Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
2003 October
2003 September
2003 August
2003 July
My Links
Daily honoring the fallen in Iraq
Catholic Medical Mission Board--Largest US-Based Catholic Sponsored Charity Focused on Providing Healthcare to People in Developing Countries
American Catholic--News, Forums, Saints, Questions, Prayer Requests
Saint Jude Shrine
The Constitution of the United States of America incl. the Bill of Rights (among the rights that Congress must not infringe upon, the "right to abort" isn't one of them)
Media Research Center: The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias
Times Watch: Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
News, Events, Opinion Straight from the Middle East Translated into English--Find out What the Arab World Really Thinks--Middle East Media Research Institute
Read any Ann Coulter Column Right Here
Catholic Online
Intellectual Conservative
Vital books: "The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America" and "Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11" both by Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz
The Drudge Report
Prevent Russia from turning back into the USSR--keep abreast of current events in Russia, sign presidential petitions--STAY INVOLVED
The real deal on healthcare-- just the facts.
Tax Foundation-- know the truth about your taxes
You wouldn't believe it if I told you. Buy "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security." "Betrayal" is too benign a word for the shocking damage to US security that Clinton was responsible for.
The Federalist, where Limited Government, as the Founding Fathers wanted it, is promoted.
What's the big deal with communism? 100 million deaths, oppression, and human misery, that's what. "The Black Book of Communism" documents history's greatest evil--edited by French historian Stephane Courtois. Buy it here.
City Journal
Join THE Conservative Forum on the Web Today
Facts and Logic about the Middle East
What Catholics Believe
Crisis Magazine (Catholic)
Human Events online
The Conspiracy to Keep you Poor and Stupid
National Review
FrontPage Magazine
Wall Street Journal on the web
The Weekly Standard
The Conservative Movement Starts Here
The Washington Times
Buy "Among the Heroes" by Jere Longman--the story of flight 93 (it will break your heart yet fill you with pride)
US House of Representatives
Just the Story, no Spin--Fox News Channel
The Heritage Foundation
National Rifle Association
Get your News from Any Source all Over the World, Right Here
The Declaration of Independnce of the United States of America
The Supreme Court of the United States
The President of the United States
US Senate
9/11: Never Forget
Students for Academic Freedom
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| A response to Winston and Sammy: the UN wants to be relevant again. |
| 08.31.03 (3:43 am) [edit] |
Winston and the Left forget some crucial factors about Iraq, namely that it was UN chapter-7 resolutions, resolutions that required force as a consequence, that were being violated by Hussein and being overlooked by the UN. The US never thought the UN was irrelvant: in fact, history shows that the US tried early and often to get the UN involved in defending its own interests.
But the UN has no "expertise" in anything but hypocrisy.
As I revealed in an Alan Dershowitz column, the UN plays favorites like any bureacracy. It legitimizes terrorists, dictators, and thugs. It lets powers with major human rights abuses and terrorists sympathies, like the UN and Syria, hold leadership roles. Instead of even acting on its principles, it actively opposes the only state (the US) that ever wanted to do anything about them.
Winston's little "gotcha" about the US suddenly wanting them is 180 degrees from the reality. The US was always open to UN involvement--even before the war. It was the UN in their pride and arrogance that didn't want the US taking the leadership in the world it so often asks for anyway, and it was the UN in that same pride and arrogance that refused US security when they were given a role in Iraq (by the US), and consequently their man Sergio bit the dust because the UN trusted Saddam's ex security guards with their own security. That's smart.
I wonder what Winston, and the Left, are trying to prove here. Don't they want a Democratic Iraq? Don't they want an end to terror and WMD proliferation? Don't they want to end mass graves, torture chambers and state-sanctioned gang-rapes? Don't they want to uphold the rule of law and defend their own country? Or do they relish the thought of keeping a guy who is against human rights, democracy, and peace in power, amassing WMD in violation of UNSC chapter 7 resolutions and threatening US national security, just for the satisfaction of bashing Bush more than progress against the opponents of civilization?
Does the Left ever stop and think? What are their principles, besides bashing conservatives? This is a group who can do nothing but bitch--they have no alternatives.
Kofi Annan, and the other UNSC members have pushed for a greater role in Iraq, not the US. The difference is this: the US rightly wants to be in control of the situation militarily. It fought for the liberation of Iraq. The French did not. But the UN, which has absolutely no experience in nation building (save East Timor and Kosovo, in which the fomer was a success and the latter is still a quagmire) wants complete control of the political and the military process. That has never been done by the UN before, and to even ask for that kind of power shows you the desperation of the self-made UN state of irrelvancy. The US governed the process of nation-building on two major scales twice--in Germany and Japan--and now those countries are so advanced they reject the very country that gave them their countries back (By the way, we spent on the deficit 33% during those days, a far cry from the 4% deficit spending we have now. But as it was then, Leftist lies and actions are overlooked. Only conservatives get bashed for doing what they have to do).
The US created the UN, and funds 22% of it (the Euros will tell you that, as the EU, they fund the more than the US, but until the EU is willing to be represented in the UNSC under one flag, they can go piss up a rope). Whenever the UN has enforced its resolutions by force, the US has done the vast majority of dying for them. The UNSC actively opposed upholding its own resolutions in council.
The international Left and the UN countries are trying to spin this situation as if the US wanted to go it alone. Not so fast, my Marxist friends. That is not true. The real story here is that the UN wants a bigger piece of the reconstruction pie, and their stupid decisions on security in Iraq have given them a pretext. President Bush has been pressured by the impatient American media to 'bring the troops home' from a so-called 'quagmire' while at the same time the same groups clamor for 'more troops'. How can he win?
Bush doesn't want the UN as the authority in Iraq. History shows they suck at it, and further more-- it wasn't Bush's idea. What Bush is actually considering is having the UN take control of the reconstruction effort and leave the military to the US. This is good because the UN won't stop complaining about a 'wider role' and secondly it will give dumbasses like Winston Smith less amunition to accuse Bush and 'his cronies' of using Halliburtion to run Iraq.
But will Winston Smith blame TotalFinaELF, France's major oil company, when it takes over the capitalistic reconstruction? Will Chirac or Putin be the robber barons then? Don't hold your breath. Smith, like the Left, lives in breathes in shades of unjustified anti-Americanism.
That defines their very existence, and clouds them to reality.
Ps. We've actually seen what the UN has already done in Iraq: 12 years of toothless inspections, misguided embargos, and an 'oil-for-food program' that was violated routinely by the very nations--France, Russia, and China--that want a 'bigger role' in Iraq.
This is about power and influence, and if you want totalitarian dictators running the show, let the UN control it.
That's probably what the Left wants anyway.
|
|
|
| |
| Canada's free ride on px drugs |
| 08.31.03 (3:40 am) [edit] |
Canada's free ride on prescription drugs (8/02)
by National Post Editorial
link-- http://www.factcheckers.org/s...
As the issue of prescription-drug pricing heats up south of the border, two questions come to mind. First, why should U.S. patients pay exorbitant prices for their medicines while heath-care systems in other developed countries -- Canada most notably -- get their medications at cut-rate prices, and thereby avoid paying their fair share of drug R&D costs? Second, why would U.S. drug companies continue to ship us their pills, capsules and serums if those products are then being "reimported" right back into the United States at the same low prices? The short answers are: They shouldn't and they won't.
As things stand, drug reimportation is taking place piecemeal, with individual U.S. patients ordering U.S.-source products from Canadian pharmacies, typically through the Internet. But the trade is expanding: This past week brought news that the town of Springfield, Mass. has struck a deal to buy drugs for its employees and retirees from a pharmacy in Ontario. And a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last month would expand reimportation drastically by requiring the Food and Drug Administration to allow U.S. pharmacies and wholesalers broad access to drugs from Canada, the EU, and various other developed nations.
The bill would save U.S. consumers billions: On average, drug prices in the United States are 67% higher than those in this country. In some cases, the difference is enormous. Toprol-XL, for instance, a medication for high blood pressure, costs $50-$55 per 100 mg dose in Canada, but about $160 in the United States.
The differential arises thanks to a phenomenon economists call price discrimination. Because Canada and the United States comprise segregated markets, the pharmaceutical companies can apply different marketing strategies: High prices in the United States because consumers there are wealthier; lower prices in Canada because we are poorer and, in many cases, [b]our market is controlled by government-imposed caps.[/b]
[b]Under the current regime, drug companies are generally willing to supply a secondary market like Canada even if the price they can get is barely high enough to recoup marginal production and distribution costs. But at the end of the day, someone's got to pay for fixed costs -- i.e., the research and development that leads to the discovery of new medicines in the first place[/b]. This is why drug costs are so high in the United States. Because it is the only major Western nation without price caps, [b]drug makers depend on the high prices U.S. consumers pay to finance their lab work[/b].
The result is that Americans are getting ripped off. [b]Since the R&D that goes into a medicine benefits everyone who takes it -- not just the Americans who pay the lion's share -- Canadian and EU patients are, essentially, free riders.[/b]
Unfortunately, our cozy scam may soon expire. If the bill passed last week by the House of Representatives becomes law, there will be a short-term dip in drug prices for U.S. consumers.[b] But drug makers will then respond by either insisting on price increases in non-U.S. markets to discourage reimportation, or by delaying the introduction of emerging, leading-edge medications abroad until after they have recovered their R&D costs stateside.[/b]
Either way, Canadian consumers will be forced to start paying the real, economic cost of the drugs they consume. At just US$3-billion annually, sales in Canada by U.S. pharmaceutical companies are a pittance compared to the US$131 billion they earn globally. Big Pharm could thus easily afford to forego all Canadian sales while it waited for the practice of reimportation to stop. ([b]Already, GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Amoxil, Zantac and Zyban, has cut off sales to Canadian pharmacies known to be supplying U.S. patients[/b].) [b]Since losing access to vital American drugs would be disastrous for Canadian patients, health-care officials here would have no choice but to accept higher prices[/b].
Admittedly, the bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives appears to have little chance of passing the U.S. Senate: Last month, 53 of 100 senators signed a letter opposing it -- and President George W. Bush has promised to veto any legislation that comes across his desk. But with cash-strapped U.S. consumers and local governments looking north to buy drugs, it seems only a matter of time before Washington gives in to populist pressure on this file. When that time comes,[b] Canadians will no doubt blame pharmaceutical firms for the ensuing price spike. But all the higher prices will mean is that we are finally paying our fair share for good medicine.
[/b]
|
|
|
| |
| Utopian myths about government healthcare debunked. |
| 08.31.03 (3:29 am) [edit] |
[b]Debunking Friday the 13th: 13 Myths about Health Care Reform[/b]
by Conrad F. Meier - Managing Editor of Health Care News
FactCheckers.org, a conglomerate of health-care think tanks in America-- http://www.factcheckers.org/s...
If you cross the path of a black cat this Friday the 13th, you're about as likely to experience bad luck as you are likely to win the lottery. That's a fact.
But facts often give way to myth. While many of those myths are relatively harmless, others can be downright dangerous to our life, liberty, prosperity, and health.
The single-payer health care plans touted by former Vice President Al Gore, Congressman Richard Gephardt (D-Missouri) and other Democrats offer a truly frightening case in point. Consider these 13 myths about single-payer health care.
Myth #1 Single-payer systems are not socialized medicine. Single-payer means government is the insurance company. It doesn't charge "premiums," but instead raises taxes. It controls not only the financing, but who gets what services, the quality of what they get, when they get it, and if they get it. You don't get much more socialized than that. [b]A single-payer system is one big HMO, without the discipline and accountability achieved by competition.[/b]
Myth #2 Single-payer systems are efficient. A study by the Institute for Global Health at the University of California [b]concluded the Kaiser-Permanente HMO in the United States and Britain's National Health Service (NHS) have similar resources, but the HMO offers better care more quickly.[/b] The difference is explained by better management, better use of integrated systems, greater investment in technology, and free-market competition.
Myth #3 Single-payer systems are compassionate. If you think HMOs and insurance companies lack compassion, [b]wait until you experience a health care system run by politicians and government bureaucrats. Single-payer health care systems depend on coercion and intrusion into the private affairs of persons subjected to them. Paperwork and red tape--not compassion or respect for the doctor-patient relationship--rule.[/b]
Myth #4 Single-payer systems are not expensive for governments. [b]Gephardt's proposal would cost $247 billion--every year[/b]. A proposal to implement single-payer health care in Maryland alone would have cost $40 million a year ... plus lost payroll tax receipts of nearly $5 billion. [b]As many as 117,000 jobs would have been lost.[/b]
Myth #5 Single-payer systems are "free" for individuals. [b]Single-payer health care plans are not free: They are paid for by tax dollars. Billions of them. The Maryland proposal would have required a 33 percent increase in the state's personal income tax. Canadians pay extraordinarily high income taxes for their "free" care ... only to have to pay again when they come to the United States for care they can't get in Canada.[/b]
Myth #6 Single-payer systems do not ration care. In a single-payer health care system like Britain's, patients have every incentive to demand care, and lots of it. [b]Since no system can satisfy unlimited demand, the central authorities must resort to the only strategy open to them: rationing[/b]. [b]In single-payer systems, you get rationing by waiting list; rationing by price controls; and rationing by restricting access to specialists, technology, and new drugs.[/b]
Myth #7 Single-payer systems offer high-quality care. To get access to the least-invasive, most effective health care technology, citizens living under single-payer health care schemes come to the United States. The Canadian Fraser Institute reported in August 2002, "with regard to access to high-tech machinery, Canada performs dismally by comparison with other OECD countries. [b]While ranking number one as a health care spender, Canada ranks 18th in access to MRIs, 17th in access to CT scanners, [and] eighth in access to radiation machines ..."[/b]
Myth #8 Single-payer systems offer timely care. On any given day, [b]one in 60 British citizens are waiting for medical treatment.[/b] Of those who are sick and actually need care, one in six must wait. [b]After meeting with a senior doctor, one million people in Britain are on a waiting list for in-patient hospital admission at any given time. Just 155,000 of those are seen within four weeks. For 250,000 of them, it takes more than 26 weeks to be admitted for care.[/b]
Myth #9 Single-payer systems improve access to prescription drugs. [b]In Britain, the government determines how much profit a pharmaceutical firm is allowed to make--a sure way to arrest research and development. [/b]In addition, [b]they ration access to drugs with a lottery based on a consumer's zip code[/b]. [b]The prize is your eligibility to receive free medication[/b]. The "lucky" zip code [b]can change at any time, apparently on the basis of political expediency rather than medical necessity[/b]. Price controls and rigid drug formularies--hallmarks of a single-payer health care system--[b]limit access to drugs and violate doctors' and patients' freedom of choice.[/b]
Myth #10 Single-payer systems allow you to see any doctor you choose. Many doctors already refuse to accept Medicare patients. A recent study by the American Medical Association found nearly half of all U.S. physicians would have limited their Medicare practices further if the federal government had carried out a plan to cut physician fees. How many more doctors would "opt out"--or quit the professional altogether--if the entire U.S. were one big Medicare program?
Myth #11 Single-payer systems are popular with doctors. [b]Five hundred physicians leave Canada every year to practice in something other than a single-payer health care system[/b]. Zosia Kmietowicz wrote in the October 20, 2001 issue of the British Medical Journal, [b]"one in four general practitioners (GPs) in Britain's National Health Service is seriously considering leaving general practice." [/b]The British Medical Association surveyed all 36,000 General Practitioners in Britain, asking them if they would be prepared to resign from the NHS. [b]There was a 66 percent response rate ... and 86 percent voted in favor of resignation[/b].
Myth #12 Single-payer systems are popular with patients. In 2002, seventy-nine percent of Oregon voters rejected a plan to have government officials run a health care system for the state's 3.5 million residents. Measure 23, touted by supporters as "health care for all Oregon," attracted just 204,082 votes, 21 percent of the total, while 786,768 voters--79 percent--rejected the plan.
Myth #13 Single-payer systems are preferred by "forward-looking" countries. [b]Nobody outside Britain--and apparently the United States--praises the NHS anymore. The country is out of step, clinging to central government control and management of health care while other countries move away from a single-payer model towards some mixture of free enterprise and government health care[/b]. [b]Canada, Russia, Sweden, Germany ... and even Britain itself ... are moving toward greater reliance on the free-market[/b].
|
|
|
| |
| Putting Hybrid's deceptive healthcare stats into context. |
| 08.31.03 (2:41 am) [edit] |
At the end of a smug little blog trying to refute the fact that government health care is no better than private care, Hybridanglo trots out the fact that between 230,000 and 284,000 Americans die each year by iatrogenic, or for us dummies, medically negligent deaths. This is his supreme 'gotcha moment' , and he rounds out his smashing blog with this quip, "so rejoice in your country's health care. just don't get sick enough to need it..."
Sheer brilliance! And then the usual groupies show up in the comments section to praise him for "getting the facts" out.
Another win for the utopians!
But, er, there's one problem. Iatrogenic statistics in countries with utopian/socialist healthcare coverages are no better than the US, and could actually be worse.
TO use but one example:
The US has 290 million people. Britain has 60 million people. The US, according to Hybrid's research, suffers 230,000-284,000 deaths due to medical malpractice every year. That's .079%-.098% of the population. Averaged out, that's .089 % of the population or about 257,000 people.
According to numerous medical and statistical web sites, including the research of Proferssor Charles Vincent which appears in medical journals and activist groups everywhere on the web (one good site is here-- http://www.sin-medicalmistake...), Britain suffers between 40,000 and 68,000 deaths per year due to medical neglect. That is .067% and .11% of the population. Averaged out, that's .089% of the population, or 54,000 deaths per year.
So the US and Britain, on average, have the same rate of iatrogenic deaths per year.
Interestingly, if you took the higher numbers in each group, we see that Britain outpaces the United States by .012 percent each year.
This may seem like a small point, but it's not, for if the utopians are going to trumpet the greatness of their healthcare programs, they need to be more honest about the statistics.
In hybrid's blog, he's treating the French heat-wave death toll of 11.435 as if it is a done deal (and he gives credit to the French Red Cross, a group that has been wrong numerous times, most famously in its criticism of US food aid to Afghanistan and conditions at Guantanamo bay (no heat deaths there yet, by the way)). But the deaths are still being reported. We can expect the death toll to ultimately surpass in percentages what Chicago's heat-related deaths became.
France and the utopians trumpet their health care constantly, and we expect them to complain about private health care (which they do constantly). Big government is our friend! But there is no comparative advantage living in France or Britian and enduring their health care over living in the United States and enjoying ours.
So while I admire Hybrid's attempts to be right and make me look bad, I'll ask him to give it another try.
France is supposed to be the world's greatest health care system. By allowing a third-worldish number of easily preventable deaths to accumulate because it has mismanaged its heavily taxed system and because health care workers just had to take their vacation, they deserve all the scorn we can throw at it.
Rejoice, utopians, in your fantasy-land health care. When you want your cancer treatments before you die from it, hop on a ferry and come to the United States. You know, like the Canadians do.
|
|
|
| |
| Silly Liberal Denials of Bias |
| 08.30.03 (4:25 pm) [edit] |
[b]Silly Liberal Denials of Bias [/b]
by L. Brent Bozell III
August 29, 2003
The New York Observer’s Joe Conason is out with a new tome called “Big Lies,” one of those “lies” being the Myth of the Liberal Media. In doing so he has now joined The Nation’s Eric Alterman in claiming that the news media are not as liberal as they are, which is undoubtedly true.
The suggestion, however, that the news media do not tilt to the left, is just not serious thinking. Or, if it’s coming from those who would consider themselves serious thinkers, it’s just not intellectually honest.
I don’t know if Al Franken is a joke or a fraud. [b]I do know he is a man full of hatred for conservatives, and because of that, a darling of Conason’s supposedly conservative press.[/b]
Last week Franken was featured not once, but twice on NBC’s Today Show to plug his upcoming book slamming the right, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” Matt Lauer dutifully read excerpts like, “Bush lies about important things like the economy, his tax cuts, his education, our reasons for going to war and drunk driving. But I think he lies only when he feels he has to. He knows that most of the time Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh are only too glad to do it for him.” Lauer also invited his audience to visit NBC’s website where other excerpts are proudly displayed, including the one focusing on “those sh---y books by Ann Coulter and Bernie Goldberg” and their “total bulls—t” claims about a liberal media bias.
[b]Lauer could have challenged Franken to prove his argument[/b], and then debated him, point-by-point. [b]That is, after all, standard operating procedure for conservative guests. But Franken received none of that scrutiny.[/b]
Lauer could have denounced Franken’s nastiness. [b]Remember all that media talk about “Clinton-hatersR 21; on the right? About “mean-spirited̶ 1; conservatives? About the “politics of personal destruction”? Lauer not only didn’t confront Franken with his ad hominems, he invited him back for an encore performance.[/b]
Which raises another point about this supposedly non-liberal press. [b]How does Franken rate two appearances in one week? [/b]Sure he’s witty and all that, but he was there to promote a book, [b]a book that wasn’t anywhere on any New York Times bestseller list[/b]. (With this kind of double promotion, you can be assured that now it will be.)
Now compare NBC’s treatment of Franken’s nemeses, Goldberg and Coulter. [b]Goldberg was sitting on the New York Times bestseller list for, count ‘em, nineteen weeks [/b]before NBC finally invited him on the Today Show – but only on the condition he be paired with ultra-leftist author Michael Moore. ([b]Another double standard: When conservatives are the focus, the discussion must be balanced; when liberals are the focus, they appear alone.) [/b]Then there’s Miss Coulter. [b]Her new book Treason has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over two months now but she has yet to be invited on the Today Show set[/b].
NBC is not alone. Over at ABC News they’re having problems with their signature “This Week” Sunday program. [b]A couple of years ago the network dropped conservative Bill Kristol from the roundtable segment while promoting ex-Clinton spin doctor George Stephanopoulos into an anchoring role where suddenly he was transformed into a journalist[/b]. The ratings plummeted as a result, and now ABC apparently has concluded that the show still has too much conservatism. ABC has axed the roundtable segment where George Will offered occasional (and no doubt vexing) conservative insights. ABC promises that Will will appear from time to time, but not as a reporter, and not an opinionated analyst. This would seem to guarantee that Will’s conservative commentaries are over.
If you don’t like ABC’s Sunday worldview, you’re going to dread what’s happening next door at CBS.
[b]It’s no longer unusual to find journalists offending religious believers, and it’s simply inconceivable that a journalist would apologize for his insult[/b]. [b]But watch what happens when the host of CBS’s Sunday morning show “Face the Nation” upsets some atheists[/b]. [b]Bob Schieffer recently used the old saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” but after hearing criticism from some atheists he was quick last Sunday to make amend on his show, pointing out they “reminded me that freedom of religion also means the right not to believe and they said my remark unfairly challenged the sincerity of their views.” [/b]
Schieffer begged forgiveness: “They have every right to their belief and I would never challenge their sincerity… So to all of you who took offense, I can only say that none was intended and I regret a poor choice of words.”
[b]How some liberals can, with a straight face, continue to deny the liberal bias in the press is beyond me.[/b]
Media Research Center, Brent Bozell: http://www.mrc.org/BozellColu...
|
|
|
| |
| Basic Civics--Getting it Right on Church and State |
| 08.29.03 (11:50 pm) [edit] |
Ci[b]vics 101 -- Getting it right...[/b]
Mark Alexander
August 29, 2003
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's defiance of a federal court's mandate to remove a Ten Commandments display from the rotunda at the Alabama judicial building has been debated vigorously in recent weeks, [b]mostly out of context.[/b]
Much of the public debate about this case has taken a wide detour around the substantive constitutional question, instead focusing on the Ten Commandments: Are they the foundation of Western law? Should they be displayed in state and local public places? Are such displays promotions of religion or history? While these are interesting questions, they are not relevant to the substance of this case.
Those content to reduce this case to a colloquy on the merits of the Ten Commandments either [b]do not grasp the serious constitutional issue being contested, or they harbor a disingenuous motive to avoid the relevant. The latter group, well represented in the pop media, has framed this case as an insurrection led by a religious zealot and his gaggle of street preachers, thus depreciating its legal significance in order to avoid substantive and instructive discussion about our Constitution.[/b]
As The Federalist reported weeks ago, the federal judges, ACLU plaintiffs and Justice Moore all agree that the issue is not the Ten Commandments but the First and, thus, Tenth Amendments, and how these are to be interpreted. [b]U.S. 11th Circuit Court Appellate Judge Ed Carnes, in his denial of Justice Moore's appeal, wrote, "If Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument were allowed to stand, it would mean a massive revision of how the courts have interpreted the First Amendment for years." [/b]The ACLU's counsel stated, "This case is not about the Ten Commandments. This case is not about Roy Moore. It is about the First Amendment...." Indeed, [b]Justice Moore wrote, "Have we become so ignorant of our nation's history that we have forgotten the reason for the adoption of the Bill of Rights? It was meant to restrict the federal government's power over the states...." [/b]
Notwithstanding the fact that the federal courts, the plaintiffs and defendant all declared this case to be about our Constitution, [b]few media pundits and commentators dared venture into its real substance -- much too cerebral, fear they, for the dumbed-down masses who can't distinguish between the First and Tenth Amendment and first-and-ten to go[/b]. But in doing so, they are selling out our Founders' courageous legacy, as well as those Patriots who keep the torch burning today.
Indeed, the substance of this case solely concerns the rule of law as plainly written by our Founders in the U.S. Constitution, the protection of which is entrusted to the federal judiciary, whom it authorizes by oath to defend it, and its Bill of Rights, as adopted by the several states (including Alabama). [b]The core question raised by this case is whether our Constitution should be altered by amendment (as per original intent), or adulterated by adjudication, which our Founders (as explicated in the Federalist Papers) and the states clearly rejected. [/b]
The Constitution clearly states that[b] "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States...." (Article I, Section 1). Conspicuously absent here is any language that allows federal judicial activists to render interpretive rulings that distort the Constitution such that it comports with their political and social agendas[/b]. On the subject of judicial activists, the Constitution declares, "[b]Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour" (Article III, Section 1). In other words, they should be impeached. [/b]Unfortunately, as Thomas Jefferson noted, impeachment is "a scarecrow," a straw man.
The First Amendment states[b] "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...," and the Tenth Amendment ensures "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [/b]
[b]In the Federalist Papers, the definitive exposition of the Constitution's original intent, James Madison wrote, "Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution. ... The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."[/b]
[b]Madison, our Constitution's author, meant that the Constitution is to be read and ruled upon constructively, not as a matter of interpretive opinion, which circumvents its prescribed method of amendment. [/b]Those are the terms under which the states, including Alabama, ratified the Constitution.
As for the suggestion that the Fourteenth Amendment's "Privileges or Immunities" clause applies the Bill of Rights' restrictions on the central government to all levels of government -- it didn't and it doesn't. [b]That notion was settled by the Supreme Court long ago, though the Fourteenth continues to be dredged up by judicial activists -- the same ones who interpret the First Amendment to read "separation of church and state" -- in an effort to eviscerate the Bill of Rights[/b]. It only applies in this case -- in the correct application of the amendment -- in support of Justice Moore's position, in that it bars the state of Alabama, and Moore as its chief judicial officer, from acting on the order handed down from the federal court.
Justice Moore, in his defiance of the federal courts, wrote, [b]"Under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, federal courts have absolutely no power, authority or jurisdiction [in this case]." He is, correctly in our opinion, arguing that he cannot be in disobedience of a judicial order where there is no jurisdiction[/b]. Thus, his actions do not rise even to the level of civil disobedience -- just defiance of an unlawful ruling. Of course, this distinction is predicated on respect for the rule of law under our Constitution, not the rule of judges, or what Thomas Jefferson characterized as "the Despotic branch." Justice Moore is currently suspended for his defiance and faces ethics charges before the seven-member Court of the Judiciary.
On Tuesday, the Ten Commandments display was removed from the judicial rotunda in Montgomery, to the shrieks of a few eccentric street preachers whose tirade (replayed repeatedly by Leftmedia outlets) [b]served only to discredit the thoughtful objections of millions of Christian Patriots across the nation and further obfuscate the constitutional case being made by Justice Moore[/b]. In neighboring Mississippi, Gov. Ron Musgrove (D) called on governors around the nation to put the monument on display in their state capitol buildings -- starting with his.
So what's next? A new appeal to the Supreme Court is in the works, while Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, Attorney General Bill Pryor and the eight Associate Justices are busy trying to convince the people of Alabama that they support the Ten Commandments but were bound to obey the rule of law. "Because we are a society of laws, the Alabama Supreme Court has a duty to comply with the federal court order, whether they agree with it or not," said Riley. Indeed, they do -- unless the order is unlawful. Riley did not say how far from the "rule of law" they are willing to let judicial activists stray before adhering to [b]Alabama's state motto, "We Dare Defend our Rights." [/b]
Perhaps that will be best left to Governor Roy Moore....
A footnote: While The Federalist would not support a constitutional amendment to elect judges to the federal bench, we have outlined in the New Federalist Platform, on our Reagan2020.com website, a plan for dissolving the inferior federal courts after a four- or six-year term on a rotating district basis, and reconstituting them. This would, in effect, term-limit the courts themselves, and thus term-limit the judges serving on those benches.[b] We believe Congress already possesses this power, as Article III, Section 1 refers to "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Of course, resorting to a constitutional amendment might be required....[/b]
Quote of the week:
"To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions every day, I say: [b]The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny." [/b]--Ronald Reagan
[i]Mark Alexander is Executive Editor and Publisher of The Federalist, a Townhall.com member group.[/i]
©2003 The Federalist
The article-- http://www.townhall.com/colum...
|
|
|
| |
| The Left, the Catholic Church, and TomPaine.com |
| 08.29.03 (11:41 pm) [edit] |
[b]Why the Left Hates the Church[/b]
By John Zmirak
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 29, 2003
One of the most surprising aspects of the contemporary Left is its inveterate hostility to the Catholic Church around the world. [b]You’d think that a political tendency whose ostensible purpose is the betterment of the poor would look with favor on the single largest provider on earth of private charity, health care, free education and housing for the needy[/b]. Looking back into history, it was the early Christian Church—driven by the Old Testament’s reverence for human life—which eventually moved Romans to stop abandoning unwanted infants to die, sexually exploiting slaves, and forcing young girls to marry against their will. (If you read the stories of the Church’s earliest martyrs, a surprising number were young women killed at their fathers’ behest for refusing to marry the man he’d chosen for them—a liberty unheard of in Roman society until the advent of the Church).
One could understand how in the 18th and 19th centuries classical liberals might be suspicious of a Church that at the time allied itself to autocratic monarchies; but those monarchies are gone, even as the Church has reclaimed at Vatican II her own ancient insights into religious liberty and the rights of individuals vis-à-vis the State—renouncing all the illiberal practices that darkened the Church’s name in the Middle Ages and thereafter. (It’s important to note that Leftists long overlooked, lied about, or minimized far more oppressive practices in their own favored Marxist utopias—as they still do whitewash horrendous abuses in Cuba and even the Islamic world.)
[b]So why do leftists hate the Church? In part, because they don’t really care about the poor. [/b][b]If they did, they’d support school choice, the Second Amendment, strict law enforcement in urban neighborhoods, and a restriction of mass immigration that savagely undercuts the wages of the native working class—to mention just a few policies the Left opposes with all the demagoguery it can muster.[/b]
No, the contemporary Left knows that fighting poverty isn’t a sexy issue anymore—that the suburban bourgeoisie which stuffs its coffers has pretty much given up on uplifting impoverished Americans, and retreated behind the walls of its gated communities. Instead, the Left has focused on issues which really appeal to its privileged constituency—namely, preserving and extending the sexual libertinism that became respectable in the 1960s. “Progressives” who’d never drop a dime in a beggar’s cup can be counted on to help keep abortion legal up through the ninth month—lest inconvenient pregnancies interrupt their daughters’ sojourns through Barnard, Bard, or Oberlin.
[b]Likewise, modern liberals can be relied upon to support the assault by unelected judges on the most basic unit of society: the nuclear family, cemented by marriage. The divorce laws promoted by feminists in the name of “gender equality” have rendered marriage itself an unenforceable contract, and stripped stay-at-home mothers of their rights to alimony, significant child support, and other legal protections they once enjoyed—in the bad old days of “paternalism.”[/b]
Now “progressives” want to drive one more stake through the heart of marriage—by expanding its definition to include homosexual relationships. [b]An institution which primarily exists to protect mothers and their children from casual neglect and abandonment will now—if the Left has its way—be diluted still further, to the point of meaninglessness. As the heroic Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) rightly pointed out, once homosexual relationships are given the positive sanction of law, there is absolutely no legal or constitutional basis for prohibiting polygamy. (Within the next 20 years, count on Moslems and dissident Mormons to file a successful legal case in this regard.)[/b]
I’d go further and suggest that within our lifetime, sado-masochist “slave contracts” will become legally enforceable. (Perhaps the 13th Amendment will block this;[b] but when did Supreme Court justices ever let the words of the Constitution stand in the way of “progress?”)[/b]
A Case in Point
Meet Dick Blow. Yes, that’s his real name. If you haven’t heard of Richard “Dick” Blow, you’re obviously not a collector of Kennedy memorabilia—of which he is a prime specimen, likely to appear any day on Ebay. You see, Blow served as intellectual valet to the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. at George magazine.
Now Blow’s clutching the Kennedys’ soiled mantle as part of the Left’s ongoing assault on the Church. [b]In a trite piece on the silly Web site TomPaine.com, Blow echoes comments by Rep. Patrick Kennedy condemning the Vatican for presuming to address the issue of same-sex unions.[/b] It did so in a recent document instructing believers about the Church’s teaching on the subject, and their duties as Catholic citizens. [b]Blow is shocked, shocked to discover that the neither the pope nor his staff have abandoned the Church’s 2,000 year-old tradition (5,000 if you count the Old Testament) that homosexual intercourse contradicts the will of God. So do a lot of things, and the Church has never been shy about naming them:[/b]
Premarital sex, adultery, auto-eroticism, lying, stealing, cheating, and just about everything else that keeps soft-core cable TV in plotlines.
[b]Blow evinces mock outrage that the Church would presume to tell her followers that their beliefs—about ultimate reality, good and evil, and the purpose of the universe—ought to guide how they vote. I wonder if Blow would have been similarly outraged when Church leaders got out front in the fight against segregation—as Abp. Rummel of New Orleans did in the early 60s, excommunicating a leading white Louisiana populist for his position on race. Or when black reverends pass the hat in church for donations to their presidential campaigns, use church buses to carry voters to the polls, or church conferences as platforms for Democratic candidates—whose positions on most social issues are starkly incompatible with those morally conservative churches’ teachings. Of course not. To ask the question is to answer it.[/b]
Blow reaches back into his former patrons’ long tradition of craven political opportunism—the “patriotic” Joe Kennedy sucked up to Hitler, the “liberal” John and Bobby to Joseph McCarthy—to dig up one of John Kennedy’ s most disgraceful moments, and hold it up as a model for the future. [b]Few people remember the depth and passion of anti-Catholic paranoia that once held sway in this country, as evinced in the fevered works of now-forgotten alarmist Paul Blanshard [/b](who was forever pointing to papal documents dealing mainly with the administration of the Papal States, to warn of the danger of a coming Catholic theocracy in America).
But fear and loathing of Catholics was still alive and kicking in 1960, and presidential candidate John F. Kennedy appeased it by making a speech to Protestant ministers in Houston. [b]In it, JFK promised never to allow what he advertised as his deepest personal beliefs—when he was campaigning with priests and nuns in Boston—to influence his official actions “directly or indirectly.” [/b]None of those reverends would have expected a Protestant candidate to make such a public renunciation of his faith—in fact, they would surely have denounced him if he had. The intertwining of faith, ethics, and politics has a long and honorable tradition in this country, going all the way back to the Puritan, Quaker, and Anglican colonies that predate our founding. [b]While the Constitution clearly and rightly forbids any attempt to erect an Established church, not a word of it suggests that religious values cannot influence one’s opinions on public policy; indeed, the movements that set out to free slaves, abolish segregation, or promote human rights worldwide are unimaginable without the strong religious motivations that drove most of their leaders. No honest person questions the patriotism of Jewish citizens who try to promote the ongoing alliance between the U.S. and Israel, or Protestants who ask the U.S. to safeguard Christians from persecution in Sudan or Indonesia.[/b]
[b]But because Kennedy was a Catholic—and for no other reason[/b]—he had to go much further, to stand before a hostile audience and effectively [b]renounce his faith,[/b] or at least its role in forming his conscience. ([b]Proposed U.S. Appeals Court Justice William Pryor is currently being subjected to a similar religious test[/b].) Kennedy’s craven surrender—and for all its high-flown Pierre Salinger rhetoric, that is precisely what it was—helped Kennedy carry the South.
This ugly moment in which bigotry reigned triumphant inspires Blow with nostalgia—and he holds it up as a standard which should be applied to every Catholic in public life (and presumably in the voting booth). [b]Stooping even lower, Blow points to the genuine abuses which occurred in Boston and other dioceses to suggest that the Vatican has no moral credibility to speak on sexual morality ever again, since it has “become a church of bigotry and buggery[/b].” Thanks, Dick.
Noting that close to a thousand abuse accusations were found in Boston, [b]Blow conceals a crucial fact: that this total accounts for some 60 years, with many of the charges unproven (and by now unproveable). If one looked at the records of a similar large institution with a lofty mission—say, the Boston Police Department—I wonder how many unproven accusations of brutality or corruption one could find. However many turned up, would that mean that Boston police could never again enforce the law? That the city of Boston itself should stop issuing laws, since it had lost all legal credibility? [/b]
Blow would not hold any other institution but the Catholic Church to such a standard. Here again, Catholics are singled out for “special” treatment. Among Irish Catholics, this should bring back fond memories of the Penal Laws that once forbade their ancestors to vote, inherit property, or attend universities until the early 19th century—[b]and the still-standing British law that forbids Catholics, and only Catholics, from inheriting the throne.[/b]
(BLOGGER'S NOTE: why do we think the Brits are so much more sophistaced than the US? Their state church was founded by a tyrant who wanted a divorce and killed and abused his wives).
With breathtaking gall, [b]Blow presumes to pass judgment on the consciences of American Catholics, praising them for their “tradition of picking and choosing which elements of church dogma they choose to believe.” [/b][b]Try to imagine a member of any other religion publicly congratulating Jews for disregarding the Kosher laws, or Mormons for getting drunk, or Moslems for worshiping idols, to get some idea of the dim-witted arrogance entailed in this statement[/b]. Even as Dick Blow and other Leftists pat American Catholics on the head, they’re really kicking us in the ass. And [b]I, for one, am in no mood to turn the other cheek.[/b]
[i]J.P. Zmirak is author of Wilhelm Röpke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist. He writes frequently on economics, politics, popular culture and theology.[/i]
Copyright 2003 Frontpage Magazine
Article--
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9581" title="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9581" target="_blank"http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
|
|
|
| |
| Brazil's pharmaceutical blackmail. |
| 08.29.03 (11:30 pm) [edit] |
The Brazillian government has effectively told private, international drug companies that if they don't make their drugs cheaper, they will break these companies' patents and produce generic imitations on their own or import them from a third party at a cheaper price.
And here we have another fundamental problem with government health care.
The drugs in question are drugs that treat AIDS, and they are expensive to produce--that is why they cost so much. But since the Brazillian socialist government runs the healthcare system, they cannot afford the drugs--or simply don't want to (they just tried to launch a rocket into space. The launch failed and about 40 people were killed--methinks they could have used that money more wisely, don't you think?).
So they are essentially breaking international law by threatening to steal a company's research, development, and ingenuity. Why is this bad for you?
If government acts so tyrannically, there will be absolutely no reason for companies to invest in the types of r and d that creates miracle drugs. The majority of advances in medicine and technology happen in the private sector--by creating a disincentive to work for something, the government will kill progress on drugs. Consequently, health care will be worse, not better.
Why come up with an idea at all if you can't be recognized and compensated for it?
Is this what the utopian dream of health-care has come to, stealing from others to 'keep the dream' alive? This article I'm referencing states how respected Brazil's AIDS program is--I'm sure it is, when you get to steal a private company's drugs and threaten them to lower their prices.
The same solution in Brazil is the same solution now. Why is it that people think they shouldn't have to pay for health care? I mean, they are anyway by paying taxes. Government should lower taxes, making investment and competition prosper, meaning that there will be lower prices, and provide socialized medicine to the very few that need it.
The third world is going to be forever locked in the third world because it is not embracing capitalism. I think the Brazillians should get some fiscal priorities straight. If they didn't feel like they had to launch rockets into space, they'd be able to pay for their drugs.
They just don't want to.
It's not fair what Brazil is doing. It is breaking the law. The pharmaceutical companies should not cave in to this blackmail, and if the government starts producing anyway, I'd file suit in the World Trade Organization.
The article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
|
|
|
| |
| The Dean Counterattack |
| 08.29.03 (11:16 pm) [edit] |
August 28, 2003, 4:00 p.m.
[b]Launch the Dean Counterattack
The Bushies must squelch this left-wing uprising.[/b]
A shocking Zogby poll this week had Vermont Gov. Howard Dean at a giant 21 point lead over former New Hampshire frontrunner Sen. John Kerry. That’s more than two-to-one with a 38 percent to 17 percent margin. Dean is the clear frontrunner and may well lead the Democrats next year. So, this is a wake-up call for the Bushies. It’s time for all the president’s men to aggressively defend Bush’s policies and attack Dean’s extreme left-liberal positions.
So far, Dean has been relying on a relatively narrow base of voter support — [b]largely Bush-hating, anti-war liberals who make up about half of the Democratic party and a third of the electorate[/b]. But Dean is well-funded and he has quickly become the darling of the liberal media. Following his successful rally in New York’s Bryant Park this week, the New York Times saw fit to run a huge frontpage story with a color picture of the candidate. [b]Meanwhile, a story on Bush’s excellent speech at the VFW convention — where he emphasized a stay-the-course commitment in Iraq —was placed below the Dean story with a much smaller headline[/b].
In the long Times piece on Dean you had to go 23 paragraphs deep to find a statement on the candidate’s basic policy positions: [b]universal health insurance, opposition to the Iraq war, balanced budgets, tax-cut repeal, affirmative action, and gay rights. This is not a winning combination, as numerous moderate Democrats point out. Still, if Dean’s the one, administration spokespeople should start underscoring the extremism that defines his campaign.[/b]
For example, Dean’s universal health-care insurance is Hillarycare. [b]It’s the same government-paid health insurance that’s been a disaster in Western Europe and Canada. [/b]And it’s the same socialist proposal that [b]was defeated handily in a Democratic Congress ten years ago.[/b]
[b]True patient power requires health-insurance choice and market competition along with tax reform[/b]. It will be incumbent on the administration to state this clearly. That means coming out in favor of the House bill on Medicare and prescription drugs and strongly opposing the all-government-all-the-ti me Ted Kennedy version in the Senate. Linking Dean to Sen. Kennedy makes sense — not only on health care but also on taxes and the war. The Vermont liberal is very much in Kennedy’s far-out orbit.
On the economy, a strong recovery is building
momentum. But the president’s economic advisors are not aggressive enough in touting the rebound. [b]Gross domestic product grew a surprising 3.1 percent in the second quarter, with hefty consumer and business spending increases. Many economists now expect 4 to 5 percent economic growth between now and next year’s election. Yet Bush advisors seem reluctant to tout the obvious turnaround in both the economy and the rip-roaring stock market. Because of their reticence, media headlines continue to sow economic doubt.[/b]
Newspapers, meanwhile, exclaim that new budget-deficit estimates are another chink in the Bush re-election armor. The headline “Leap in Deficits Instead of Fall Is Seen for U.S.” was on the very same Times front page that featured Dean’s giant color photo. But the new Congressional Budget Office estimates show a huge drop in projected deficits beginning in 2005 and extending for the next eight years. By 2010 the deficit is projected to be less than 2 percent of GDP. By 2013 the CBO estimates a $211 billion surplus.
[b]At roughly 4 percent of GDP currently, the U.S. budget gap is only slightly larger that the fiscal red ink posted by France and Germany. [i]Of course, they didn’t fight a war.[/b][/i]
Importantly, the CBO underscores the point that slumping economic growth is the largest source of the problem, and recovering growth is the largest source of the solution. [b]The Bush strategy of across-the-board tax cuts —which are responsible for only one-fifth of the temporary deficit bulge —were the correct economic-growth solution for fiscal imbalance and the recession cycle.[/b]
Yet if Dean’s high-tax policies were actually put in place they would wreck the recovery and doom the stock market rise. [b]His liberal domestic-policy proposals would also have grave consequences, inflating the size of government to Ted Kennedyesque proportions.
As for foreign policy, Dean would destroy American credibility for at least the next fifty years, giving global terrorists a green light to threaten our safety and security. [/b]Culturally Dean would destroy the traditional American family and the social values that keep our society intact.
Howard Dean’s left-wing uprising should be squelched before it gains any currency in the public mind. Standing above the fray is no way to do it. Neither are caustic put downs. The Bushies must dig in now. They’ve got to pull out some serious policy analysis and some long knives — before this Dean thing gets out of hand.
--[i]Mr. Kudlow is CEO of Kudlow & Co[/i].
The National Review article--
http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow082803.asp" title="http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow082803.asp" target="_blank"http://www.nationalreview.com...
|
|
|
| |
| French government health care: the toll is now at 11,435 |
| 08.29.03 (11:07 am) [edit] |
Did you know that in the year 2000 the World Health Organization rated FRANCE as the top health service?
It's true!
Meanwhile, 11,435 is the new toll of dead people after France refused to give air conditioning to its hospitals and nursing homes, acted too slow in confronting the heat crisis and generally bungled things up as only its government-run health care system can do.
And because there is, if you can believe it, mandatory government vacation in August, even more old folks died because their health care workers weren't there to provide for them.
But what is the solution, according to the clear-thinking French, the same group of people that morally lectures the US on everything? Well, shit-- more taxes! Let's get that tax rate in France up to 75%!
You've got dead bodies in warehouses, flowing out of morgues, etc. Yet the problem--government health care--is not being attacked like it should be.
This is what the utopians have in store for us. Yet and still, the Left will insist that western Europe and Canada has better healthcare than the US.
Here's the article, read it and weep-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
|
|
|
| |
| Why did 100 people die in the Najaf bombing ? For the same reasons 23 died at the UN. |
| 08.29.03 (10:45 am) [edit] |
When the US evil empire 'occupied' Iraq, they were told a couple of things. One of them was to stay away from the holy city of Najaf and its very holy mosque. If most of you remember watching it on television, there was a huge standoff when the US tried to enter the town to secure it. The Shiites didn't want the US in: they weren't necessarily opposed to the US, they just didn't want us infidels in their town.
And, when the US evil empire similarly tried to do its job and secure the UN compound, which was the holiest site for liberals in the country, the UN utopians said 'no' as well.
Both were bombed to bits by Saddam loyalists in the last week and a half.
Now, both Kofi Annan and Ahmed Chalabi of the governing council have said that it is the US's responsibility to secure Iraq. True, true. However, there is no way for the US to force itself upon the UN and the Shiites in Najaf-- the US didn't 'secure' the UN compound because it was EXPLICITLY asked not to, and did not 'secure' Najaf because it was EXPLICITLY asked not to (and would have started a riot if it did).
The US is feverishly trying to fashion an Iraqi police force, but will the anti-western Shiites accept the Iraqi police, or will they see it as a puppet of the US? On a similar note, will the UN ever recognize the governing council as anything other than a US puppet?
The fact is that the Shiites had more religious freedom under the US 'thumb' than under Hussein, and they should have let the US secure their holy sites. The UN also should have let their pride drop and accept UN security as well, instead of entrusting it to former Hussein security forces.
The US gets criticized as some big evil oppressive presence, when it is doing what everyone else asks of it. Hussein is a Sunni Muslim; he hates Shiites. It's a no-brainer that he's attack a Shiite Mosque, especially right after the Imam there pleaded for unity and cooperation with the US.
Look to Iran, too, for they are trying to disrupt US success there as well.
But 75-100 died in Najaf because it, like the UN, chose to deny US security. It chose to believe in the evil of the US.
How ironic.
Look for the UN to point to this as a US failure, when it is because we acted like the UN in the first place that these things happened.
Look for the Left to forget the facts and blame this also on the US and Bush.
The article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
|
|
|
| |
| Hamas rejects appeals to renew truce-- well now all hope is lost. |
| 08.29.03 (12:46 am) [edit] |
Hello?
Hamas unilaterally imposed its own 'cease-fire' that wasn't really a cease-fire. They still staged attacks on Israelis, including the deadly bus-bombing attack in Jerusalem last Tuesday that killed 21 innocents, including 6 children.
And why did Hamas kill babies? Because Israel killed one of Hamas' own suicide bombers. In short, Hamas retaliated for Israel defending itself from baby killers.
But in order to understand Hamas, or any Muslim, you have to understand that they don't consider Jews people. Hence you get mind-boggling quotes like this yesterday from Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi who used to be, if you can fathom, a [i]pediatrician[/i]:
"Hamas rejects the appeal (by Arafat) to resume the truce as the Zionist occupation has torpedoed the truce with their assassinations of women, children and Palestinian political leaders...We cannot speak about a truce while aggression against the Palestinian people continues."
That's ballsy to say the least: Israel is targeting those that are killing its children, yet to Hamas Israel, or the "Zionist occupation" (note: Israel existed as a state in Palestine 2000 years before Islam formed, and Judaism even longer) is committing a crime by killing the baby killers. That's A-OK.
It's just like the asinine media that morally equates baby-killing terrorists to a sovereign democratic state defending itself. This is all part of a tit-for-tat 'cycle of violence' largely the responsibility of Israel because the Palestinians 'have no choice' but to resist so violently.
Bullshit. For the past 36 years the "Palestinians" have gotten everything they've wanted--but they don't want the end to the occupation. The "Palestinians" want an end to Israel--the idea of a Jewish state in its historic homeland is anathema to the Muslims, which is why they rejected their own state in the first place when Israel was created.
Islam was never central to the Holy Land (Palestine). It is never mentioned in the Quran, and neither is Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Jewish bible, which is older than Islam itself, mentions Jerusalem over 600 times-- it is clearly the center of their faith.
To put it another way, imagine that the Jews were claiming Mecca as their own. That would be clearly wrong, wouldn't it-- Mecca is clearly THE Islamic city. Yet the Muslims claim Jersualem as their own, and they only did because of its importance to the Jews.
(If we really want to place blame on events in the 20th century, we can blame the British empire, which carved up the Middle East when it decided to de-colonize like a drunk cutting up a Thanksgiving turkey.)
Chew on this stat for awhile, folks: 1 billion Muslims in the world versus 13 million Jews.
Let's stop this moral equivalency and call the Palestinian cause what it is-- terrorism aimed at eradicating the Jewish state.
A religious war.
Such a peaceful, tolerant bunch the Muslim radicals are. Grandpa Arafat always wanted peace, but just can't resist another big pile of dead Jews.
Of course, he won a Nobel peace prize you know. But like Jimmy Carter, another recipient of the prize, he's done absolutely nothing to actually achieve peace.
Carter gave us North Korean nukes, Arafat gives us the Middle East crisis.
The article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
|
|
|
| |
| Terror stings its pal, the UN |
| 08.29.03 (12:18 am) [edit] |
[b]Terror Stings Its Pal, the U.N.[/b]
By Alan M. Dershowitz
Los Angeles Times | August 28, 2003
Several days ago I received a phone call from a Brazilian journalist who asked me to respond to the charge being made in her home country that
Israel was at least indirectly to blame for the deadly truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that killed, among others, a prominent Brazilian diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
I was not surprised at the question, considering its source. Among many South Americans, as among many Eastern Europeans, the knee-jerk response to nearly every evil is "blame it on the Jews." For example, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has blamed the "Jewish media" for the scandal involving Catholic priests having sex with young parishioners.
But the question got me to thinking: Who does share the blame with the terrorists themselves for the horrific explosion that killed and injured so many innocent people? Although the primary culprit is clearly the
terrorist group that planned and executed the mass murder, the secondary culprit is the U.N. itself.
For more than a quarter of a century, the U.N. has actively encouraged terrorism by rewarding its primary practitioners, legitimating it as a tactic, condemning its victims when they try to defend themselves and
describing the murderers of innocent children as "freedom fighters." No organization in the world today has accorded so much legitimacy to terrorism as has the U.N.
Consider the following:
• There are numerous occupied peoples around the world seeking statehood or national liberation, including the Tibetans, Kurds, Turkish Armenians and Palestinians. Only one of these groups has received official recognition by the U.N., including observer status and invitations to speak and participate in committee work. That group is the one that invented and perfected modern international terrorism — namely, the
Palestinians.
These rewards were first bestowed in the 1970s when the Palestine Liberation Organization was unabashedly committed to terrorism. In fact, Chairman Yasser Arafat was invited to speak to the U.N. General Assembly
in 1974 at a time when his organization was seeking to destroy a member-state of the U.N. by terrorism.
By rewarding Arafat and the PLO for such behavior, the U.N. made it clear that the best way to ensure that your cause is leapfrogged ahead of others is to adopt terrorism as your primary means of protest. The Tibetans, whose land has been occupied more brutally and for a longer period than the Palestinians, but who have never practiced terrorism, cannot even receive a hearing from the U.N.
• The U.N. has for years refused to condemn terrorism unequivocally, while encouraging and upholding "the legitimacy of the struggle for national liberation movements" against "occupation" — in other words, the
use of terrorism against innocent civilians to resist occupation. This has sent the message to aggrieved groups that terrorism is legitimate.
• The U.N. has allowed Palestinian terrorists to use U.N.-sponsored "refugee camps" like Jenin as terrorist bases. This has sent the message to the world that the U.N. closes its eyes to terrorism.
• The U.N. has repeatedly condemned efforts by Israel to prevent and respond to terrorism. For example, the Security Council condemned Israel for isolating Arafat in the West Bank last year, even after it was proved
that Arafat remained complicit in acts of terrorism.
This has sent the message to the victims of terrorism that if they fight back they risk sanctions.
• The U.N. has allowed states such as Syria that sponsor terrorism to sit on the Security Council and to chair important committees, while denying
Israel these same rights. This has sent the message that the U.N. applies a double standard when it comes to terrorism.
The bottom line is that the U.N. has served as an international megaphone for the perverse message that any people who feel that they are occupied
have the right to resist occupation by randomly murdering innocent civilians anywhere in the world.
Now the chickens have come home to roost. Some Iraqis, who feel that they are now occupied, have taken the U.N.'s message to heart and are engaged
in a "national liberation movement" of the kind long praised by the U.N. and are using the tactics rewarded by the U.N. against that very organization.
Now that the victims of "national liberation terrorism" are U.N. employees instead of Jewish babies, maybe the U.N. will finally come to its senses and understand that by legitimating and rewarding terrorism, they have
created a Frankenstein monster that can be turned against any nation, organization or group. Unless there is a change, no one will be safe from this U.N.-created, -fed and -rewarded monster that threatens the entire
world.
[i]Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University and the author of numerous books, most recently[/i] "Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge" [i](Yale University
Press, September 2002[/i]
Copyright 2003 Frontpage Magazine
Article-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
|
|
|
| |
| The Real Empire |
| 08.29.03 (12:08 am) [edit] |
[b]The Real Empire [/b]
From the September 1 / September 8, 2003 issue: [i]The once and future China. [/i]
by Gary Schmitt
HOW TELLING IS IT that critics (and even some advocates) of the Bush administration's foreign policy routinely refer to "the American empire" and Washington's "imperial burden"--while ignoring the fact that the People's Republic of China is the sole major multicultural empire left in the world? More than a third of China's territory is populated by non-Chinese. Its three largest provinces--Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang--are home to non-Chinese civilizations. And, throughout the People's Republic, a cacophony of languages are spoken, many of which are as far from Chinese as English is. What's more, China openly expects to expand its rule to include ocean areas far beyond its coast and the strategically central island of Taiwan. The fact that Taiwan is home to a separate and democratic state doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference to Beijing. Whatever difficulties lie in describing America's global preeminence and the character of its foreign policy, there should be no philological impediment to calling China what it is: a large empire with even larger imperial ambitions.
There are, of course, any number of reasons for the inability to see China clearly. In part, it's because China has made remarkable economic progress since the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, and analysts get overly focused in tracking the ups and downs of China's modernization. But this kind of political myopia is nothing new. For much of the last half of the Cold War, an amazing number of scholars and commentators had a difficult time bringing themselves to conclude that the Soviet Union was a qualitatively different animal from the states that populated the free world. Ultimately, that was because they couldn't acknowledge that the West was home to decent and just states, and the Soviet Union was, in fact, "an evil empire." If there was a problem then in seeing what was self-evident, it's hardly a surprise that it continues to be a problem today.
Looking past what is right in front of them, far too many Sinologists and foreign-policy strategists fail to take account of the essential character of the Chinese state. The result is a serious misunderstanding of how the People's Republic of China rules, how it relates to other states, and what its behavior might be in the years immediately ahead. To long-standing China-watcher and journalist Ross Terrill's credit, he reminds us in his new book, "The New Chinese Empire," what the obvious is: "Repeatedly, American and other officials, commentators, and scholars skip over the fundamentals of the authoritarian Chinese state. Often there is a plausible reason: culture is destiny, or economics is destiny, worthy analysts believe; politics will take care of itself as society evolves. . . . But, for the coming years, politics is destiny for the PRC." Let others describe the nuts and bolts of the present regime. Terrill sees his task as setting out China's governing architecture.
And China's politics is that of an imperial state: governing over Chinese and non-Chinese alike largely by fiat; seeking to extend that rule over even more people, if necessary by force; and insisting on its right to do so by a modern version of a mandate from heaven.
ACCORDING TO TERRILL, the ugly truth of Chinese history is that China has never abandoned the empire. Even after the demise of the last Chinese dynasty in 1911, China's new "republican" rulers, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, reverted to imperial form. At the end, both tossed aside the ideal of a federal and democratic China in favor of the top-down ways of traditional China. And, of course, once Mao came to power, any hope that China would shake off this legacy died. Mao did not create a new China, let alone a "new man" as many in the West claimed. Ruling as a "neo-emperor"--issuing deadly edicts from above, surrounded by a "court" of family and political eunuchs, and receiving homage from the nation's workers, who bowed before his picture at the start and end of each work day--Mao left a legacy that amounts to nothing short of "a counterrevolution against the 1911 revolution."
As Terrill points out, the death of Mao did nothing to bring an end to the imperial-style rule. Indeed, imperialism became more necessary than ever, from the Chinese Communist party's perspective. As the economic reforms of the Deng and Jiang era took hold, and with them, the centrifugal forces the reforms were creating, the Communists needed to maintain a strong central authority to justify their rule--and revived Chinese nationalism was the cultural glue they used. The new mandate--establishing One China and its sovereign sway over the region--required, like previous mandates, an omnipotent state authority to keep heresy at bay.
To sustain its legitimacy, Terrill points out, the new Chinese empire even pretends to be the heir to the old Chinese empire--revising history books, anthropological studies, museum exhibits, and maps to support its claims for Greater China. Contrary to expectations in the West that economic reforms would eventually lead to substantial political and civic reforms, China maintains a firm, and if need be, an iron grip on the media, the Inter-net, and political, labor, and religious organizations.
The result is a strange brew of economic dynamism on the part of individual citizens, political apathy among the population as a whole, a muted civic culture, and a form of Chinese racism. Accepting a paternalistic state, China's political and economic elites have little tolerance for notions of rights-bearing, consent-giving individuals. From this, as Terrill notes, it follows that Beijing still routinely refers to Chinese-Australians or Chinese-Americans as "Overseas Chinese," as though the decision to become citizens of some other country were nothing more than an inconvenient convention. And it follows as well that Taiwan must be part of One China--regardless of the fact that the island has never for any extended period been under China's control--because what matters is race, not popular consent.
Even in the area of the economy, where China has made the most progress toward becoming a modern state, reforms have been shaped and ultimately constrained by the political system in which they operate. According to Terrill, as of 2003, "the party-state still controls the economy, . . . considerably more than any non-Communist state in East Asia." The Chinese currency is still not a free-floating currency. And "all big industry" remains "intimately linked with the banking-bureaucratic apparatus of the state," typically living off the banked household savings of Chinese citizens rather than real profits.
In such an environment, there are limits to what progress can be made. "So long as your business is below a certain size," Terrill quotes a successful businessman, "you're pretty much left alone. But when you get big enough to attract the attention of the authorities, they soon come knocking on your door with their hands out." Power and connections now dominate China's economy, where, according to Terrill, one percent of the population owns forty percent of the country's wealth. Obligations under international-trade agreements notwithstanding, China still behaves like a mercantilist state in which political calculations rule more than the market.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that "the new Chinese empire" is a stable one. Terrill argues, as others have, that China's effort to sustain its economic growth does not rest easy with its system of governance. Toss in huge demographic, ecological, and societal problems, and one can see how the marriage of convenience between Leninism and the Chinese autocratic tradition may not be sufficient for holding the country together.
How soon this regime crisis occurs is a matter of speculation, and Terrill wisely, if somewhat disappointingly, punts on predicting how it will be resolved. By his lights, in the decades ahead, China might become a powerful fascist state, a fragmented and chaotic country of mini-states, or even a relatively stable federal democratic nation.
Of course, Washington and the rest of the world have to deal with the Chinese regime that is here now, not what it may become in the years ahead. And the question that always arises when a change in leadership has taken place, as it has over the past year in China, is whether the new leadership is open to changing the fundamental character of the present state. The short answer is we don't know, and we can't know. History is replete with leaders who, when faced with unexpected crises or opportunities, took policy turns no one could have ever predicted.
NEVERTHELESS, we do know a few things about the new Chinese leadership. As opaque as decision-making normally is within the Chinese leadership, we were given some insight into what to expect from last November's turnover in the Chinese Communist party's leadership with the publication of "China's New Rulers: The Secret Files" by Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley. Based on leaked, confidential dossiers prepared internally for the party leadership on each of the candidates for the Politburo's Standing Committee, Nathan and Gilley's book provides a rare and illuminating look into policy perspectives of the new set of leaders, their histories, and (to a more limited degree) how they got to be the "chosen ones." The picture that emerges is that whatever the discrete policy differences among them might be, they share one overriding concern: continuation of the Communist party as the governing body of China.
Paradoxically, this is perhaps best shown by the predictions "China's New Rulers" gets wrong. Published shortly before designated-heir Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as party general secretary (and eventually China's president), the book forecasts a new standing committee of seven, with Li Ruihuan, then a member of the Politburo's standing committee, moving up to the number two slot and becoming chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress. What in fact happened was nine were picked for the Politburo's standing committee, and Li Ruihuan not at all. Of the three unexpected new members, two have had strong ties to Jiang Zemin, and one seemingly close relations with both Hu and Jiang. More significantly, Li Ruihuan was known to be the candidate with the most forward-leaning reformist views, notably the belief that greater media freedom and competitive elections were necessary to force better and more accountable performance from the party in governing.
To be sure, the so-called "Fourth Generation" (following those of Mao, Deng, and Jiang) is fully aware that all is not well with the party or the country. Based on the materials analyzed by Nathan and Gilley, however, Hu Jintao is firmly in the camp of those who believe "strengthening internal party mechanisms to rectify the behavior and quality of cadres" is the correct path to take. Whatever he may become, right now Hu is not a Chinese Gorbachev.
Proof will almost certainly be on exhibit as Hu and his colleagues deal with the current crisis in Hong Kong. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, picked the widely disliked Tung Chee-hwa to be Hong Kong's chief executive. Under normal circumstances, and owing Tung nothing, Hu might have found a reason to "retire" Tung from his post. But that is not likely to happen now. In the wake of the mass march by Hong Kong's citizens in protest against the government's effort to push through laws on subversion and treason, shelving Tung at this point would suggest that Beijing was buckling to public pressure. Whatever Hu's views about Tung, this is one message he and the rest of the Politburo are not about to send to Hong Kong or, more important, the rest of China.
Instead, the residents of Hong Kong have seen the normal purge of ministerial underlings, praise from Beijing about Tung's leadership, and warnings from central government officials to Hong Kong's democrats about the "painful historical lessons" of the Cultural Revolution when people took to the streets as well. The fact that Beijing would equate the recent peaceful march in Hong Kong with the bloody, Mao-directed rampage of the Red Guard shows just how little reform there is in Hu's "reform" agenda. Whatever Tung's ultimate fate, "stability" will remain Beijing's final word when it comes to domestic affairs.
AND WHAT ABOUT foreign affairs? Is China a "status quo" power or at least cognizant that it needs a peaceful international environment and good relations with the United States to be able to address its domestic problems?
According to Nathan and Gilley's analysis, Hu and company do not view China as a "dissatisfied power" or a country looking to challenge the United States. But this first impression is somewhat misleading. As the authors also point out, China's new leaders are convinced that America's "strategic eastward movement has accelerated" and, as such, created "a great change in our geopolitical environment." From Beijing's point of view, it is not China that is causing difficulties but, rather, the United States. Expanding NATO, throwing its weight around in the Balkans and now in Iraq, establishing bases in Central Asia in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, tightening defense ties with Japan and Australia, creating a new relationship with India and, of course, continuing to support Taiwan--all of this is seen by China's elite as part of Washington's design to keep China in check. From "the leaders' statements," it appears they believe "China and the U.S. must inevitably come into conflict" and that statements by successive administrations that American "interests are served by a stable and prosperous China" are, from their point of view, "too obviously deceptive to deserve attention."
Of course, there is some basis for China's paranoia--but not much. By any objective standard, China's security situation is remarkably good. It no longer faces a hostile nuclear-armed Soviet Union; it no longer has to worry about nearly four-dozen divisions of the Red Army sitting just across its border; it has normalized relations with South Korea; it has put the open conflicts with India and Vietnam in the past; and it has established new ties itself to the Central Asian states. And, finally, Taiwan's "Republic of China" no longer claims sovereignty over the mainland and its military can do little more than defend the island of Formosa.
The fundamental problem is that China's leaders have convinced themselves--and a large part of their population to boot--that China's identity is, as Terrill argues, tied up with a fiction of their own making: One China. If Terrill is right, this fiction cannot be readily given up since it is intimately linked to the Communist party's justification for holding onto power. No issue, he points out, so "starkly focuses" the jumble of iffy historical claims, theology of One China, and thwarted national ambitions as the mainland's claim to Taiwan.
According to Nathan and Gilley, China's new leaders apparently consider Taiwan's independence from China temporary. They "optimistically believe that the rise to power in Taiwan of the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party . . . will be a passing phenomenon." Growing economic and existing cultural ties are simply too strong for Taiwan to resist the mainland's pull. Or so they and any number of American Sinologists hope.
But Beijing is not counting exclusively on this "soft" approach to integrating Taiwan with the mainland. Behind the somewhat restrained rhetoric coming from the mainland about Taiwan these days is the continuing modernization of China's military capabilities. No other major power in the world has increased its military spending, in terms of percentage, as much as China over the past decade. And those increased capabilities are directed almost exclusively at Taiwan and deterring or defeating an American intervention on the island's behalf.
Too large to ignore, China's improved military posture is beginning to worry even America's foreign-policy establishment. In May, a Council on Foreign Relations task force, led by former Carter defense secretary Harold Brown, issued "Chinese Military Power," an assessment of China's military modernization. Buried behind the reassuring general finding that China was "at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability" are several important warnings. The first is that China might use its new capabilities "not to invade Taiwan outright but rather to achieve political goals," such as forcing Taiwan into unification talks. Second, if Beijing thought the trend lines in cross-Strait affairs were not headed in the direction it wanted or expected, it "could decide to utilize force against Taiwan even if the balance of forces across the strait favored the United States and Taiwan." And, finally, the Chinese military is working to develop the means to impose "serious risks and costs on the U.S. military" if it should attempt to intervene in a cross-Strait conflict. The goal would be to deter Washington from the initial decision to intervene even if the United States believed it would ultimately come out on top in a prolonged campaign. In short, Washington policymakers should take little comfort in traditional war-planning assessments when it comes to China and a conflict over Taiwan.
THAT IS CERTAINLY the underlying message as well of the Pentagon's most recent report on China's military, "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China," issued in July. In addition to cataloguing the improvements in China's land, air, naval, and missile forces, the report brackets these findings with the general point that, although China is interested in maximizing its national power primarily by continued economic growth, this goal takes a backseat to issues of "national unity" (read: Taiwan) and "strategic configurations of power" (read: American preeminence).
To this end, China's military, driven by Jiang's frustration with the limited military options he had on hand in the mini-crises of 1996 and 1999, is hard at work devising military plans that rely on "surprise and shock," allowing, as they repeatedly say, "the inferior [force] to defeat the superior." Nor is this a case of bluff. As Nathan and Gilley report, Generals Cao Gangchaun and Guo Boxiong (the two new vice chairmen of China's ruling defense structure, the Central Military Commission) have emphasized precisely the kind of high-tech, combined arms approach to military operations that are seen as essential in any Taiwan-directed campaign. General Cao, in particular, apparently believes Taiwan "could be overwhelmed through a carefully planned and quickly executed high-tech attack from the mainland," leaving the United States with a fait accompli.
THE DANGER of course is not only that China might obtain this capability--last year's "Annual Report" listed 350 short-range ballistic missiles deployed across from Taiwan; this year's lists 450--but also that the military will convince themselves and China's leadership that it can pull such a strategy off. It's difficult to deter military planners who believe that they can overcome shortfalls in real capabilities by being cleverer than the opponents or who believe that their opponents are weak willed.
Conventional wisdom, as expressed by the report from the Council on Foreign Relations, holds that the way to avoid a crisis in the Taiwan Strait is for America to "reassure China and Taiwan" that "their worst fears will not materialize." For China, this means making sure Taiwan doesn't assert formal independence from the mainland. And for Taiwan, it means maintaining an ability to counter any use of force by China against the island.
The result would be diplomacy's version of suspended animation. But this presumes both countries will be satisfied with the "status quo" for the indeterminate future. Certainly, in the case of China, it runs counter to past threats to use force if progress isn't made on unification. As last year's party congress reiterated, "the Taiwan issue must not be allowed to stall indefinitely." If Terrill is right about the character of the present regime in Beijing, this stance on Taiwan is virtually hard-wired into the Chinese body politic.
In "China's New Rulers," Nathan and Gilley report that "since possible military action against Taiwan is a national security matter, there is no specific discussion of it in the investigation reports" that form the basis of their book. Yet, in a footnote, they point out that in a book published in 1999 by the same source that gave them the classified materials for "China's New Rulers," there are quotations from Chinese military leaders about China's ability to conduct an assualt on Taiwan. Their assessment was that they were not ready then but would be in a position to guarantee a military victory by a set deadline--a deadline "which is X'd out" in the manuscript. Interestingly, in 2000, just before Clinton left office, the Pentagon produced a report on China's military power that suggested, if current trends in China's buildup continued, the balance in the Taiwan Strait would begin to turn in 2005 in China's favor, and could well be sealed by 2010. The buildup has continued, while Taiwan's own modernization plans have stalled. In the meantime, in the Pentagon's most recent "Annual Report," those dates have disappeared. It would be worth knowing whether they did so because they no longer fall into the category of speculative judgments but have become classified intelligence facts.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM among Sinologists and even America's own military is that Chinese talk of conflict with Taiwan is just talk. China's leaders are, at the end of the day, sober realists who understand the great gap in military capabilities between their own country and the United States. Moreover, they know, we're told, the great cost they would inflict on both China's economy and its international standing by creating a military crisis.
But such assessments assume that China is well on its way to being a normal state and its leaders are not all that different from those in Paris or Moscow. Yet, if these recent publications on China are accurate, China is hardly a normal state: It doesn't rule like one; it doesn't pick its leaders like one; and it doesn't assess its strategic affairs like one. To assume it is and ignore the obvious is a dangerous conceit.
[i]Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project for the New American Century. [/i]
The Weekly Standard-- http://www.weeklystandard.com...
|
|
|
| |
| The big picture on American deaths in Iraq. |
| 08.28.03 (8:35 am) [edit] |
[b]Context
The big picture on American deaths in Iraq.[/b]
--Michael Novak
In the 118 days between May 1 and August 26, there were [b]63 American battlefield deaths in Iraq[/b]. [b]About two weeks ago, the left-wing press recognized that this did not sound as dramatic as they wished. So they started totaling all military deaths in Iraq, including those from accidents, which happen in military life every day, everywhere. This brought the total up by another 78. They're more comfortable with that total number, 141. But the true battlefield number is 63.[/b]
This is significant, because in the first stage of the war, from March 19 until April 30, 112 Americans died in combat, and 29 in various accidents. In those first 42 days, that meant almost [b]3 combat deaths per day[/b]. In the 118 days since then, there has been about one combat death every other day — 63 in 118 days. (The accidental deaths have been fairly consistent: 29 in 42 days early on, and after May 1, 78 in 118 days.)
[b]The total number of American combat deaths in Iraq since March 19 has been, then, 175. But the number of U.S. Marines killed in one single night during the bombing of their barracks in Lebanon in 1983 — the first blow of terror against America — was 243[/b]. Drawing a lesson from that incident, [b]Osama bin Laden said before September 11, 2001 that Americans have become soft and surrender prone. Plainly, this is true of some Americans; but I don't think of most[/b].
Consider: During the Vietnam War, Americans lost an average of 15 dead every day; during the Korean War, 30 every day; and during World War II, an average of 214 every day. The numbers in Iraq this year have been far below that.
Tragic for the family as each of these deaths is, the total number of combat deaths in Iraq this year comes to [b]175 in 170 days, two-thirds of those during the first 40 days[/b].
Nonetheless, it is hard for Americans watching television this summer to watch our young soldiers being picked off one at a time, assassinated really, not in battle, but in cowardly ways (a shot to the back of the skull on a university campus, a grenade dropped from a bridge into an open humvee, another grenade launched at Americans on guard at a children's hospital). Every single death hurts. The drumbeat regularity of one death every two days hurts even more.
The nine Democratic candidates for the presidency in 2004 are already campaigning bitterly on this and other "bad news" issues in Iraq. [b]Democratic hardcore voters hate George Bush with insatiable passion. The candidates who desperately need this hardcore vote in the upcoming Democratic primaries fix on bad news in Iraq like vultures.[/b]
President Bush, largely silent just now, and biding his time, has powerful arguments waiting in rebuttal. He welcomes the strategic error of the Democrats in attacking him on the issue of war — where he is far stronger than they — rather than on domestic issues, where they have advantages.
[b]For one thing, terrorist attacks all around the world dropped sharply in 2002 and even more so far during 2003.[/b]
Second, there has been no further terrorist attack in America in almost two full years. There have been multiple threats, and any day another tragedy may yet occur. But the nation is not where it was prior to September 11, 2001.
Afghanistan is no longer an open, free training ground for al Qaeda. Iraq is no longer threatening Iran and Kuwait. Also, no longer sending funds to Palestinian homicide bombers. Iran, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia are being more careful, now that they are closely watched. These are large steps forward for the Middle East. More must be done.
Since March thousands of terrorists from around the world have flocked to Iraq to wreak death on Americans. They are still pouring in, drawn like moths to flame. They hope to kill Americans. Instead, they themselves are being killed in droves. [b]In early August, for instance, in an American sweep north of Baghdad, while eight Americans were being killed, more than 300 Fedayeen who engaged them died in combat[/b].
Every terrorist who rushes to Baghdad to kill Americans is one less who is attacking Americans at home. [b]The American strategy is to fight them in Iraq, and other places outside the U.S., rather than to sit and wait for them to come to harm us in New York, Washington, or Los Angeles.[/b]
More and more middle-level Iraqi are losing their fear of Saddam and the Baathist party, and are bringing intelligence to the Americans. Even restless, hostile youths on the street are refusing to take up arms against the Americans; the reward they are being offered for killing one American has had to be raised from $300 to $5,000.
[b]Meanwhile, 95 percent of Iraq, while still bristling with privately held arms and dangerous, has brought very few deaths to Americans and others. Virtually all the killings of Americans these days take place within a triangle whose three sides are approximately 100 miles in length. [/b]This small triangle, a mere five percent of Iraq's land surface, runs from just south of Baghdad about 100 miles north to Tikrit, about 80 miles from Tikrit to Al-Ramadi, and another 80 miles from Al-Ramadi back to Baghdad.
This is the famous "Sunni triangle," Saddam's homeland, and his most-committed base, the main source of his leadership cadres, and his most trusted and fiercest loyalists. What future do these Baathist Sunnis face, in an Iraq democratically led by a Shiite and Kurdish majority? Even though their rights will be protected, and their interests represented in the new government, some of them will still have to face an unblinking justice. For how long will their scarlet crimes be remembered by those they tortured, murdered, and tormented for 30 long years? Some of them desperately fear a just society.
Still, this small strip of hostile territory will not forever hold its secrets. The call of peace and prosperity will beckon to many civilized and decent people, and age-old streams of dignified manners and peaceful commercial ways will again emerge and flow anew, even in the Sunni Triangle.
[b]Meanwhile, the United States is composed of 50 states, and every day there is an average of one murder in each of them, 50 every day. These 50 are tragic losses, too. They put the losses in Iraq in perspective. [/b]
[b]Except that the young American soldiers in Iraq are there as volunteers, who are offering their own lives so that others might live. That is what makes each of their deaths so uniquely painful to their fellow citizens.
We will never be able to honor them enough.[/b]
[i]— Michael Novak is the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for progress in religion and the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.[/i]
From National Review-- http://www.nationalreview.com...
|
|
|
| |
| Les Liberals Dangereuses-- The Left's hypocrisy on 1st Amendment, religion |
| 08.28.03 (8:22 am) [edit] |
[b]Les Liberals Dangereuses[/b]By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 28, 2003
PONTEFICATIONS
MOSES CARRIED THEM DOWN FROM MT. SINAI by hand, still warm from the hand of God. But on Wednesday morning, government minions used a cold hydraulic forklift to pick up and remove the 10 Commandments from the highest court of law in Alabama.
What should we think of this controversy? What does it reveal about politics and culture in America today? And why are Leftists hypocritically on both sides of the issue of whether to separate Church and State?
This latest battle in our culture war began when Roy Moore, without prior notice, had a 5,300 pound hunk of granite moved in the dark of night into the entryway to the Alabama Supreme Court, where until days ago he presided as Chief Justice.
Moore was elected the state’s Chief Justice after, as a minor backwater judge, he gained huge publicity by picking a fight with the American Civil Liberties Union by posting the 10 Commandments in his courtroom and refusing to take them down.
The hunk of granite he installed at the Alabama Supreme Court was also carved with the 10 Commandments. After defying a federal judge’s order to remove it and the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn that order, Moore was suspended as a justice in the system of justice he had sworn to uphold.
Moore has argued that his actions did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition of any “establishment of religion.” This part of our Bill of Rights, he says, restricts only the United States Congress, not the State of Alabama.
For better or worse, this argument was settled almost 140 years ago when the Union defeated the Confederacy to end the War Between the States. (The winners called this conflict the “Civil War,” a propaganda term implying that the war was always fought entirely inside one country and that therefore the Southern states never actually seceded. And yet, oddly, the victors held legal ceremonies to “readmit” to the Union these states they said had never left.)
Prior to that war Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun and others had argued for the doctrine of “nullification.” The states were superior to the Federal Government they had created, this argument went, and the states retained the power to nullify federal laws (including tariffs and taxes) within their own borders.
When asked if he could punish or stifle a newspaper that had criticized him, President Jefferson replied that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom prohibited the Federal Government from doing so. But, added Jefferson, the government of the state where the newspaper was published did have such power.
In the wake of the War Between the States, the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868 held that the equal protections accorded by our Bill of Rights to U.S. citizens must be honored by state and local governments. The State of Alabama has no more right to abridge freedom of speech or of the press than does the Federal Government.
The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Former Alabama Chief Justice Moore has said that this restrains only the Congress of the United States, not the Government of Alabama, and that therefore the federal courts have no jurisdiction over his 10 Commandments display.
If Mr. Moore were right, then the State of Alabama would also possess the power to prohibit freedom of speech and the press, to outlaw peaceful public assemblies, to forbid people from petitioning the government, and to establish its own official state church and banish all other religious practices from Alabama.
One of the three things Thomas Jefferson wanted to be remembered for on his tombstone was his authorship of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom. This state law abolished all official government-sanctioned churches and their power to tax those of other faiths.
“I care not whether a man worships one god or 100,” said Jefferson. “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But Alabamans have been paying taxes to illuminate, shelter and guard a granite shrine on which appears Mr. Moore’s chosen translation (for God wrote them in Hebrew, not English) of one of the Bible’s two differing versions of the 10 Commandments.
Does this constitute an “establishment of religion,” or are the 10 Commandments a statement of universal religious belief? All faiths probably would concur in saying “Thou Shalt Not Kill (more accurately translated “Murder”)? 221;
But alas, the Commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy is unique to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Buddhism, Hinduism and other major faiths have no Sabbath at all. The 10 Commandments, therefore, are not universal. Enshrining them indeed does have the effect of establishing the Western religious tradition above all others in our officially secular and egalitarian, pragmatically pluralistic society.
As a commonsense answer, imagine that Mr. Moore had walked into the Alabama Supreme Court one morning and found himself facing a 5,300 pound granite monument inscribed only with the “Five Pillars of Islam” credited to the Koran and making no mention of Judaism or Christianity. Would he regard this shrine on government property as an “establishment of religion?”
Leftists cheered wildly as the moral strictures of the 10 Commandments were removed from the Alabama Supreme Court. It is easy to see why. If people decided to believe in those rules – especially the Commandments that prohibit stealing and the coveting of your neighbors’ property – the Democratic Party, with its endless use of envy and class warfare and discriminatory demands to “tax the rich,” would vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The Left is a diseased ideology of darkness that cannot survive in the pure light of moral clarity.
But in Alabama those same Leftists see nothing wrong, and instead embrace, another merger of Church and State. Governor Bob Riley, nominally a Republican conservative, is seeking a $1.2 billion tax increase targeted almost entirely on the wealthy and on business. Why? Because, says Riley, of his Christian faith.
“I’ve spent a lot of time reading the New Testament,” says Riley, “and it has three philosophies: Love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you.”
Riley says he wants to raise taxes on the rich so that he can reduce the taxes and increase the government benefits of the poor. And to nobody’s surprise, the same Leftists who demanded removal of the 10 Commandments are wildly cheering Gov. Riley, despite his naked use of religion to shape government policy.
“What Bob Riley is doing is acting like a Christian,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of the Sojourners, a magazine so far to the Left politically that it cannot tell the difference between the cross and the hammer & sickle.
One of Gov. Riley’s strongest supporters is Democratic presidential hopeful Rev. Al Sharpton, a Leftist demagogue and anti-Semite notorious for not paying the taxes and other debts he owes.
“It is rare I would support an initiative by a Republican governor,” said Sharpton. “But I think the concerns of education – of children – go far and above partisan concerns.”
Sharpton aims to rally Alabama voters, who can cast ballots for or against Riley’s proposed tax increase on September 9th. The measure is supported by the state Democratic Party and opposed by the state Republican Party, of which Riley claims to be a member.
The head of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, has said he wants “to make Riley the poster child for Republicans who go bad. I want every conservative Republican elected official in the United States to watch Bob Riley lose and learn from it.”
As of August 24, polls showed the tax increase proposal losing by about 20 points.
According to Neal Peirce of the Washington Post, among the groups “largely opposed” to what would be a tax hike eight times bigger than any in Alabama history are African-Americans. They have learned to distrust those who utter any of the three classic lies: (1) The check is in the mail; (2) I will respect you in the morning; and (3) We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.
Is Governor Bob Riley genuinely representing Jesus or secretly serving Satan? For the answer, open your Bible to Matthew 6:1-5. Does Bob Riley have a sinister motive and secret identity? For the answer, open your Bible to John 12:3-6 to learn everything that any Christian needs to know about liberal welfare policy and who those like Bob Riley really are.
As a general rule of thumb, Leftists have no objection to mixing Church and State when it serves the Leftist agenda or when the religion is not Judaism or Christianity. Have the Governor of Alabama demand higher taxes in the name of Jesus? Terrific. Have taxpayers subsidize “art” made by submerging a crucifix in urine? No problem. Celebrate the pagan witchcraft holiday of Halloween in public schools where Passover and Christmas are verboten? Hey, trick or treat.
Let Democratic candidates campaign from the pulpits of tax-exempt black churches and gather money using the churches’ collection plates? Why not? Bill Clinton only removed the tax exemption from a Christian church that criticized him. Come to think of it, do we have separation of Church and State when the Internal Revenue Service can decide who is or is not a valid church worthy of tax exemption? This is a life or death quesiton, because, as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall long ago (in McCulloch vs. Maryland) ruled, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”
Spend tax dollars to erect images of the pagan Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, as the California legislature just did despite a $38 billion budget deficit? The ACLU sees nothing wrong with that.
Which reminds me, why is the ACLU not screaming its head off about Church-State separation in the California legislature? On the verge of passage there is a freaky piece of legislation nicknamed the “Sacred Sites Bill.” If enacted into law, Senate Bill SB 18 would create a powerful new entity called the Native American Heritage Commission, controlled by Native Americans, with the power to regulate development on any land that includes OR IS CLOSE TO an Indian “sacred site.”
The proposed law is amazingly vague. What is a “sacred site?” It is whatever Indians say it is. What is “close to?” That is for the courts to decide. What does this Commission’s regulatory power mean? It mig | |
