes nothing of the sort. What does cause problems are bad ideologies such as collectivism, socialism, and theocratic and other forms of dictatorships: they cause poverty, ignorance, and war. Individualist, free, secular, wealthy countries are not to blame for other countries being backward--indeed they are often victimized by them.Then Carter said,
But tragically, in the industrialized world there is a terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness. We have not yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our excessive wealth. This is a potentially rewarding burden that we should all be willing to assume.After enduring the twentieth century and the deaths of literally hundreds of millions--if not billions--of people as the direct result of socialist wealth redistribution policies (the USSR, Red China, and Nazi Germany as the big examples); a forty-year "war on poverty" in America that has redistributed hundreds of billions of dollars for naught; probably a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money expropriated and given to "developing countries" that despise America, some being fountainheads of terrorism, and seeing without exception how socialist schemes fail 100% of the time they are tried, how dare President Carter dig up this rot.Not only is Carter blameworthy of laying the ground on which terrorism spawned, to this day he is prescribing the same poison that made so much of the work sick in the first place, and he calls it a cure. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because it's become a symbol of death--especially since Arafat won it.
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine Names Ralston Executive Director
Newport Beach, California--As the health care reform debate gains renewed focus in Washington, Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM), a non-profit patient education organization, has designated a new executive director. AFCM, founded in 1993, is America's only grass-roots educational organization based on individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in medicine.AFCM has named Richard E. Ralston its executive director. Ralston, who served on active duty in the United States Army for 7 years, has a comprehensive background in media. Mr. Ralston, a supporter since AFCM was founded in 1994, was editor of books published in 1991, Communism: Its Rise and Fall in the 20th Century, and in 1999, Why Businessmen Need Philosophy.
"Every day physicians and their patients continue to be confronted with constraints on their ability to make free decisions about medicine," Ralston said. "I think the time has come to take a stand against the heavy hand of government in the medical profession."
"We must give voice to the rights of the individual patient and of each physician to make his or her own decisions regarding their health or medical practice," he said.
Saddamasochism
In Canada's National Post, "The UN's foray into Saddamasochism," a very amusing article making fun the U.N. weapons inspector who was "outted" for his sadomasochistic diversions:Indeed, in their kinky UNphilia and Kofi Annanism, the West's liberal elites have come up with the weirdest masochistic fetish of all, demanding that the role of global dominatrix be given to an organization that can't wait to prostrate itself. On Saturday, Mr. Blix's team admitted that the Iraqis had in fact been given advance warning of what are supposed to be "surprise" site inspections. One should never underestimate the UN's capacity to abase and degrade itself before the strongman's even had a chance to get his bullwhip out.
Venezuela Shrugs
You heard it here first.This year in Venezuela, the currency has collapsed, the economy has contracted, while inflation and unemployment has soared. Our global economics and financial markets contributor Andrew West predicted all of this over two years ago in Capitalism Magazine. The good news is that in Venezuela, the most productive people have gone on strike, refusing to exist as Hugo Chavez' revolutionary slaves. According to the BBC,
Oil production in Venezuela - the world's fifth largest oil exporter - is nearing a standstill, as the national strike against President Hugo Chavez enters its second week. Many petrol stations are running out of fuel, and exports are being severely hit, hiking up prices on the international oil market.
Opposition leaders vowed on Sunday to continue their strike against Mr Chavez indefinitely. Many schools and businesses in Caracas and other major cities remain closed, and domestic airline pilots and aluminium workers are the latest to join the stoppage...
... During his weekly Alo Presidente television programme, Mr Chavez launched into a lengthy diatribe in which he dubbed the opposition "coup-mongers". "They won't rob Venezuela of its happiness," he shouted, grabbing a plastic model of the baby Jesus from a crib on his desk and kissing it.
Comments Andrew West, "[Chavez's diatribe and grabbing of a the baby Jesus is] as good a comic scene as any in Atlas Shrugged. Even Mr. Thompson wouldn't stoop that low."
Rich People Should Sacrifice More
Here's a good one: The Washington Post ran a letter criticizing Catherine Reynolds' recent $100 million donation to the Kennedy Center by Mark Weadon."The Dec. 7 front-page story…said that Ms. Reynolds made her fortune "in the student loan business." Am I alone in finding this disturbing? At a time when college students and their parents and universities are struggling to make ends meet, how is it possible for one person to amass this kind of wealth from the sale of education loans?
Something is deeply flawed when so much money can be siphoned out of a system in which both students and colleges operate on razor-thin margins. Perhaps students, universities and the nation would have been better served if even a portion of Ms. Reynolds's vast income had gone toward lowering student loan interest rates."
Heck, why not eliminate all interest, because after all, wouldn't the nation be better served if no one had to pay to borrow money? Never mind that Ms. Reynolds' wealth came from loaning people money to get an education that supposedly would allow them to be self-sufficient. Never mind that Ms. Reynolds pays a large percentage of her wealth in taxes. And never mind that Ms. Reynolds is now using her wealth to support the arts. Apparently, the only people who should make money in life are whiners like Mr. Weadon. People like Ms. Reynolds should just work for free putting people like him through school. After all, rich people should sacrifice more.
Altruism as Appeasement
"The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared toward irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes."-- Ayn Rand, in "Altruism and Appeasement," published in The Objectivist newsletter, January 1966.
UAL Loan Denial
The denial of federal loan guarantees to UAL deals a serious blow to the corporatist notion that the taxpayers should be on the hook for the management blunders of privately owned companies. Bravo! And as Bruce Bartlett writes, the airline's troubles also offer a reality check on the fuzzy-headed notion that employee ownership represents a ideal form for capital/labor cooperation in a capitalist economic structure:The benefits to each individual worker are too small to fundamentally change their attitudes. On the contrary, they often use their ownership to block productivity-enhancing changes. The result is that management is even more hamstrung than it was before, leading to losses and bankruptcies.
To signficant extent, UAL's problems are rooted in the denial of economic reality engendered by majority employee ownership.
The Romanow Report
The Romanow commission was a shameful waste of time and money. Mr. Romanow wants us to believe that socialist medicine is good while private, for-profit medicine is bad. But the exact opposite is true.We have reams of evidence that capitalism generates better products and services at lower costs. Consider the computer industry where we keep getting vastly better computers at lower prices; or consider the telephone industry where long-distance rates plummeted after privatization. Free market competition works because it rewards people for being innovative, productive and responsible.
Likewise, we have we have reams of evidence that socialism leads to rising costs, longer lineups and poorer quality. Consider all the poor and miserable socialist countries of the last century. Even Sweden embraced some privatized medicine. Socialism always fails because it punishes those who are creative, productive and responsible in order to reward those who, for whatever reason, are not. And there's another reason. When the government extorts money from people to pay for health care, the providers become accountable to the government -- not the patient. Unlike under capitalism, there is no real incentive for providers to innovate to improve quality and efficiency.
Nobody can predict what new discovery will be made in medicine to drastically reduce costs and save lives. Only capitalism provides the incentive to innovate. Contrary to what many believe, socialism doesn't help the poor; it merely bulldozes everyone down. The moral and practical solution to our health-care woes is private, for-profit health care.
What Would Jesus Drive?
IRVINE, CA-- "Scratch through an environmentalist's veneer and you will find a mystic not a scientist," says Dr. Onkar Ghate, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Environmentalists and religionists are, deep down, of the same faith. That's why it's to be expected that a coalition of church groups and environmentalists would launch a 'What Would Jesus Drive?' campaign to deprive Americans of their SUVs.""Religion declares that it is your moral duty to serve God--that you must abandon your rational mind and believe-that material profit and worldly success are sinful because they pull you away from God. Environmentalism declares that it is your moral duty to serve wilderness--that despite the vast evidence to the contrary, you must simply believe that industrialization and technology are harmful--that selfish profit and worldly success are sins because they represent the exploitation of nature. Both necessarily look upon SUVs--contemporary symbols of technological progress and earthly pleasure--with disgust.
"If this coalition of religionists and environmentalists want a world where you are forced to serve something other than your own life, where rational thought is outlawed in the name of blind faith, where men grovel in caves while most of the land remains in a wild state, untouched by the life-giving hand of technology and capitalism, then they are a little late. They could have found a concrete example of their ideal--in Taliban-run Afghanistan."
A setback for theocracy
MONTGOMERY, Alabama--Last Monday, US District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that the placement of a Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama state Supreme Court building violated the First Amendment provision against government establishment of religion.The monument was originally installed by Chief Injustice Roy Moore, who blamed federal court rulings such as those against prayer in public schools for a nation-wide moral decline over the past 50 years. Yup, those trendsetters in the Supreme Court; if it weren't for them we'd all be Jerry Falwell. Eew.
Moore was given 30 days to remove the 5,300-pound slab of rock at his own expense, which hopefully will be quite high.
But cross-lovers from the Christian Coalition warned that Judge Thompson's ruling would "seriously erode our religious freedoms, the acknowledgement of God, and the moral foundation of our law." What they meant was that his ruling would seriously erode their ability to establish a theocracy, inculcate schoolchildren, and rewrite history. Isn't one of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," or something like that?
At least the Muslims are blatant about wanting to rule the world. They'd have killed hundreds of people over this already. Or perhaps violence is what Coalition Director John Giles was alluding to when he said that there was likely to be a "national uprising."
Bring it on, Johnny-boy.
Nigerian Muslims embrace Allah, all things ugly
LAGOS, Nigeria--On Thursday, Nigerian Muslims violently condemned the Miss World pageant scheduled for 7 December in Nigeria's capital city, Abuja. The pageant, they claim, promotes sexual promiscuity and indecency, and Allah isn't into that. "Down with beauty," they chanted. Ugly old Allah would prefer a good riot any day.And riot they did.
Mobs of angry Muslims took to the streets shouting, "God is great." To prove it, they stabbed, beat, and set fire to random passers-by, burned churches and offices, and rampaged through the city. In all, over 200 people were killed and another 200 injured. "Miss World is sin," they reminded onlookers.
The outrage began when a Kaduna newspaper published an article questioning the validity of Miss World criticism. "What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them [the contestants]," wrote reporter Isioma Daniel.
But Mr. Daniel, Muhammad didn't think.
Fortunately, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was able to clearly identify the root cause of the rioting. "The beauty queens should not feel that they are the cause of this violence," he said. "It could happen at any time irresponsible journalism is committed against Islam."
Daniel and his editor have since been arrested, but Muhammad is still on the loose.
Sources close to Allah suggest that he is just upset because Miss Israel is a dish.
I’ll take the sue-Happy Meal. Easy on the consequences.
New York--A herd of fat kids have filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Wendy's restaurants, blaming the companies for a nationwide epidemic of obesity. One plaintiff, after mistakenly dropping his volition down a New York drainage grate, was overcome by the uncontrollable urge to eat all of his meals at McDonald's everyday for three years in a row.The suit claims that the plaintiffs "purchased and consumed the Defendant's products and as a result thereof, have become obese, overweight, developed diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and/or other detrimental and adverse health effects and/or diseases." It contains several pages of obesity statistics for the United States, as well as a section titled "Socio-Economic Ramifications" (of people stuffing their faces like pigs).
At the (clogged) heart of the suit is the complaint that McDonalds "failed to warn and/or adequately warn" that gorging on grease-soaked french-fries and corn-syrup/yellow dye #6 shakes might not be the healthiest thing to do every day for three years.
It looks as though McDonald's food is almost as dangerous as its coffee. Who would have thought? Grimace seems to like it and, aside from being purple, he looks healthy.
Colin Powell: Secretary of Hypocrisy?
Washington--In a recent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, US Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the targeted killing of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen as a morally justified act of self-defense. "This was a case of clearly somebody in a direct conflict with the United States," Powell explained. True enough.But Mr. Blitzer was understandably confused by Powell's response. "What's the difference between that targeted killing and the targeted killings the Israelis engage in--which the State Department has criticized?" Powell's answer: Blank-out.
"But what you're saying," Blitzer continued, "is the Israelis should stop doing what they did, but the US, theoretically, can continue?" Yup. That's what he's saying alright, Wolf. One would think that after years of interviewing politicians Mr. Blitzer would stop expecting principled behavior from unprincipled people, but it's an admirable mistake.
"We will do what we have to do to defend ourselves with respect to terrorist activities," Powell added. So would the Israelis, General...if you'd let them.