Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

Drudge Report | OpinionJournal | FrontPage Magazine | Associated Press
 JewishWorldReview | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Other Links | Bottom

Top

DrudgeReport.com

• Bush: “We Keep Our Word”

• Poll Shows New Yorkers Leaning Toward Bush

• Kofi Annan Lectures US to Do What It’s Already Doing in Iraq

• Thousands of Iranian Agents Foment Unrest in Iraq

• 90 Dead Tigers Found in Freezers in Riverside, CA Home

• BBC Chief Blasts American Media for ‘Gung-Ho’ War Coverage

• Murderous Winnie Mandela Convicted of Fraud

• Howard Dean Claim That We Don’t Know If Iraqis Are Better Off Without Saddam

• NASA Employee Charged With Stealing Columbia Debris

• Number of SARS Cases in Shanghai a State Secret

Bottom

'The world now knows: We Keep Our Word'...

In January of this year, I defined two great priorities for this nation, priorities for my administration. First, we will confront and defeat threats to America, wherever they gather. (Applause.) We have made very clear that we would hunt down terrorists who hate us and who want to harm us. And we made very clear that we would deal with the growing danger of Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime. The world now knows we keep our word. (Applause.)

Our men and women in uniform have made us all proud; the women in uniform have made us all proud -- because they've showed incredible skill and bravery and decency. They fought the enemy with fierce courage; they treated the innocent with compassion and respect; and they are working to make sure the Iraqi people are free. (Applause.)

You see, the values of America understand and say clearly that freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is God's gift to each and every person of the world -- no matter where they live. (Applause.) And it was with that value that our soldiers are now acting in Iraq. And we're working to make sure America is more secure, but we're also making sure that the Iraqi people can be free, can run their own country, can decide their own fate. I know that some of you here today have a loved one serving in the Armed Forces. You tell them, the United States of America is proud of your loved one's service. (Applause.)

Poll: NYers like Bush over Democrats, including Hillary...

Heavily Democratic New York is showing growing support for President Bush over all potential Democratic challengers, including the state's own Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a poll showed.

Annan Lectures U.S. Forces...

Annan lecturing the US on the Geneva Convention is absurd; it was the Saddam Regime which has failed to adhere to it.

U.N. chief Kofi Annan urged U.S.-led forces in Iraq on Thursday to live up to their responsibility for civilians and public order under the Geneva Conventions, drawing an angry response from the United States.

…

But Washington's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Kevin E. Moley, took issue with the remarks, saying the United States had gone out of its way from "from day one" to meet all its obligations.

"Quite frankly, we find it odd at best that the secretary-general would feel that he had to bring this to our attention," Moley told journalists.

Thousands of Iranian agents organizing anti-U.S. rallies in Iraq...

Iran Denies...

The United States has formally warned Iran against interference in Iraq.

U.S. officials said the warning came in wake of intelligence reports that thousands of Iranian agents are organizing the Shi'ite majority in Iraq to oppose the U.S. military presence in that Arab country. The officials said Iran, with the help of Hizbullah insurgents who arrived from Lebanon, is suspected of playing a leading role in the huge anti-U.S. demonstrations by Iraqi Shi'ites over the last week.

90 Tigers Found Dead At Calif. Home...

BBC chief blasts American media networks for 'gung-ho' coverage of Gulf conflict...

Dyke has it wrong. It was the false, biased coverage of the Vietnam War that was shocking.

Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, attacked American television and radio networks for their "shocking" and "gung-ho" coverage of the Iraq conflict yesterday. He also issued a warning against US companies being allowed greater ownership of British media.

Winnie Mandela faces jail...

The bloodthirsty Winnie gets a little justice.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was facing jail yesterday after a South African court convicted her of dozens of counts of fraud and theft of 1m rand (£65,000).

The anti-apartheid campaigner and MP, who will be sentenced today, faces a 15-year jail term and an undignified end to her political career.

Dean: 'We Don't Know' If Iraqi People Are Better Off Without Saddam...

Typical Leftist denial of reality. The Saddam regime was oppressive in the Orwellian sense.

NASA employee charged with stealing Columbia debris...

Communist Party Officials Say Shanghai Caseload 'Still State Secret'...

This kind of thing happens in a totalitarian state.

Top

 OpinionJournal.com

• “Fascist” Roots of the Ba’ath Party, De-Nazification a Model for Iraq

• Free Market Might Have Saved Iraqi Art,
  Germans Had an Artillery Emplacement in Monte Cassino in WW II

• John Kerry Whines for Being Described as “looks French”

• Iranian Opposition Plans General Strike to Topple Ayatollahs

• Iraq Naysayer Chris Matthews Expresses Regrets

• Other Naysayers Continue to Inflate Iraq Problems

• Indian Businessman Who ‘Insulted’ Saddam Freed After 12 Years in Prison

• Dixie Chick Maines Claims She Didn’t Say What She Said

• Black Ministers Cry ‘Racism’ When Boston Public Golf Course Imposed Residency Requirement

Bottom

An excellent short account of the de-Nazification of Germany and the national socialist roots of the Ba’ath Party.

Note that the Communists used German National Socialist (Nazi) concentration camps as instruments of class warfare in the Russian Sector.

Though there are obvious differences between Germany in 1945 and Iraq in 2003, the comparison is, even so, illuminating. As Bernard Lewis points out in his new book "The Crisis of Islam," the ideological origins of the Baath Parties of Iraq and Syria are to be found in Hitler's Germany. Arab nationalists were profoundly impressed by National Socialism, and they had the same enemies in the Middle East: the British and the Zionists. In 1941 the emergence of a pro-Nazi regime in Iraq was prevented only by a British invasion. After 1945 Baathism fell under Soviet influence, which only reinforced the movement's totalitarian characteristics. Baathism has, indeed, combined the Nazi and Soviet models, suppressing opposition by ruthless use of a secret police and, on occasion, massacres of entire towns, while propping up the dictatorship with militaristic propaganda.

…

The ultimate penalty, capital punishment, was reserved for the most serious cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity: In all, 481 were executed by military tribunals, most famously at Nuremberg. In the Soviet zone, where de-Nazification was often a euphemism for class warfare, much larger numbers perished as the Nazi concentration camps were repopulated with the German upper and middle classes.

Leisure & Arts BY ANDRE EMMERICH
What were all those antiquities doing in Iraq anyway?

An excellent article. Note that the “A Litany of Destruction” sidebar says that the Germans had an artillery emplacement in Monte Cassino in World War II.

Contrary to what some believe, trade in ancient objects is not the enemy of preservation. The great contribution the art market makes to this cause is to endow works of art with value. When objects have no value they are inevitably at grave risk of destruction because preserving them is a costly enterprise. Storing, safeguarding, heating and air conditioning, and conserving art can only be done for a relatively few things. In practice, there is a constant triage which saves a few treasured objects while consigning the remainder to destruction through benign neglect.

Top

FrontPageMag.com

• Amnesty International Exposed as “Anti-American and anti-war”

• Saddam Siphoned Off “Oil for Food” Money While Iraqis Suffered

• Ann Coulter: Liberal Fear of Christianity

• Saddam Tried to Use Money Siphoned from “Oil for Food” Program to Buy Support in UN

• Bias of Leftist Media So Obvious That People Are Starting to Ignore It

• International Bill of Rights Would Advance Leftist Causes

• Disloyalty Prospers in Hollywood

• Jack Kemp: Starting With a Blank Slate in Iraq

• Newt Gingrich: Bush Needs to Reform the State Department

• CIA’s “Secret War” Helps Topple Saddam Regime

• North Korea and Cuba Nominated for UN Human Rights Commission

• Colin Powell: France Faces Consequences

• White House Warns Iran Not to Interfere in Iraq

• Castro Used Double Agents Against Reformers

• Largest American Muslim Charity Tells Court No Funds Went to Hamas

• Teacher’s Aid In Pennsylvania Suspended for Wearing Cross

• O.J. Simpson Reality Show in Works

Bottom

Add Amnesty International to the growing list of organizations that have recently been exposed as anti-American and anti-war. Founded in 1961 as an organization "dedicated to freeing prisoners of conscience, gaining fair trials for political prisoners, ending torture, political killings and ‘disappearances,’ and abolishing the death penalty throughout the world," Amnesty International has proven that since the start of the war it is firmly against the United States and its allies in the quest to liberate Iraq. Despite rhetoric that proclaims neutrality in the war and a non-partisan and non-political stance, Amnesty International has taken a firm stand against the Bush and Blair administrations while turning a blind eye to the atrocities of Saddam Hussein and his sadistic Baathist government.

Now we know the truth. Now that American marines have opened the doors and collapsed the walls of Saddam Hussein’s infamous palaces, along with the homes of his relatives and party loyalists, there can no longer be any doubt: The left’s persistent claim that Iraq’s people are poor and malnourished largely as a result of UN sanctions – of which the US is seen as the principal architect – rings utterly hollow. Now the eyes of the entire world have been given a glimpse of the lavish wealth that Saddam’s Ba’athist regime hoarded for itself while forcing the population at large to scrimp and struggle. Now it is no longer arguable: It wasn’t sanctions, but the unimaginable greed of the Iraqi regime, that caused the deaths of so many innocent subjects of Saddam.

If anybody wondered why the sainted United Nations, France, Russia and Syria joined forces in trying to block the U.S. from ousting the brutal Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq the answer is now becoming clear; they feared exposure of the corruption into which they had dragged the now-infamous Oil for Food program.

…

Writing in the New York Post, Dick Morris asked "Why do you think France, Russia and China sided with Saddam Hussein in the United Nations Security Council against the invasion of Iraq?" His answer: because Saddam bought and paid for it.

Back in 1997, Saddam found what he thought was a way he block American efforts to stop him from dominating the region. He would get UN approval to lift sanctions and allow unrestricted oil sales, by bribing France, Russia, and China with juicy contracts giving them a right to develop the major oil fields in Iraq contingent on the lifting of sanctions, to get their votes in the Security Council.

SOME TIME in the morning of April 9, 2003, as the statue of Saddam Hussein was being hauled down in Baghdad, another statue--of Walter Cronkite, famed CBS newsman--hacked at with hammers by various bloggers, also came crashing down. Cronkite, once called "the most trusted man in America," was believed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to have turned the American public against the Vietnam War. This time, Cronkite had done his best to turn the American public against the war in Iraq, but no one paid any attention. Of course, he had been out of public life for quite a long time, but this fails to explain it: His network successors did their best to turn the public against it, and no one had listened to them, either. In fact, as Cronkite's statue was falling, reports came in that millions of former supporters of Dan Rather and Peter Jennings had put their arms down and melted back into the populace, some finding shelter in the arms of Fox News.

International Bill of Rights will be used to advance “progressive” causes.

3. Worse even than this fate, the judges could choose to pursue the restrictions on human rights codified within IBOR to erode the broader freedoms guaranteed within Western democracies. No less a democratic government than Canada has banned the Bible’s injunctions against homosexuality as "hate speech." …

We’re getting close to James Bryce’s (Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612) “When treason prospers, none dare call it treason.”

Don't believe the whining of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon and other Tinseltown leftists who claim they're paying a price for opposing Operation Iraqi Freedom. They're getting rich from their anti-U.S. activism, according to the liberal Washington Post.

Let's get one thing straight from the outset about Iraq. The Iraqi people need wait upon no one - military general, foreign government or international organization - to govern themselves, engage in commerce domestically and sell their property on world markets. Sovereignty resides in the Iraqi people and cannot be conferred by any outside entity or authority.

The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory.

The unprecedented collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, quashed with dizzying speed and negligible casualties, was not the result of good luck or overwhelming force of arms. It was largely due to cell phones manned by CIA psy-ops agents conducting a telemarketing campaign selling surrender to the enemy’s top commanders.

Amazingly, as part of the operation, some of those "human shields" who went to Iraq were really CIA agents sent to deal with Iraqi generals thinking of defecting as well as to identify the military targets where Saddam put them.

The United Nations has listed North Korea and Cuba as candidates for election to its Human Rights Commission, even though the commission has just censured them for rights abuses.

Other nominees with dismal human rights records include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations continues to act as if it has no relevancy.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is warning France that there will be consequences for its refusal to support war with Iraq as the White House considers ways to punish the fair-weather ally.

This is an eminently sensible policy and appropriate punishment for France’s contribution to the collapse of the United Nations.

While not explicitly confirming reports that Iranian agents were making their way into Iraq, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "We have concerns about this matter.

If Iran were able to turn Iraq into a Islamic Republic it would reverse the victory there.

This is typical of a police state.

The nation's largest Muslim charity, shut down after the Bush administration designated it a sponsor of terrorism, yesterday asked a federal appeals panel here to overturn a lower court decision upholding that action.

A teacher's aide is challenging her one-year suspension without pay for wearing a cross necklace, which officials say violates a Pennsylvania Public School Code prohibition against teachers wearing religious garb.

O.J. Simpson -- acquitted in 1995 in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman -- is preparing for his debut as the star of his own "Osbournes"-esque reality show.

Top

Bottom

No articles today

Top

Jewish World Review.com

Bottom

No articles today

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 (Subscription Site)

• x

• WHO Warns Travelers to Avoid Beijing, Toronto

• Blacks Refuse to Accept Public Vote on Georgia State Flag

• Santa Cruz, California Sues Government for Interference of Growing Medical Marijuana

• Turner and Associates Law Firm Being Investigated for Illegal Contributions to Edwards’ Campaign

• Plaintiffs in Nike Suit Claim Misrepresentations Not Protected by First Amendment

• Engineers Start Oil Flowing in Iraq

• Saddam’s Arms Caches Floor Iraqi Weapons Markets

• Indonesian Muslim Leader Denies Ties to Church Bombings

• State Legislator Charged With Negligent Homicide

• LR Robbers Chose East Indians, Hispanics as Victims

• Former Iraqi Soldier Recalls Life Under Saddam

• Free-speech Advocate Commends Ruling to Return Harry Potter Books to School Library

• Arkansas State Board of Collection Agencies Sued Over Usury

• Wall Street Executive Charged With Obstruction of Justice

• Bob Dylan’s Gospel Songs Revived by Contemporary Artists

• Bradley Gitz Blasts Iraq Campaign Naysayers

• Pat Lynch Blasts LR River Rail Project

• Letters – Christians “are at fault for most of the wars and inhumanities of the last 1,000 years.”

• Dagoberto Rodriguez, head of the Cuban mission in Washington accused the U.S. of fomenting unrest in Cuba.
• Treasury Secretary John Snow said on a trip to Brazil that he wants to remove trade restrictions, allowing more imports of Brazilian orange juice and sugar.
• Iranian Actress Gowhar Kheirandish was given a suspended sentence of 74 lashes for kissing an actor on the cheeck.
• Michael Pankiewicz of the Kennedy Space Center was charged with stealing Columbia debris.
• Presidential Candidate Howard Dean called for Senator Rick Santorum’s residential to resign his senatorial leadership position.

Bottom
ArkDemocrat

Global health officials warned travelers Wednesday to avoid Beijing and Toronto, where they might get the SARS virus and export it to new locations.

Canadian officials angrily said they would challenge the health advisory and declared their nation’s largest city still "a safe place." Toronto is the first location outside Asia targeted in efforts to contain the disease.

Opposition from the black caucus helped stretch both flag debates past six hours, but because blacks make up only about a fifth of each chamber, they could not block the bill.

…

The clash between rural white Democrats and black Democrats poses no small problem for Coleman, who succeeded a 30-year speaker this session and needs support of both factions to hold on to power.

Coleman comes from a rural south Georgia town and supports a statewide flag vote. But he spent Wednesday trying to make peace with black lawmakers, several of whom shed tears during the flag debates.

…

Indeed, dozens of proposals concerning the Georgia flag have come up this year. Southern heritage groups demanded a direct vote between the current flag, adopted in 2001 and the former flag with its Confederate cross. Civil rights leaders threaten to boycott any referendum that includes that rebel "X."

Another politically correct attack on consent of the governed.

“Raid on ‘pot’ farm draws city lawsuit.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (AP). April 24, 2003.

Local officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday demanding that federal agents stay away from a farm growing marijuana for the sick.

A strict reading of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments would indicate that growing marijuana from seeds obtained in a state for use in that state would not be interstate commerce and therefore out of Federal jurisdiction.

The investigation was prompted by news reports about $2,000 contributions to the Edwards campaign made by four legal assistants at the Turner & Associates firm. One donor, Michelle Abu-Halmeh, told The Washington Post that Tab Turner, the firm’s principal lawyer, said he would reimburse her for her donation. Turner said last week that she would not be reimbursed.

Did Turner “shake down” his employees?

Nike’s effort is the centerpiece of an argument over free speech in the business world and whether consumers can go to court if a company stretches the truth.

Nike painted a rosy picture of its labor practices, and consumers relied on those misrepresentations when choosing which products to buy, lawyers for a California activist argued. That is false advertising not protected by the First Amendment, and Nike should be made to answer for it in court, lawyer Paul Hoeber told the court.

Engineers began restoring the lifeblood of Iraq’s shattered economy Wednesday by pumping crude oil for the first time since the war began. Although Iraq will not export the oil, the quick startup means one of Iraq’s largest fields could return to prewar production levels within weeks.

Gunshots heralded what the men in the New Baghdad market were selling Wednesday, among the oranges and the eggs — AK-47s, Beretta submachine guns and Browning 9 mms, for as little as $10. Massive arms caches abandoned by Iraqi forces and cleaned out by scavengers have put automatic weapons in the hands of anyone who covets one, endangering any return to peace and stability in Iraq. Even widows and other peaceful Iraqis are buying AK-47s for self-defense.

Having a weapon for self-defense is inherent in American democracy as per the Second Amendment.

The spiritual leader of a group with suspected links to al-Qaida denied Wednesday that he ordered deadly bomb attacks against dozens of churches on Christmas Eve 2000. He called the charges "lies from America."

Rep. Johnnie Bolin, D-Crossett, was charged Wednesday with three counts of negligent homicide in the February deaths of three people killed after the legislator lost control of his car on an icy overpass and hit them.

The robbers made off with a laptop, a cell phone, a palm pilot and several thousand dollars in cash, and police say the heist represented one of a string of robberies targeting people from India and Hispanics in the past month by 18-year-old Jonathan Roberson of Little Rock and his brother, Jason Perry, 21, and possibly a third brother.

Roberson and Perry, who were arrested Tuesday and were being held Wednesday in the Pulaski County jail on $500,000 bonds, admitted they helped commit three robberies of nine victims, said Little Rock police detective Mark Knowles. Investigators are seeking a warrant for the arrest of a third brother, he said.

In the 1990 photograph, Al-Kazaz wears a military uniform in his Baghdad living room. A portrait of Saddam hangs among other pictures on a wall.

He is quick to mention that Saddam’s likeness was the required decor in all Iraqi homes.

"It’s fear, fear, everywhere you go," Al-Kazaz, who is now a U.S. citizen residing in Tulsa, said in an interview Wednesday. "Even in your own home, you fear. They say the walls might ‘hear.’"

This is most Orwellian.

"This is a great decision," said Theresa Chmara, a First Amendment lawyer for the Freedom to Read Foundation, one of several groups that filed briefs in support of putting the books in the Cedarville School District library. "It reaffirms... that students do have First Amendment Rights and school boards can’t withhold books just because they don’t agree with the book."

Possible downside: faculty could use works with falsehoods to indoctrinate students by claiming First Amendment rights. The Arming of America comes to mind.

Note that the ruling was in favor of politically correct works.

Wednesday, Stewart and six other Arkansans sued the Arkansas State Board of Collection Agencies. They claimed the board assists check-cashing companies in charging usurious fees in violation of the state constitution.

Also sued was Mike Beebe, the state’s attorney general, responsible for defending Arkansas law. The lawsuit was filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court.

Mark Pryor, the previous attorney general, was accused of taking campaign contributions from the “payroll lenders” in exchange for de facto exemption from the usury laws.

Frank Quattrone, the former head of Credit Suisse First Boston’s technology-banking unit, was charged Wednesday by federal prosecutors with obstructing investigations into whether he channeled shares of initial public offerings, or IPOs, to favored clients.

Quattrone became the first Wall Street executive to be charged with committing a crime as a result of investigations into securities industry misconduct that began in 2000. His Silicon Valley unit managed the most computer-related share sales at the height of the Internet boom, generating as much as 15 percent of Credit Suisse’s revenue.

Too religious for the masses and too brief for the born-again crowd, Bob Dylan’s three-year plunge into gospel music has often been skimmed over in discussions of the folk-rock legend’s career.

But nearly 24 years after the release of his first soul-searching Christian album, Columbia Records recently issued Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan, featuring 11 musical interpretations by some of today’s top gospel artists.

So why such absurd predictions and assessments from people who should know better? One explanation is simply ignorance, in particular of world politics and military affairs. The other, more pernicious explanation is that they confused prediction and desire, such that they merely predicted what they wanted.

It is a crime to burden Central Arkansas Transit Authority with the operation of this bottomless money pit. Get this into your head. The grand civic visionaries would have completely shut down the essential services of the bus company to satisfy an egotistical whim.

Villines, Hays, Dailey and Keck would have cheerfully made every blind, disabled, elderly, poor and disadvantaged person get frostbite waiting for the next bus if that was the price of kissing up to the special interests, which always seem to get prompt service on whatever happens to be the play-pretty of the day. They care nothing about the beleaguered people who rely on CATA or the taxpayers who are interested in reliable transit and decent paved streets. All they care about is big money, illusive fancy visitors, and their own scaly hides.

• “Sales tax break is not needed.”
  Douglas Gray of North Little Rock writes to denounce sales tax breaks given to the special interests.

• “Respect was not shown.”
  T. Wesley Dodson, Jr. of Little Rock writes to complain about the Little Rock police conducting a traffic enforcement operation during the funeral of a Iraq Operation serviceman.

• “Revenue source unused”
  Eugene Cushman of Jacksonville writes to endorse gambling as a source of revenue for the state government

• “What does Kerry want?”
  Rod MacCleod of Mountain Home writes to criticize the Pat Lynch column on John Kerry’s desire for “regime change”

• “Be sure to send money”
  Gary L. Hanes of Camden writes to criticize naysaying of NPR.

• “Please sit down, shut up”
  Lynn Sellers of North Little Rock writes to criticize Christians, claiming that “If it weren’t for the Christians and the Muslims, there would have been many centuries of peace among the more logical humans. [Christians] are at fault for most of the wars and inhumanities of the last 1,000 years.”

• The Hypocrisy of the Iraq Naysayers

• “Anti-war” Clerics Denied the Truth of the Evil of the Saddam Regime

But if a public figure is wrong about the question of the day, it is incumbent on them to (A) acknowledge their failure, and (B) honestly reevaluate their position, trying to understand why they were wrong.

…

But why should anyone take them seriously? They've been proven wrong on the question of the day and then failed to demonstrate any serious capacity for introspection. They're not public thinkers. They're not journalists. They're activists.

Bottom
Other Links

RELIGIOUS FIGURES who opposed the liberation of Iraq have a lot of explaining to do. Fashioning themselves prophets of peace, they caustically denounced the "rush to war." Having granted the United Nations an almost transcendent moral authority, they declared Operation Iraqi Freedom an "immoral" act of aggression. In the months leading up to the conflict, they made a litany of brash claims and gloomy predictions--all proven to be utterly false.

Top | Drudge Report | OpinionJournal | FrontPage Magazine | Associated Press
|  JewishWorldReview | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Other Links