Jun 23, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--In order to do business in China, several well-known U.S. companies have agreed to block certain "offensive" words, e.g., freedom, for China's communist censors. Important as it is to condemn these companies, it is even more important to applaud the well-known U.S. companies that refuse to help China kill freedom.
"Congratulations to Time, USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for their courageous support of freedom of speech; and shame on Microsoft, Yahoo and Google for their betrayal of this crucial value--the very value that makes their own existences possible," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Brook noted that "those who kowtow to the communist censors will no doubt say they have to obey the laws of the countries where they do business. But why do they have to do business there? They will argue that leaving the vast Chinese market to foreign competitors will only hurt America economically--and kill any opportunity they might have to promote free speech in China. But was CNN able to promote free speech in Iraq when, all those years prior to the war, it prostituted itself to the censors of the mass murderer Saddam Hussein? How do you promote free speech by being complicit in its suppression?
"Time, USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal didn't grovel for business: they have policies--and principles--against submitting to censorship. Their principled stand deserves our recognition."Jun 21, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Useful reading on Africa for advocates of "One":
Capitalism Is the Cure for Africa's Problems by Andrew Bernstein
Africa needs to remove its political and economic shackles and replace them with political and economic freedom.
Africa: A Tragic Continent by Walter Williams
Poverty is not a cause but a result of Africa's problems.
Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith Richburg
Keith Richburg, an Award winning Journalist for the National Post, has heard all the stories about the supposed reasons for the ongoing chaos that still sweeps most of the African continent -- he's been educated about the consequences of white colonialism, the rape of Africa's natural resources, the time that's still required to for all of this to be overcome, etc., ad nauseam. At one time he unquestioningly believed all of the excuses. But after years of close-up scrutiny, living in the heartlands of several nations, he's not buying it. He has watched firsthand the rape of the African continent by its own sons, who should know better. To quote Rochburg, "Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers, and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose into the images of the rotting flesh."
The Solution to Africa's Problems is Not Socialism But Freedom by Walter Williams
Evidence shows that no amount of IMF, World Bank and other handout interventions can bring prosperity to repressive nations. Only Africans can solve Africa's problems.Jun 20, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From AP: White House Castigates Durbin For Remarks.The White House and Senate Republicans on Thursday assailed a Democrat for comparing American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.
It is "beyond belief" that Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin would compare the treatment of dangerous enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to the death of millions of innocent people by oppressive governments, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ...
Defending himself, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat said Thursday it was "just plain wrong" to say he was diminishing past horrors.
He said he was comparing interrogation techniques that the FBI report said were used at Guantanamo with those in foreign detainee camps. ...
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings," Durbin said Tuesday.
Michelle Malkin has many related links here, here, here, and here, including this one from the Los Angeles Times: We Are Our History -- Don't Forget It.Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin's gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot -- an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year.
The title of this cartoon comes from this Investor's Business Daily editorial, which states:Among his complaints is that, according to an e-mail he said he received from an FBI agent, on "one occasion the air conditioning had been turned so far and the temperature was so cold in the room that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold."
But that sure beats the temperatures on the upper floors of the World Trade Center that day when innocent Americans jumped to their deaths because jihadists turned passenger jets into manned cruise missiles.
Durbin quoted the e-mail as alleging that a prisoner who had been forced to listen to loud rap music had been "chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the floor." Why on earth would we restrain terrorists of the ilk that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001, a date that seems to have escaped Durbin's memory?
Back when Amnesty International referred to the Guantanamo Bay dention center as "the gulag of our times," The Jawa Report had an essay that put things in perspective: The Gulag Archipelego vs. Amnesty International's 'Gulags'.
Must-read Mark Steyn: Durbin slanders his own country. (via Little Green Footballs)One measure of a civilized society is that words mean something: "Soviet" and "Nazi" and "Pol Pot" cannot equate to Guantanamo unless you've become utterly unmoored from reality. Spot the odd one out: 1) mass starvation; 2) gas chambers; 3) mountains of skulls; 4) lousy infidel pop music turned up to full volume. One of these is not the same as the others, and Durbin doesn't have the excuse that he's some airhead celeb or an Ivy League professor. He's the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Don't they have an insanity clause?
More from Mark Steyn on Sen. Dick Durbin and Gitmo interrogations: Facing the Music. (Via Memeorandum)Again, the more one hears the specifics of the "insensitivity" of the American regime at Guantanamo, the more many of us reckon we're being way too sensitive. For example, camp guards are under instructions to handle copies of the Koran only when wearing gloves. The reason for this is that the detainees regard infidels as "unclean." Fair enough, each to his own. But it's one thing for the Islamists to think infidels are unclean, quite another for the infidels to agree with them. Far from being tortured, the prisoners are being handled literally with kid gloves (or simulated kid-effect gloves). The US military hand each jihadi his complimentary copy of the Koran as delicately as white-gloved butlers bringing His Lordship The Times of London. When I bought a Koran to bone up on Islam a couple of days after 9/11, I didn't wear gloves to the bookstore. If that's "disrespectful" to Muslims, tough. You should have thought about that before you allowed your holy book to become the central motivation for global jihad.
Jun 16, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From Reuters: Bush pledges to speed up aid to Africa:President George W. Bush told African leaders on Monday he would "work harder and faster" to accelerate aid to the region under a heavily promoted but little-used program after they complained the system was too bureaucratic. ...
Bush went into the meeting having turned down a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to give Africa as much as $50 billion a year by making long-term aid commitments that would allow poor countries to raise money on global capital markets.
Bush and Blair did work on a debt relief plan for Africa that finance ministers agreed on in London over the weekend, before a Group of Eight [G8] summit next month in Gleneagles, Scotland. Under the deal, about $40 billion in debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations, including 14 in Africa, will be canceled.
"We believe by removing a crippling debt burden, we'll help millions of Africans improve their lives and grow their economies," Bush said.
From Mens News Daily: Capitalism Is the Cure for Africa's Problems by Andrew Bernstein. (Via Harry Binswanger)The current plan of George Bush and Tony Blair to send billions more in aid to Africa is futile. History demonstrates that brutal dictatorships and savage tribes engaged in internecine warfare are not transformed by handouts. After all, billions of dollars have already been poured into Africa. What Africa needs is freedom, not welfare. The West should reject the idea that it is our responsibility to lift Africans out of their poverty -- and then tell them of the system that enabled the West to gain its current wealth and power: capitalism. ...
Africa has the identical natural resource fundamentally responsible for the West's rise: the human mind. But it has neither the freedom nor the Enlightenment philosophy of reason, individualism and political liberty necessary for creating wealth and health. Africa is mired in tribal cultures that stress subordination to the group rather than personal independence and achievement. All over the continent brutal dictators murder and rob innocent citizens in order to aggrandize themselves and members of their tribes.
What Africa desperately needs is to remove its political and economic shackles and replace them with political and economic freedom. It needs to depose the military dictators and socialist regimes and establish capitalism, with its political/economic freedom, its rule of law, its uncompromising respect for individual rights. And to accomplish that, it first needs to remove its philosophic shackles and replace tribal collectivism with a philosophy of reason and freedom.
UPDATE -- June 17: From the South African Institute of International Affairs: The private sector, political elites and underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa by Moeletsi Mbeki. (Hap tip Barry Rab.)In the model described above the underlying assumption is that private individuals are free to pursue their search for security and comfort and they therefore own and control the means of achieving their objectives. They are assumed to be free to exchange what they produce without let or hindrance and that where they are able to make savings, they are free to retain those savings and plough them back in improved techniques or in other investment avenues as they may wish.
This is not the case with the private sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa's private sector is predominantly made up of peasants and secondly, of subsidiaries of foreign-owned multinational corporations. Neither of these two groups have the complete freedom to operate in the market place because they are both politically dominated by others -- non-producers who control the state. Herein lay the weakness of the private sector in Africa that explains its inability to become the engine of economic development. Africa's private sector lacks political power and is therefore not free to operate to maximize its objectives. Above all, it is not free to decide what happens to its savings.
Jun 15, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
"One malady to which political bodies are liable is the excessive accumulation of laws. Their number soon prevents the citizen from knowing what they are; and hence the need for lawyers. Some laws soon provide the means for eluding others; and hence comes chicanery. . . . Whenever legislation is too complicated [it] encourages fraud, by multiplying the chances of evasion, and very rarely adds to the solidity of title or of right. The only advantage is the greater frequency and duration of suits." -- Jean-Baptiste Say (1803) [Hat Tip: Intermarket Forecasting]Jun 14, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum: 
From The Wall Street Journal: Unsocialized Medicine; A landmark ruling exposes Canada's health-care inequity:The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune from the laws of economics. Politicians can't wave a wand and provide equal coverage for all merely by declaring medical care to be a "right," in the word that is currently popular on the American left.
There are only two ways to allocate any good or service: through prices, as is done in a market economy, or lines dictated by government, as in Canada's system. The socialist claim is that a single-payer system is more equal than one based on prices, but last week's court decision reveals that as an illusion. Or, to put it another way, Canadian health care is equal only in its shared scarcity.
Jun 12, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes David Holcberg from the Ayn Rand Institute:
The U.S. government should welcome the Cuban escapees who were independent, inventive and courageous enough to escape Cuba in a vessel fashioned out of an old taxicab.
The escapees, intercepted by the Coast Guard on the shores of Florida, risked their lives to be free in America. If the U.S. government follows its long-standing policy on Cuban refugees intercepted at sea, it will send these people back to Castro's island, where they will likely be thrown in prison and tortured. Cuba is a brutal communist dictatorship founded on the principle that individuals have no rights. As these refugees demonstrate, Cubans don't even have the right to leave the country.
The U.S. government should recognize that these Cuban escapees have a right to live in freedom, and give them asylum here in America. But more than that, our government should put an immediate end to the unconscionable policy of sending freedom-seeking refugees back to a totalitarian dictatorship.
Jun 9, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--Muslims demand that non-Muslims show respect for the Koran. But does the Koran deserve our respect?
Some argue that it doesn't because on 9/11 the murder of 3,000 Americans was committed in its name. Others, including our President and government, argue that bin Laden and his henchmen misinterpret the Koran and have "hijacked a great religion."
Neither side grasps that there is a fundamental standard by which to permanently decide the question of respect for the Koran. Above all else the Koran--and it is certainly not unique in this regard--demands that all human beings surrender their reason and submit to faith, i.e., to the acceptance of an idea in the absence of perceptual evidence or rational proof. On this basis alone the Koran should be rejected by all human beings--because surrendering one's reason is the very essence and cause of human depravity and evil.Jun 8, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes David Holcberg from the Ayn Rand Institute:
This week the Supreme Court dealt a blow to individual freedom by ruling that federal agents may arrest and prosecute people who grow or use marijuana for medical purposes.
The fundamental issue at stake is not federal law versus state law, but personal freedom versus government coercion. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights exist to protect every individual's right to life and liberty. An individual who grows or consumes marijuana violates no one's rights while legitimately exercising his own. Just as government has no right to determine what food we eat or what books we read, it should have no right to determine what drugs we take. As long as we don't violate the rights of others, we should have the right to do with our lives--and our bodies--whatever we think is best.
May 26, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From The New York Times: House Approves a Stem Cell Research Bill Opposed by Bush:The House passed a bill on Tuesday to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, defying a veto threat from President Bush, who appeared at the White House with babies and toddlers born of test-tube embryos and warned the measure "would take us across a critical ethical line." ...
The House vote followed an impassioned lobbying campaign by advocates for patients, including Nancy Reagan. Mrs. Reagan, who became a strong backer of stem cell research as her husband struggled with Alzheimer's disease, telephoned fellow Republicans this week urging a yes vote, [said the bill's chief Republican backer, Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware.] ...
The White House event, on what conservative Christians and the president call an important "culture of life" issue, demonstrated just how far Mr. Bush is willing to assert himself on policy that goes to what he considers the moral heart of his presidency. ...
[T]he embryonic stem cell debate ... inflamed the passions of the House, sounding at various times like a lesson in cell biology, a theological discourse and a personal confessional. Lawmaker after lawmaker came to the House well to recount struggles with conscience and searing personal experiences with death and disease.
Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, rolled to the microphone in his motorized wheelchair to speak of his spinal cord injury, which he said could be helped by the research. Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican of Missouri, told of a young man named Cody, who had been paralyzed in a car accident at age 16 and asked her to rethink her opposition to embryonic stem cell studies.
"I later wrote a note to Cody's family telling them that even after hearing his story, I couldn't do as he asked," Ms. Emerson said, "and I have regretted writing that letter ever since."
May 26, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From The New York Times: Text of Senate Compromise on Nominations of Judges:A. Future Nominations. Signatories will exercise their responsibilities under the advice and consent clause of the United States Constitution in good faith. Nominees should only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances, and each signatory must use his or her own discretion and judgment in determining whether such circumstances exist.
May 26, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From ABC News:
A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book. The decision angered Italy's justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work "La Forza della Ragione" (The Force of Reason).
Fallaci lives in New York [...] In "La Forza della Ragione," Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom."
State prosecutors originally dismissed accusations of defamation from an Italian Muslim organization, and said Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech. But a preliminary judge in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutors advice at a hearing on Tuesday and said Fallaci should be indicted. Grasso's ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci's words were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith." [May 25, 2005]
From David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute:
The decision of an Italian judge to indict author and New York resident Oriana Fallaci for being "offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith" is a violation of her right to free speech and an absurd concession to Islamists at war with Western Civilization.
Fallaci, as any individual, should have the right to criticize any religion or ideology, free from government censorship or retaliation. If Muslims (or Italian judges) don't like Fallaci's books, they are free to not buy them. They have no right, however, to punish or silence her.
May 25, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Ayn Rand Insitute:
In the current Senate debate over President Bush's judicial nominees, some senators appear to be using a simple test: if a nominee has ever ruled in favor of property rights, he is unfit to serve as a federal judge.
The left has been preaching for many, many decades that so-called human rights trump property rights, that altruistic feelings for the weak, the poor, the handicapped, etc., ad nauseum, must guide a judge's decisions, not some "outmoded" concept of justice based on the sanctity of the individual's right to property. The senators worry that the nominees will reverse some of the massive violations of property rights that the left has subjected this country to for so long.
Consider one of Justice Janice Rogers Brown's opinions that is thought objectionable. When the city of San Francisco forced hotel owners to pay a fee to convert from residential to tourist use, Justice Brown observed: "Private property, already an endangered species in California, is now entirely extinct in San Francisco…. Theft is theft even when the government approves of the thievery. Turning a democracy into a kleptocracy does not enhance the stature of the thieves; it only diminishes the legitimacy of the government."
There are, however, legitimate reasons to oppose Bush's nominees--not because of the rights a nominee promises to uphold but because of the rights he threatens to extinguish (such as the right to abortion)--as Bush strives to open another breach in the wall separating church and state.
May 24, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Some gems from "Writing a Convincing Editorial" by Robert Tracinski:
The single greatest error made by beginning writers is that they try to say too much. This error comes from the belief that, in order to be convincing, an argument must be utterly comprehensive, addressing every possible issue that relates to it. But no argument is effective unless it can be absorbed and remembered by the reader. An effective editorial must be essentialized, focusing only on the most important issues and integrating them into one graspable whole.
[...]
The primary goal of one's writing is to be clear: to convey one's conclusion and the evidence for it in a manner that the reader can easily understand. Eloquent phrases, vivid images, and humorous examples are only valuable if they advance that goal.
The article goes on to cover in some detail on the following guidelines:
1. Focus on a central theme.
2. Know the viewpoint you have to refute.
3. Make inductive arguments.
4. Base moral evaluations on the facts.
5. Rely on the reader's implicit knowledge and values.
6. It is more important to be clear than to be eloquent.
7. End on a call to action.
8. Good writing comes from exhaustive editing.
Well worth reading [Link].May 23, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Good stuff from Opinion Journal:
"Gulag" is the Russian acronym made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to describe the vast network of Soviet slave labor camps in which millions died. It is thus one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International that the pressure group is now calling the U.S. detention facility for Taliban and al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time." [...] It's old news that Amnesty International is a highly politicized pressure group, but these latest accusations amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda. A "human rights" group that can't distinguish between Stalin's death camps and detention centers for terrorists who kill civilians can't be taken seriously.
May 22, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From The Telegraph: White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return (hat tip Tom Pechinski):White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the country's central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe's economic crisis. ...
During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy.
Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge - and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving. ...
One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: "He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back?
"There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this."
For a couple of our past Mugabe cartoons, see here and here. Gateway Pundit has more.May 21, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Von Mises' Socialism:
The world inclines to Socialism because the great majority of people want it. They want it because they believe that Socialism will guarantee a higher standard of living. The loss of this conviction would signify the end of Socialism. (462)
It is true the world still inclines for socialism--even though they believe that it will not guarantee a higher standard of living. The reason is despite the fact they know that socialism does not work in practice (economically); they still believe it is the right thing to do in theory (morally).May 20, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--Over the last century, the government has used antitrust law to prosecute and punish some of the most productive individuals and companies in history. It has subjected companies like Standard Oil, General Electric and Microsoft to endless trials, massive fines and destructive breakups--on charges that they harmed competitors and helpless customers by engaging in so-called anticompetitive behavior.
In his controversial new book, The Abolition of Antitrust, Dr. Gary Hull, director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University, and his co-writers present a sustained economic, historical, moral and legal broadside against the federal statutes known as antitrust.
These scholars of American economic history argue that the targets of antitrust are not criminals but victims, whose much-reviled power is in fact neither coercive nor destructive. They argue that the only "crime" of these phenomenal producers is their life-giving powers to produce products that appeal to millions of customers. Antitrust law, they argue, is fundamentally unjust: it throttles, punishes and sacrifices America's best producers for the sake of those whose only talent is to get the political power needed to destroy the truly productive.
The authors conclude that the evil is not merely in some specific case or application of antitrust, but inherent in the law as such. Antitrust, they maintain, cannot be "fixed" or redeemed, and for the sake of justice and America's prosperity, must be abolished.***
On Tuesday, May 24, the Ayn Rand Institute Lecture Series 2005 Presents:Antitrust Is Immoral By Gary Hull. Over the last century, the government has used antitrust law to prosecute and punish some of the most productive and innovative companies in history. It has subjected companies like Standard Oil, General Electric and Microsoft to endless trials, massive fines and destructive breakups—on charges that they harm worthy competitors and helpless customers by engaging in so-called anticompetitive behavior. In this provocative lecture, Dr. Gary Hull, director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University, argues that the targets of antitrust are not criminals but victims. Their much-reviled monopoly power is not coercive or destructive; it is the life-giving power to produce products that are incredibly appealing to customers and far superior to those of laggard competitors. Antitrust law, argues Dr. Hull, is fundamentally unjust: it throttles, punishes and sacrifices America's best producers for the sake of their inferiors. This evil is not merely in any specific case or application of antitrust, but inherent in the law, as such. Antitrust cannot be "fixed" or redeemed. It must be abolished.
THIS EVENT IS FREE TO THE PUBLIC. LOCATION and DETAILS: Tuesday, May 24, 2005. Hyatt Regency Irvine, 17900 Jamboree Road (at the 405 Freeway), Irvine, California 92614. Bookstore opens: 6:30 PM. Presentation: 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM. Q & A: 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM
From Reuters: 
From The New York Times: 