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Saturday, March 2nd, 2002
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5:27 pm
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Just so no-one suffers the illusion that I am Chris Mooney, he is a columnist. His column can be found, on the link provided below.
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5:24 pm - many links in this article, so run yr mouse on the text to find the articles that are being referred to. Its worth it.
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To: Ann Coulter, syndicated columnist
Re: Where's the carnage?
Dear Ann,
I must confess that my heart sank when I read your latest column, "Mineta's Bataan death march," in which you criticize Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta for opposing the racial profiling of Arabs in U.S. airports.
It's not so much that I have problems with your argument (though I do personally disagree with it). What I don't get is why you tiptoed, quite un-Coulterlike, around your most striking point: That you'd like to see Mineta dead.
Here's what you wrote at the opening of the column:
According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us.
Frankly, Ann, I've come to expect better from you. Why use a rhetorical trick that depends on confusing Mineta with the recently killed Afghan secretary of transportation? Why not just come out and say what you really mean?
I know columnists aren't usually in the business of inciting violence. But you've always been the exception in this regard. There was, after all, the time you called for the U.S. to attack France. And need I mention what you said about those poor misguided people in the Muslim world who were caught on the air celebrating the September 11 attacks?
Ann, let's face it. If writing columns is like playing a sport, then by your very nature you're an extreme athlete. You've always been much more over the top than your closest rivals, Michelle Malkin and National Review's John Derbyshire; and even he had the guts to suggest that we ought toexecute Chelsea Clinton (arguing that "the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future").
Seriously, Ann, do I have to remind you that you got fired from the National Review Online for your extreme rhetoric? That's your persona now. It's what distinguishes you, what sets you apart. You don't hem and haw. You don't take prisoners. The website http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20010716.html"%20target=">Spinsanity.com</a> has even labeled you "the jargon vanguard."
After 9/11, I was convinced that you had really started to come into your own. I even wrote a column making the assertion -- an outrage for my liberal readers -- that you had actually been right about something.
But for a gal who celebrates toughness, this latest piece is an un-manly display indeed. I never thought I'd see the day that Ann Coulter was afraid to call for the death of the only Democratic cabinet member.
What is opinion journalism coming to?
Dismayed,
Chris Mooney
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| Wednesday, February 27th, 2002
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2:29 am
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Certain rights have been granted to gays in Israel recently. Fucking ISRAEL, but in Alabama....
February 15, 2002
Ala. Court Rules Against Gay Mother
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - In awarding custody of three teen-agers to their father over their gay mother, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court on Friday wrote that homosexuality is "an inherent evil" and shouldn't be tolerated.
The nine-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of a Birmingham man and against his ex-wife, who now lives with her gay partner in southern California.
The parents weren't named in court documents to protect the identity of the children, ages 15, 17 and 18.
Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote that the mother's relationship made her an unfit parent and that homosexuality is "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature."
Moore also quoted scripture, historical documents and previous state court rulings that he said backed his view.
Moore is known for his decision to place washing machine-sized monuments of the Ten Commandments in the state judicial building after he became chief justice last year. He also fought to keep a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom when he was a district judge.
David White, state coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama, said Moore's opinion reflected outdated thinking.
"It's unfortunate Alabama is going to be embarrassed once again by a religious fanatic in a position of power in Alabama," White said. "It's obvious he cannot judge a gay person fairly and he should be removed from office."
John Giles, state president of the Christian Coalition, said Moore's decision protected the institution of marriage and strengthened the traditional family.
The father had held custody since 1996, but the mother petitioned for custody in June 2000, contending the father had been abusive.
John Durward, the father's attorney, said his client "is very relieved."
The mother's attorney, Wendy Crew, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
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| Thursday, February 7th, 2002
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12:16 pm
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| Saturday, December 8th, 2001
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8:03 pm
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A quote from the following article::
Ashcroft defends radical anti-terrorism measures
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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In forceful and unyielding testimony, Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday defended the administration's array of anti-terrorism proposals and charged that some of the program's critics are aiding terrorists by providing "ammunition to America's enemies."
Emboldened by public-opinion surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the administration's initiatives against terrorism, Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists."
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I lose valuable IQ points reading about America. It reminds me of Gore Vidal's comment about the cold war's "red scare" ::
"Suddenly, if you were caught reading the New York Times without moving your lips, you were in danger."
current music: Man On The...
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| Thursday, December 6th, 2001
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4:26 pm
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Shock as columnist investigated for un-American activity
Date: 07/12/2001
Phillip Adams, defender of the rights of man, is in an unexpected spot of bother, Pilita Clark reports.
It sounds too strange to be true.
Warren Beeby, the group editorial manager of News Ltd, publisher of The Australian newspaper, says he can barely believe it himself.
But yesterday he confirmed that one of the paper's better-known columnists, the ABC broadcaster Phillip Adams, is under investigation for alleged racial vilification by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Adams is such a vigorous opponent of racism, discrimination and all manner of oppression that the Prime Minister once famously urged the ABC to find a "right-wing Phillip Adams" to balance its political output.
But Mr Beeby said an American citizen had complained to the commission over a column Adams wrote in October about Australia's "blank cheque" support of the United States's war against terrorism.
In the column, Adams argued that US history was replete with racial violence at home and flawed foreign policy abroad, including the bombing of Cambodia, complicity with the Pinochet regime in Chile and one-time support for Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
"If Australia is to be a true friend of the American people, we must try to rein them in, not urge them on," he wrote. "The US has to learn that its worst enemy is the US."
Mr Beeby said the commission wrote to News Ltd in late November asking for a response to a complaint it had received about Adams and the column.
"We're in the process of replying on behalf of the newspaper and Phillip is in the process of thinking what he will say as well," he said.
Mr Beeby first raised the complaint, without naming Adams, in a speech on press freedom to the Commonwealth Press Union earlier this week.
He told the Herald yesterday he found it hard to believe the commission could take such a complaint seriously. "I've never heard of an American being racially vilified before. I think this is one of the great tragedies of our time."
He said it was of deep concern to all Australian media organisations when bodies such as the commission used their powers to stifle debate critical to the public interest, such as Adams's column.
"It was a clinically argued case, whether you agree with it or not, and an important part of the debate about what is going on, and suddenly it's racial vilification of Americans."
A spokeswoman for the commission said it never commented on complaints before it. "All I can say is the normal procedure for complaints is to ask for a response [from those being complained about]. We would then examine the complaint and if it is lacking in substance we would terminate it."
Phillip Adams could not be reached last night.
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| Friday, November 30th, 2001
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7:01 pm
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frontpagemage.com features a columnist named David Horowitz. He has called Edward Said, a respected Palestinian and Professor at Columbia University, a terrorist. And Chomsky, a spokesman for the Taliban.
Why do all right wing ideologues have well constructed websites? And I thought Pravda was bad... Horowitz has emerged as the new champion of McCarthyism. Who cares if he cannot properly qualify his arguments? Who needs a good reason to denounce others as "terrorists", when the very point of doing so, namely to discredit or defame another individual's reputation, is successfully executed when it is broadcast over the web and print.
"Independent" commentators like Horowitz are the font from which anti-americanism is fomented abroad. Ever blurring the lines between journalist and propagandist, he purposefully omits facts, twists the words of those he detracts, or sometimes just invents for one purpose: to ensure that Americans will properly embrace its wars and hate its enemies, particularly those at home. I wonder, if I was to turn back the clock to the late 80's, would he be demanding that Americans show greater support for its proxy war in Afganistan, and our "allies" there, among them Osama Bin-Laden?
Thanks
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(10 comments |comment on this)
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| Thursday, November 29th, 2001
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7:11 pm
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| Monday, November 26th, 2001
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1:36 pm
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| Thursday, November 22nd, 2001
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11:54 pm
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| Wednesday, November 21st, 2001
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1:41 am - Hopefully. dhjelm won't mind me putting this up, for posterity at least.
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dhjelm : free market economics were thrown out in the thirties not because they were garbage, but the federal reserve system, progressives, and regulation of industry made the concept outdated. in the 1800s when the US was a free market society, everyone got richer. the rich got richer faster of course, but everyone's lives got better. the immigrant iniially suffered, but they made money and moved out west only for their spot to be taken by a new immigrant. it wasnt until thiscentury that poverty was a permanent thing.
globalization of trade without any checks is bad.
Daz daz:
This is fundamentally inacurate.
"Free Market Economics", firstly, implies that there was a system in America during the 19th century. Arguably, America's economic policy was characterized by a lack of system, which is the essence of "laissez-faire" (Liberal) economics.
So, lets look at the 19th century, as that era has been of great interest to my work. I apologize if I use many references to Canada's industrialization, I will try include as much as possible the American experience.
It is inaccurate to say that "everyone's lives got better" during the 19th century. Quite the opposite. The processes of industrialization, which was both fomented by and created for another development, rapid urbanization (circa late 18th century in America, mid to late 19th in Canada) resulted in considerable increases in such economic and social indicators, such as Infant Mortality Rate, Death Rate, Poverty, Crime, among the working poor.
The process went like this: The jobs were in the cities, people went to the cities for the jobs. AND the government, in tandem with the early industrialist, frequently worked to make the acquisition of land for immigrants impossible, by buying up most of the available land, within reasonable distances of cities and towns (see Quebec, and historian - Pentland). AND the early industrialists successfully lobbied governments to encourage more immigration so top create a labour market. Often such immigrants settled in these urban settings without sufficient money to pay for overhead costs of living (house, food etc..). The workers lived in urban slums, diseases such as polio (from Rats), Tubercolosis, and cholera were rampant.
The average man's wages were, in fact, insufficient to raise a family on. Which brought about a few other developments, such as female labour and child labour. Working hours could go up to 16hrs a day. (what does this say about Quality of life)
Did people get rich? Yes. Capitalists did. As they refered to themselves as Capitalists, quite unashamedly in those days. They thoroughly rejected any attempts on the government's behalf to "limit their ability to compete", or "limit their freedom". Some examples of which, was their rejection of the attempt to impose a standardized 9 hour day, and the attempt to ban the use of children as labourers. They felt that leaving the market to govern itself, was axiomic, any interference would hurt the economy, as it would negatively affect their ability to compete.
The Capitalists got rich because there was two markets to exploit to increase profits. 1. The commodities market, on which the object is sold, in accordance to supply and demand. 2. The labour market, on which the worker's labour is bought and sold, in accordance to supply and demand.
The need for the product dictates the nature of the price. Same went for labour: The more labourers about, the less the wage.
Wages were not fixed at a sum that was conducive, as previously suggested, to raise a family.
Race, age and Gender also played a key role in determining worth. Skilled labourers, for example, might have turned up to 16 dollars a week (Canadian) in the 1880's. They were ALWAYS male, ALWAYS white (mostly always British, not Irish). They made up what Marx and many others considered to be the "labour aristocracy".
Did they get rich? Not really. What wiped them out? Technology and labour process innovations. Whatever the ultimate benifits to technologies, and processes like Assembly Line Production, the late 19th was characterized by a reckless drive to profit, made possible through such innovation, but at the expense of the traditional artisan. Coopers, for example, were those skilled craftsment who produced barrels; eventually, a machine was created to replace them, and temporary labourers, and a few machinists to run it. Unemployment, caused by the obsolescence of many trades, (Coopers, Wooden Ship builders etc..), allowed for an increased supply of cheap labour. Assembly lines required cheap unskilled labour, and therefore, paid much less.
So, I feel I have outlined some of the experience of the working poor, so to dispel any illusion that the 19th century was a period in which living standards had improved. At best, you can argue that the 19th century was the no-man's land through which the western world had to traverse to reach the promised land of today; but I would still hasten to disagree with that statement.
Free Market Economics was thrown out in the 30's. Why? Because of the depression, the recent introduction of universal suffrage, and the prominence of powerful labour bodies, in America, such as the CIO and its increased ties with the Democratic party; and in Canada, the CIO and the Worker's Unity League, and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation Party. There were early attempts to maintain the Liberal system, even during the depression, on both sides of the border. In Canada, our Prime Minister held poverty to be a condition fomented by laziness and corrupt morals, and so proposed a return to the 19th century-era policy of sending debtors and the poor to "workhouses". What did the "progressives" want? Federal recognition and protection of Unions, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, public education, some even proposed univeral health care.
The notion that the government ought to take care of its citizens, was the anti-thesis of free-market economics. Regulation of industry was considered to be, for many, the safeguard against the reoccurance of another depression such as the one suffered in 1929
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1:17 am - To Pat Buchanan #2
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| Tuesday, November 20th, 2001
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9:33 pm
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Assault on Liberty
by Nat Hentoff
Abandoning the Constitution to Military Tribunals
uring his terms as governor of Texas, George W. Bush made it clear that he was dangerously ignorant of the Constitution—not only denying due process to the record number of people he executed but also refusing effective counsel to indigent inmates of Texas prisons.
But as president, Bush, terrorized by the terrorists, is abandoning more and more of the fundamental rights and liberties that he—and his unquestioning subordinates—assured us they were fighting to preserve.
On Thursday, November 15, William Safire—The New York Times' constitutional conservative—distilled Bush's new raid on the Constitution:
"Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. . . . We are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts. . . . In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.' "
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These secret trials will be based, to a large extent, on secret evidence.
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What Bush has done by executive order—bypassing Congress and the constitutional separation of powers—is to establish special military tribunals to try noncitizens suspected of terrorism. Their authority will extend over permanent noncitizen American residents, lawfully living in the United States, as well as foreigners.
Assault on Liberty
Nat Hentoff Abandoning the Constitution to Military Tribunals
Alan M. Dershowitz Military Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music
Norman Siegel No to Military Tribunals: They Are Not Fair
Jeffrey Herman Powers of Military Tribunals
The trials will be held here or in other countries—like Pakistan or "liberated" Afghanistan—and on ships at sea. The trials will be in secret. There will be no juries. Panels of military officers will be the judges—with the power to impose the death penalty if two-thirds of these uniformed judges agree. There will be no appeals to any of the sentences. (Even in regular court martials, judges must rule unanimously for executions.)
The defendants may not be able to choose their own counsel—lawyers who, after all, might get in the way of the swift justice commander in chief Bush has ordered.
The military tribunal will have other, more extensive ways to undermine the rule of law than exist in court martials or regular trials. The evidence to be allowed will be without the range of protections accorded defendants in what used to be the American system of justice.
For example, under "the exclusionary rule" in American courts, illegally obtained evidence cannot be used at a trial. Neither can hearsay evidence, which can include rumor and other unverified information about which a witness has no personal knowledge. Such evidence helps produce a death sentence.
Much of the prosecution's evidence will be withheld from the defendant and from whatever lawyer he or she can get because it will allegedly be based on classified intelligence sources. And the military officers in charge will, of course, decide the severe limits on the defense in other respects as well. These secret trials will be based, to a large extent, on secret evidence.
As for proving guilt, the standard will fall below "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a startled response, Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who caved in to the administration and supported the anti-terrorism bill, with its pervasive assaults on the Constitution, has awakened to what this reckless president is capable of.
Leahy said in the November 15 New York Times that these drumhead tribunals with their arbitrary standards can "send a message to the world that it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary executions without the possibility of judicial review, at least when the defendant is a foreign national."
Bush is sending a corollary message to the world that is particularly dangerous to American citizens arrested by foreign governments on charges of endangering their national security—journalists reporting "state secrets," travelers talking to native dissenters, or overly curious visiting academics. If the United States can prosecute and even execute loosely identified "supporters" of "terrorism" secretly and swiftly, why can't other countries follow that lawless example in their own interests?
Until now, Attorney General John Ashcroft has taken most of the direct heat for the Bush administration's contempt of both the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers, as well as its ending of lawyer-client confidentiality for dragnet suspects in federal prisons, and its holding of suspects in prisons for days and weeks without releasing their names or the charges, if any, while their families and lawyers search for them.
But now, as the only president we've got, Bush has taken center stage as he further dismantles the Constitution through these military tribunals. In this executive order he has issued as commander in chief, only he—our maximum leader—will decide, in each case, who is to be brought before what in the Old West were called "hanging judges." Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will appoint members of the tribunals and set up the rules. Remember, there will be no appeals to United States courts or to international tribunals.
We have already seen on television and elsewhere in the media a parade of apparatchiks of the president. Included are his loyal vassals in the administration and various legal scholars of realpolitik. This is a war, they intone, and these (presumptive) terrorists do not deserve to be judged by our constitutional standards.
Moreover, Bush's good soldiers add, there can't be an open trial, as the Constitution demands, because our intelligence sources would be revealed. Under the once vaunted American system of justice, defense lawyers would have been entitled to see some of that evidentiary background. But in an open court, the president's defenders argue, witnesses against these dread defendants would be in danger of their lives from the terrorists' hidden colleagues among us.
In the November 15 New York Times, Professor Phillip Heymann of Harvard Law School, a former deputy attorney general, was asked about such rationales:
"Mr. Heymann said that some terrorists, notably those charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had been successfully prosecuted in the civilian courts with a law [the Classified Information Procedures Act] that allows classified information to be used in a trial without being disclosed to the public.
"Similarly . . . Mr. Heymann said that countless Mafia and drug-cartel trials had been conducted where both witnesses and jurors were protected."
Then Heymann cut to the duplicitous core of George W. Bush's summoning of the military tribunals:
"The tribunal idea looks to me like a way of dealing with a fear that we lack the evidence to convict these people." (Emphasis added.)
On Ted Koppel's Nightline (November 14), Harvard Law School professor Anne Marie Slaughter reminded the president and the rest of us that this war is being fought to protect and preserve American values.
"One of these values," she said, "is justice. And we have an entire system designed to achieve that. To forsake that now is to betray the cause we're fighting for."
Also, with regard to our pride in the American system of justice, Slaughter pointed out, "We are trying to gain the confidence and the support of people in Muslim countries around the world, as well as in our own coalition. From that point of view, this is disastrous. They're asking us for evidence [of worldwide terrorism]. We're now saying, 'Well, we can't give you evidence.' "
Brushing these counterarguments aside, defenders of the president insist there are historical precedents for these military tribunals—the trial and hanging of British secret agent John Andre in 1780; the convictions during the Civil War by the Union army of opponents of Abraham Lincoln's policies; and the trials and executions of German saboteurs sneaking into this country during the Second World War.
In response, Georgetown University law professor David Cole emphasized on Nightline, "The only times that military tribunals have been permitted in the past have been in a declared war with respect to enemy aliens—people who are involved in fighting against us in a declared war on behalf of a nation with which we're at war."
Bush asked for an official declaration of war, but Congress declined. So, as Cole said, "We are not in a declared war." Furthermore, "this [Bush executive order] is not limited to people, even to the Al Qaeda people who are fighting against us. This is an extremely broad executive order . . . that's wholly unprecedented."
As the November 15 Washington Post reported: "[This order] would grant the Bush administration complete freedom to set the terms of the prosecution. Defendants could include suspects in attacks on Americans or U.S. interests, and anyone suspected of harboring them." And Ashcroft has "raised the possibility that the government may seek military trials against [the large numbers of] suspects now in custody"—not one of whom has been connected to the September 11 attacks.
At one point in the debate over the USA PATRIOT Act (the anti-terrorism bill), the ACLU reminded us that "the president is not above the law." Now the ACLU, in view of the military tribunals Bush has set up, calls on Congress "to exercise its oversight powers before the Bill of Rights in America is distorted beyond recognition."
In view of Congress's yielding most of what John Ashcroft wanted in his and Bush's anti-terrorism bill—despite the damage to the Bill of Rights—its members, concerned with being reelected in this time of terrorism, are not likely, with a few exceptions, to rise to the defense of American values and laws.
Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in the first wiretap case before the Supreme Court (Olmstead v. United States, 1928), foreshadowed the advent of George W. Bush:
"Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. . . . To declare that in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means . . . would bring terrible retribution. Against this pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face."
In 1928, the Supreme Court agreed with the government's subversion of the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections—setting the initial stage for the current vast expansion of electronic surveillance by the Bush administration—and not only over suspected terrorists. The Court has another chance now to teach the president that he is not above the law. Tell that to your representatives and senators—now!
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| Monday, November 19th, 2001
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8:12 pm - Reply to Pat Buchanan #1
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I wonder if Pat Buchanan has ever heard of Toronto?
Its one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. I believe it is considered to be the most. But the former claim is sufficient to make this point: Canada's immigration policy has fluctuated over the last century and a quarter, but to be sure, it has almost always been more open than that of the USA. Yet, for some mystical reason, Canada has been victim to relatively few terrorist attacks, as compared to the USA.
Why is that Pat? Why? Is it the cold? Is it because Canada's racial mix happens to be a harmonious one? Or, in yr words, they have found it much easier to assimilate?
OR IS IT, that America has been a major supporter of terrorists, dictators, and "rogue nations" themselves, whatever the intentions were at the time (anti-communism, oil, both) . And in so doing, hatred of them has festered among the people they helped terrorize, collar, and swindle.
No, it couldnt be. Racial diversity is a factor in the production of Terrorism. Jean-Marie Le Pen, (who wanted to give Arabs in France the boot) couldnt have put it better.
This is the first of a series of replies to Pat Buchanan's little polemic.
The next one, will be much more detailed, as I am in a rush to go to work right now.
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7:16 pm
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The following article contains many many opinions that might offend people. But I think it is important to hear what Patrick Buchanan has to say (Pat was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000, and served three presidents in the White House, and endorsed President Bush Sr.'s election to republican candidacy at their Convention preceding the Presidential election.)
Its a game: spot the racism, and historical inaccuracies.
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Let the "Ashcroft Raids" begin
© 2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
By Pat J. Buchanan
In 1919, with President Wilson felled by a stroke, anarchists detonated a bomb outside the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. For the anarchists, not a wise move.
On Jan. 2, 1920, there began what historians call "the Palmer Raids." U.S. agents swooped down on immigrant enclaves, collared anarchists, roughed them up and booted 3,000 out of the United States. The raids were led by 25-year-old John Edgar Hoover, who would later take over a corrupt federal agency and convert it into the most respected anti-terrorist organization on earth: the FBI.
After Lenin's coup ignited a reign of terror in Russia, Palmer let Congress know that Trotsky had plotted it all in New York. Enough said. When Leninists attempted to seize power in Berlin, Bavaria and Budapest, Palmer – not a man to take chances – sent Hoover's boys after the Bolsheviks. They cleaned house.
Among the expellees was famed radical Emma Goldman, who had been the Britney Spears of American anarchism. Goldman had inspired both her lover, Alexander Berkman – who stabbed and shot Henry Clay Frick of Carnegie Steel during the Homestead Strike of '92 – and Leon Czolgosz, who murdered President McKinley.
As James Fulford tells the story on Vdare.com, the website that urges immigration control, Goldman wailed all the way to the boat that America was behaving like czarist Russia, though she was being packed off to the Workers Paradise. But even Lenin and Stalin soon had enough of Emma's act – for they, too, booted her out.
Walter Lippmann decried the Palmer Raids and Red Scare, but when a terrorist bomb exploded on Wall Street outside the House of Morgan on Sept. 16, 1920, killing 33 and wounding 400, the attorney general seemed more in touch with reality than Walter.
History, or rather those who write it, has not been kind to Palmer or Hoover. But their raids took place after 30 years of mass immigration and social tensions, when Americans wanted to put their house in order. And with Harding's landslide, the United States would reform its immigration laws and close its borders for 40 years, until LBJ and Great Society liberals threw them open again.
Progressives may deplore the immigration quotas from the Coolidge to the Kennedy eras, but not one act of terrorism occurred on U.S. soil in those years. Even in wartime, Hoover's vigilant FBI kept America secure from sabotage and terror. Indeed, it was not our Nazi enemies, but FDR's communist friends who carried out the only successful acts of espionage and treason.
America has now completed a third of a century with massive immigration, and Sept. 11 should be a final warning that open borders represent an intolerable threat to the national security.
In the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, America was one nation and one people again. We learned the same history, spoke the same language, listened to the same radio and TV shows, went to the same movies, sang the same songs, honored the same heroes, read the same books.
But the times, they are a-changing.
At the U.S.-Mexico soccer game in L.A. in 1998, the U.S. national anthem was booed by 90,000 Mexicans, the Americans flag was torn down and the U.S. team was showered with debris as it left the field.
Last month, another soccer match was held between the French and Algerian teams outside Paris. France's national anthem, the Marseillaise, was booed by 60,000. Spectators in corporate boxes were told to lock themselves in, as Algerians began to chant the name of Osama bin Laden. When youths ran onto the field waving Algerian flags, the stands erupted in wild cheering. Spectators fled.
We are only just beginning to see the dark side of diversity.
Western peoples must begin to ask themselves questions our ruling class has kept off the table too long: Are there not some peoples, from radically different countries and cultures, who are far more difficult to assimilate in Western societies than others?
Gov. Tom Ridge is in charge of homeland security, and the place to begin is at America's borders. The president and Congress should impose an immediate time-out on all immigration, shift the 90-10 pro-Third World bias in immigration to 50-50 First World/Third World, and begin the systematic deportation of illegal aliens.
Ridge should begin with the aliens from nations that harbor terrorists, any who consort with or fund terrorist organizations and any who applauded the horrors of Sept. 11. When rounded up, these folks should hear just five words, "Get out of our country!"
Meanwhile, let the Ashcroft Raids begin.
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6:56 pm
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"I am very concerned about my good friend (Attorney General) John Ashcroft," Jeffords said. "Having 1,000 people locked up with no right to habeas corpus is a deep concern."
from::
Jeffords Discusses Switch in Book
By Christopher Graff
Associated Press Writer
Monday, November 19, 2001; 5:12 PM
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3:36 am
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Al-Jazeera accuses US of bombing its Kabul office
Targeting of building denied by Pentagon
Matt Wells in Barcelona
Saturday November 17, 2001
The Guardian
The Qatar-based satellite television channel, al-Jazeera, claimed yesterday that its Kabul office had been targeted by United States bombers. Ibrahim Hilal, the chief editor of the Arabic language network, said it had given the location of its office in Kabul to the authorities in Washington - yet on Monday night, its office was destroyed by a bomb that almost wrecked the nearby BBC bureau.
The Pentagon yesterday denied that it had deliberately targeted al-Jazeera, but said it could not explain why the office was hit.
Speaking by telephone to the News World conference of media executives in Barcelona, Mr Hilal said he believed that al-Jazeera's office in Kabul had been on the Pentagon's list of targets since the beginning of the conflict but the US did not want to bomb it while the broadcaster was the only one based in Kabul.
By this week, however, the BBC had reopened its Kabul office under Taliban supervision, with the correspondents William Reeve and Rageh Omar.
On Monday, al-Jazeera executives in Qatar called their correspondent in Kabul and told him to leave, because they feared for his safety after the Northern Alliance took over.
However, after receiving assurances from the Northern Alliance that he would be safe, the reporter decided to stay. He did not tell Qatar of his decision - that night, his office was bombed. At the time, Reeve was being interviewed on BBC World from his bureau in the same street. Pictures of him diving under his desk to avoid fall-out from the blast have been shown on BBC television.
Mr Hilal said he believed the attack was deliberate and long-planned. "I still believe the decision to exclude our office from the coverage was taken weeks before the bombing. But I don't think they would do that while we were the only office in Kabul."
He said that US intelligence forces routinely monitored communications between Qatar and Kabul - a recent videotape of an Osama bin Laden statement was played out by satellite to Qatar from Kabul, but not broadcast until seven days later.
Yet Washington knew of its existence and demanded the right to broadcast a response.
The US would have known, therefore, that al-Jazeera had ordered its Kabul correspondent to leave, but would not have realised that he was still in the city. If the correspondent had died, there would have been an outcry, and the disaster would have been compounded if Reeve had been seriously injured or killed.
Speaking to the conference from the US military's Florida command centre for the Afghan bombings, Colonel Brian Hoey denied that al-Jazeera was a target. "The US military does not and will not target media. We would not, as a policy, target news media organisations - it would not even begin to make sense."
He said that the bombing of Serb television in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict was a different issue. Col Hoey said the targets in question "appeared to have government facilities associated with them".
He said the Pentagon did not have the location coordinates of the al-Jazeera office in Kabul even though the broadcaster said it had passed them, on several times, via its partner CNN in Washington.
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3:24 am
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I can't fucking sleep. My house is 90 degrees, because of the rads. I am too lazy to open a window. Maybe not lazy, but there is some form of inertia that is holding me to my seat, complimenting well a compelling urge to continue reading the news.
Saw Harry Potter movie today. Me and about a million 7-13 yr olds, and their haggard mums.
Why do all kids have a cold?
Anyway, the movie has absolutely no plot, much like the book, but I liked it anyway.
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3:12 am
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U.S. SILENCES AL-JAZEERA, DESTROYS KABUL OFFICE WITH MISSILE
Updated on 2001-11-13 15:57:11
DOHA NOV 13 (PNS): U.A.E. based Al-Jazeera tuned in by estimated 35 million Arab viewers around the world which gained fame due to its exclusive coverage from inside Afghanistan. The Kabul office of Al-Jazeera television was hit by a missile and put out of action when Afghan opposition forces entered the capital, the Qatar-based channel said today.
It is not known yet whether the Norhtern Alliance forces have shelled the TV station or it was bombed by US Fighter Jets. US Bombers have had also mistakenly bombed few hospitals and offices of Red Cross in Kabul during last month.
Taliban regime had only allowed Al Jazeera channel to be stationed within Kabul. Federal Communication authority (FCA) in USA had asked US Channels to not to broadcast the video speech of Osama Bin Laden aired by Al Jazeera. Auhorities in USA believed a possibility of hidden messages being indrectly conveyed through video speech to Al Qaeda followers by Osama in USA.
No statement has been issued by international Committee to Protect Journalists on bombing on broadcast media apparently by United States
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2:53 am
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U.S. actions undercut tough talk against terrorists
By Wayne S. Smith
Posted November 12 2001
As President Bush has made clear, we are now involved not simply in an all-out campaign to bring to justice Osama bin Laden and all others responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but in a campaign to end terrorism as an international threat. If we are to lead that campaign effectively, it is vital that our own rejection of terrorism be unequivocal -- and unquestionable.
Unfortunately, there are still some lingering ambiguities -- in many cases having to do with carry-overs from the CIA's clandestine war against Cuba of the '60s and '70s. Even after the CIA had called off the war, certain of the exiles it had trained continued operations on their own.
One of the most infamous was Orlando Bosch. In prison from 1968 until 1972 for terrorist activities, he was then paroled, but only two years later he violated his parole and fled to Latin America, ending up in Venezuela, where in 1976 he was imprisoned for masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner, with the loss of 73 lives.
Released from Venezuelan prison under strange circumstances in late 1987, Bosch returned surreptitiously to Miami in 1988, where he was almost immediately arrested for illegal entry. The Immigration and Naturalization Service began proceedings to deport him.
That caused an uproar among hard-line exiles in Miami, but despite their demands that he be freed, the acting associate attorney general in 1989 denied Bosch's petition to remain in the U.S. "The security of this nation," he explained, "is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists … We could not shelter Dr. Bosch and maintain our credibility in this respect."
One can only say "amen" and wish that that had been the end of it. But it was not. Lobbied unrelentingly by Sen. Connie Mack of Florida, by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, her then-campaign manager Jeb Bush and by various other Miami politicians, the first Bush administration overrode the Justice Department and in 1990 allowed Bosch to remain in the United States.
Worse, in 1992, the Bush administration granted Bosch an administrative pardon. Since then, he has lived freely in Miami.
And then there's the case of Guillermo Novo, one of the alleged conspirators in the 1976 assassination in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister, and his associate Ronni Moffitt. Though acquitted of that charge on a technicality, Novo spent four years in prison for lying to a grand jury. Shortly after his release, he was hired by the Cuban American National Foundation as an expert in "public affairs." Today, he is in prison in Panama, accused of involvement in a recent assassination attempt against Fidel Castro.
Another exile, Virgilio Paz Romero, who had been convicted of involvement in the 1976 Letelier assassination, was this year freed from INS custody after the Cuban American National Foundation "fought diligently" for his release.
In short, the pattern of condoning terrorism and protecting those engaged in it continues until the present day. Under the present Bush administration, the most influential voices in determining U.S. policy toward Cuba seem to be those of U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, of Ros-Lehtinen and of the Cuban American National Foundation -- the same old gang of Bosch cheerleaders. If the first President Bush squandered a certain amount of U.S. credibility on issues of terrorism by pardoning Bosch, George W. Bush undercuts that credibility today by associating himself and his policies with those who lobbied for that pardon in the first place, or who have otherwise aided and abetted terrorists.
Our foreign policy imperatives since Sept. 11 demand a very different approach: that the U.S. government assert through both its actions and its words that it does not condone acts of terrorism, whether carried out by Middle Eastern fanatics or by hard-line Cuban exiles from Miami. Only then will there be no ambiguity.
Wayne S. Smith, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., is a former U.S. diplomat who served in Argentina, Brazil and the Soviet Union in addition to Cuba.
Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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