Brother Bill opines re the BTK killer that:
Bill is showing his compassionate side. What he suggests would actually be kinder than what Rader deserves.
How's this for an amazing piece of media America-bashing? In an article on an elderly woman's birthday in Amsterdam, Reuters seizes the opportunity to shoehorn into the story a ludicrously irrelevant swipe at the U.S., from the 19th century, no less:
It's a classic specimen of a PC social announcement, one which will be taught at journalism schools to future generations of journalistic novices eager to learn how it's done. Thanks for the tip to Jonah at The Corner.
Despite the utter dopiness exhibited by the writer of the piece, it does inspire one to consider a possible career as a composer of such announcements for Reuters. It seems like easy money. Here are a few of our practice efforts in case they ask to see a resumè of our work:
You get the idea. I bet we'd win the job if we applied.
China's CNOOC, the third largest petroleum company in China (and state owned) wants to buy UNOCAL, a petroleum company in California, in an effort, no doubt, to secure oil reserves to fuel their burgeoning economy. Chevron Corp. has offered $16 billion for UNOCAL and CNOOC has offered $18 billion.
Some congressmen see this as a threat to our national security (sadly, only 40 of them.).
This is creating a dilemma that I knew would occur eventually and the implications could be huge. What we have here is a nation that has accepted US dollars in transactions for goods and services. The US dollar is a promise to pay and lawful tender for all debts public and private. In other words, as declared by the issuing country, these dollars cannot be refused.
In a capitalist economy, the shareholders of UNOCAL are entitled to receive the best offer for the company maximizing the value of their shares.
If it is the case that CNOOC (China) is not allowed to buy UNOCAL, China will undoubtedly question the benefit of holding so many US dollars as the purchasing power of this "money" appears to be limited.
A case can be made that there appears to be double standard regarding the true convertibility of US dollars into wealth. If China comes to this conclusion, it could have a major impact on all things economic in this country as the inflow of dollars from China are largely responsible for keeping our economy afloat.
Read more at the link.
Michelle Malkin calls our attention to this astonishing confabulation from the pen of Texas fantasist Molly Ivins:
Really? We're responsible for more than a million dead Iraqis? An e-mailer to Michelle Malkin totes up the numbers:
In a world where an insistence upon objective truth is seen as a droll vestige of an obsolete oppressive white male mindset, it may seem churlish of us to call attention to Ms Ivins' tenuous acquaintance with factual reality. Nevertheless, we can't help but be amazed that a nationally syndicated columnist, even taking into consideration that she's a liberal, would write such a howler. She'd have looked less foolish, perhaps, had she not made such a point of telling us that she was speaking for herself.
Strategy Page reveals al Zarqawi's plan for winning hearts and minds in Iraq:
The sage thinkers at Move On.org insist we get out of Iraq now and let the chips fall where they may. Where they'd fall, of course, is right into the lap of the people who have no qualms about threatening someone's family unless he kills himself along with a slew of innocent children. Move On doesn't seem to care, though. It's easy to blow the trumpet for retreat, of course, when it's not one's own friends and family that will be targeted for death.
It appears that Mr. Hathaway is a proponent of "Free Gold". "Free Gold" is the term given to the concept whereby gold and fiat currency coexist. In such a scenario, gold serves as a store of wealth and currency is used as a convenient means of conducting everyday transactions.
While one may say, "That's the way things are today.", that is not the case. Gold is not free to express it's true value. Central Banks have been on a campaign to sell their gold holdings into the open market, thereby depressing the price of gold and stifling the measure of inflation.
Additionally, bullion banks have leased gold to private entities at a lease rate of incredibly low levels of interest. The private entities, in turn, sell the gold (causing the price of gold to drop) and use the proceeds for other investments that pay a higher rate of return than the cost of the lease. Later, they buy gold at the lower price and return it to the bullion banks. This is known as the gold carry trade.
This practice fell out of vogue as global interest rates declined over the last five years and, to no surprise, there has been a coincident increase in the price of gold over the same time period.
From the link:WSC
Trey Jackson has links to video and audio of Ward Churchill, phony Indian, fraudulent scholar, and hero to Left-wingers everywhere, uttering these words:
Churchill denies any malevolent intent, of course, but its hard to interpret him in any fashion other than endorsing the murder of American officers. Here is an excerpt from the Denver Post story:
Now the man is advocating murder. How long will he continue to draw a paycheck from the University of Colorado and the taxpayers who help fund it?
If ever you've been inclined to think that no one deserves to be executed by the state or you have ever wondered whether evil really exists or is just an outdated religious concept, you should watch this.
Watch both parts and see if you can honestly say to yourself that this man does not deserve to die.
Buried on page A15 of the New York Times is this little tidbit:
Of course, it doesn't. The heart of the issue for Amnesty International is that Gitmo is part of a Republican initiated war on terror which the United States is fighting to win. If Bill Clinton were still president AI would be off searching for Israeli atrocities in Gaza or somewhere.
The heart of the issue, in our opinion, is why this story wasn't front page news in the NYT. After the firestorm Sen. Durbin created during last week's calumnies of the American military one would think that some contrary facts would be significant news. Evidently, though, the Times didn't think its readers would be too interested in the truth of the matter.
Speaking of Sen. Durbin, why wasn't he along on the trip to learn a little bit, ex post facto as it were, about what he was pontificating upon in his Gitmo speech. Indeed, we're surprised he didn't head up the mission. After all, it's better to be late in having facts in hand if you're going to libel your country, than to never know them at all.
Thanks for the tip to Instapundit.
It's hard to imagine, but apparently some Darwinians have been lying about their philosophical opponents, and the California Academy of Science admits it. You can read the particulars here.
For another fine illustration of the Darwinians' passionate commitment to free and open inquiry and the search for truth see here.
Meanwhile, someone, a magician we think, who calls himself The Amazing Randi was so concerned that the Smithsonian Institute was going to show the new video The Privileged Planet earlier this month that he offered them $20,000 not to do it. The Privileged Planet, based on a book of the same name, presents what's commonly known as the anthropic principle, the idea that the physical properties of both the cosmos and the earth seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Fearful that such information may incline impressionable viewers toward the conclusion that the universe is not just all an accident, Mr. Randi is willing to pay "hush money" to the Smithsonian to suppress these subversive ideas.
What a great argument for materialism! Why hasn't someone come up with this before: The universe is not designed because I've got more money than you do! It's bound to convince somebody, probably.
Anyway, David Berlinski, inspired by Mr. Randi's clever strategy for persuading people of the intellectual superiority of materialism, has decided to capitalize, as it were. He writes The Amazing Mr. Randi the following letter:
All this has got us to thinking. We wonder how much The Amazing Mr. Randi would pay us not to post anymore pieces on Viewpoint on the topic of Intelligent Design. Not that we can be bought or anything.
President Bush gives an important speech on the War on Terrorism and our local paper runs this headline over its front page story last night:
Dems: Bush Milks False Sept. 11 Link
For the editors at the York Dispatch the knee-jerkingly negative Democratic reaction is the most important aspect of the President's address. It's the key element of the story. Why not choose a headline like: Bush Vows to Stay the Course or Bush Stands Firm? Could it be they didn't run something like these because that would have made the president seem strong and resolved and, well, that's just not the image of GWB that our local paper wishes to project.
Indeed, the AP report that followed the headline was more about the Democrats' reaction to the speech than about the speech itself. It's another example of why people are just about at the end of their patience with the way the traditional news outlets package their product.
Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and other highly acclaimed theatrical works is very much opposed to the Iraq War. She helped form the group New Yorkers Say No to War, joined the artists network of Refuse and Resist! a Maoist group, and lent her name to the Not in Our Name antiwar coalition, also organized by Maoists. In one interview, Ensler's hysterical response went like this:
No doubt she could. When one is not bound by the constraints imposed by reality one can expatiate indefinitely about anything. Where, we wonder, does this woman get her information about the comparative status of women under the Taliban and now? Were Afghan women better off when they could be beaten or killed for wearing cosmetics or going out in public without a male relative as an escort? Were they better off when they were considered to be their husband's property and had no political rights at all?
What makes Ms. Ensler think that women are worse off in Iraq now with the rape rooms gone, economic opportunities for women burgeoning, and political freedom and the vote available to women for the first time in their lives, than they were under Saddam when they had no protection from the depravity of Hussein's henchmen?
I wonder if Ms Ensler has taken a poll among Afghan or Iraqi women and asked them whether they thought they were better or worse off now than before 2002. I very much doubt it because I very much doubt that she's really interested in finding out the truth. It wouldn't fit with what she already knows.
A friend and former student is among those who is deeply troubled by what he sees as human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay. He forwarded me a series of articles from which he draws the conclusion that Gitmo is comparable in its treatment of detainees to the Soviet Gulag. I suggested to him that he read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. He replied with an excerpt from Gulag that recounts some of the psychological methods employed by Soviet interrogators in the Lubyanka and Lefortovo prisons under Stalin and argued that their similarity to what went on in Gitmo puts them on the same moral plane.
Here is my reply to that followed by my friend's rejoinder:
R,
Thanks for the article you recommended (http://reasonablereflection.net/meadesmaxim/99/), but I'm afraid I don't see how the excerpt from the Gulag Archipelago supports the point you wish to make which is that American detention camps are comparable to the Soviet Gulag of the thirties and forties.
In the excerpt, Solzenhitsyn details methods that interrogators employed against Soviet prisoners. They are evil, to be sure, but their heinousness lies (for the most part) not in what was done but rather in to whom it was done and why it was done. The victims of these interrogations were innocent clergy, ordinary believers, dissidents, and anyone else that Stalin deemed insufficiently eager to embrace his regime. Everyone, including the interrogators, knew these people were innocent of any real crime. They were subjected to being "cursed at" etc. because the interrogators were required to get "confessions" out of them to save appearances and therefore had to break their will to resist. What was done to them was wicked primarily insofar as the victims were innocent and the rationale was so unjust.
The detainees at Gitmo, on the other hand, were believed to have information that could prevent acts of murder of innocent people. It's hard to overstate the moral difference this makes. To the extent that the detainees had females "invade their space" or were deprived of sleep in order to get them to divulge this information, these treatments were of a different moral level altogether than similar tactics used at Lefortovo and Lubyanka. In Moscow these tactics were employed against simple peasants. At Gitmo these tactics were employed against mass murderers.
Have there been times at Gitmo when interrogations crossed the line? Possibly, but every allegation of such behavior is investigated and when appropriate the offenders are disciplined. How often do you think that happened in the Gulag of Solzhenitsyn's experience? Even if there have been some incidents of abuse, there are no doubt similar incidences in every prison in the United States. Is the entire American prison system comparable to the Soviet Gulag?
Remember, in the real Gulag prisoners subsisted on a daily diet of one piece of moldy bread and a bowl of watery gruel. The bread often had maggots and beetles in it for which the prisoners gave thanks since the bugs enabled them to get a few more traces of protein into their system. There were scarcely enough calories in this diet to keep people alive and so millions died horrible deaths from starvation and disease. Millions more were permanently damaged, physically and psychologically by their suffering. The survivors emerged from their hell emaciated wrecks.
In the real Gulag the prisoners worked every day digging at frozen soil with nothing on their bodies to defend against the cold except for a few tattered rags. Frostbite and gangrene were common. They couldn't sleep because they couldn't get warm on the freezing cement floors of their cells. They lived in squalor and constant numbness and hunger. If they hesitated or staggered under their load of pain and suffering they were often beaten by their guards for sport.
In Gitmo, by contrast, the prisoners eat better and live more comfortably than do our soldiers in the field. They have menus that include glazed chicken and rice pilaf. The diet is tailored to Islamic requirements. The average detainee has gained 10 to 15 lbs. since his internment.
The prisoners are clothed and shod. Laundry is done for them. They're called to prayer five times a day. Religious accoutrements like prayer rugs, beads, and Korans are provided by American taxpayers and delivered with gloved hands in deference to the Muslims' belief that their captors are "unclean."
Doctors are on hand to address medical complaints and they receive hospital care when they need it. No detainees have died at Gitmo.
To compare Gitmo to the Soviet Gulag is not only factually grotesque and a slander on American troops, but perhaps worst of all, it trivializes the horrific deaths and suffering of millions of kulaks who would have regarded Gitmo as a paradise and would have counted themselves blessed by God had they been transferred into such a place.
I'm sure that that's the last thing you want to do, R, but it is nevertheless implicit in your claim that Gitmo is in any significant way comparable to the chain of Siberian labor camps run by Stalin.
-----------------
Mr. C,
You write:
I think this position is very morally problematic. The destruction of a man's mind is no passing matter, no matter whom it is done to or why. The question of who the victim is seems to me to be utterly irrelevant--it is no less immoral to rape a rapist for sport than it is to rape an innocent for sport. God loves all His children equally. Motivation, of course, does have moral weight, but if the action is truly brutal in nature, as is the destruction of the mind of a man and the robbing of his dignity, then I think the old saying that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" must be taken seriously. We are not justified in doing anything we please to mens' minds merely because our intentions are good--there lies the road to lynchings.
A principle of humane law is that suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Not a shred of evidence has been offered for the guilt of a single person detained as an unlawful combatant by the United States military. Furthermore, large numbers of detainees have been released without charge after years of detention and brutal interrogation. What right do interrogators have to brutalize these men? Why do we assume that the ones still in detention are guilty given the large number of admitted mistakes?
Do you think that Stalin employed no communist true-believers who thought priests and dissidents were a threat to the true and the good? Scores of documents suggest that detainees give false confessions to end their brutalizations. What, precisely, other than subjective judgments about the interrogators' mindsets, is the moral difference between the Soviet and American gulags?
Are we to believe that none of those detained at Lefortovo and Lubyanka were actually suspected of plotting violence to depose state socialism? (Terorists hate our freedoms...dissidents hated their equality, no?)
Can you provide a shred of evidence that a single person detained as an enemy combatant by the U.S. government is guilty of murder? Why do the hundreds released without charge not count as 'simple peasants'?
The vast majority of the tactics Solzhenitsyn describes are explicitly allowed by U.S. policy and used with impunity. Regardless of those that are counted as "crossing lines," the fact remains that even the approved tactics are capable of the utter destruction of the human mind. That is a great evil.
Furthermore, prisoners accused of a crime have recourse to the courts to dispute their reason for detention and their treatment while detained. Enemy combatants, especially those held in secret or kidnapped, have no such rights. They are entirely subject to the cruelty and sadism of their interrogators.
As long as the United States government continues to sanction 1) the holding of prisoners indefinitely without charge, 2) the holding of prisoners in secret without access to lawyers or courts, 3) mental torture which breaks the spirit, and 4) kidnapping, it remains the operator of a Gulag. When it stops sanctioning those war crimes, I will consider the Gulag closed.
If your point is merely that the United States government is not known to sanction forced starvation, I will agree. However, the United States has indeed condemned thousands of persons to physical and psychological agony for the remainder of their lives. An Afghan detainee was kicked several thousand times in the course of a few weeks, another was boiled alive. An Iraqi had lit cigarettes placed in his ears. And thousands undergo the daily mental torture, with full sanction, that Solzhenitsyn described as breaking mens' souls. Maher Arar will never fully recover from the horrors of his treatment at the behest of the United States.
Numerous detainees in Iraq have died of exposure. We routinely deny detainees the ability to sleep for periods of over a week. The intervention teams at Gitmo are described in the FBI memos as routinely beating detainees for sport.
Glazed chicken is an MRE option, eaten routinely by soldiers in the field. And being fed, even force fed, is little comfort when one faces daily physical and psychological torture which includes the denial of sleep, near drowning experiences, being chained to the ceiling by one's wrists, and being beaten for hours on end.
Routinely detainees lose the privilege of time to pray if they do not cooperate with their interrogations. If they do cooperate, of course, they are given food, sex, time to pray, whatever they please. Doesn't that smack of forced confessions to you?
Over one hundred have died in deaths ruled homicide by military coroners in other detention facilities around the world.
How does facing up to the criminal conduct of the U.S. government, the CIA, and certain elements of military intelligence slander American troops? Whom does it slander? Those who are perpetrating criminal conduct and wish to plea-bargain down their offenses?
As Solzhenitsyn describes, prisoners often felt the same way about being transferred from one Gulag prison to another. That does not mean that those prisons in which the horrors were less totalizing were not an element of the same moral evil.
My claim is based explicitly on the four elements of similarity noted above. Any system of prisons which collects kidnapped persons and holds them indefinitely without trial or charge while destroying their minds for the purposes of the captors is a Gulag.
R
There'll be more to come, I'm sure.
Lest in watching the evening news you succumb to the doom and gloom about Iraq that is being purveyed there Arthur Chrenkoff has posted his 30th edition of Good News from Iraq. The picture coming out of that country from people who are actually there is completely different than what you hear from the senate Democrats and others who get their information from the New York Times and Washington Post.
Here's just one minor example of the way the MSM distorts the news from Iraq: Spec. Matthew Rosebaugh of the 82nd Airborne recalls a story wherein the media reported that only 40 percent of homes in a particular region have running water, giving the impression that the United States is doing little to undo the damage caused by the war. He points out, however, that before the war the figure was only 20 percent.
Why not report that the availability of water has doubled since OIF?
Strategy Page offers interesting insight into the difficulties with, and progress of, the development of an effective Iraqi police force. The courage of these men is truly astonishing:
They are risking everything because they trust that we won't abandon them. Thank God that the president at this moment in history is someone determined to stick by these brave men and help them save their country and their people from the savagery of the radical jihadis. Thank God the person making the decisions about our policy in Iraq is not one of those calling for withdrawal timetables or precipitous pullouts. Thank God he's not one of those prattling about "quagmires" and "chaotic conditions" and "no end in sight." Such is the rhetoric of timid men and nations who history either forgets or looks upon as losers. Thank God the president is a man who is doing what he believes is right and not what he thinks is politically expedient. It is such men who, despite their flaws, history esteems.
According to the Treasury department, the U.S. government took in a single-day record $61 billion in tax receipts on June 15. This surpassed the previous single-day high of $56 billion set on December 15, 2000. The recent surge in tax revenues is not just a one-day event. Fiscal year to date, total government receipts are up 15.5 percent, the fastest rate of increase on a comparable FYTD basis since 1981. The difference between the growth rate of tax revenues and the growth rate of government spending has widened to 8.4-percentage points, the largest since late 2000 when the budget was in surplus.
Economist Michael Darda argues that the Bush tax cuts are the reason.
This would be so sweet if it comes to pass:
PRESS RELEASE--
Justice for the little guy. What an extraordinary concept. We should all e-mail our support to Mr. Clements.
After Kelo we thought the Supreme Court couldn't look any more ridiculous than they did in that decision, but they proved us wrong yesterday when they ruled that the Ten Commandments could be displayed outside the state capitol of Texas but not inside the courthouses of Kentucky.
Read Justice Scalia's dissent here. On almost every case in which he is in the minority his opinions make the majority look like intellectual dwarves.
George Will says that the Supreme Court would look a lot less foolish if in cases like the two decided yesterday they only had the wit to say simply, "Because the display on public grounds does not do what the establishment clause was written to prevent -- does not impose a state-sponsored creed or significantly advantage or disadvantage one sect or sects -- the display is constitutional."
Unfortunately, this sensible approach will almost certainly escape the fumbling grasp of the jurists who dominate today's Court. Thank goodness they are now in recess and can't do any more harm until October.
This article from the Washington Post gives a good picture of the role of Syria in the transit of jihadis into Iraq. Some interesting insight here:
As American operations become more frequent in the west of Iraq, Syria is going to either have to clamp down hard on people like Abu Ibrahim or risk having American troops visit on a regular basis the Syrian towns and cities close to the Iraqi border. One way or another the infiltration of men and material into Iraq through Syria is going to have to stop.
For those like Senator Dick Durbin who need a lesson on the nature of prisoner abuse we recommend this account from The Independent:
We're trying to remember whether Amnesty International has issued a call to have Chinese officials arrested and tried for their crimes. Since they urged foreign nations to arrest Bush administration officials we're sure they must have done the same for the thugs and sadists who run China, but we just can't recall it.