Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

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This sure sounds like adhering to an enemy of the United States, giving them aid and comfort. One wonders if this makes them “illegal combants.” As the chief law enforcement of this country, Bush has an obligation to enforce the treason statutes.

ANKARA (Reuters) - A group of around 50 Western anti-war activists received visas Tuesday to enter Iraq where they plan to form "human shields" in an effort to deter a possible U.S.-led attack on the Arab state.

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“I am an American human shield on this trip to Baghdad to try and stop this war,” said volunteer John Rosse.

The first in a new monthly series of polls for The Times conducted by Populus shows that Mr Blair is now being damaged politically, particularly among women, by his tough stand and close alliance with President Bush.

Britain goes wobbly.

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This is consistent with the Monday, February 10, 2003 “Best of the Web” OpinionJournal.com column.

My 20 years of work in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program and military industry were partly a training course in methods of deception and camouflage to keep the program secret. Given what I know about Saddam Hussein's commitment to developing and using weapons of mass destruction, the following two points are abundantly clear to me: First, the U.N. weapons inspectors will not find anything Saddam does not want them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to a degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq mainly because they maintain lucrative trade deals with Baghdad, many of which are arms-related.

Germany has had socialistic policies since the days of Bismarck, including the National Socialism Third Reich.

Uncontrolled crime seems to characterize non-totalitarian socialist countries, possibly due to a belief that law enforcement is a form of “oppression.” This may explain why crime is high in America.

Dysfunctional public institutions are also a charcteristic of non-totalitarian socialist countries.

You could say the same thing about the American “anti-war” types.

Germany labors under heavy socialist policies--high taxation and crushing regulations that suppress growth. Its economy can barely employ German citizens, and many immigrants--a lot of whom are Muslim--are prohibited from working, forced to sit idle for years on welfare. Germany needs to do a better job at assimilating its immigrants. It can do that by cutting taxes, removing obstacles to business expansion and allowing immigrants greater freedom in taking jobs and starting businesses.

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Germany isn't alone in its blinkered priorities. French bureaucrats patrol the streets at night, looking for any business with the audacity to violate the 35-hour workweek. Meanwhile violent crime goes unchecked. Like other European countries, France refuses to assimilate immigrants. Consequently, there's a large population of Muslims--many from former French colonies--who are held in poverty collecting welfare checks for years.

France doesn't take crime seriously. Prisoners, even felons serving long sentences, are allowed to wear street clothes inside prison. This makes it relatively easy for prisoners to blend in with visitors and simply walk out the front door. That's how Ismael Berasategui Escudero, an alleged Basque terrorist, was able to trade places with his brother and escape from Paris's La Sante prison in August. Guards didn't even know he was gone until the brother stepped forward six days later.

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France, Germany and other Europeans don't have the moral will to stand up to criminals at home or on the international stage. Terrorists know this, and depend on it.

This article raises the question of the nature of “hip-hop culture.” If “hip-hop culture,” and its rap music are a manifestation of “anti-social behavior as legitimate expression of black culture” why would a responsible corporation use it in an advertising campaign?

PepsiCo, best known for its cold carbonated beverages, now finds itself in hot water with the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), which has called for a ban beginning tomorrow on Pepsi and the company's other products. The reason? “The ‘cultural disrespect’ of hip-hop performer Ludacris and hip-hop culture by Pepsi,” according to a press release HSAN issued last week.

PepsiCo severed its link to former spokesman Ludacris after Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, way back on Aug. 28, 2002, challenged the wisdom of employing the rapper, calling him “a man who is demeaning just about everybody, and is peddling antisocial behavior.” “This guy Ludacris is harmless to mature adults,” Mr. O'Reilly said, “but not to impressionable children that lack parental guidance.”

After selecting a few of the rapper's choice lyrics--including one he read as “I'm DUI, hardly ever caught sober, and you about to get ran the f-- over”--Mr. O'Reilly, in full spin mode, declared himself a Coke drinker and voiced no objection to Pepsi's use of provocative sex-kitten Britney Spears, who may have made the wrong impression on a few teenage girls in search of a role model.

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My comment

The United for Peace and Justice site has a link for Little Rock, Arkansas.

An interesting historical footnote is that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

The belief that America is the world’s leading terrorist state is shared with Cambian Genocide denier Noam Chomsky.

On February 15, many thousands of protesters will assemble within sight of the United Nations building in New York to express their opposition to a war in Iraq. Their efforts will be duplicated in some 300 additional cities throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This will be the first such protest not organized by the Workers World Party (WWP), an energetic Marxist-Leninist organization that openly supports Kim Jong Il’s brutal dictatorship in North Korea. Instead, it will be run by a group called United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ), whose co-chair Leslie Cagan is an enthusiastic, longtime supporter of yet another Communist despot, Fidel Castro.

Given the manner in which the major media report the contemporary “peace” movement’s activities, the average American would never suspect that it is in fact a movement dominated the selfsame Communists that once marched in support of Stalin, Mao, the Vietcong, the Sandinista Marxists, and the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador; the same America-loathing radicals who, because they passionately deem America the root of all evil in the world, now support Kim and Castro.

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But in order to understand the mind of any movement, we must acquaint ourselves with its leaders, those individuals whose ideas animate the masses that follow them. Consider the aforementioned Leslie Cagan. She is a socialist and longtime activist who, during the past thirty years, has mobilized millions of demonstrators in rallies denouncing our nation’s foreign policies; its military-related spending; and its purportedly virulent racism, sexism, and homophobia. She is a die-hard, pro-Communist radical who proudly aligns her politics with those of Communist Cuba.

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In short, Cagan candidly sides with Castro’s Communist regime rather than with the United States, which she deems the world’s foremost terrorist nation. …

Tea-sips go Commie. Compared to the “anti-war” types the old-fashioned blowhard Texans are the lesser of two evils. The bad news is that the University of Arkansas may have the same nonsense.

LBJ’s failure to obtain a declaration of war and sharply define the line between legitimate dissent and treason comes home to roost. The “anti-war” movement is based on Yankee sentiments, so it looks like Austin has been Yankified.

By becoming a state Texas lost the right to conduct foreign policy, which the Constitution assigns to the Federal Government. This seems to be a form of secession.

If an alien drove across the Congress Avenue Bridge that links the north and south halves of Austin on the night of President Bush's State of the Union address, he might be forgiven for thinking he was in France rather than the United States, let alone in the city where Bush launched his political career. Several thousand members of Austin Against War, the University of Texas International Socialists, and the Texas Green Party lined the bridge holding signs with venomous insults directed at Bush such as “We Don't Want Your Fundamentalist Fascist Crusades Or Your Oily Wars” and “Bush is Evil, This I Know.”

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However, the barbarians in Austin aren't merely at the gates; they are in the halls of power. On Thursday, February 6, the Austin City Council passed a resolution denouncing the “unilateral” war against Saddam Hussein and calling on Bush to “let inspections work,” apparently indefinitely. Anti-war activists virtually took over the council meeting, as they conducted a nonstop Bush-bashing session in the public comment part of the meeting.

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Regardless of local public opinion, many critics point out that it is not within the purview of city governments to pass such resolutions. David Rogers of the Young Conservatives of Texas argues, “There is simply no authorization for the City Council to make foreign policy pronouncements. Austin has two representatives in Congress -- one from each party -- and they are authorized to speak to national issues. Austin City Council members campaign on local issues, not on issues of foreign policy. They should focus on the multi-million dollar city budget deficit they have created, instead of pulling cheap publicity stunts.”

Rabbi Michael Lerner has been banned from speaking at the antiwar rally in San Francisco this Sunday, February 15. One of the rally organizers, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), has stated that it will not allow a "pro-Israel" speaker to take the stage -- despite the fact that Rabbi Lerner has been an outspoken critic of Israeli policy in the occupied territories, has endorsed ANSWER’s antiwar rallies in the past, has signed the Not in Our Name petition against the war, and is widely known to be among the most progressive of American rabbis. Other coalitions organizing the rally, including Not in Our Name and United for Peace and Justice, have acceded to ANSWER's opposition to Lerner, on the grounds that they had previously accepted as a condition for participation in the demonstration the agreement that if one of the groups vetoed a speaker that all would have to agree.

As war with Iraq approaches, the so-called “anti-war” movement is gearing itself up to protest the long overdue removal of a psychopathic dictator. I say “so-called,” because closer inspection of the groups participating in organizing marches and rallies reveals that rather than protesting the war, they are using it to advance the Communist agenda.

Take a look, for example, at the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, a member of International ANSWER's steering committee. ANSWER, as readers of FrontPage know, is a front for the pro-Korean communist Workers World Party. Judging from its web site, the IFCO's real sympathies are just as red.

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What clinches the IFCO's knee-jerk leftoid perspective, however, is the link to the “Free Mumia” web page. Nothing displays the irrational fanaticism of the anti-American left more than the transformation of this murderer into a “political prisoner.” Given the overwhelming evidence of Mumia's guilt, only a fanaticism of religious proportions, or a blind allegiance to ideology, could explain the belief that he was framed by the cops because he's some sort of “activist.”

… The relative tolerance of Classical Islam has been gradually eroded, to be replaced by rigid, fanatical fundamentalism. That once beautiful culture is now decaying, stagnant at best, and unable to accommodate other religions or cultures. This sickness is now contaminating the West through the terror of Jihad.

I feel alienated from a religion that has sponsored over 30 years of terrorism, and from the flagrant and arrogant Moslem/Arab support of it. My criticism is not directed at the Koran itself, but at the current Moslem culture and community that has handed over control of Arab society to the most extreme, fanatical Wahabi Islamic sect. Many religions chose to mature out of their intolerant, medieval form. It is now Islam’s turn to seek reformation if they truly care to save their religion’s reputation around the World and to save the world from a major military confrontation. Reasonable Moslems should stand up and realize that people who criticize the current culture of Islam are not the threat to Islam; rather, the silence over and justification of 9/11 by Moslems is Islam’s true enemy.

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Contrary to popular belief, Islam is not flourishing; Islam is rotting out from its core. This is a culture in convulsions, using anything and everything from oil to airplanes and from stones to suicide bombs as weapons against the rest of the World. In my estimation, this is a sure sign of internal struggle, conflict and weakness. Instead of using reason to reform their religion and join the rest of the civilized world in peaceful co-existence, they choose violence through their ancient doctrine of Jihad.

My comment

Comments made by Noam Chomsky in Hanoi on April 13, 1970.

Chomsky should be called “Khmer Rouge” for his support and denials of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. A rational society would revile Chomsky in the same manner as the Holocaust Deniers.

Requires subscription to read entire article.

In a documentary to appear on HBO, Oliver Stone profiles his new friend Fidel Castro -- and proceeds to whitewash the Cuban despot's brutal reign.

No surprise here. The funny thing is that Castro may be behind the JFK assassination.

An interesting historical footnote is that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

At the same time, Center officials protested to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over the pending ruling in the Supreme Court over a Holocaust denial publisher who has asked the court to cancel his sentence on the grounds that “his incitement to anti-Semitism is not a racist crime, as Jews are not a race.” Samuels and Widder asked that the President take measures to ensure that Brazil’s Supreme Court not “be abused in the service of hate" and "to personally condemn incitement to anti-Semitism as a racist crime.”

On Sept. 11, 2001, Jennings coverage hit the nadir of gross pro-Palestinian bias. Regarding the video of Palestinians celebrating the World Trade Center attack, Jennings said:

“It’s an unfair comment on Islam in some respects, but it is certainly a motivating factor that the hatred of the United States, and the hatred of the United States as a patron of Israel, whether you're from Afghanistan, or whether you're from Iran, Iraq, or inside the Palestinian territories is so intense at some levels, and has become more intense in recent months, that nobody will be, very many people will not be surprised at this attack today though like everybody else will be amazed at the magnitude and success of it.”

A refreshing change from the Austin “anti-war” types.

Today, the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) and the UT College Republicans announced they will protest a lecture by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Wednesday, Feb. 12. The lecture, which is cosponsored by the UT College of Liberal Arts, will be held at the Frank Erwin Center, 1701 Red River St. at 6:45 p.m. Protestors will gather beginning at 6:00 pm on the northwest side of the Erwin Center holding highly visible signs.

UT YCT and College Republicans members will participate, as well as members of the YCT chapters at Texas A&M and SMU. Community groups such as the Heart of Texas chapter of Free Republic and activists in the Williamson County Republican Party will also take part in the protest. YCT is inviting all students and concerned citizens to join us at the protest and bring a sign letting Clinton "feel their pain," as we will have special prizes for the best signs.

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More madness stemming from American law not differentiating between violent and non-violent religions. If this had been in the Selective Service legislation Cassius Clay wouldn’t have had a legal leg to stand on.

(UPI) -- The head of a suburban charity accused of funneling money to terrorist groups including al Qaida entered a guilty plea to racketeering Monday as jury selection was about to get under way.

Sounds about right. As The Wall Street Journal said, the uncertainty of losing investments to terrorist acts is a curb on economic growth. Thus the economy is unlikely to improve until we beat the terrorists.

What's worrying the stock market? War. Sure, investors are disappointed that corporate profits have not rebounded vigorously and that the economy grew, as we learned, just 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. But those problems, too, are linked to the imminent conflict with Iraq.

Here's how the Federal Reserve put it Wednesday: High oil prices and “other aspects of geopolitical risks have reportedly fostered continued restraint on spending and hiring by businesses.” As those risks lift, monetary policy and productivity growth “will provide support to an improving economic climate over time.”

More of the war on drugs injustices. Had the jurors read the newspapers the court wouldn’t have been able to fool them.

The states’ rights question is whether plant products grown from seeds grown in a state and planted in a state constitute “interstate commerce.” If it doesn’t then it’s not a Federal matter.

It is not every day that a jury apologizes to a man it has just convicted.

So Ed Rosenthal should feel honored that seven of the 12 jurors that convicted him on three federal counts of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy are now apologizing to him and calling for their own verdict to be overturned on appeal.

Five of them appeared and two others had statements read at a news conference last Tuesday outside U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

They wanted to let the world know that they felt misled by the federal judge and prosecutors that did not allow the defense to raise issues of state and local medical marijuana laws in Rosenthal's trial.

Rosenthal, 58, is a well-known author, magazine advice columnist and advocate for the medicinal use of marijuana who was growing the grass for medicinal purposes. California is one of eight states (Oregon, Maine, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado are the others) that have passed laws to allow the sick and dying to smoke or grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.

Outstanding. If Western Civilization is based on the value of the individual, then those who oppose it are opposed to this concept. The omnipotence of the state is a tyrannical concept as old as civilization.

The shifting currents of global power and politics require us to remember that we have no permanent friends or allies. What we have, instead, are permanent values. Others in harmony with those values become our friends and allies. Opponents of those values become something else.

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America is not a Satan of any kind. And our failure to be perfect does not diminish the universality of values we cherish and try to promote. That's why it's vital that we articulate these values clearly and hand them down from generation to generation.

The value most central to our civilization - the one from which others flow - is the inestimable worth of each individual. This idea is what author and political scientist Glenn Tinder calls the “spiritual center of Western politics.” This value causes us to respect and protect individual rights and liberties. It says all people are equal before the law. It says it doesn't matter whether the person clinging to a capsized boat off our shore is rich or poor, it’s worth sending out the Coast Guard.

It's clear that not all nations share that value. Those nations may be our temporary allies to achieve some mutual interest, but in the long run they cannot be our friends. And we are not true to this core value if we ignore it in our geopolitics.

The idea that the individual is exalted leads inevitably to other key values. One is the one-person, one-vote idea, which also embodies the idea that people can best govern themselves and should have the freedom to do so.

Indeed, most of the constitutional amendments that make up the Bill of Rights stem from this core idea about human worth. Without that value, it doesn't make much sense to guarantee freedom of worship, a free press, freedom from searches and seizures and other freedoms.

Only a Leftist would call a man who nearly started World War III “moral.”

Even after the shambles Communism has caused have been revealed by the end of the Cold War Castro remains a true believer and lets the Cuban people suffer.

Hollywood films, the bad guys usually lose. They aren't celebrated. They aren't deified. The good guys don't engage in endless “dialogue” as innocents are killed and tortured. The heroes are the ones who fight hard and triumph over evil. Hollywood just doesn't make films exalting leaders who torture or kill their own citizens.

At least it didn't until Oliver Stone spent some time in Cuba, hanging with Fidel.

Coming this May on HBO, is Stone's documentary “Commandante,” about the life of Fidel Castro. Jake Tapper of Salon.com reported on Stone's softball session with reporters recently at the Sundance Film Festival. “I thought he was warm and bright,” said Stone of his amigo nuevo Castro, “He's a very driven man, a very moral man. He’s very concerned about his country. He's selfless in that way.”

Yet does Stone, for a moment, ever think about what would happen to a Cuban filmmaker who tried to produce a glowing film about President Bush? Does he think about Castro's jails teeming with prisoners whose crime was not thinking properly? Of course not. That would divert energy from a more important task-savaging American foreign policy.

Why is this happening to America? Didn't we recently free a sizable portion of the world from the grip of communism? Are not thousands of our young men buried at Normandy and the names of others carved on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington for paying the highest price and bearing the ultimate burden in the service of other people's freedom and humanity? Have we not transferred trillions of dollars in aid and trade to other nations, and would do so to those in the Middle East if they would live in peace with us and their neighbors?

What other nation rebuilds and reconciles with its enemies like the United States? Radical Islamists claim the United States oppresses Muslims around the world, but this is a clever lie to divert the attention of the oppressed from their real oppressors -- political and religious dictators who wish to remain in power and have access to life's goodies, while denying the same to others in order to keep them under their control. They add to their oppression a vision of an angry, vengeful god who needs corrupt human beings to impose his will by force and to murder anyone who can be labeled an “infidel,” which is to say everyone -- even Muslims -- who do not subscribe to their doctrine of serial assassinations, terrorism and the dehumanizing of women.

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The Wiesenthal Center is learning the hard way that Leftists are only have tolerance for “progressive causes.”

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America is not a Satan of any kind. And our failure to be perfect does not diminish the universality of values we cherish and try to promote. That's why it's vital that we articulate these values clearly and hand them down from generation to generation.

The value most central to our civilization - the one from which others flow - is the inestimable worth of each individual. This idea is what author and political scientist Glenn Tinder calls the "spiritual center of Western politics." This value causes us to respect and protect individual rights and liberties. It says all people are equal before the law. It says it doesn't matter whether the person clinging to a capsized boat off our shore is rich or poor, it's worth sending out the Coast Guard.

It's clear that not all nations share that value. Those nations may be our temporary allies to achieve some mutual interest, but in the long run they cannot be our friends. And we are not true to this core value if we ignore it in our geopolitics.

The idea that the individual is exalted leads inevitably to other key values. One is the one-person, one-vote idea, which also embodies the idea that people can best govern themselves and should have the freedom to do so.

Indeed, most of the constitutional amendments that make up the Bill of Rights stem from this core idea about human worth. Without that value, it doesn't make much sense to guarantee freedom of worship, a free press, freedom from searches and seizures and other freedoms.

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