Michael Radu
CASTRO’S CUBA IS NO MORE
On Monday, July 31, less than two weeks before his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, the official successor as head of state, the armed forces, and the Communist Party. Whether or not Fidel, who seized power on January 1, 1959 and has not relinquished it for a single day until now, recovers from this particular infirmity - officially described as an "intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding" - it is clear that his rule is at an end. Less clear is what will happen to his regime.
THE RESILIENCE OF MAN
This is the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean across from Italy. The English playwright George Bernard Shaw declared on a visit here in 1929, "If you want to see heaven on earth, come to Dubrovnik." Over a million visitors a year from all over the world agree with Shaw, marveling at its huge fortress walls, swimming in the sparkling clear Adriatic, choosing which hidden restaurant in a myriad of tiny alleys to enjoy marvelous food and wine, and partying all night at the Troubador Jazz Café owned by my friend Marko Breskovic. Only the smallest fraction of them pay any attention to this sign affixed to the stones at the city's entrance:
HOW TO SAVE AMERICA FROM BECOMING ARGENTINA
If you knew the U.S. government was going bankrupt primarily because of spending on Social Security and Medicare, and the only solutions were the following, which one would you pick? (1) Doubling individual and corporate income tax rates. (2) Immediately cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits by two-thirds. (3) Immediately cutting all federal discretionary spending (including defense) by 143 percent. (4) Reforming Social Security and Medicare by moving from the current defined benefit plans to a program of individual investment accounts, like the current 401(k) and Medical Savings Account (MSA) plans. Many leading economists of the political right and left have concluded the U.S. government will not be able to pay its creditors, including its current and future retirees, the full value of promised benefits, unless current policies are radically changed. So we must choose.
CONCORDIA
This is K2, the highest mountain in the world next to Everest, at 28,250 feet. It is so inaccessibly remote in the Karakorum mountains behind the Himalayas on the border between Pakistan and China, that very few human beings have ever seen it. Last week I was privileged to take a small group of Americans to the base of K2 by helicopter. It was the first helicopter expedition ever to K2, which otherwise takes 10 days of very high-altitude trekking to reach. An enormous glacier flows from the south face of K2 called the Godwen-Austen glacier, which meets another huge glacier flowing from a mountain called Baltoro Tengri. The confluence of these glaciers is known to mountaineers as "Concordia." It is the consensus of the world's professional mountaineering community that at Concordia is the single spot of greatest scenery on planet earth. But Concordia could stand for so much more.
THE LUNACY OF A BRITISH LEGACY
The border between Pakistan and India is one thousand eight hundred miles long, running from the Karakorum-Himalaya mountains next to China all the way to the Indian Ocean. Along its entire length, there is one land crossing for foreigners, between Lahore, Pakistan and Amritsar, India, called Wagha. To make the crossing, you take a taxi to the Pak side of Wagha, where porters are waiting to carry your bags. After going through passport and customs control, you walk a thousand yards over bare ground to the Indian side, where your Pak porters turn over your bags to a swarm of Indian porters who fight amongst themselves to carry them. When the porters start grabbing your bags from each other, you have to physically intervene to keep your bags from being torn apart. It is over 100 degrees in the shade.
THE ROAD TO AGRA
If I ask you to think of India, the image that most likely appears in your mind's eye would be the Taj Mahal. Arguably the most famous building in the world and considered by many to be the most beautiful structure mankind has ever created, it was completed in 1648 by the ruler of India, Shah Jehan, to immortally entomb his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. There is a painful problem with this image, however, for the great majority of folks in India: the Taj Mahal isn't an Indian building. It's Moslem, and thus for Indians a symbol of Islamic imperialism. The Moslem invasion of India had begun with Mahmud of Ghazni (now in present-day Afghanistan) in 1001. Historian Will Durant observed:
The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.The Taj Mahal is in Agra, about 120 miles south of New Delhi - and it was on the road to Agra that I reflected on the extraordinary complexity of Indian history.
SIAMESE YELLOW
Bangkok. Western tradition associates royalty with the color purple. Not in Siam, or as it's called today, Thailand. The royal color here is yellow - and the whole country right now is wearing yellow, yellow shirts, hats, sashes, or ribbons, in celebration of their beloved King Bhumibol's 60th anniversary of his reign. The King's picture is everywhere, and not because of a personality cult. He is genuinely revered as the embodiment and father-figure of the Thai nation. And at the same time, the streets of Bangkok are clogged with protestors in yellow shirts waving yellow banners, demanding their democratically elected government be overthrown. The Siamese are an interesting people.
KILL TERRORISTS, DON’T CAPURE THEM
THE British military defines experience as the ability to recognize a mistake the second time you make it. By that standard, we should be very experienced in dealing with captured terrorists, since we've made the same mistake again and again. Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them. Killing terrorists during a conflict isn't barbaric or immoral - or even illegal. We've imposed rules upon ourselves that have no historical or judicial precedent. We haven't been stymied by others, but by ourselves.
THE MYSTERY OF ANGKOR
You couldn't imagine a more peaceful place than Cambodia in 1961. Sure, the Vietnamese to the east had split into a Communist North and Free South after the French defeat at Dienbienphu - but that was a problem of despised Cham (the ancient name for ‘Nam). A flight on Royal Air Cambodia from Phnom Penh (the capital) to Siem Reap (near the ruins of Angkor) provided an unforgettable example of just how laid back the place was. It was a DC-3, and the stewardess served us a small cup of orange juice, then strapped herself in the jump seat near the exit door and fell fast asleep. The plane landed, taxied to the tiny terminal, the ground crew opened the door, and we all walked past her to deplane - she was still out cold in Z-land. Must have been a long night in Phnom Penh. I stayed in this small hotel, Auberge de Temples, run by a French lady, right across from Angkor Wat. There were a handful a visitors and I was the only American. As I explored the magnificent ruined cities and temple complexes of Angkor Thom, Ta Prom, Ta Keo, Angkor Wat and others, they were like deserted lost cities that I had all to myself. Wow, is it different today.
SPEAKING ENGLISH AND GETTING RICH
Does the language you speak or use help influence how wealthy you are? When trying to determine why some countries are wealthier than others, economists rarely, if at all, consider language. However, if you look at the list of wealthiest countries on a per capita income basis, you will notice all but three of the top 20 are English-speaking, or use some other Germanic language. Is there something about the English language itself that helps make one wealthier, and is there something about the Arabic language itself that inhibits economic development?
CLIMBING FUJIYAMA
It was an interesting way to spend the 4th of July. And instructive. I climbed Fujiyama - Fuji-san, as the Japanese reverently call it - once before when I was 17. That was in 1961, and I still have the climbing stick I used with the year burned into the wood. It's funny that I have no recollection of the climb being hard. It requires starting from 7,900 feet at 4 in the morning, and trudging steeply up through volcanic scree to reach the rim at 12,200 feet some five hours later. No problem when I was 17. I guess 45 years does make a difference after all. Actually, the big difference is in coming back down. Going up it's your lungs that take a beating, going down it's your legs - and I'll take the former any time. My lungs still work OK, but the endless, endless steep pitch down, down, down, hour after hour made it achingly clear I don't have teen-age legs any more. But my 14 year-old son Jackson does - and standing on top of Fuji with him made all the effort easily worthwhile. For the rest of his life, Jackson will remember the 4th of July in 2006. Fujiyama, one of the world's most famous mountains, is now a part of his life. Hopefully, it will inspire him to learn more about the country of which Fujiyama is the symbol: Japan.
IRAQ’S WMD’S: THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION
Senator Rick Santorum's announcement last week of over 500 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq went largely ignored by the mainstream media. The National Ground Intelligence Center's newly-declassified report proves conclusively that Saddam Hussein lied -- and George Bush and Bill Clinton told the truth -- about Iraq's WMDs. This doesn't square, of course, with the media's mantra that "Bush lied, kids died", so they gave it short shrift. But 500 hidden sarin, nerve and VX weapons is no small thing: it's one of the world's major chemical weapons arsenals. Its presence completely vindicates George Bush and Tony Blair. Though unreported, it's obviously major news. Yet there's an even bigger story. And you probably haven't heard it either.
FREEDOM’S BIRTHDAY
[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. It needed only a slight updating for 2006. We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.] July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America. Put aside your worries and concerns, your frustrations and fears about what's wrong with America. For one day, forget the negative - put it all in a zip-lock bag, hide it in the back of the freezer, and pretend it doesn't exist. One reason is that, for all your worries about America's culture and morality, you and all your fellow conservatives can feel good about your country. Liberals can't. One of the defining characteristics of leftie-liberals is an inability to feel truly proud of their country - proud to the bone. You cannot be a liberal without feeling apologetic and embarrassed over being an American. You cannot be a conservative without lacking any such embarrassment or compulsion to apologize at all. Being an American is simply the coolest thing on earth.
LAST STRAWS
Women know all about last straws. It will thus take a woman to explain to the puzzled men of the New York Times, the Hamas Palestinians, and the Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq why the events of this past week were last straws. "Men are essentially clueless," most any gal will be happy to tell you. "We keep giving them hints that things are bugging us, they keep right on ignoring the hints, until one day when we finally can't take it any more, we snap - and they are hurt and bewildered." So it is that Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller and his fellow traitors at the New York Times are playing the besieged victim in the face of the torrent of outrage over their treasonous exposure of Bush's tracking of terrorist financing. Just as are the terrorists of Hamas, the poor little victims of Zionist oppression who can't understand why this one last provocation, kidnapping an Israeli soldier, could prompt the threat of all-out war against them. As for Al Qaeda in Iraq, they have had a collective senior moment, a memory lapse that could prove fatal. Here's the story they forgot:
A SUMMER EXPERIMENT
Since we launched To The Point at the end of March, 2003, we have issued the TTP Weekly Report every single week for the last three+ years. I'm really proud of that and have every intention of continuing this record. It's going to be challenging to do so this summer, so here we go with an experiment. I haven't been stuck in DC for these past three years straight, but wherever I wandered off to in the world during that time, it's been for a short while, like a couple of weeks or so here and there. This summer is different, for I'll be out of the country for all of July and August. Sometimes I'll be in places where there will be an Internet connection, and sometimes not. Wherever I'm in the former, you'll hear from me - but there may be a gap or two when I'm in the latter. The TTP staff will make sure that the Weekly Report gets out in time, and with our brilliant regulars like Joel Wade, Michael Ledeen, Jack Kelly, Neal Asbury, Dagny D'Anconia, and Dennis Turner. As for me, I'll be providing at least a "sitrep" (situation report) on each country I'm in. As of now, that will be: Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, Croatia, Montenegro, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Spain. Plus a surprise or two.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY IN MEXICO
Last month we discussed in Bad News for Hugo how the ugliest man in Mexico right now is Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. By getting voters to think that Lopez Obrador would be a Mexican Chavez if elected president this Sunday (July 2), Felipe Calderon has a chance of beating him. It's a given in most every conservative mind that an Obrador victory would be a disaster for the US, and a Calderon one vastly preferable. That's because Obrador is an anti-American Marxist and Calderon is a pro-American free market advocate. It seems a no-brainer to root for Calderon. I, too, will be rooting for Felipe this Sunday. Regrettably, the odds favor Obrador. We can hope he loses, but if he wins, we'd better start thinking fast how to turn the danger of his victory into an opportunity. Let's start now.
THE WEASELS HAVE WON
It was back in October 2004, in Porter At The Pass, that we first discussed the true nature of the CIA:
Most folks think the CIA is a right-wing outfit. It is not. The CIA has been dominated by incompetent left-wing hyper-liberals for years.These CIA lefties - known as "Rogue Weasels" by their more competent counterparts - were conducting a covert war against the Bush Administration by leaking damaging classified information to leftwing journalists in the press. When George Bush finally got rid of George Tenet and installed Porter Goss as CIA Director, the weasels began a covert war against their own agency - as discussed in The Rogue Weasels Club last December. That's because Porter was trying to root them out. One of the chief weasels Porter was able to dump was Deputy Director of Operations Stephen Kappes, who had been a principal conduit of classified information leaked to Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Walter Pincus. How the weasels struck back and got their revenge on Porter was explained in Porter and Casey last month. Now this week, we have final confirmation of the weasels' triumph.
MOONBAT RIGHT
We call To The Point "The Oasis for Rational Conservatives." We've gotten a flood of emails this week asking if articles on certain websites claiming that George Bush has "a secret plan to abolish American sovereignty" are being pushed by Irrational Conservatives. The answer is yes. We all focus so much on the moonbats of the left - barking mad hairshirts like Algore, Moveon.org folks driven treasonously insane by Bush Derangement Syndrome - that it's important to recognize there are moonbats of the right. For some weird reason which has to do with psychology rather than reality, a small but loud subset of conservatives easily falls prey to conspiracy theories about cabals of powerful people meeting in secret to take over the world: the Bilderbergers, the Trilaterialists, the Council on Foreign Relations, or some such. The world headquarters of this subset of conservatives is on a grassy knoll in downtown Dallas.
THE NET NEUTRALITY CON
You probably have seen the ads about the "net neutrality" bills before Congress, concerning who gets to manage and set fees for access to the Internet. The House of Representatives has just done the right thing by defeating the so-called net neutrality proposals, and the issue is now before the Senate. The "net neutrality" advocates are a strange coalition of leftist political groups hostile to property rights, self-appointed consumer groups totally ignorant of good economics, and a few large business users of the Internet (such as Google) who want the telecom companies to provide them a free ride for their demands for a more robust network. To understand the fight, you need to be aware of the economic interests of the various players.
CHENEY COOLING ON CONDI
A year and a half ago, just after GW’s second inauguration, in Cheney and Condi, you first learned of the Bush-Cheney plan to have Condi Rice replace Dick Cheney as Vice-President.
Then, in 44, you learned that Bush’s private nickname for Condi is “44” – meaning that as his dad and he are known in the White House as “41” and “43,” he intends for her to be the 44th President of the United States.
But in Cooling on Condi, we let the other shoe drop and discussed Condi’s inability to control her State Department’s compulsion for appeasement regarding Iran.
Nonetheless, all indications have continued that the Cheney-Condi Switch was still on track, scheduled to be implemented this fall as an ultimate October Surprise to lock in GOP House/Senate victories in November.
Until now. Earlier this month, Condi insultingly and gratuitously dissed Cheney, and threw her lot in completely with the spineless pinstripes infesting Foggy Bottom. And over no small matter, but the most critical foreign policy issue of the moment.
THE BIGGEST JERK IN CONGRESS
There are 435 Congresscritters, and choosing who is the biggest jerk among them is not easy, for there is a multitude of choices. Many would opt for John Murtha (D-PA), but he's just the most senile. That's not a joke - he's age 74 and actually going senile. In a recent interview with Tim Russert, he thought Okinawa was close to Iraq, so our troops could be "redeployed" there. Okinawa is 6,000 miles from Iraq. He's reached that stage of senility called second-childhood, where the patient acts increasingly juvenile - like saying the most outrageous things possible in order to get attention, even if they are treasonous and spits on his own military record. Some, of course, would choose anti-American racist screwballs like Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), or Maxine Waters (D-CA). But they're just bit-player kooks. If you took a vote among the Congress members themselves for the biggest jerk among them, the most likely winner would be James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).
INCONVENIENT GLACIERS
Al Gore says the world's glaciers are melting because humanity has emitted too much CO2. However, a new peer-reviewed study shows that in South America‘s Andes Mountains the glaciers' advances and retreats have not been governed by CO2, but by small variations in the sun's intensity.
The study, led by P.J. Polissar of the University of Massachusetts, found that Andean glaciers expanded only four times during the 600 years of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from 1250 AD to 1850.
Each of those glacier advances occurred during a solar minimum, when the sun's lowered activity apparently dropped the mountain-top temperatures by 2-4 degrees C and increased precipitation by about 20 percent.INCONVIENENT FALSEHOODS
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film An Inconvenient Truth. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia gives this assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites? No. Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.THE CONFUSION OF BILL GATES
No doubt he is a genius when it comes to software and innumerable gadgets and such; I am really pleased he got into computers big time. I certainly got a lot from that in my own line of work.
But Bill Gates really needs to shut about some other things he is confused about. Like his claim the other day, when he announced his impending retirement and turn to full time philanthropy, that he "needs to give back to the community."
Why? Did he steal something from people? Did they lend him something he needs to return? What on earth was he talking about?PUTIN’S ANTI-REAGAN DOCTRINE
The most beautiful women in Europe are not in Paris. They are in a country, as Joel Wade and I discovered to our delight, called Moldova. On every street corner in the capital of Chisinau, Joel and I stood transfixed, watching one spectacularly gorgeous woman after another walk by. Back then, in 1989, the place was stilled called the Soviet Republic of Moldavia. The Principality of Moldova had emerged independent out of the Middle Ages, only to be colonized by the Russian Empire in 1812. During the Russian Revolution in 1917, it broke free and joined Romania for safety. Stalin had his troops seize it in 1944, incorporating it within the Soviet Union as Moldavia. It was an exciting time to be there in 1989, as Moldovans saw the USSR disintegrating and their liberty finally around the corner. By mid-1991, they had declared their independence and Moldova was once again free. But there was a little problem.
BLACKS TO THE RESCUE
Here's the hottest question being asked this week by Republicans in Washington: Would you trade the Hispanic vote for the Black vote? It's not being asked too loudly, of course, but that it's being asked at all shows some smart guys in the GOP have figured it out: Bush's desperate attempts to retain and expand the Hispanic vote (40% for him in ‘04) by refusing to protect our border with Mexico and demands for amnesty for Mexican illegals is a loser. Sure, there are muchas Mexicano-Americans who understand that a border fence shutting down the illegal invasion would be the best thing that could happen to Mexico. If folks have to stay there rather than escape, the pressure for real reform could build irresistibly. Nonetheless, when the question is met with scoffs and denial that blacks will ever vote Republican, the smart guys ask: What do readers of Esquire Magazine and Southern Baptist evangelicals have in common?
DEMOCRAT HELL WEEK
The hit on Zarqawi has been described, quoting Churchill, as "the end of the beginning" towards winning the war in Iraq. What it and so much else also portends is the beginning of the end for the Democrat Party's dream of regaining power in Congress this November. Week before last, the Dems were riding high. Bush's poll numbers were so disastrous Time Magazine ran a cover asking "How low can he go?" The liberal rag followed this with a cover story on the "massacre" of Haditha. Nancy Pelosi went on a speaking tour describing what she'll do as House Speaker next January. Harry Reid told his staff to start planning for when he becomes Senate Majority Leader. Yep, the Dems had the Republicans on the ropes, and were gleefully acknowledging their impending victory to the cheering crowd - when without warning and out of nowhere, the Pubbies unleash a series of such punishing blows the Dems find themselves stunned, dazed, and on the canvas.
THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT AMERICA
[Nothing could better illustrate the Left's depression over George Bush's military killing Zarqawi than this morning's headline in the Washington Post: After Zarqawi, No Clear Path For A Weary Iraq. The media's relentless pessimism has infected America in general. It is about time conservatives stop being suckered by liberal pessimism, and start celebrating what's right with America. Peter Wehner, Deputy Assistant to President Bush at the White House, here provides grounds for doing so. ---JW] Americans hear a great deal about the problems they face. We hear hardly anything about the encouraging developments. So here is an empirical assessment of where we are. Social Indicators: We are witnessing a remarkable cultural renewal in America.
JOURNALISTS AS ENEMY PROPAGANDISTS
The Marine incident, and its aftermath, at Haditha last November tells us much more about the media than it does about the Marines. And what it tells us ought to outrage us to the core.
On every radio and television show I appeared on last week (and all I observed) in which this topic came up, without exception at least one of the media people immediately attempted to implicate not just the still-presumed-innocent Marines, but the American military's leadership and methods in general.
The "Drive By Media" (Rush Limbaugh's scientifically accurate description) has already started to report this story in a manner that is likely do vast damage that may last for several years to the morale (and possibly recruitment) of our military. It will create a propaganda catastrophe of strategic proportions in our mortal struggle with radical Islam and their terrorist spear point.
And all this is being done by journalists who should be considered enemy propagandists.ADVISING IRAQ
A buddy of mine came over to my place tonight to celebrate the take-out of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He's on his way to Baghdad to be an advisor to Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki. "What advice do you think I should give him, Jack?" he asked me over too much Famous Grouse Scotch. Here's what I told him: "Well, the very first thing he should do is hang Saddam. Get the trial over with tomorrow, take Saddam and every one of his cronies on trial out into the bright Baghdad sunshine and publicly hang the bastards on world-wide television. Then burn the bodies and scatter the ashes to the winds so there's no burial site for his followers. That'll be it for the Baathists. "Then...
Chapter Twenty-Six: CLEANSING THE TEMPLE
The Jade Steps Chapter Twenty-Six: Cleansing The Temple Much of the royal household was transferred to the Palace of Axayacatl. Montezuma's chefs set up the royal kitchens, attendants the royal baths, servants the royal wardrobe, so that he was fed, bathed, and clothed as before. Suitable quarters were arranged for his wives and concubines, which he frequently visited. His retinue of courtiers and counselors was with him throughout the day. Petitioners and ambassadors from various parts of the empire came to plea with him or present him with tribute. All seemed normal - with one difference. The only guards, of which there were many, were Spanish. There wasn't a jaguar warrior in sight. Yet to everyone who came to him with concern, to ask about his obvious imprisonment, Montezuma assured them he was happy and under no restraint. He told them not to disturb themselves or the city, and commanded them not to be distressed, for his "visit" with the strangers was the will of Huitzilopochtli.
THE WORLD BOGRAKAB CUP
For at least a quarter-century now, I've been hearing the same mantra from soccer enthusiasts: "Every little kid in America plays soccer. When they grow up, soccer will be more popular than football or baseball." This hasn't happened and never will happen. Kids love to run around and kick a ball. Watching grown-ups do it has all the drama of watching paint dry. A majority of Americans will not pay much attention to the World Cup this month while the rest of the world goes bananas about it because "soccer" should really be named "bograkab" - bunch-of-guys-running-around-kicking-a-ball. Here's a synopsis of most every period of most every professional soccer game ever played: Run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball - never score. Run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball - never score. It doesn't get more exciting in sports than this. Except for curling. So - now that I have all soccer fans totally enraged (something that's very easy to do, by the way), let's talk for real about why soccer will never be a competitor to football or baseball or basketball for the hearts of American sports fans.
BACK IN ‘NAM
One of the first things George W. Bush did as his presidency was getting off the ground in 2001was to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam. Since then, trade between the US and Vietnam has grown 400% to $7.8 billion last year. Last week, the US and Vietnam signed an agreement that paves the way for Vietnam to join the WTO, the World Trade Organization. And yesterday, Monday, June 5, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in Hanoi meeting Vietnam's Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai. Noting that a US Navy ship will soon be visiting a Vietnamese port for the fourth time in four years, a reporter asked Rummy if the US was seeking basing rights in Vietnam. "We have no plans for access to military facilities in Vietnam," was Rummy's reply. When diplomacy requires it, Rumsfeld can lie with the best of them.
REPUBLICANS’ LUCK: DEMOCRATS DUMBER THAN THEY ARE
Just when you think Republicans couldn't be dumber - passing the Senate Shamnesty bill, House Speaker Denny Hastert demanding Congress be above the law and letting Democrat crook William Jefferson off the hook, on and on - the Democrats up the stupidity ante. Starting to panic that Her Royal Sowness, Queen Hillary, just might be presidentially unelectable, they dump the PIAPS and go, hearts-a-flutter, for Mr. Hairshirt, Algore. Too dumb to grasp that Americans on the whole refuse to scared by "end of civilization" global warming doomsaying, the entire left-wing political/media machine is cranked up for Hairshirt Al. To top this, the most powerful outfit driving the Dems into left-wing fever swamps, MoveOn, is promoting its "Big Ideas" with its members holding "house parties" all over the country. The goal is come up with "three big positive ideas" for Dems to campaign on in November. Several thousand MoveOn folks were asked last week to choose among the "top ten." And what might be the top ten best ideas for America the left can come up with? Here they are, appropriately translated:
GAZA IS DARWIN CITY
You've heard of the Darwin Awards, right? They're awarded to idiots who kill themselves doing something astoundingly dumb, thereby contributing to human evolution by removing themselves from the gene pool. Awardees are individuals, but I am nominating an entire inhabited region of the world: Palestinian Gaza. Gaza should, in fact, be re-named Darwin City. Consider this news bulletin from Gulf Daily News of Bahrain, dated May 27, 2006:
GAZA CITY: Four Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza yesterday as Israel fired dozens of artillery shells into the territory. Three men died and five other were wounded in a house when a family member brought in and accidentally set off an unexploded Israeli shell that landed near the area, Palestinian security sources said.
OILY LIES OF THE LEFT
With oil prices reaching record levels, the left is up to its old tricks, blaming the President and calling for lots of expensive big government "solutions". As part of this push, they argue that we're running out of oil. But clearly, this argument is not new -- and it's dead wrong. Truth be told, the world's estimated oil reserves grew from 60 billion barrels in 1920 to 600 billion by 1950, 2,000 billion by 1990, and 3,000 billion by the year 2000. And in the next few years, they'll keep rising. Here's why.
SHRINKING SERBIA
In the summer of 1982, I was invited to participate in a Guinness Festival, along with a number of other Guinness World Record holders, held in Austria's Lake District.
At the welcoming reception, we all went around to each other to introduce ourselves and ask, "What are you in the book for?"
There was a fellow with the most consecutive situps: over 27,000. Another with the most consecutive one-armed pushups: over 600. A lady with the most consecutive hours belly-dancing. A rotund guy with the most consecutive hours treading water.
And yes, it was cool for me to answer: Sky-diving on the North Pole, the world's most northerly parachute jump (April 15, 1981, 90º North Latitude). "A record that cannot be bettered," as one Guinness edition said.
I had brought my rig, as the Guinness folks wanted me to do a demo jump. They got a small plane with a door removed and we flew as high as it could go, almost 18,000 feet. When I exited, I was overwhelmed by the sight below.THERE IS NO SUCH COUNTRY AS IRAN
At a meeting of the Nonaligned Movement in the Malaysian city of Putrajaya this week, Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki announced to reporters that "there is no such country" as Israel.
Since Israel does indeed exist, Mottaki means that Iran doesn't diplomatically "recognize" Israel's existence, that Iran wants to extinguish the political existence of Israel, that Israel's current existence is accidental, an illusion that will be swept away by the total triumph of Islam in the Middle East.
Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni should now feel free to announce that there is no such country as Iran. Its existence as an intact nation-state is make-believe. Its existence is as ephemeral as the Soviet Union's or Yugoslavia's, and is soon to break apart as did they.
Last week in Iran Unraveling? you learned about the protest demonstrations by Turkish-speaking ethnic Azeris (who make up over 1/3 of Iran's population) over a cartoon in a government newspaper depicting Azeris as cockroaches. The demos grew this week and are getting violent.
IRAN UNRAVELING?
Things have not been going well for Ahmadinejad the Persian Midget and his sour band of terrorist mullahs this week. This is thanks to Porter Goss giving Michael Hayden a lesson in how to run psy-ops at the CIA before his departure tomorrow (Friday, 5/26).
Take the riots in Tabriz and other Azeri-populated cities in northwest Iran. On May 23, a government newspaper in Tehran published a cartoon depicting an Azeri-speaking cockroach. Oops.
That very day, Azeri demonstrators marched on government offices in Tabriz, riots broke out in a number of Azeri towns, the Tabriz main bazaar was shut down with shopkeepers joining the demonstrators, who had to be dispersed with teargas.
The irony of the mullahs having cartoon riots directed at them is just too delicious. I wonder how such a cartoon slipped into a government newspaper? "No comment" from Porter.
HOW DIFFERENT IS AMERICAN EDUCATION FROM COMMUNISM?
When I went to college I had my biggest problem with the discipline of history. It may have started when I was a kid in Hungary and first ran up against official "scholars" who rewrote Hungary's history-renamed the streets in Budapest, rewrote all the textbooks, and reshuffled the holidays, and even completely recast Western intellectual history.
Under Marxism there was room for just one account of the development of philosophy, namely, what Karl Marx and his epigones wrote.
At first I thought that in a relatively free society historians could be trusted a lot more than under Marxism. But I am not so sure about this now.
To begin with, the one major institution of American society that's very similar to what it had been under communism is education.