Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also weighed in, ordering Shiites to vote "yes" in the referendum, one of his aides, Faisal Thbub, said. It was the most direct show of support for the charter by al-Sistani, whose call brought out huge numbers of voters to back Shiite parties in January elections.

For months, secular Iraqi politicians like Mithal al-Alousi have been warning that Shi'ite Iran is trying to stoke sectarian tension and is aiming to create a breakaway Islamic state in the mostly-Shi'ite southern Iraq.  "I am very sure we have Iranian influence in Basra.  We have Iranian influence in Amarah.  We have the Iranian intelligence agency.  They have control in Basra," he said.

U.S. and British military intelligence officials say they believe Iran is running intelligence-gathering operations in southern Iraq and providing arms and money to several active Islamic groups operating in the region.   

The groups are accused of carrying out attacks on coalition forces, imposing Islamic laws by force, and assassinating former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party.

The largest of these Islamic groups is the Badr Organization, a Shi'ite militia force of about 20,000 men, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.  The Badr group also acts as the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which operated out of Iran for decades during Saddam's rule and is now the largest and the most powerful political party in Iraq.   

The head of the SCIRI party, religious cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has been the leading proponent of a provision in Iraq's draft constitution, which calls for the creation of a Shi'ite mini-state in the oil-rich south. 

The federalist arrangement is also supported by members of the Islamic Dawa Party, led by interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.  Like SCIRI, the Dawa Party has strong ties to Iran. [Emphasis added]

Prime Minister al-Jaafari and the United Iraqi Alliance he leads represents the Shiite majority and dominates the government. Al-Jaafari's own al-Dawaa party has very strong ties to Iran. For that matter, so does Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi who runs energy policy. U.S. intelligence concluded last year that he may have given crucial U.S. intelligence secrets to Tehran. ... Jaafari's United Iraq Alliance looks to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani as its political as well as religious mentor. Sistani has been quiet, politic, cautious and shrewd since Saddam was toppled. But two facts about him stand out. He remains a citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran and in the two and a half years since U.S. forces liberated Baghdad, he has never once officially met any U.S. representatives.

Jaafari's appointment as prime minister was welcomed in Washington as a giant stride toward the goal of establishing a peaceful, stable, constitutional state in Iraq friendly to the United States. But his emergence as the first Shiite national leader of Iraq in its history may also be seen part of a very different process -- the rise of a new, militant, politicized and revolutionary Shiism articulated and shaped by the late Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran.

There is little question that Iran hopes the referendum on the Iraqi constitution will help consolidate the power of Shiites in Iraq after decades of Sunni Arab domination. Others see more sinister goals.

U.S. officials have accused Iran of secretly backing the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq to reduce the impact of America's victory there as it tries to strengthen democracy in the region. Tehran has repeatedly said it doesn't see Iraq as a battleground between Iran and the United States.

Protesters at a white supremacists' march threw rocks at police, vandalized vehicles and stores and cursed the mayor for allowing the event. Mayor Jack Ford said when he and a local minister tried to calm the rioters Saturday, they were cursed and a masked gang member threatened to shoot him. ...

At least two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself "America's Nazi Party," had gathered at a city park to march under police protection. Organizers said they were demonstrating against black gangs they said were harassing white residents.

The violence broke out about one-quarter of a mile away along the planned march route shortly before it was to begin. One group of men pounded on a convenience store, and others overturned vehicles. ...

When the rioting began, Ford tried to negotiate with those involved, but "they weren't interested in that." He said people in the crowd swore at him and wanted to know why he was protecting the Nazis.

They were mostly "gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way," Ford said.

"I was chagrined that there were obvious mothers and children in the crowd with them," he said.

Thomas Frisch, 76, said a large group of men destroyed the exterior of a gas station next to his home of 30 years.

"A whole big gang started to come in here. Next thing you know, they're jumping on the car. Then they overturned it. Then they started on the building, breaking windows, ripping the bars off," he said.

Ratajski and his nephew left Jim & Lou's Bar as a crowd gathered in front, pelting police with rocks and breaking the windows. "I was shaking. I feared for my life," said Ratajski's nephew, Terry Rybczynski.

The neighborhood northwest of downtown, full of tree-lined streets and well-kept brick homes, once was a thriving Polish community. But within the last decade it's become home to poorer residents. ... The neo-Nazi group became interested in the neighborhood because of a white resident's complaints to police about gang violence, Bill White, a group spokesman, said earlier this month. ...

Rioters set fire to 86-year-old Louis Ratajski's neighborhood pub, Jim & Lou's Bar, but he and his nephew, Terry Rybczynski, escaped the flames.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance. A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over. EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource." A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world. At issue is who would have ultimate authority over the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. That role has historically gone to the United States, which created the Internet as a Pentagon project and funded much of its early development. The U.S. Commerce Department has delegated much of that responsibility to a U.S.-based private organization with international board members, but Commerce ultimately retains veto power. Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.

IRVINE, CA-- A cabal of countries, including Cuba, Syria, China and Iran--now backed by the European Union--is demanding that control of the Internet be surrendered to the United Nations.
       
These and other thug-nations restrict their own citizens' ability to receive and broadcast news and grievances from inside their blood-soaked walls. China, for instance, currently has many individuals jailed for being "cyber-dissidents" and it engages in massive censorship of the Internet. It recently passed a law mandating that only "healthy and civilized" news may be read by its citizens--to be determined, of course, by the same "civilized" officials who brought us Tiananmen Square.

This world-wide web of evil nations, hiding behind the veneer of technical complaints, now seeks to control not just what its own citizens are able to see and say on the Internet, but what every individual on the face of the planet is able to see and say. If the UN is given control of the Internet, we can expect free trade and freedom of speech to be crushed.
       
The Internet was created in and by the land of the free, America. It has now become the object of an alarming power-grab by the world's dictatorships and their puppet, the UN. America must not surrender its citizens' freedom to the mercy of a debating society for dictators. 

It's the criminalization of price hikes -- not the hikes themselves -- that's immoral. The moral premise behind price-gouging laws is summed up in the altruistic injunction, "People before profits" -- as if merchants aren't people. What this "ethical" position really boils down to, then, is that the needs and desires of some people (consumers) trump the needs and desires of other people (businessmen) and that in a pinch government should sacrifice the latter to the former.

 

[...] The high prices oblige consumers to economize. Artificially low prices, by contrast, invite hoarding and frivolous buying, emptying shelves sooner. For instance, someone able or willing to purchase only 10 jugs of water at a "gouged" price might've bought 30 if the price were "normal," leaving less for others customers.

 

 

One thing is certain: oil companies are not to blame for high gas prices. These companies are responsible for producing the gasoline we need. In California, where gas prices are among the highest in the nation, the oil industry has been repeatedly investigated to find evidence of "price manipulation" (four times in 2003 alone) and none has ever been found.

Although there are other causes of high gas prices, such as high gasoline taxes, the primary cause is environmental regulation. For example, environmental regulation significantly restricts drilling for oil in Alaska and on the continental shelf. More drilling could considerably increase the gasoline supply (up to 20% from greater Alaskan drilling alone) and thus lower prices.

A CIA Intelligence Memorandum discusses what analysts perceive as Che Guevara's fall from power within the Cuban government beginning in 1964. It states that at the end of 1963, Guevara's plan of "rapid industrialization and centralization during the first years of the Revolution brought the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power." "Guevara's outlook, which approximated present -day Chinese--rather than Soviet--economic practice, was behind the controversy." In July 1964, "two important cabinet appointments signaled the power struggle over internal economic policy which culminated in Guevara's elimination." Another conflict was that Guevara wanted to export the Cuban Revolution to different parts of Latin America and Africa, while "other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the Revolution." In December, 1964, Guevara departed on a three-month trip to the United States, Africa, and China. When he returned, according to the CIA report, his economic and foreign policies were in disfavor and he left to start revolutionary struggles in other parts of the world. (CIA Intelligence Memorandum, "The Fall of Che Guevara and the Changing Face of the Cuban Revolution," 10/18/65)

Che's final battle commences in Quebrada del Yuro. Simon Cuba (Willy) Sarabia, a Bolivian miner, leads the rebel group. Che is behind him and is shot in the leg several times. Sarabia picks up Che and tries to carry him away from the line of fire. The firing starts again and Che's beret is knocked off. Sarabia sits Che on the ground so he can return the fire. Encircled at less than ten yards distance, the Rangers concentrate their fire on him, riddling him with bullets. Che attempts to keep firing, but cannot keep his gun up with only one arm. He is hit again on his right leg, his gun is knocked out of his hand and his right forearm is pierced. As soldiers approach Che he shouts, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." The battle ends at approximately 3:30 p.m. Che is taken prisoner.

 

[...] Félix Rodríguez arrives by helicopter in La Higuera, along with Colonel Joaquín Zenteno Anaya. Rodríguez brings a powerful portable field radio and a camera with a special four-footed stand used to photograph documents. He quietly observes the scene in the schoolhouse, and records what he sees, finding the situation "gruesome" with Che lying in dirt, his arms tied behind his back and his feet bound together, next to the bodies of his friends. He looks "like a piece of trash" with matted hair, torn clothes, and wearing only pieces of leather on his feet for shoes. In one interview, Rodríguez states that, " I had mixed emotions when I first arrived there. Here was the man who had assassinated many of my countrymen. And nevertheless, when I saw him, the way he looked....I felt really sorry for him." (Rodríguez:2)

The Objective Standard is a quarterly journal of culture and politics written from the perspective that man's life on earth is the proper standard of morality. According to this principle, that which supports or promotes an individual's life is good, that which retards or destroys it is evil. The purpose of the journal is to analyze and evaluate ideas, trends, events, and policies with respect to this standard.

The Objective Standard provides a rational, principled alternative to the ideas of both liberalism and conservatism. Whereas liberals hold that morality is subjective (i.e., feeling-based), that majority opinion is the standard of value, that sacrifice for the common good is noble, and that rights are social conventions; and whereas conservatives hold that morality is grounded in religion (i.e., faith-based), that God's will is the standard of value, that sacrifice in obedience to His commands is good, and that rights are divine decrees; we hold that morality is grounded in the objective requirements of human life (i.e., reason-based), that man's life is the standard of value, that the selfish pursuit of one's life-serving goals is good, and that individual rights are moral principles defining the basic requirements of a civilized society. Ours is a philosophy of reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism. In a word, we advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and we apply this philosophy to the cultural and political issues of the day.

Contributing writers include Craig Biddle, Yaron Brook, Alex Epstein, Elan Journo, John Lewis, Keith Lockitch, Larry Salzman, and Lisa VanDamme.

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep shock today at the public beating which pro-government paramilitaries gave Guillermo Fariñas, the editor of the independent Cubanacán Press agency, in the central city of Santa Clara on 16 September after he took part in a protest against the arrest of a dissident. "This extremely violent attack on Fariñas shows that Cuban independent journalists are not just under threat from the government but also from ultra-revolutionaries, who in this case vented their anger on Fariñas as the political police looked on," the press freedom organisation said. The attack came after Fariñas and some 15 other government opponents demonstrated outside a police station to demand the release of Noelia Pedraza Jiménez, a fellow dissident who had just been arrested. About 100 paramilitaries watched the demonstration.

After announcing to the demonstrators that Pedraza would shortly be released pending trial, Vladimir Méndez Mauad, a captain with the state security department, offered to drive Fariña home as he currently has to use crutches because of a disability and, until recently, had to use a wheelchair. However, as Fariñas left the police station, a police officer warned him that whatever happened to him outside at the hands of the paramilitaries "will be your problem."

According to Fariñas, the approximately 60 paramilitaries armed with clubs who were still outside then challenged him, asking him if he had the courage to repeat to them what he had said on Radio Martí (the Miami-based Cuban exile radio station). Kneeling and with his hands behind his head, Fariñas replied : "Why do you listen to Radio Martí if you are revolutionaries ?" After Fariñas refused to say, "Long live Fidel Castro," they began to insult him and hit him with their clubs until one of them call a halt, fearing that they would kill him in public. Political instructors with the ruling Communist Party of Cuba then drove him to a deserted spot 23 km outside the city and dumped him there. Fariñas told Reporters Without Borders his arms and hands are so swollen from the beating that he can no longer write or use a computer keyboard. He added that he thought he was now top of the list of people to be arrested in "the next crackdown."