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August 27, 2003

The U.N. Has Promoted Terrorism - and Now is on the Receiving End of it.

An excellent article today by Alan Dershowitz (emphasis added):

Terror Stings Its Pal, the U.N.

The world body has fed a monster that now threatens it and everyone else.

...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.

...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.

Great stuff. Read the whole thing.

August 26, 2003

It’s Looking More Like the Future Every Day.

I’m looking at this and I still think it’s gotta be some sort of a put-on. Is this for real?

Japan ready to market “robot suit”

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese companies are preparing for the commercial launch of a “robot suit” that helps aged or physically disabled people walk, get up the stairs or seat themselves to relax without a chair.

In science fiction, this sort of thing has been called an exoskeleton. There was one in ALIENS. Ripley gets into it to fight the alien mother bug at the end of the movie. (If anyone has a picture of it, send it to me and I’ll post it here for comparison.)

via GeekPress.

Update: Here’s a pic of the exoskeleton from ALIENS, thanks to Bryon Scott.

What hasn’t been widely appreciated yet about Arnold’s press conference last week:

he said that the state’s own documentation of the state budget is so screwed up that none of the experts he consulted could even tell what it was saying.

[Arnold] said that when his council sat down and looked at the state budget, they were floored by what they saw.

“No one … could figure out or make heads or tails of the state budget. We don’t know what is being spent and we don’t know where.

He wasn’t talking about the budget itself—he was talking about the documentation of the budget. He said:

One thing I have learned in business is you can’t make sound decisions with faulty information.

That’s why the first thing he’s going to do, if he gets elected, is have an audit done so that people can figure out where our money is going.

If that was the only thing he did, it would be a huge contribution, and enough reason to vote for him.

Contrast that with Cruz Bustamante, who evidently thinks he can fix a $38 billion deficit with $8 billion in new taxes and $5 billion in spending cuts. That doesn’t even add up. Cruz is offering only more of the same.

August 22, 2003

James Flanigan on How to Fix the California Budget.

The brilliant LA TIMES economic writer James Flanigan has provided an informed and cogent plan to deal with California’s economic situation.

The article is titled, “No Time for Sound Bites if State Is to Be Saved”. Flanigan is usually upbeat when others are forseeing doom. If he’s concerned, attention must be paid.

High points (emphasis added):

• [Roll] back regulations and articulate a well-thought-out overhaul of the broken workers’ compensation system, including changing the very definition of an injured worker. Labor advocates will scream, but it’s the only way to make California competitive again.
• On energy policy, for instance, it should be declared that any power company unwilling to renegotiate its costly California supply contracts would be barred from future projects that involve so much as a penny in state funds. Such bare-knuckle tactics would make corporations see red, not to mention file suit, but that shouldn’t deter someone who really cares about curing what ails California.
• As for housing… [address] a tax structure that penalizes communities erecting houses instead of big-box retail centers; excessive environmental restrictions; and runaway liability lawsuits against builders of multiple-family units.
• The most important need… is for changes to the state’s budgeting process. ... keeping tight control over property taxes, the state has forced cities and towns to rely too heavily on sales levies to finance public services, including police and fire protection. Now the whole system has begun to creak. “The state today is characterized by a complete lack of fiscal discipline,” says former Democratic congressman and White House budget director Leon Panetta.

I particularly like the way he addresses the contracts Gray Davis signed with the energy companies, that are costing us an extra $40 billion. Tell them if they ever want any more California business, they have to renegotiate these outrageous contracts.

No one else yet, as far as I know at this time, has provided such a detailed and well-informed plan.

That fish in the upper left looks like it isn’t buying Davis’ act.

Fight Islamic Extremism in Iraq Now—or Here Later.

Avigdor Haselkorn, author of “The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence”, has written an insightful article about the current situation in Iraq. The article is called “Jihadis View Iraq as the Place to Slay the Great Satan—The United States must not bow in the face of escalating attacks.”

By positioning itself militarily in this area, the U.S. has turned the tables on its enemies. It seized the strategic initiative and, instead of radicals holding it and its allies hostage, it is regimes such as those in Iran and Syria that have been boxed up.

The mullahs in Tehran, for instance, who have staked their survival and Iran’s regional designs on Iran building nuclear weaponry, are now afraid to do so. They are aware that pursuing this course would probably end their political longevity. After all, the U.S. military is now poised on Iran’s western and eastern borders. Moreover, as long as U.S. forces are patrolling the Syrian border, Iran can’t use Hezbollah to distract Israel from going after Tehran’s nuclear efforts.

The Syrians have been under heavy U.S. pressure to cease their support for Hezbollah and an array of Palestinian terrorist groups. But Damascus is even more nervous that the U.S. example in Iraq the forceful disarming of an extremist regime believed armed with weapons of mass destruction signals that its vast stores of chemical weapons could become the next casus belli for the Bush administration.

...Were the U.S. to be successful in establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq and rehabilitate the country’s economy, the political danger of the new regime serving as an example to the rest of the neighborhood would have led to intensive efforts to subvert the experiment. The extensive campaign of sabotage underway in Iraq, exemplified just recently by new bombings of the oil pipeline to Turkey and the water main in Baghdad, should be seen as confirmation of this trend. It is imperative that the U.S. prevail in this conflict. Were the American forces to pack up and leave Iraq under pressure, as some have already called for, the war on terror would crumble.

If the U.S. forces were to retreat now, the perception that the U.S. is nothing but a paper tiger unable to sustain casualties would prove itself. Such a realization would open the gates to a relentless onslaught against the U.S. itself, its interests worldwide and its regional allies.

Iraq is serving as a lightning rod, attracting Islamic extremists, and those who just want to preserve the oppressive political order in nations such as Syria and iran. With the US on the ground in their own back yards, they are fighting us there, in Iraq, rather than here, on our soil.

That’s where we want them. We need to stay the course in Iraq.

August 20, 2003

I’m Voting for Arnold.

Arnold just held a brilliant press conference. He was surrounded by a team of advisors – roughly 8 on his left and another 8 on his right. To his immediate left was Warren Buffet; to his right was George Schultz. He said he was going to cut spending rather than raise taxes.

“I will not raise taxes,” Schwarzenegger said in his remarks to reporters after the meeting with his advisors. “Economic recovery depends on reform.”

Buffett said that the difficulties California is facing are fixable—he said California is the wealthiest state in the nation and it can be done.

Arnold said that even the mere presentation by the state of its economic status is a mess:

“No one, not even economic and academic leaders, could figure out and make heads or tails of the state’s budget,” he said.

He said in business you can’t make good decisions based on inaccurate information. He said that when he gets elected he will immediately hire an auditing firm free of political ties which will audit the state’s economic status to figure out where the money is in fact going. He said this will be a 60-day action.

“This problem was not created in two weeks. We’re not going to be able to solve the problem in two weeks, and anyone out there telling the people of California otherwise is just a typical politician,” Schwarzenegger said.

The candidate said that Californians are taxed from the minute they get up in the morning and “flush their toilets.”

“Additional taxes are the last thing we need to put on the books of the citizens and businesses of California,” he said.

Contrast that with Bustamante, who evidently thinks he can fix a $38 billion deficit with $8 billion in new taxes and $5 billion in spending cuts. Give me a break.

“Maria [Shriver] and I teach our children basic principles,” [Schwarzenegger] said. “We teach them, don’t spend more money than they have, and that is what I will teach in Sacramento.”

This is the guy, folks.

August 17, 2003

ARNOLD THE LIBERAL?

All the conservative talk-radio hosts are concerned because Arnold seems to be so liberal.

I just want to point out—we’re all used to primaries, in which the candidate hews to the party platform, committing himself to positions that are bound to alienate some of the voters of the opposing party. In primaries candidates must do so in order to be nominated. But here, there was no primary. Which puts us in uncharted waters.

What’s happening now in California isn’t a primary—it’s the election. Arnold is going for the biggest vote he can get—in a state that has gone Democratic for every major public office there is for many years. He had no need to alienate all those Democratic votes. On the contrary, he’s wooing them, like any good politician would. His adding people like Warren Buffett and even Rob Lowe to his team is most likely indicative of his wish to appeal to all the voters of California.

Republicans don’t like seeing people like the very liberal Buffett and Lowe on Arnold’s team. But he’s pursuing his goal. He means to get elected. And given the latest polls showing him trailing Bustamante by 3 percentage points, this may be the right campaign.

August 16, 2003

How California Got $38 Billion in Debt.

For starters, Gray Davis overpaid by more than $40 billion for energy a couple of years ago:

During California’s so-called energy crisis, the governor dragged taxpayers into the power business. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, ” experts estimate that California paid about $40 billion too much for power in 2000 and 2001 as energy firms jacked up prices. Adding in the $10 billion of overcharges from the long-term contracts would bring the state’s tab for the energy crisis to $50 billion.”

A lot of that $50 billion is in long-term contracts, meaning California hasn’t even paid it yet. It’s just a liability on the balance sheet. I’d have to check with an accountant (any accountants reading this are welcome to add a comment), to ask, is this $50 billion all in addition to the $38 billion we’re already in debt?

And of course, there’s also this:

As a quid pro quo for campaign contributions from state employees, California employees such as fire fighters and police officers can now retire as early as age 50, with 90 percent of their salary among the most generous pensions anywhere.

...Despite the governor’s declared “freeze” in hiring, he added 44,000 people to the state payroll.

And this:

In the governor’s first four years in office, spending increased 36 percent far higher than the 5 percent annual increase in the state’s population and inflation.

The recall isn’t a circus. The recall is emergency life support.

The Democrats’ laboratory: The host organism dies

IN JUNE 2002 , the liberal American Prospect magazine was hailing California as a “laboratory” for Democratic policies. With “its Democratic governor, U.S. senators, state legislature and congressional delegation,” author Harold Meyerson gushed, “California is the only one of the nation’s 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control.” In the Golden State, Meyerson said, “the next New Deal is in tryouts.”

...Strictly adhering to formula in California, as the private sector was bleeding jobs and money, Gov. Davis signed off on comically generous pensions for government workers. Government employees in the Golden State earn more than the private-sector workers who pay their salaries and that’s excluding the job security, health benefits and 90 percent pension plans that come with “Irish welfare,” as government jobs used to be called.

Economists refer to this backward ratio between public and private-sector salaries as “France.”

...And yet, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic Party think Gray Davis is doing a super job. Democrats have denounced the recall a genuine citizens’ revolt as a “circus.” According to recent polls, two out of three people in this overwhelmingly Democratic state want Davis out, and still the recall is being called a “Republican power grab.”

So now the question many in California are asking is, will Arnold fix it, or is he a Republican in name only?

August 13, 2003

Madness in Congress:

Congress to Restrict Use of Special Ops.

Congress is set to impose new restrictions on the use of Special Operations Forces that for the first time will require a presidential order before deploying commandos in routine but hidden activities.

...The new rules, if contained in the final version of the bill, would add a burden to the military’s deployment of Special Operations Forces by requiring the Pentagon to first obtain a presidential “finding,” or directive, similar to those required for covert-action intelligence operations.

... “We want to be able to deploy [special-operations commandos] in minutes and hours instead of days and weeks,” said the former special-operations officer. “And this will get us delays. It will make it hard to kill terrorists by turning over deployment decisions to the Senate.”

...Larry DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said he could not discuss any details of the classified Senate report.

“We’re confident that by the time Congress has finished acting on this, they won’t do anything that will make it more difficult to fight the war on terrorism,” Mr. DiRita said. “What we’re finding now is that fighting that war requires more flexibility in a number of areas, not more restrictions.”

This is an instance of legislation that would protect our enemies and jeopardize our safety.

August 11, 2003

You notice that no one on the left actually states, “We were wrong to go into Iraq.”

All they say is, “The reason Bush gave for going to Iraq was a lie.” They don’t say we were wrong to do it. How could they dare to say it was wrong to depose the most brutal mass-murdering dictator of modern times? How could they even pretend that the world isn’t safer for the U.S. without him?

Of course they can’t, and they don’t.

Check out the recent speech by Al Gore in this light. (By the way, I was searching Google for the text of the speech. It was already hard to find. Know who had it? Al Jazeerah. That’s where the link goes to.)

Here’s how Gore introduced the topic of Iraq (emphasis added):

...you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case – but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis. ...The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem.

Notice that he doesn’t dare say the war itself was wrong? He’s just going to criticize the way we went to war. He’s ‘deeply troubled’ about that.

Read the rest of the speech. Did Gore say we were wrong to free the Iraqi people? Did he say the war didn’t serve U.S. interests? Did he say the world isn’t safer for the U.S. with Hussein out of power? No.

Instead he trotted out a few easily-debunked canards and then went on to other, “larger” subjects.

The Left knows the liberation of Iraq was a good thing—and they won’t admit it.

SEA CHANGE AT THE LA TIMES?

Not likely, but they did print an article by Rush Limbaugh, which I don’t recall them doing before. It’s an excellent analysis of the reasons for the California recall.

Art Torres, California’s Democrat Party chairman, complains that the recall “just exacerbates the impression that we’re a bunch of wackos out here.”

Sorry, Art, but that impression exists because of what you and your party have done to California, not because the people, through lawful, civil and democratic means, have decided to reclaim their state.

...Californians are also voting with their feet. They are leaving the state in bigger numbers than citizens of other states are arriving. California’s population growth is because of the influx of immigrants many of them illegal. Davis’ answer is to increase taxes and cut basic services to the citizens, while increasing benefits for illegal immigrants including driver’s licenses, in-state college tuition benefits, etc.

Moreover, between 1998 and 2001, state spending increased more than 35%. California’s $38-billion shortfall was larger than the budgets of most states. California’s bond rating has been slashed, increasing the cost of its enormous debt. And during this time, Davis added more than 25,000 state employees to the public payroll.

Davis was slow to react to his state’s energy crisis for fear of offending the radical environmentalists. The infrastructure for energy production was incapable of meeting growing demand. He then purchased long-term energy contracts at top dollar, and spot market contracts during market peaks. The result: The public paid more for energy, yet faced rolling gray-outs.

The California recall effort is a legitimate, albeit extraordinary, public reaction to a complete deterioration in political leadership. It’s difficult to see how Governor (Fill in the Blank) could do much worse.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE-WINNER ELIE WIESEL SUPPORTS BUSH ON IRAQ.

From the latest Parade Magazine (no link):

“I’m worrying about terrorism, especially in the Middle East,” Wiesel, 74, tells us. “I was in favor of America’s military intervention in Iraq, because Saddam’s violations of human rights had to be stopped. Iraq must reform. It must become a democracy.”

August 09, 2003

Take some time to cool off today.

And if you like animal stories, check this out.

August 08, 2003

U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Phone Home via Video-Conference.

This is very cool. From Turning Tables, written by an American soldier in Iraq:

this one was on honest to god conference room that i’m sure was used by saddam and all of his buddies…and now it belongs to us…because we took it…

a big U shaped table…dark wood…most definitely imported…the big guy spares no expense…and every chair was plush and colorful with hand carved wood trim…there was another giant screen on the far wall…and projected onto this screen was my brigade conference room back at the fort…

i stroll in and i see the sergeants family who was in front of me saying good bye to his…a big family with 3 kids and a wife trying desperately to keep her composure and get her family out of there in an orderly fashion…and then in the corner of the screen…coming through the door way…is a very distorted shape that the camera is trying to focus on…it walks like my girlfriend…it’s the same size as my girlfriend…and it just so happens that it is my girlfriend…she giggles…and i wave and smile…

i have to press a foot switch every time i want to speak so that the microphone turns off…other wise the delay will cause an echo that is killer…there is at least a 15 seconds of delay that makes normal conversation useless…speak…pause…pause… pause…pause…response…but she is there and she can here me and i can see her…

she’s wearing the ‘curious george’ shirt i bought her on the universal city walk in l.a…it fits her perfect…and her hair is beautiful…she’s had 3 hair cuts since i left…but luckily she sends me pictures…so i stay up to date with the girlfriend fashions…

we have this thing that we do…it is very silly…but its so great…it started one night when we were at a rave in l.a….to the beat i say “girlfriend” while i nod my head…and then i say “run in place”...which i do…to the beat…it’s a sign of my affection…so there i am…in baghdad iraq…running in place…in saddams conference room…so that my girlfriend can watch me over a v.t.c. on the other side of the earth…i’m sure that every network administrator who was tuned in from here through kuwait and germany and washington d.c. got a good hearty belly laugh out of my foolishness…but i did it all for the nookie…

my woman brought pictures that she ran over to the camera on her side and showed me…then she jumped up and down so that i could see her up close…the camera was up on a shelf…

then i showed her my muscles…my big ol’ arms that are twice the size as when i left…she was impressed…or she at least faked it for me…she’s a good woman…

the 8 minutes went so quick and half of it was wasted on the delay…so we got about a good four minutes of talking…but we made a life time of memories…

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