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Circulated via email, from Gary Bauer—AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL MELTS DOWN:
Amnesty International has gone from being merely irritating to now making obscene charges. On the eve of Memorial Day weekend the human rights group compared the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet Gulag (prison system.) For good measure they also urged that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Attorney General Gonzales and other U.S. government officials, or “architects of torture” as they referred to them, be brought up for charges of war crimes.
Even the liberal Washington Post was astonished and accused Amnesty of having “lost its bearings.” Actual prisoners who survived the Gulag, like Natan Sharansky, quickly reminded us that the Soviet Gulag brutalized tens of millions of people. Millions of those who entered that Russian government-sanctioned hell on earth died of torture, starvation, exposure or execution. As the Post points out, if Amnesty wants to find something comparable to the Gulag they could look to “the labor camps of North Korea, …China’s Laogai…or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
Meanwhile at our “gulag” at Guantanamo Bay the “scandal” is about whether a Koran was inappropriately handled – a Koran that was one of hundreds we supplied to the prisoners! Guards who have on occasion violated interrogation guidelines have been charged and punished. Can Amnesty International really be this blind?
One final thought. The inmates of the Soviet Gulag were people who, by and large, simply wanted freedom. For that they suffered horrible torture and death. The prisoners in Cuba were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in the wake of the vicious Al Qaeda attack on our homeland. It is a testament to the values of Western Civilization that they are still alive.
Gary Bauer
The Washington Post article Bauer quotes is here.
I’m surprised they didn’t trumpet this announcement. They could have made a media event out of this. This has been one of the biggest mysteries in MSM for decades. Washington Post confirms ‘Deep Throat’ ID:
By GREG SANDOVAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SANTA ROSA, Calif.—The Washington Post said Tuesday that a former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, was the confidential source known as “Deep Throat” who provided the newspaper information that led to President Nixon’s impeachment and eventual resignation.
(via Memeorandum .)
This line is just for testing the new FeedBurner rss feed.
Ambient Irony points out this poem by Rudyard Kipling:
Danegeld
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
The methods of terrorists—killing civilians—may be relatively recent, but the strategy is age-old. Putting up with it just means, that you never get rid of the terrorists.
I finally saw Star Wars Episode III this weekend. It’s really good. It’s like the previous two were just ways for George Lucas to limber up and remember how to write and direct movies. I hope he makes a lot more now.
Little kids are very impressionable, and I have no doubt that lots of kids will try to find life lessons in this. We can consider what it is they may be learning.
...SPOILER SPACE… MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD…
The Bad
Always Avoid Absolute Statements
Anakin: “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy!” Obi-Wan: “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!”
This is the most dangerous one, I think, since many kids will start thinking, “Absolute statements are all bad.” Many won’t realize that “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!” is of course an absolute statement, and is therefore absurd.
Some Heros Aren’t Supposed to Have Kids.
In Episode II it was established that Jedi aren’t supposed to have kids. That’s so uncool. What does that teach a kid? Of course, it’s absurd again, since the Jedi ability to use The Force is inherited. (LYT pointed that out to me).
The Good
If You Betray Your Friends You Hurt Yourself
Anakin’s fear that his wife Padme would die came true only because he betrayed his friends. At the end of the movie the doctor says that Padme’s in perfect health and they can’t explain why she’s dying. It appears that she’s dying of a broken heart over Anakin’s having done evil. If he’d been honest, Padme would have lived, and the thing he feared would never have happened. This one is really good, and may be one reason why the movie feels uplifting, even though the good guys lose almost everything.
If You Betray Your Friends You Hurt Everyone Around You
Anakin’s betrayal of the Jedi costs him all of his friends, costs him his wife, drives him into the employ of a villain, and does a great deal of damage to the lovable, beautiful Star Wars universe. Again, this is really good for kids to learn.
Find the High Ground
Surely one of the moments kids will think over the most is the conclusion of the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan: “It’s over Anakin, I have the high ground.” Anakin: “You underestimate my power!” Obi-Wan: “Don’t try it…” Anakin jumps and his legs are cut out from under him. I’m sure some kids will notice that “having your legs cut out from under you” is a common expression, as is, “not having a leg to stand on,” meaning, you don’t have a good basis for your beliefs. “High ground” is also a phrase used with reference to discussion, meaning the position that helps all the people involved. I think some kids may learn some generosity, forgiveness and nobility from Obi-Wan’s effort to try to keep Anakin from being hurt. And they may also learn that not having the high ground leaves you in an indefensible position. I’d hesitate to show this scene to kids, since some could find it horrifying. But if it’s not too much so for a kid, I guess he or she could learn some good things from it. Of course, they may also learn, “you may have to yell at your family members sometimes,” which in my personal view is silly. But family members being mad at each other is common in drama.
So there’s a lot of good stuff there. Hopefully, for many kids who might be susceptible to the first two items I noted, the absurdity of those items will make them self-cancelling.
This country owes its freedom to the skill and bravery of our soldiers.
Les Enfant Terrible points out David R. Usher’s insights into why gay marriage is destructive to society, including:
America has unsuccessfully wrestled with welfare problems for years, and so has the National Organization for Women. Their plan is to reform welfare by creating the married two-mother “super-family”, making the economics of the traditional “two-parent” family work for any two-mother married household regardless of sexual preference.
I call this arrangement a “super-family” because it would have six sources of income: the incomes of two married mothers, two sets of child-support orders, and two sets of welfare entitlements. Heterosexual marriages have only two incomes, and would clearly be an economically inferior choice.
Think about that. Under current law, two women could have children by men, leave the men, marry each other, and now they have six sources of income: “the incomes of two married mothers, two sets of child-support orders, and two sets of welfare entitlements”. One may consider this unlikely, but it’s not unlikely if society encourages it and rewards it financially. It is an established management principal that what gets measured (and rewarded) gets done. Here, there would be measurement and reward. The result: half of society (the males) are attacked and even oppressed.
This one is a jaw-dropper:
We already know that single fathers represent less than 10% of all single-parent households. This is not because men walk away from the family or do not want to be parents. It is because when a child is born out of wedlock, custody automatically goes to the mother. In divorce, we see similar single-father household statistics – over 75% of divorces are filed by women. The 10% of fathers who do have custody occur usually because the mother did not want custody.
Coupled with:
Heterosexual marriage prevents segregation along gender lines. We have not yet realized that the “divorce revolution” is really a misnomer for gender-segregation – with extremely high costs. Divorce and non-marriage are the primary predictors of poverty for women and children, along with a wide array of expensive, intractable social problems.
In other words, encouraging divorce has been disastrous for women.
How about this:
If two men married, they would not be able to have children. We can say decisively that Goodridge creates inequality by making all men a reproductively subordinated class, who perhaps could only become legitimate parents through adoption. Adoption is not reproduction, and cannot be considered an equalizing factor.
Coupled with:
It is clear that proponents of same-sex marriage are selling gender segregation, in a manner not unlike Stephen A. Douglas’s losing argument before the civil war suggesting that popular sovereignty made slavery merely a matter of choice.
What gets measured (and rewarded) gets done.
Check this out:
Marriage is the first, and the greatest guarantor of human equality in history. It is the only civil rights institution that eliminates all natural and culturally-imposed social, economic, physical, and gender disparities of men and women. It is heterosexual marriage which forms the whole cloth of the human race.
In marriage, it matters not who can bear children, who can financially support the family, or who can fix the SUV. The differences of the sexes are completely equalized and harnessed for the overall good of society, the economy, and the raising of children.
I will conclude with another quote from Usher:
Marriage is the constitutional construct creating a place for men in family and society. Margaret Mead expressed this decisively when she said; “Motherhood is a biological fact, fatherhood a social creation”. The reason why marriage between men and women is an unfettered constitutional right is because its equalizing power is uniquely fundamental to the success of the human race and society itself; where this absolute right does not affect anyone adversely because it is totally inclusive of both sexes.
...We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace.
What gets measured (and rewarded) gets done. In the case of encouraging gay marriage, the resulting effect on society would be disastrous. Indeed, it already has been, as noted in this previous post:
...gay rights was strongly correlated with demographic decline: 5 (50%) of the 10 most rapidly dying states and 6 (32%) of the 19 dying states have gay rights …. No growing state has gay rights.
Usher has identified some of the reasons why gay marriage has been opposed by human societies throughout history.
Sayet Right notes that the hosts of Air America seem proud to announce that they really are ignorant of the facts:
Then, after a break for the news, Janeane Garofalo began her program with a vicious diatribe against Tom DeLay. She went on and on attacking him and calling him names—never once, of course, offering any facts or evidence to back up her hate.
And then we found out why. She didn’t know who Tom DeLay is much less what he might or might not have done.
I’m going to have to paraphrase here because I was driving in my car and not taking notes but the great voice of Liberalism said something to the effect of “and, of course you all know who Tom DeLay is, right? He’s like, the majority leader or, like the whip or something in the House or the Senate or something…I don’t know…”
Sayet Right begins the post by noting:
I was listening to Air America yesterday for about as long as I could stand it. It was coming up on the end of the hour when the “nay” to cloture vote was announced. The leftists in the studio (who had apparently gathered for the news) were cheering the event (understandably) when someone “discovered” that Republican Bill Frist had cast a nay vote along with the Democrats.
For the next several minutes (until the commercial and then news break) the people on Air America began to viciously attack Frist as a hypocrite who had sold out his party for political gain. The hosts went on and on (and on and on) about how this proves that Republicans are scum.
Of course the reason Frist voted no had nothing to do with a change of position or his “selling out his party” and everything to do with parliamentary rules. Once again the Dems were on the attack (and viciously so) against a member of the United States government without having a clue what they were talking about.
Instead of praising Frist for voting in their favor, the Air America Dems attack Frist even when they think he is helping them. Surely this approaches a definition of madness.
Roger L. Simon is inviting comments on Pajamas Media Question #2 – ‘How can we be an online Joe Friday?’
I’ve just posted the following to that thread:
I think MSM has gotten in trouble partly by setting goals using words that don’t refer to anything that actually exists. Specifically, they try to be “objective.” There is no such thing as “objective.” There is such a thing as being 100% faithful to the truth, in other words seeking to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Being “objective” is what causes MSM to be unable to call terrorists, killers, and beheaders by their true names, and instead to call them radicals and insurgents. MSM believes that calling such people by their true names would be taking sides (which it would) and therefore would not be “objective.” There is no such thing as “objective”, but there is such a thing as helping a murderer by refusing to call him a murderer.
I agree with the consensus that the goal should not be to be “fair and balanced.” “Fair and balanced” appears to be another way of saying “objective.”
With regard to “honest and transparent”, I would suggest “100% faithful to the truth and documenting all facts with links” as being more specific language.
A related question is, what is our goal? Over the decades the goal of MSM has become merely to attack the government. MSM attacks the government regardless of the facts and regardless of what is good for this country. MSM therefore does a great deal of harm.
I would suggest that our specific goal should be “to help the American people, and Democratic people all over the world, lead successful lives; and to help people in non-Democratic countries find the way to Democracy and Capitalism, which have been the greatest engines for the health, well-being, and success of people yet discovered in human history.”
Setting specific goals will be a powerful means of achieving the success of Pajamas Media.
(Note—I’m currently providing Market Research consulting to Pajamas Media.)
This is one place in Iraq where go-getters are abundant and no one is waiting for a handout. Unlike much of the rest of Iraq, the men—and a considerable number of women—who ply their trade here live by a bootstraps philosophy, eagerly profiting from an equities market where daily trading volume has grown twelvefold since Saddam Hussein’s fall.
The success of capitalism in Iraq will drive Islamofascism out and destabilize dictators, oppressors, and Islamofascists throughout the Mid East, as others see what freedom is like and long to emulate the good fortune of the Iraqi people.
(via Iraq the Model. )
In mounting a filibuster against John Bolton immediately after promising not to block filibusters of judicial nominees, the Dems appear to be unreliable. From Pejmanesque:
Given the decision by Democrats to hold up the confirmation vote for John Bolton—this after assuring us that there would be no filibuster of his confirmation—Republicans may well be forgiven for thinking that there will soon be bad faith shown on The Deal (regarding filibusters for judicial nominees). As such, Republicans may as well go out immediately and state that they expect Democrats to break The Deal—thus reviving the possibility that the Senate will have to vote on whether to eliminate the filibuster.
From Frank Gaffney Jr.:
Harry Reid’s mediocrity as Senate Democratic leader was on full display in the vote Thursday on the nomination of John Bolton to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In one of the most bizarre political performances in memory, having promised not to filibuster this nominee, he announced — immediately after his party voted to do just that — that Democrats were not filibustering Bolton’s appointment.
When, minutes later, Majority Leader Bill Frist made the obvious point that the Democrats’ votes “looked” and “quacked” like a filibuster, Senator Reid reversed himself. He acknowledged that it was indeed “a filibuster” and, therefore, yet another example of his party’s deliberate effort to deny President Bush the people he wants to place in key judicial and now executive-branch positions.
Note Gaffney’s phrase, “and now executive-branch positions.” Gaffney is pointing out that, having had so much success in blocking judges via a filibuster, the Dems are now seeking to extend the filibuster technique to blocking executive-branch candidates.
And having ostensibly agreed to cease filibustering judicial nominees, the Dems immediately show that they seek to continue using this extension of the filibuster technique to block executive-branch nominees.
The Washington Times points out that the nuclear option remains available:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hasn’t given up. The nuclear option—or the constitutional option, as Mr. Frist prefers to call it—is as viable today as it ever was. As leader of the Senate, he recently made clear, he will not hesitate to trigger the constitutional option, which would ban judicial filibusters, if the Democratic minority resumes the unprecedented, systematic filibuster campaign it waged during the 108th Congress (2003-04), when the minority party denied up-or-down votes to 10 appellate-court nominees.
This declaration is most welcome.
Windows computers: “the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and … a national economic security risk” ?
That’s how computer security expert and ex-Windows user Winn Schwartau sees it.
A NEAR CONTINUOUS HEMORRHAGE OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS:
[Rumsfeld] said U.S. officials must also deal with “a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone” and “a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country.”
I wonder who’s doing the leaking. Presumably it’s not people who support the war in Iraq, who are leaking the classified documents, but it is instead mostly Dems who are doing so. However, it may be that some Republicans are doing so in pursuit of some sort of political jockeying.
In either case, it’s a disgrace, and the people doing it should be identified and held accountable.
CAR THEFT IS FUNDING TERRORISTS:
Arizona has one of the worst auto theft problems in the nation. Tonight we learn that some of those stolen cars are actually being used to fund terrorism.
Every 20 seconds a vehicle is stolen. As many as 200,000 of them leave North America through sea ports and cross international borders annually.
Some of those are making it to the Middle East to be sold by terror groups.
These are terrorists training to attack. Training isn’t cheap.
Law enforcement has discovered a new link between training terrorists and stolen vehicles.
Mikel Longman is with the Arizona Deptartment of Public Safety and is also a member of the North American Export Committee.
He says, “Interpol has identified vehicle theft and crimes involving vehicles and insurance fraud as being a primary illicit fundraiser for terrorist type activities.”
Organized crime groups are using the stolen vehicles to carry illegal drugs, some to smuggle human cargo, others to bring in laundered cash.
This is the second news story I’ve seen today tracking down how terrorists are illegally raising money. (The first one is noted here. ) This appears to indicate that we’re making additional advances toward shutting the terrorists down.
As I noted previously Harvey Kushner has reported that terrorists use sales of counterfeit items in this country to raise substantial profits.
From Josh Meyer in today’s LA Times:
WASHINGTON — When Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. John Stedman was booking a clothing store owner last year on charges of selling counterfeit high-fashion merchandise, his attention was drawn to the large and colorful tattoo on the man’s arm.
The tattoo included Arabic writing, suggesting it wasn’t a gang symbol or the mark of one of the many organized crime syndicates that have helped make dealing in knockoff goods — like Gucci handbags, Prada shoes and Louis Vuitton watches — a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States.
It turned out to be a symbol of allegiance to Hezbollah, the Islamic militant organization that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist group.
The case of the tattooed merchant was one of several in Southern California in which alleged Hezbollah operatives had been caught trafficking in counterfeit merchandise, Stedman and other experts told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
They said that suspected Hezbollah operatives in the U.S. and other groups accused of terrorist activity were raising as much as $30 million a year in America through the sale of counterfeit merchandise and other criminal enterprises, and sending unknown but substantial sums back home.
THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES BY THE BRITISH AUT (ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS) HAS BEEN OVERTURNED.
